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NUCLEAR
Still Missing: A Nuclear Strategy
US pushing new Russia nonproliferation plan
Finland nuclear power expansion gains in poll
'There will be war,' after heat subsides
Ten North Korea officials in South for nuclear project
Nuclear-tipped Foolishness
US agrees to limits to missile defense: Ivanov
Russian Lawmaker Discusses Arms Deal
Rumsfeld Says Terrorists Will Use Weapons of Mass Destruction
U.S.: Extremists Will Get Mass Destruction Weapons
Nuke treaty a 'good thing'
Bush to Seek Cooperation but Press Issues
Ukraine seeks to unfreeze EBRD nuclear plant loan
Finding Rich Fodder in Nuclear Scientists
Trying to Add Light to the Heat on Indian Point
Sound Site for Nuclear Waste
MILITARY
U.S. Wants Afghan Army to Grow
Anthrax Scare At World Bank Sends 1,200 Home
Anthrax Scare at World Bank, IMF
Polygraph Tests Set in Anthrax Probe
A Disease Warrior's Challenge: Bioterror Defense
House, Senate Compromise on Bioterror
Court rules error is not a shield
Powell 'Angered' by Killing of Kashmiri Separatist
Villagers Flee as Fighting in Kashmir Is Unabated
'There will be war,' after heat subsides
Pentagon Opens Talks With India
Iran Parliament Debates U.S. Ties
New Round of Iraq - U.N. Talks to Be Held in Vienna
Sharon Ejects Orthodox Party, Cutting Coalition's Edge
Sharon Faces Test, Palestinians Head for Exile
NATO should take Russia 'warts and all'
Pakistan Seeks Monitors to Cool the Simmering Crisis in Kashmir
The U.S. ignored foreign warnings
Icons of the Crusade
U.S. military recruiting legal aliens holding green cards
They've Got a Secret -- Lots, Actually
POLICE / PRISONERS
Spying at Home
U.S. Rules Out Firearms in Airline Cockpits
FBI Warns of Suicide Bombs
State Dept. Releases Report on International Terrorism
Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not Told
U.S. Releases List of Nations That Sponsor Terrorism
Suicide bombs 'inevitable'
Bill eyed to probe warning failures
NYC Warned of Possible Threats
ENERGY AND OTHER
Australian city water supply to generate power
Army Corps Completes Hasty Project Review
University's cloning patent raises a 'mammal' issue
Mammoth Cave Bioprospecting Produces Potential Cancer Drug
International financial agencies send workers home after anthrax scares
ACTIVISTS
600th arrest at Mothers' Day Action
-------- NUCLEAR
Still Missing: A Nuclear Strategy
By Sam Nunn, William Perry and Eugene Habiger
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47970-2002May20?language=printer
This week in Moscow, President Bush and President Vladimir Putin will sign a treaty reducing the number of U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads over a 10-year time period. Reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons is vitally important and this is a strong step forward, but there is clearly more urgent work to be done.
President Bush knows this. Well before Sept. 11, he cited the threats from nuclear material that cannot be accounted for, from rogue nations, nuclear theft and accidental launch. He talked of the need to "constrict the supply of nuclear materials and the means to deliver them" and the need to "cut off the demand for nuclear weapons by addressing the security concerns of those who renounce these weapons." He said the United States "should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status."
At his previous summit with Putin, Bush said, "Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction."
The administration's challenge is to put forward a coherent strategy for fulfilling the president's goals. So far it has not.
The most likely, most immediate, most potentially devastating threat America faces is the threat of nuclear terrorism. This puts us in a new nuclear arms race -- between terrorist efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and our efforts to stop them. Acquiring weapons materials is the hardest step for the terrorists to take, and the easiest step for us to stop. We and our allies should be taking every possible action to help make the tons of nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere secure from terrorist theft or purchase. But we're not. The budget for these efforts remains essentially flat -- even though, at the current rate, it will take years to secure the remaining 60 percent of nuclear material in Russia that is not adequately protected. The administration needs immediately to put forward new ideas, come up with new funding and recruit new partners to secure the raw materials of nuclear terrorism in Russia and elsewhere.
On the question of nuclear weapons policy, some in the Bush administration are considering and openly discussing steps that would take us in the opposite direction from the path pointed out by President Bush, including expanding options for nuclear attacks, widening the number of targeted nations and developing new nuclear weapons variants. While each of these ideas may have a plausible military rationale, their collective effect is to suggest that the nation with the world's most powerful conventional forces is actually increasing its reliance on nuclear forces. If other nations follow this example, they will increase their reliance on nuclear weapons and undercut the cooperation we must have to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism. If our nation moves in this direction, we will increase our ability to deal with unlikely threats -- and decrease our ability to deal with the likely threats.
We addressed the Cold War's threats by confrontation with Moscow. There can be no realistic comprehensive plan to defend America against today's threats that does not depend on cooperation with Moscow. It appears that both President Bush and President Putin understand this, but their challenge is to get their own teams heading in this direction. This week:
(1) Both Bush and Putin should pledge to ensure that nuclear, chemical and biological materials and weapons in both countries are safe, secure and accounted for -- with reciprocal monitoring sufficient to assure each other and the rest of the world that this is the case.
(2) The United States and Russia should launch a global coalition against catastrophic terrorism by encouraging and assisting all countries in adopting the same high standards to keep weapons of mass destruction and their essential ingredients secure from terrorists. NATO should make this its top priority, and the new relationship with Russia could be a big help.
(3) The two presidents should insist on an accurate accounting and adequate safeguards for tactical nuclear weapons, including a baseline inventory of these weapons and reciprocal monitoring. These are the nuclear weapons most attractive to terrorists -- even more valuable to them than fissile material, and much more portable than strategic warheads; yet they are not covered by present treaties or agreements.
(4) Both presidents should order their military leaders, in joint consultation and collaboration, to devise operational changes in the alert status of their nuclear forces that would reduce toward zero the risk of accidental launch or miscalculation and increase the decision time before each president would be required to make the fateful decision to launch. They should begin with an operational stand down of the weapons on both sides that are now scheduled for reductions.
(5) Both presidents should pledge that the treaty they are signing will be supplemented by additional agreements to ensure transparency, verifiability, irreversibility and stability. The goals of stability and irreversibility would be substantially advanced by agreeing to dismantle nuclear weapons from each nation's stockpile.
This summit gives President Bush and our nation the opportunity to advance our top national security imperatives. We are not assured of having this opportunity tomorrow. We must seize it today. There is much at stake.
Sam Nunn is a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. William Perry is a former secretary of defense. Gen. Eugene Habiger, USAF (Ret.), is former commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces.
----
US pushing new Russia nonproliferation plan
Story by David Ljunggren,
REUTERS CANADA:
May 21, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16043/story.htm
OTTAWA - The United States is pressing its key partners to sign on to a new $20 billion plan to speed up nuclear nonproliferation projects in Russia in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and thereby prevent hostile groups from obtaining weapons-grade material, diplomats said.
But they said some members of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations feared Washington might be moving too quickly with its "10 plus 10 over 10" plan, under which the United States would give $10 billion while the rest of the G7 would also come up with $10 billion over 10 years.
Washington, which has already committed around $1 billion next year under existing programs to help Russia decommission the vast former Soviet nuclear arsenal, is determined to prevent al Qaeda and other organizations from taking advantage of leaky security at Russian atomic sites, the diplomats said.
"This is a very ambitious nonproliferation plan. I think Sept. 11 focused people's attention as to how great the dangers of nuclear proliferation are," one G7 diplomat told Reuters.
Details of the plan have yet to be worked out but it is designed to boost efforts to help Moscow deal with the 30,000 nuclear weapons and the highly enriched uranium and plutonium stocks it inherited when the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991.
Last year, a bipartisan U.S. task force said the need to secure Russian nuclear weapons, materials and scientific knowledge was "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States".
U.S. officials first put forward Washington's new plan in mid-April and are determined that it should be formally announced at a summit of leaders of the Group of Eight nations - the G7 plus Russia - in the Canadian Rocky Mountain resort of Kananaskis in late June.
The focus on nonproliferation intensified with the announcement by U.S. President George W. Bush that he planned to sign a treaty with Russia this week under which the two nations would cut their nuclear warheads by the year 2012 to around 2,000 from current levels of 5,000 to 6,000.
MIXED VIEWS WITHIN G7
Diplomats said G7 nations were of three minds about the new U.S. plan - Germany and Canada supported it fully; Britain and France liked the concept but wanted more details; while Italy and Japan were less enthusiastic, in part because of the cost but also because of widespread corruption in Russia.
"People feel there is enough money going to the Russians to fund nonproliferation efforts as it is and they aren't spending all of it. If we give them even more, it won't be that effective," said another G7 diplomat.
U.S. officials are now suggesting that instead of handing over billions of dollars to Russia, G7 countries could forgive some of their Soviet-era debt on the understanding that Moscow spent an equivalent sum on nonproliferation efforts.
One North American security source familiar with the 10 plus 10 over 10 plan said Washington was unhappy with how little other G7 nations had contributed to programs designed to neutralize the dangers posed by Russian nuclear material.
"Everybody recognizes that given the threat we have now of terrorists getting their hands on some of these weapons of mass destruction that we really need to accelerate the programs. The Bush administration believes this cannot be done unless we get more money into them," the source told Reuters.
Experts say the new plan might focus on decommissioning some older Soviet-era nuclear power stations as well as constructing a mixed-oxide plant which would turn weapons-grade plutonium into fuel suitable for use in civilian reactors.
But one non-U.S. diplomat said Moscow would have to be consulted properly about the new proposals.
"You can't tell the Russians 'Here's a check, now do this and this'. That just isn't possible," the diplomat said.
Under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, named for its two principal sponsors in the Senate, Washington has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to former Soviet states since 1991 to protect and dispose of nuclear materials.
The money is designed to help scrap those Russian missiles, bombers and submarines designated for destruction under arms reduction treaties as well as accounting for and safely storing dangerous byproducts, including nuclear warheads.
But while G7 nations do not doubt the sincerity of Washington's efforts to step up nonproliferation efforts, they worry that it could blunt the new initiative by moving too quickly to produce a plan for the leaders' summit in Canada.
"There are lots of questions still hanging over this one but the Americans are absolutely determined that an announcement be made in Kananaskis," said one diplomat.
-------- europe
Finland nuclear power expansion gains in poll
REUTERS FINLAND:
May 20, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16026/story.htm
HELSINKI - More than half of Finns now support a plan to build a new nuclear reactor to meet rising energy demand and reduce dependence on imports, particularly from Russia, a survey showed on the weekend.
The Gallup poll, published less than a week before the parliament votes on the issue, showed that 54 percent approved construction of a fifth reactor, as long as other energy sources were also expanded.
That represented a sharp rise from January, when 40 percent supported the proposal in another Gallup poll.
The parliament is believed to be narrowly in favour of expanding nuclear power, despite a trend among European Union nations in recent years to seek energy alternatives to such reactors.
The five-party coalition government, which includes the anti-nuclear Green Party, has said the best way to meet both Finland's rising energy demands and its obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto protocol was to build the country's first new reactor for more than two decades.
Supporters said a key reason for Finland's determination to push ahead was its desire to be more self-sufficient and reduce reliance on imports, particularly from Russia.
According to the poll conducted from April 29 to May 5, three-quarters of Finns opposed too much reliance on Russian energy, and 58 percent said it was better to expand nuclear power than import electricity from their huge neighbor.
Opponents of nuclear energy believe that health and environmental risks of nuclear generation are excessive, so other energy sources should be favoured. The parliament rejected a proposal to expand nuclear power generation in 1993.
Finland has four nuclear reactors at two installations, supplying about 30 percent of total electricity needs. It has no oil or gas of its own.
More than 1,600 Finns took part in the poll, which was conducted by the Gallup polling company and published by the Finnish news agency STT.
-------- india / pakistan
'There will be war,' after heat subsides
By Rahul Bedi
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
May 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020521-97550579.htm
NEW DELHI - India prepared for war with Pakistan yesterday, although senior officers said offensive operations would have to wait for the end of searing summer temperatures and the monsoon rain that follows.
Delhi placed all paramilitary units along the border under army control and the coast guard under naval command.
The foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, said this was "standard operating procedure" when preparing for war.
The country's military is planning for conflict in September, although New Delhi has announced a diplomatic offensive to avoid conflict.
In Washington, State Department officials said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage plans to travel to the region, probably early next month, in an attempt to ease tensions between the nuclear armed rivals.
With the subcontinent enduring a heat wave that has sent temperatures soaring as high as 122 degrees officers conceded that an offensive at the moment would be impossible.
"There will be war but, in all likelihood, it will take place after the summer and the monsoon rains," a senior army officer said, declining to be named.
There was no other way the Indian army could "let off steam and teach Pakistan a lesson," he said.
The two sides continued to trade artillery fire across the border for the fourth day in a row.
Indian officials rejected proposals by Pakistan for independent observers to be deployed along the border.
"The figures of infiltration [by Islamic militants] have gone up," said an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nirupama Rao. "There's no point in seeking to deflect attention by talking of involving third parties."
In Pakistan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan appealed for international efforts to ease tensions.
"We hope the international community will increase further its efforts considering the hostile postures adopted by India and convince India to see reason and come to the negotiating table for discussions and dialogue."
India accuses Pakistan of providing Islamic militants with bases and sending them to fight in Kashmir.
Nearly 1 million men have been mobilized on both sides of the border since an attack by militants on the Indian Parliament five months ago.
Pro-war sentiment is widespread in India. Retired Maj. Gen. Afsir Karim, a member of the National Security Council Advisory Board, said: "We have neither economic nor diplomatic clout against Pakistan and the only instrument left is the military one."
-------- korea
Ten North Korea officials in South for nuclear project
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
May 21, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16041/story.htm
SEOUL - Ten North Korean nuclear and aviation officials began a tour of South Korea yesterday to study the feasibility of an air link between the estranged neighbours to serve a nuclear power project, the Unification Ministry said.
The proposed air route between the Koreas - which have no telephone or travel links across their heavy militarised Cold War border - would be limited to serving a nuclear reactor project in North Korea being run by an international consortium.
The consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), is building two nuclear reactors in southeastern North Korea at a cost of more than $4.0 billion under a 1994 pact negotiated by the United States which froze the North's suspected nuclear weapons programme.
The visit of the 10 North Koreans under KEDO auspices comes as official North-South Korean ties are stalemated despite signs of a breakthrough last month.
After two sets of reunions of families divided since the 1950-53 Korean War, North Korea unilaterally cancelled inter-Korean economic talks set to be held in Seoul from May 7.
Repeating a pattern it followed for much of 2001, North Korea agreed to restart talks, prompting the South to send fertiliser aid. But the North then cancelled the talks, blaming what it said were pro-U.S. remarks by South Korea's foreign minister.
The United States is also awaiting word from North Korea on restarting talks after Pyongyang said in April it was ready to receive a visit by Jack Pritchard, U.S. envoy for negotiations with the North.
The North Korean technicians arrived in South Korea on Sunday and will stay until May 24, visiting nuclear power plants and airports in the second such visit by North officials following a training tour by 19 nuclear experts at the end of last year.
A proposed air link would be used to fly KEDO personnel and equipment from Yangyang or another city on South Korea's eastern coast to an airport up the coast in North Korea near the nuclear project site at Kumho.
-------- missile defense
Nuclear-tipped Foolishness
Michael Roston
May 21, 2002
Foreign Policy In Focus
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205nuke.html
On April 11, 2002, the Washington Post publicized the Defense Science Board's study of integrating nuclear-tipped interceptors into America's planned national missile defense (NMD). Initial Bush administration reviews of missile defense technology discounted the possibility of using such a system. However, the administration may be concerned that other missile defense proposals, employing "kinetic hit-to-kill vehicles" that strike a target head-on, cannot guarantee successful interception. Some analysts have suggested that this form of interception is as difficult as "hitting a baseball with a golf ball." Beyond guaranteeing a successful interception, some NMD planners also hope that nuclear explosions in space would guarantee the destruction of biological or chemical agents in ballistic missile payloads.
The Defense Department under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not the first to consider the use of a nuclear warhead-based missile defense system. Nuclear-tipped ballistic missile interceptors created a great deal of controversy in previous decades. One system, known as Sentinel, was actually deployed during the 1970s to defend the Midwest's nuclear silos from a preemptive strike. The military considered deploying the Sentinel system nationwide. The result was a strong push by physicists that succeeded in convincing the military that the risks of deploying such a system far outweighed the protection it provided.
The arguments against nuclear-tipped interceptors have salience to this day, and should continue to be heeded.
First, nuclear-tipped kill vehicles would most likely intercept an incoming missile in low earth orbit (LEO). At this height, it is still possible for radiation produced by a nuclear detonation to fall back to earth. If this intercept were to occur over American soil, the missile defense system would create a serious risk of the homeland being exposed to unnaturally high amounts of dangerous radiation. It is precisely this concern that inspired Representatives John Spratt of South Carolina and Tom Allen of Maine to mandate a study by the National Academy of Sciences of the effects of such an incident.
Second, the damage done to most commercial and military satellite systems by even one nuclear detonation in low earth orbit would be comparable to the "Pearl Harbor in Space" scenario ironically depicted by many conservatives as a justification for U.S. weaponization of space. On January 11, 2001, a special commission on threats to U.S. space systems led by Rumsfeld concluded that U.S. satellites were vulnerable to both conventional and nuclear attacks conducted by "rogue states," who presumably would have little to lose in a conflict with the United States. But isn't it possible that the use of a nuclear-tipped interceptor in an NMD system deployed by the U.S. would have essentially the same destructive effects as a rogue attack?
Even within the Defense Department, there have been studies showing that a nuclear detonation in space, whatever the source, is a shock our entire planet cannot healthily absorb. An April 2001 study by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency entitled "High Altitude Nuclear Detonation against Low Earth Orbit Satellites" concluded that a single low-yield nuclear burst in space could disable every commercial and government satellite in low earth orbit in a matter of weeks. Replacement of damaged satellites at current launch rates would be extraordinarily difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, while higher background radiation levels would continue to degrade any new systems put in orbit for months afterward.
Most commercial communications satellites are in low earth orbit. In their role as conduits for rapid information exchange, they form the backbone of the global economy, and their destruction would chaotically disrupt international markets. Furthermore, the diplomatic consequences of destroying all other countries' LEO satellites in such a strike (including those of our allies) would be almost unimaginable. And the effects would go well beyond economic and diplomatic. Weather prediction and monitoring satellites would also be badly degraded, undermining everything from U.S. military operations to worldwide shipping and transportation to disaster prevention. In addition, crucial military imaging systems such as the Lacrosse, KH-11, and KH-12 photo-reconnaissance satellites would eventually be disabled as well.
The U.S. uses these satellites for target identification for future air strikes, tactical wartime intelligence, and post-bombing damage assessment--tasks that were essential to military success in Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. The loss of such assets would undermine the use of precision air strikes during wartime to limit U.S. casualties.
In short, the accumulated economic shocks and human casualties caused directly and indirectly by the loss of LEO satellites would be very high and hard to calculate accurately. It is exactly these extreme vulnerabilities that have led many U.S. conservatives to warn about a future Pearl Harbor in Space. But in this case, it would be the U.S. itself that would destroy its own assets--not international rogues.
Unfortunately, in its rush to deploy a workable NMD system, the administration appears to be studying a form of treatment that will cure the disease but kill the patient. In seeking to prevent one ballistic missile from striking an American target, a nuclear kill vehicle could do serious harm to the very people it seeks to protect. Members of Congress are right to raise concerns about the implications of this system. One hopes they will convince the Pentagon's Defense Science Board to fully consider these costs by going beyond narrow technical considerations and assessing the overall effect of a nuclear-tipped interceptor on U.S. national security.
(Michael Kraig is a Program Officer at The Stanley Foundation (online at www.stanleyfoundation.org). Michael Roston is an Analyst at the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (online at www.ransac.org). This Foreign Policy in Focus commentary (online at www.fpif.org) should not be construed as representing the beliefs of either of these organizations.)
----
US agrees to limits to missile defense: Ivanov
Tuesday May 21, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020521/1/2pvmh.html
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the United States will pledge to limit the development of its missile defense program in a declaration on Russian-US strategic relations to be signed this week.
"The declaration will clearly state that the US missile defense system will be limited," Ivanov told a session of the State Duma lower house of parliament on Tuesday.
US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are due to sign a new nuclear disarmament treaty reducing Russian and US nuclear stockpiles to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads for each side over the next 10 years.
They are also due to sign a separate, broader declaration on strategic relations during their Friday meeting in the Kremlin.
Washington had previously denied that Bush would sign any agreement in Moscow placing limitations on the proposed US missile defense program, which Russia has furiously opposed.
Ivanov failed to specify what type of limits Washington had agreed to place on its proposed missile shield, which is still being developed.
But Ivanov said the document forbids the United States from using the missile program against Russia's national interests.
Washington has long argued that the shield was a defensive weapon aimed at preventing a limited attack from "rogue states" like North Korea and Iraq, and in no way threatened Russia's own nuclear potential.
Ivanov further noted that the disarmament treaty will allow Russia to load multiple nuclear warheads on its long-range missiles, thus addressing one of its primary strategic security concerns.
The new nuclear disarmament treaty that will be signed Friday allows Russia "to load multiple warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles," Ivanov said.
This "lowers our concerns" about nuclear parity between Russia and the United States that arose following Moscow's ratification of the START II nuclear disarmament treaty two years ago, Ivanov said.
"We have the first legally binding treaty to be signed by the US administration," said Ivanov.
The two sides "have created favorable conditions for ensuring national security," said Ivanov. "This is a period of unprecedented activity in our international activities."
-------- russia
Russian Lawmaker Discusses Arms Deal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 21, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50989-2002May21?language=printer
MOSCOW (AP) -- Despite some grumbling from nationalists that Russia caved in to the United States, the nuclear arms deal to be signed this week faces no serious opposition in the Russian parliament, a senior lawmaker said Tuesday.
Alexei Arbatov, deputy head of the parliament's defense affairs committee, said the lower house, which is dominated by pro-government moderates, will quickly rubber-stamp the deal.
``There are no doubts that any treaty signed by the president will be easily approved,'' Arbatov said at a news conference.
The accord commits each country to cutting its nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads from the approximately 6,000 each is now allowed. It is to be signed when President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Moscow this week.
The Bush administration reluctantly agreed to Moscow's push for a formal treaty but brushed off Russian complaints about the Pentagon's plan to stockpile some of the decommissioned weapons rather than destroy them.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with lawmakers Tuesday to gather support for deal, describing it as the best compromise Russia could hope for.
``It was the most that we could get,'' Ivanov said. ``The main achievement is that we have managed to preserve the negotiation process.''
Ivanov also said the new treaty would free Russia from constraints on its strategic nuclear forces contained in previous agreements, such as the ban on the deployment of land-based missiles with multiple warheads -- the kind of weapons preferred by the Russian military for cost reasons.
Ivanov said a declaration also to be signed during the presidential summit would reflect the ``limited character'' of the conceived U.S. missile defense and the U.S. pledge that it wouldn't threaten Russia.
Ivanov also sought to allay lawmakers' concerns about U.S. military deployment in Central Asia for the war in Afghanistan, saying Moscow would try to ``determine the timeframe for their presence.''
``This issue can't leave us unconcerned,'' he said.
Russia's Communists and other hard-liners have assailed the nuclear deal and Putin's support of the deployment of U.S. forces in the ex-Soviet republics as national treason.
Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov said Tuesday that the party leaders would meet this weekend to condemn the treaty and prepare a motion of no-confidence in the government -- a symbolic move given the Communists' weak presence in the lower house.
Arbatov insisted the deal was the best Russia could get because its military had damaged its ability to negotiate a better one by announcing plans to cut its nuclear forces for lack of funds.
``The program of reduction of Russia's strategic nuclear forces has cut the ground from under the feet of our negotiators,'' Arbatov said. ``When you try to bargain without having anything to offer, it's hard to get any concessions from your partner.''
He said the deal was a victory for Russia considering the Pentagon could afford having as many warheads as it wanted, unlike the cash-strapped Russian military.
Meanwhile, Ivanov and Undersecretary of State John Bolton met in Moscow on Tuesday to put the finishing touches on the arms agreement and other security documents due for signing at the summit, the Foreign Ministry said.
-------- terrorism
Rumsfeld Says Terrorists Will Use Weapons of Mass Destruction
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/politics/21CND-TERROR.html
WASHINGTON, May 21 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned today that terrorist states will inevitably be able to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction.
"Let there be no doubt, it is only a matter of time before terrorist states armed with weapons of mass destruction develop the capability to deliver those weapons to U.S. cities, giving them the ability to try to hold America hostage to nuclear blackmail," Mr. Rumsfeld told senators at a hearing on the Pentagon budget. "With the power and reach of weapons today, we have little margin for error and we need defenses that can deter and defend against such attacks."
Mr. Rumsfeld's warning, while not surprising, was nevertheless sobering. It was the second statement of concern about national security in two days from a high official. On Monday, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that suicide bombings like those that have left hundreds dead in Israel are "inevitable" on American soil.
"I think we will see that in the future - I think it's inevitable," said the director, Robert S. Mueller III, whose agency is under siege by critics in Congress and elsewhere who contend that the bureau failed to follow up on clues that might have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.
Mr. Rumsfeld told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea are working on weapons of mass destruction and can be expected to supply them to terrorists to which they are linked. Terrorists, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "inevitably will get their hands on them and they will not hesitate to use them."
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks were not startling in view of the Bush administration's often-expressed concerns about terrorists, but they served as another reminder of how the world has changed since the days of the cold war and, more specifically, since Sept. 11.
Mr. Mueller, who spoke on Monday to a conference of the nation's district attorneys, did not identify which terrorist groups might be considering such attacks in the United States, nor did he provide any specific time frame when they might occur.
His comments came a day after Vice President Dick Cheney issued a similarly vague public warning about the likelihood of new terrorist strikes, saying that another attack by Al Qaeda was "almost certain" but that it could happen "tomorrow or next week or next year." Mr. Cheney made no reference to the possibility of suicide bombings here.
Mr. Mueller apparently did not know that his warnings would be made public. Administration officials said that his remarks and those of Mr. Cheney, coupled with warnings last weekend from intelligence agencies that they had detected terrorist communications suggesting a new attack was being planned, were not part of any campaign by the White House to raise public alarm.
Nor, they said, were the warnings intended to deflect criticism over intelligence failures before Sept. 11. The F.B.I. has been the target of intense criticism after the disclosure that an agent in the bureau's Phoenix office warned last July that Al Qaeda terrorists might be training in American flight schools.
Mr. Mueller suggested that the F.B.I. and other agencies would not be able to stop new terrorism attacks in the United States or against American targets overseas because of the difficulty of recruiting informers who had penetrated the inner circle of terrorist groups.
His warnings came as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed news reports that a group of "extremists" may have entered the United States in recent weeks aboard container ships that docked in American ports.
"We had an instance in which 25 extremists, as they were described, jumped on ships outside of the United States, hid in the container cargoes until they got to the United States and then disembarked," the lawmaker, Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview on CNN. "And they've been lost in the American population."
Mr. Graham offered no other details on the search for the men, but Congressional aides said the senator was referring to information gathered from the Coast Guard and intelligence agencies about a group of Middle Eastern men who had apparently jumped ship between late March and May 15 in ports in Miami, Port Everglades, Fla., Long Beach, Calif., and Savannah, Ga.
One Congressional aide stressed that the information had not been confirmed. A Coast Guard spokesman had no comment about Mr. Graham's account.
Government analysts and private counterterrorism specialists have long worried that militant Islamic groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad might someday unleash a wave of suicide bombings in this country in an effort to pressure the United States to limit its support for Israel.
Their concerns have grown in the wake of the dozens of suicide bombings in Israel in the last 18 months in which Palestinians, many only teenagers, have strapped explosives to their bodies and walked into pizzerias, discos, malls and other places where Israeli civilians gathered.
Law-enforcement officials believe that an embittered Palestinian immigrant came within hours of detonating a nail-studded bomb in the New York City subway system in 1997, in what would have been the first such attack. The suspect, Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, was convicted of the plot two years later, though it was never clear if he was acting at the suggestion or behest of a terrorist group.
During the trial, which Mr. Abu Maizar clearly saw as a chance to publicize the plight of Palestinians, he testified he had intended the bomb to kill as many Jews as possible.
"I lived under the Israeli Army occupation for 20 years, facing all kinds of suffering from the aggression of the Israeli Army," he testified in explaining his actions. Law-enforcement officials in New York say that Mr. Abu Maizar had planned to detonate the bomb in a subway station or on a subway line in a Brooklyn neighborhood where large numbers of Orthodox Jews live.
Mr. Mueller's warnings came during a question-and-answer session with the National Association of District Attorneys, which is meeting this week in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington. Aides said that Mr. Mueller did not realize that a reporter from The Associated Press was in the audience. F.B.I. officials later confirmed the accuracy of the quotations cited by the A.P.
On Capitol Hill, the debate continues to center on how to investigate previous warnings and the government's responses to them in the months and years before Sept. 11.
There was new concern among lawmakers over how the Bush administration had responded to the arrest in Minnesota last August of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has since been described as the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Confirming reports in The Star Tribune of Minneapolis and The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged on Monday it had received a warning in August from the F.B.I. about Mr. Moussaoui's arrest. But the agency said it issued no warning to airlines because there was no evidence to suggest he was part of a terrorist plot.
Rallying behind the White House, House Republican leaders said they opposed creating an independent commission to investigate how the government dealt with terrorism warnings before Sept. 11.
The Republican opposition made it unlikely that a proposal for an outside group to scrutinize the performance of the government would soon be approved by the House, leaving the House and Senate intelligence committees to make their own investigation.
Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader, said he opposed an outside inquiry. Last weekend, he said, "This is a professional matter of national security, utmost national security importance."
"It should be handled professionally, it should be handled carefully, and it should be handled quietly," he said.
Other lawmakers, led by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and John McCain, are pushing to create a 14-member independent commission. Mr. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican often at odds with the administration, have said they may try to push legislation through shortly after Memorial Day.
--------
U.S.: Extremists Will Get Mass Destruction Weapons
May 21, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-usa.html
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday it was inevitable terrorist groups would get weapons of mass destruction, deepening concerns about fresh attacks on the United States.
His comments, coupled with dire warnings by other senior officials, came in the wake of reports the Bush administration may have failed to assess correctly clues shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,000 people.
U.S. officials said although there appeared to be no information now pointing to a specific attack, which would warrant raising the formal threat level, there were enough signs to trigger fresh calls to Americans to be on alert.
``We have to recognize that terrorists networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction, and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them and they would not hesitate one minute to use them,'' Rumsfeld told a congressional hearing.
On Monday's FBI Director Robert Mueller said it was ''inevitable'' suicide bombers would strike in America despite efforts to reorganize U.S. defenses after the attacks on New York and Washington by hijacked planes.
And on Sunday Vice President Dick Cheney said extremists were ``almost certain'' to strike again.
Analysts said the Bush administration appeared to be trying to put people back on their guard eight months after the attacks.
ANOTHER ATTACK
``I suspect law enforcement is very concerned that there will be another attack,'' said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counter terrorism operations.
``In an environment where there are a lot of questions about what they knew, they are trying to put everything out, so there is a political decision to put it all out so that they will not be accused of sitting on anything.''
President Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer made clear the warnings were in part in response to questions last week about just how much the White House knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
``I think it was just more as a result of all the controversy that took place last week,'' Fleischer told reporters.
Fleischer also said the warnings were aimed at averting public complacency, which he said Bush had often predicted.
Rumsfeld, testifying at the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee, named Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea and ''one or two others'' as the leading threats.
Bush has named Iraq, Iran and North Koreas as members of an ''axis of evil,'' each of which he said was developing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and backing international terrorist groups.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge stressed there was no specific credible evidence of a threat of suicide bombings in the United States, but Americans would be ``somewhat naive'' if they felt immune from such attacks.
``While we prepare for another terrorist attack, we need to understand that it is not a question of if, but a question of when,'' Ridge told a meeting of the World Economic Forum.
'YELLOW' WARNING
He said Mueller, who made his remarks in a closed door meeting on Monday, ``was reminding this country that we should not feel that we are immune from terrorists using that kind of tactic against us as well.''
Ridge told the conference the United States remained on an ''elevated'' level of risk, or yellow ranking, on a color-coded national alert system introduced in March, because intelligence on possible attacks was too vague. The highest alert level is red, followed by orange, yellow, blue and green.
Rumsfeld spoke as the State Department released its annual global report on terrorism, which warned of the risk of groups acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It said Sept. 11 showed their determination to inflict mass casualties.
``In the wake of these unprecedented attacks, terrorists increasingly may look to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials, many of which can cause significant casualties, to rival the events of Sept. 11,'' it said in a special insert on such weapons.
But it said the threat went beyond al Qaeda, citing as examples the militant Islamic group Hamas' use of poisons and pesticides to coat shrapnel and the recent arrest of a group in Italy with a compound that could produce hydrogen cyanide and maps of the underground systems near the U.S. embassy in Rome.
Fleischer acknowledged Bush was probably told only recently of an FBI memo, date last July and warning that extremists could be training at U.S. flight schools. He said the president was pleased with Mueller's work and that of the CIA Director George Tenet.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Attorney General John Ashcroft and Mueller were told of the July memo soon after the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks but that neither had told the president.
News of the July memo has sparked mounting concern over whether the Bush administration failed to recognize warning signs ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush was also told in a briefing by Tenet in August that members of the al Qaeda network could attempt a hijacking.
-------- treaties
Nuke treaty a 'good thing,' but US was going to make cuts anyway: Rumsfeld
AFP
May 21, 2002
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/020521184932.xp0xa1kq.html
The nuclear arms treaty to be signed this week at a Moscow summit is a "good thing" because it might persuade skeptics in the Russian military that Russia's future lies with the west, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
But Rumsfeld said the treaty, which calls for a two-thirds cut in both countries' strategic nuclear arsenals over the next ten years, does not make the United States do anything it wasn't already going to do.
"We didn't need this treaty in a sense," Rumsfeld told a Senate committee.
He noted that President George W. Bush had already said he was going to reduce the US arsenal to between 2,200 to 1,700 from 6,000, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would too.
"The agreement is useful I suppose, but we were going to do what we were going to do regardless," Rumsfeld said.
When they sign the treaty at the Kremlin this week, Bush and Putin will be making a legally binding commitment to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals to those levels by 2012.
But the treaty requires neither country to destroy decommissioned warheads, and the United States has said it intends to keep a portion of them in an active reserve in case it has to quickly build back up in response to a crisis.
Rumsfeld said the United States was concerned about the security of Russia's nuclear stockpile but dismissed criticism that security would have been better served by requiring destruction of decommissioned warheads.
"There isn't any way on earth to verify what people are doing with those weapons," he said.
"We don't have a good grip on how many theater nuclear weapons they have. We don't have a good grip on what their production rates are for nuclear weapons in a given year," he said.
Nevertheless, he said, "I think this understanding which has been turned into a treaty is a good thing."
"I think the country is doing a good thing in attempting to turn Russia toward the west, and to take steps which will reassure them that we intend to do this so they can reassure those in their country who are doubting," he said.
"And there are some people in their military who doubt these things, and wonder if this turning west by Russia is really the right thing for Russia, the permanent thing for Russia," he said.
----
Bush to Seek Cooperation but Press Issues
Arms Transfers to Iran, War in Chechnya on Agenda for Meetings With Putin
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47661-2002May20?language=printer
President Bush goes to Moscow this week intent on cementing a move from conflict to cooperation with Russia but also determined to press Russian President Vladimir Putin on arms transfers to Iran, Chechnya and other unfinished business, administration officials said.
Bush will be carrying a nuclear weapons treaty, in which the two countries will drastically reduce their nuclear warheads, and a pledge of closer relations between NATO and the faded superpower the western alliance was created to contain. The White House wants to dispense with most talk of armies and ideology in favor of themes such as counterterrorism and economic reform during Bush's talks with Putin.
Yet adapting the rules and habits of Europe to Russia's tangled military and political bureaucracy will take time and more than a little cajoling, administration officials and analysts said.
Bush plans to ask Putin to block transfers of nuclear expertise and ballistic missile technology to Iran, the first time the two men will discuss in detail an issue that has long bedeviled U.S.-Russian relations. The administration believes Russian companies and scientists are helping Iran, which Bush called part of an "axis of evil" in January, develop weapons of mass destruction.
With Putin shackling the country's media and prosecuting a war in Chechnya, U.S. officials acknowledge the administration must choose how to blend its desire for warm relations with consternation at some of Putin's actions and methods.
"We've decided we're no longer going to be enemies. We've decided we're going to be friends. But we haven't decided what these friends are going to do together," a State Department official said. "The real challenge to the relationship is creativity. What's going to be on the agenda?"
Another Russia specialist said the relationship is "something yet to be built by both sides."
This will be Bush's first trip to Russia, and the pomp quotient will be high. He will travel from formal meetings at the Kremlin and a dinner at Putin's home to a tour of St. Petersburg, the grand canal city of Peter the Great. Bush will meet business leaders, encourage the beleaguered Russian media, consult with religious figures and speak to students on national television.
Much time has been set aside for one-on-one talks between Bush and Putin, meeting for the third time in 12 months. U.S. advisers have concluded that Bush functions more effectively in a small, personal forum than reading from notes amid a large delegation. Bush feels a positive connection with Putin, saying of the former KGB officer when he met him last year, "I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Even before they shake hands in Moscow -- after Bush arrives Thursday from delivering a speech in Berlin's Reichstag -- the two men will have reached agreement to cut strategic nuclear warheads by two-thirds by 2012. Many details of the accord have been left unaddressed, but the deal's predictability pleases Putin, while its flexibility satisfies the Pentagon.
Perhaps as important, NATO's 19 foreign ministers agreed last week to grant Russia a significant voice in deliberations on such issues as terrorism, arms proliferation, missile defense and peacekeeping. The pact stretches well beyond earlier arrangements, while ensuring that the Kremlin has no veto in NATO affairs.
Stanford University professor Michael McFaul said Bush's maiden trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg will be the last gathering properly termed a U.S.-Russian "summit conference."
"This is going to be the summit that punctuates the end of summits, for sure," McFaul said. "In many ways, the big issues of U.S.-Russia relations and Russia's relations with the West have been decided."
A senior U.S. official talked with enthusiasm about a potential Russian return to normalcy, 85 years after the Bolshevik Revolution. This view holds that Moscow is lumbering erratically toward a more open economy, constructive foreign engagement and some political liberty. Such problems as government campaigns against free speech, abuses by Russian soldiers in Chechnya and unregulated business relationships are seen as solvable with time and engagement.
"We have a shot at that great historic turn of Russia. These are historical possibilities," said the senior official, quickly adding that Moscow has often disappointed upbeat predictions.
Jack Matlock, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, said integration with Europe will happen. "The only question is how easy, how long, how imperfect," said Matlock, now at Princeton University. "It's happening willy-nilly, although no one area is totally decisive."
An early test will be the administration's challenge to Putin to restrict technology transfers to Iran, where Russia is helping build a nuclear reactor in Bushehr and scientists have contributed missile expertise. Conventional arms sales have also been a problem. On several issues, Bush "will say, 'Stop!' " national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
Russian officials have reacted in conflicting ways to Washington's nuclear proliferation complaints.
"Some say, 'We agree,' " a U.S. official said. "Some say, 'We're not doing anything.' Some say, 'It's nothing to worry about.' Some say, 'It's in the past.' And that's one reason why addressing this in a more systematic and comprehensive way, we think, is going to be important."
Leon Fuerth, who was national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore, said the Clinton administration raised the Iranian question repeatedly to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and others, achieving mixed results. He said Putin could succeed where Yeltsin did not.
"Putin knows which buttons to push to find what is really going on," said Fuerth, who teaches at George Washington University. "If his government wishes to engage deeply and continually in this, the man at the top has all the assets, personal and professional, to do it."
Next month, the United States will formally exit the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty over Russian objections. The administration also raised Moscow's hackles by dispatching troops to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to fight terrorism. In Central Asia, the U.S. presence is growing alongside the U.S. military bases that Putin permitted after Sept. 11.
On missile defense, the White House has offered a limited cooperative role to a Russian government deeply frustrated with U.S. plans to increase its military strength, especially at a time when Moscow has little money to spare.
"We're discussing it," an administration official said. "The Russians are torn. They don't want to give up their principled position. They're beginning to change their thinking, but we'll see how far they get and how fast."
Putin particularly wants economic integration, including foreign investment in an antiquated economy beset by corruption, bureaucratic ills and a lack of regulation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that American direct investment in Russia since 1991 has been $6 billion, compared with $7 billion since 1989 in Hungary, a country about one-fifteenth Russia's size.
Despite progress in the U.S-Russia relationship, even an administration official who tends toward optimism conceded, "It's Russia. You don't know what the future is."
-------- ukraine
Ukraine seeks to unfreeze EBRD nuclear plant loan
REUTERS ROMANIA:
May 21, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16040/story.htm
BUCHAREST - Ukraine has made a new offer to a regional development bank in an attempt to unfreeze a loan to build two controversial nuclear plants to replace ill-fated Chernobyl, Energy Minister Vitali Gaiduk said yesterday.
Gaiduk told the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Bucharest he hoped for a decision on the frozen $215 million loan later this year.
"Ukraine is offering some new conditions to the EBRD and the bank seems to be ready to think about them. By November, I think we will come to a decision", he added.
The EBRD, set up to help former communist states switch to a market economy, conditionally approved the loan to state-run nuclear power generator Energoatom last December.
It was to fund the completion and safety upgrade of two nuclear power plants - Khmelnitsky 2 and Rivne 4 (K2 and R4) - which will provide power to replace that from Chernobyl, which was shut in 2000.
However, EBRD shareholders voted against the deal, which has been criticised by environmental campaigners.
The project's total cost is put at $1.48 billion.
On Sunday, EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pedro Solbes said progress on rebuilding a deteriorating concrete tomb encasing the wrecked reactor at Chernobyl was being slowed by administrative and legal obstacles in Ukraine.
Solbes told the EBRD meeting political instability ahead of general elections last March had slowed Ukraine's momentum for energy sector reform.
"We hope ongoing discussions with the Ukrainian authorities would be conclusive and that an early resumption of the reform process in Ukraine's energy sector will allow the reactivation of our cooperation," Solbes said.
Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma discussed the issue with Commission President Romano Prodi in Brussels last week.
They also discussed delays to a $760 million plan to rebuild a deteriorating concrete tomb housing the wrecked reactor at Chernobyl, site of the world's worst radiation disaster in 1986.
"We are also concerned that the implementation of the Chernobyl Shelter Plan, for which the EU has mobilised considerable amounts of grant support, is hampered by administrative and legal obstacles in Ukraine.
"It is essential that all necessary corrective measures are taken rapidly," Solbes said.
Ukraine's Finance Minister Ihor Yushko said Ukrainian officials discussed the issue of the Chernobyl Shelter Plan on Sunday with EBRD officials.
"I've got a feeling that we know how to solve this matter and we agreed upon the procedural things", Yushko told Reuters but declined to elaborate.
The EBRD made its loan conditional on the permanent closure of Chernobyl, safety assurances, International Monetary Fund approval of extended funding to Ukraine and commitments from other lending agencies.
Yushko was upbeat about the timing of the discussions with international lenders, saying that within a week or maximum two, the speaker of the parliament and the distribution of seats will be known.
"The political campaign is over, the situation is more or less clear", he said.
The bank, which has committed $950 million to projects in Ukraine, has actively encouraged energy reform.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Finding Rich Fodder in Nuclear Scientists
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/science/21CONV.html
BOSTON - Say the word "anthropologist" and images of Margaret Mead in Samoa or Bronislaw Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders may spring to mind. But for Dr. Hugh Gusterson, 43, a professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the intensive scrutiny of scientific investigation is applied not to island natives but to mostly affluent white men with "Ph.D." affixed to their names.
Since 1984, Dr. Gusterson has studied nuclear weapons scientists based at the Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, exploring the ways they adjust to culture-shattering events like the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.
The results of his research are described in "Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War," published in 1996. Now he is working on a sequel, and a book of essays is due in 2003.
Dr. Gusterson lives in Somerville, Mass., with his wife, Dr. Allison Macfarlane, and their 6-month-old child, Graham. Dr. Macfarlane is a geologist specializing in nuclear waste. Around M.I.T., the Gustersons are known as the "nuclear couple."
"Why shouldn't I study nuclear weapons scientists?" Dr. Gusterson asked. "Anthropology is the study of humanity and this is a part of human life."
Q. How did you first decide to study the folkways and mores of nuclear weapons scientists? A. It started for me in the 1980's. I was in graduate school, Stanford, where I'd been admitted to do African anthropology. Before that, I'd worked as an activist for the nuclear freeze in San Francisco. What I thought about, whenever my mind was at rest, was the arms race - why it existed, how to stop it.
One day, while I was still with the nuclear freeze, I was sent to a high school to debate a weapons designer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Tom Ramos.
I was shocked to discover that I really liked him, as a person. Till that moment, people on the other side of the debate were very abstract to me. I'd never met any of them. Yet, my whole life was devoted to undoing their work. I began to wonder more about what kind of people they were.
Back at Stanford, I began thinking about dropping Africa and wondering about doing fieldwork at Livermore, this famous nuclear weapons lab only a hour's drive from the university. In 1984, it was unusual to be doing fieldwork in your own culture. If you did it at all, you studied down - ghetto residents, welfare mothers. Nowadays, there's a fast-growing field, the anthropology of science. Q. How did you find your way into a tight community of scientists? A. There was an undergraduate in my department whose father worked at Livermore. My adviser said, "Why don't you drive down there and see so-and-so's father?" So I drove there one evening. I had really intended to just to talk with him about the feasibility of doing this research. This gentleman, who was a weapons designer, immediately asked me if I had brought a notebook and when I said yes, he said, "I will now tell you my life history."
He then spent the next three hours reciting his story. He came from this aristocratic family in North Korea. He had escaped from North Korea as a very young man. When he came to the U.S., he learned physics. He wanted to work on nuclear weapons to make a contribution to the struggle against communism.
This man led me to other people in the lab. Thereafter, whenever I interviewed someone, I'd ask my subject to refer me to others. I also began a program of "deep hanging out." I moved to the town of Livermore. My roommates often worked at the lab. I went to local churches, to bars, to the singles group. I ate lunch at the lab's cafeteria. Q. What's the difference between your methods of getting to know scientists and spying? A. I always identified myself and explained what I was doing. In anthropology, there are strong ethics codes. People have a right not to be studied if they don't want to be. Q. What kind of information did your hanging out with scientists net? A. For starters, I was surprised to find out how many weapons scientists were liberals - at least at Livermore. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where they also do nuclear research, is a somewhat more Republican place.
Many of the Livermore weapons scientists had been active against the Vietnam War when they were younger; some had been active in the civil rights movement. One guy had been a Vietnam protester in graduate school. But when he got out of school, it was a very bad time in the physics job market, and he didn't have many options. He decided if he took a job as a conventional weapons designer, he'd be making weapons that actually killed people. On the other hand, as a nuclear weapons designer he felt that he was making weapons that would save people's lives through "strengthening deterrence."
Q. Were the weapons designers interesting people? A. They were often mavericks, eccentrics.
One of my favorites was an H-bomb designer, who when I gave a presentation on my research showed up dressed in a loincloth and carrying this goat's head with a rattle inside it. Every time I made a point, he'd shake the goat's head. He was satirizing me, I think. He was saying, "We are your primitives. We are your `boys in the woods.' " Q. So what moved the scientists? A. Some people, like the Korean gentleman, wanted to fight communism. Others liked working in a place that had the best equipment, lots of support staff and really interesting science to do. People often said that there was something intoxicating about the physics. It becomes deeply fascinating to try and figure out how to make the weapons make a bigger bang with less plutonium or how to reshape the inner configuration of the weapon.
These guys worked at it 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and the testing of their designs was what they lived for. It captured all their imaginative resources. They were making a small star. A hydrogen bomb is a small star you've created on earth.
I became fascinated by what the tests meant to these scientists. I found their mannerism became so intense when they talked about nuclear tests. If you were an elite designer, you spent 18 months preparing for this event that lasts for two shakes of a lamb's tail. They might go weeks and weeks without a getting a good night's sleep as they approach this climactic moment of The Test. Q. Why was testing the weapons so important? A. That's when they got their feedback. They got to know whether they had understood the physics by whether the bomb goes off, and it goes off with the strength they predicted. I think there's this sense of transcendent power: to mobilize that force, to make the earth move. It's the biggest bang you can make and it's your bomb that does that!
But I think also at a deep unconscious level, this is where the scientists convinced themselves, "We're in control the weapons, they don't control us." You build the bomb, you predict how it will work, you see the prediction come true, and you say, "I'm in control of this." But I also think at the end of the day that scientists just like to do experiments. Q. How did your subjects react to the 1992 halt of American nuclear weapons testing? A. They talked a good deal about being thrown away. There was one guy who put a sign on his office door, "Will work for food."
It was only when this bargain was struck between the Clinton administration and the weapons labs people that some of this anxiety abated. The government agreed to buy them all sorts of expensive equipment that simulated nuclear weapons tests.
But the older guys will say that nothing can really replace a live nuclear test. The younger guys have this forlorn wistfulness about having missed out on something really important. Nowadays, some of the guys go camping at the Nevada test sites on weekends. It's their sacred place. Q. How did you perceive the marriages and personal relationships of your weapons scientists? A. I often found emotional distance in their relationships. I think the physicist's temperament is not one that's conducive to emotional intimacy, by and large, anyway. On top of that, the demands of classification and secrecy can cause a tremendous distance in a marriage, cause a lot of pain. The women who did best at being married to physicists were very independent resourceful women who expected to live independent lives. Q. How were you changed by your time among the weapons scientists? A. I came into the project like many antinuclear activists, convinced that the bomb was a threat to human survival, afraid of it, full of bad dreams about it. Interestingly, over time, I absorbed the weapons scientists' sense of ease with the bomb. I no longer have the bad dreams I used to have about nuclear war.
In some ways, I'm like the monogamous anthropologist who has spent years with a polygamous group: seeing men with four wives comes to seem natural, after a while. But then, I think, if you're not changed by the culture you've studied, you haven't done the fieldwork properly.
-------- new york
Trying to Add Light to the Heat on Indian Point
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By JANE GROSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/nyregion/21PROF.html
OSSINING, N.Y. -- THERE are times, Sandy Galef tells her constituents, when "one issue overrides all others," and since Sept. 11, the Indian Point nuclear power complex is that issue in the 90th Assembly District in the northwest corner of Westchester County.
So Assemblywoman Galef has cast herself as head science teacher for the 130,000 residents of Peekskill, Cortlandt, Yorktown, Croton-on-Hudson, Ossining and Buchanan, where the plant looms on the banks of the Hudson River.
Topics related to Indian Point occupy her entire newsletter. Experts in nuclear energy fill all the guest slots on her monthly cable television show. The trunk of her car is full of pie charts of New York State's energy sources.
Ms. Galef, an assemblywoman here since 1992, spends most of her spare time at Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings; on fact-finding visits to other nuclear power plants; and on dunning experts for facts, figures and opinions on alternative energy sources, improved security measures and the pluses and minuses of decommissioning a pair of reactors that provide electricity for two million people.
"I am trying to educate myself and my constituents," said Ms. Galef, who attended her first N.R.C. meeting in 1983, as a county legislator. She has been a regular ever since, long before a small band of antinuclear activists swelled to a furious horde in the wake of the World Trade Center attack.
She has already gathered and shared a trove of information:
¶The Entergy Corporation, owner of the reactors, pays 95 percent of the village taxes in Buchanan and half the school taxes, and it employs 1,500 people.
¶The loss of the 2,000 megawatts produced by Indian Point would raise electricity rates in the region by 20 to 40 percent.
¶Shutting the reactors could increase the danger of a release of radioactivity from spent fuel rods. At other decommissioned plants, like one she visited in Haddam, Conn., security was reduced once there was no revenue.
¶The N.R.C. has done simulations of the damage a small plane would cause at the reactors, which is said to be minimal, but is only now planning a similar study involving a Boeing 747.
Unlike most politicians in the area, from town supervisors to candidates for governor, Ms. Galef is not howling for the reactors to be shut down immediately lest they be struck by a hijacked airplane fully loaded with jet fuel, a doomsday possibility that has dominated conversation in these parts since the Sept. 11 attacks and the later threats to the nation's 83 nuclear plants.
At community meetings in the months since, suddenly attended by other elected officials who never took an interest before, Ms. Galef has avoided taking a position of yea or nay, arguing that closing Indian Point is a simple-minded response in an era of growing energy needs.
"You can't walk away from 2,000 megawatts of power and say we'll be O.K.," she said. "People are demanding we decommission these reactors tomorrow and then hoping when they open the refrigerator that everything isn't defrosted."
Ms. Galef, 62, surveyed her Tudor home here, a cozy refuge from the bland motel room in Albany where she pitches camp four nights a week when the Legislature is in session.
"Think about what we've added in the way of things that get plugged in," she said, ticking off computers and television sets, air-conditioning, fax and copier machines. "Why, even I have one of those electric toothbrushes."
This is the home where Ms. Galef and her late husband, Steve, raised their two children, Greg, 35, a financial planner, and Gwen, 32, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan who is expecting her first baby. It is also the place where Ms. Galef nursed her husband through a yearlong struggle with throat cancer, commuting daily to Albany and returning to his side each night.
Mr. Galef, a lawyer who spent four years in the County Legislature, compared with his wife's 13 there, became ill just as Ms. Galef was about to begin a campaign for County Executive, after Andrew P. O'Rourke left the job. It was a race she never ran. But within months of Steve Galef's death in 1998, she was out on the street shaking hands and passing out fliers for re-election, choking back tears when neighbors offered condolences.
THE Galefs had shared a love of politics and government since junior high school in White Plains. She was a perpetual winner in campaigns for class secretary, he a failed candidate for president. In those days, they were buddies, dating each other's friends.
Romance blossomed while she was a student at Purdue and he at Washington and Lee, where he won his first election. Conversation in the Galef household was always about public policy, even after her husband moved from county government to a full-time legal practice so somebody made enough money to pay the mortgage and the college tuitions.
Her daughter, Gwen, showed early promise as a politician, winning an election in the third grade that some might call a tainted victory, since her parents handed out lollipops at the polls. "A bribe," Ms. Galef cheerfully admitted.
Gwen Galef has taken her father's place as political sounding board, and could take up the family business. "I can see my daughter doing something political," Ms. Galef said. "Maybe a judge-type thing."
-------- us nuc waste
[To reply: mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
Sound Site for Nuclear Waste
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47992-2002May20?language=printer
In her May 14 letter, Public Citizen's Joan Claybrook said, "Incredibly, there has never been a rigorous scientific search for the best long-term options" for disposal of nuclear waste.
President Carter initiated a review of alternatives in 1979, following his policy to change course and forgo reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors. The federal Interagency Review Group recommended geologic disposal, and that was adopted as national policy by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. A key finding of that act was that "federal efforts during the past 30 years to devise a permanent solution to the problems of civilian radioactive waste disposal have not been adequate."
Ms. Claybrook's proposal to leave waste where it is -- in 131 locations in 39 states -- and "search for a solution based on sound science" sounds like another delay and open-ended quest for an unknown disposition approach. The way the Department of Energy intends to store the waste at Yucca Mountain does not preclude possible reprocessing in the future, because the repository will not be sealed for up to 300 years. In the meantime it does store the waste in a superior site.
BRIAN O'CONNELL
Director
Nuclear Waste Program Office
National Association of Regulatory
Utility Commissioners
Washington
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Wants Afghan Army to Grow
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan said Tuesday he hopes to have 2,000 to 3,000 Afghan soldiers trained for a new national army within six months.
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, said ``time will decide'' how much larger the national army would get. He described the 2,000-3,000 goal as an ``initial target.''
The training is being conducted by soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd Special Forces Group. French soldiers also are involved.
Speaking in a video-teleconference from Tampa, Fla., near his Central Command headquarters, Franks told reporters at the Pentagon that he anticipates that training an Afghan army will be difficult.
``I will not be a little Johnny Sunshine on this thing,'' he said. ``I think we need to be realistic. ... I don't delude myself in believing this will be an easy task. We don't know how it will go.''
During a visit to Afghanistan last week, Franks met with U.S. troops and some of the Afghan army recruits who are being trained.
The long-term goal is to establish a unified Afghan army that can secure the country's borders and prevent a resurgence of the al-Qaida terrorist network and the Taliban militia that hosted al-Qaida before the U.S.-led attacks began last October.
``That will certainly be one of our more important projects in the days, weeks, months ahead, because the national army of Afghanistan is going to be an essential element of their long-term security,'' Franks said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has championed the Afghan army training program as an alternative to committing U.S. peacekeepers, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday that displaced Afghan civilians are returning to their homes -- a good sign for stability.
``The flow of refugees back into that country ought to tell us that it is certainly not stable, like Washington, D.C., or San Francisco or wherever. But for Afghanistan, it isn't bad,'' Rumsfeld said.
``The big areas are reasonably secure,'' he added. ``People get killed every once in a while, just like they do in the United States and Europe. It is nowhere near as stable as here, but it is a vastly better place than it was.''
Many question whether the fierce rivalries among competing tribes in Afghanistan can be overcome sufficiently to build a unified army. Franks declined to say how long he thinks it may take to create such an army, but he indicated it would be at least a matter of months, if not years.
In prepared remarks, Franks stressed the cooperative efforts of the 60-plus nations that have joined the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.
``It seems to me that it's because of these efforts and a great many more that the people of a war-torn Afghanistan have a chance today that they did not have eight months ago,'' he said.
``And it's with the continuing commitment of the nations involved in this coalition that we will surely finish the job of killing, capturing terrorists that remain in Afghanistan and the destruction of that network.''
On other subjects, Franks said:
--He doubts the Army's proposed Crusader self-propelled howitzer would have been used in Afghanistan even had it been available. Rumsfeld's decision to cancel the $11 billion Crusader project has angered some in Congress and caused turmoil within the Army.
--He believes some Iranian groups are intent on causing instability within Afghanistan but is not convinced they are sponsored by the Iranian government.
--He is pleased with the Pakistani military's efforts to help round up al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan. Coordination with Pakistan ``is moving in a direction that is satisfying to us,'' he said.
-------- biological weapons
Anthrax Scare At World Bank Sends 1,200 Home
By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 21, 2002; Page B05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48625-2002May21?language=printer
More than 1,000 people who work at the World Bank headquarters in downtown Washington were sent home yesterday afternoon after a batch of mail there tested positive in a preliminary check for the anthrax virus, officials said. A more sophisticated test came up negative.
In a precautionary measure, the 1,200 people who work in the bank's Africa and training divisions at the headquarters, at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, were evacuated about 4 p.m. and were told to work from home for most of this week while further tests are conducted, said World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey.
The next tests will be conducted by a laboratory in West Virginia and are to be completed by Thursday, Anstey said.
Mail addressed to the bank's 7,500 employees at the Washington headquarters is separated into tabletop-size batches and thrust into a machine that compresses the letters and tests the atmosphere around each bunch, Anstey said.
In the preliminary test of mail addressed to workers in the bank's J building, the presence of anthrax was indicated, Anstey said. A second test at another facility contradicted the first.
It is the first reported anthrax-related scare for the World Bank, but such drills became familiar in recent months in Washington, where hundreds of buildings suffered scares since the first anthrax deaths in October.
----
Anthrax Scare at World Bank, IMF
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Investigation.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than a thousand World Bank employees worked from home after an anthrax scare Tuesday, and its sister agency, the International Monetary Fund, found evidence of spores in its mail room.
One hundred IMF employees and four World Bank employees were taking antibiotics as a precaution, officials said late Tuesday.
With no discernible progress on the investigation months after the anthrax letter attacks, the FBI prepared to give lie detector tests to current and former workers at a pair of Army medical labs where the microbes are on hand.
At Fort Detrick, Md., officials were reviewing a Defense Department proposal for stepping up security at the germ warfare defense lab, which has considerable anthrax stores. The goal: Secure biological agents as tightly as the nation secures chemical and nuclear material.
The directive, still in draft form, focuses on safe handling of the biological agents, screening personnel who have access to the material, securing the physical plant and tracking methods to account for supplies, said Caree Vander Linden, spokeswoman for U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Former Fort Detrick employees have charged that lab security at the Army base has been lax. The FBI has made Fort Detrick, located outside Washington, a centerpiece of its investigation.
In Washington, officials at the World Bank directed 1,200 of its 8,500 employees to work from home for two days after a preliminary test of mail came back positive for anthrax. A second test showed no anthrax, and the bank is now awaiting results from a third, definitive test.
Preliminary field tests often inaccurately detect the presence of anthrax and are not considered significant unless confirmed.
Just in case, officials shut down the ventilation system connected to the room where the mail was, Anstey said Tuesday. Without air conditioning in offices where the 1,200 workers are located, it was too hot and they were sent home, Anstey said.
``We would prefer to overreact than underreact,'' she said.
Also Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund reported that it had received a positive reading from a batch of mail at its facility. Similarly, the IMF had one negative and one positive test and is awaiting results of a third screening.
In the investigation, FBI agents have already administered a round of polygraphs at Fort Detrick, focused on those who have handled evidence related to the anthrax probe, said Dr. John Ezzell, an anthrax expert there who is participating in the investigation.
The FBI maintains a presence to observe laboratory work related to the investigation, but agents who interviewed workers last fall and winter have been less active lately, Ezzell said.
The investigation has rattled workers, said Norman Covert, who is retired from Fort Detrick and stays in close touch with many of his former colleagues.
``They're a little bit intimidated by the attention they're getting by the FBI,'' he said.
The next round of polygraph tests, which could top 200, will be given to current and former employees at Fort Detrick and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a law enforcement official said Tuesday. The tests are voluntary, though some workers who are typically subject to the tests for security reasons could be compelled, he said.
Army scientists at the Utah facility have been developing a powdered form of anthrax for use in testing biological defense systems, military officials have said. Because the anthrax used in the attacks was also in powdered form, investigators have looked carefully at Dugway.
A parallel track in the investigation -- attempting to use genetic fingerprinting to pinpoint the lab where the attack anthrax came from -- still has not produced usable information, the official said.
Five people died in the anthrax attacks last fall, and at least 13 others contracted and recovered from either the skin or respiratory form of the disease.
--------
Polygraph Tests Set in Anthrax Probe
Washington Post
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47721-2002May20?language=printer
The FBI is preparing to administer polygraph tests to more than 200 current and former employees at a Fort Detrick, Md., lab and other U.S. facilities that have anthrax stores in the latest attempt to identify suspects in the deadly anthrax mailings, a law enforcement official said yesterday.
The effort will be focused on the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, the Pentagon's top biodefense research center, and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, but other laboratories will also be included, the official said.
Investigators plan to re-interview some subjects and to conduct new interviews with others. Each person who has not taken a polygraph test will be asked to submit to one voluntarily, officials said.
"It's nothing we can force them to do," said one law enforcement official. "But it's an effort to work through this list with a little more specificity."
The mass polygraph effort, first reported last night by ABC News, marks the latest attempt by frustrated FBI investigators to narrow the hunt for culprits in last fall's anthrax mailings, which killed five people and made 13 others ill.
The plan underscores the lack of individual suspects in the case but indicates that investigators remain tightly focused on the community of domestic scientists and laboratory workers who have had contact with the U.S. military's bioweapons defense program. Genetic tests show the strain used in the attacks is descended from stocks developed at Fort Detrick.
-- Dan Eggen
----
A Disease Warrior's Challenge: Bioterror Defense
Henderson Seeks to Shape Science, Health Agendas
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48006-2002May20?language=printer
A few years ago, D.A. Henderson and his staff at Johns Hopkins University called a state emergency hotline to see what would happen when they reported an illness with anthrax-like symptoms. It took three days before someone called back.
"But most states didn't even have emergency numbers then," Henderson recalled. "Things have changed."
But not nearly enough.
"Biodefense is a subject alien to most academics and to industry," Henderson said. "On the chemical side, we have spills and accidents and hazardous materials teams all over the country. On the nuclear side, we've had a large reservoir of talent for years. But in biologics, it's very limited."
Donald A. Henderson, 73, a world-famous doctor and epidemiologist, would like to change that. He is Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's principal science adviser for public health preparedness, a newly created position he slid into at the beginning of this month after serving six months as director of Thompson's almost-as-newly created Office of Public Health Preparedness.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the mail-borne anthrax-spore attacks, Henderson's brief in both jobs is to help bring government, the public health system, research and industry together to create a modern, comprehensive biological warfare defense strategy.
"I said to the secretary that I'd come in and maybe get things up and running, stay four to six months and then retire to Hopkins," Henderson said. "It has proved to be a far larger task than either of us anticipated."
Shifting jobs will release Henderson from the day-to-day business of biodefense preparedness and allow him to "shape broader agendas on directions for science and research," Henderson said.
"We have problems in academia and problems in industry," he added, while the Defense Department, the nation's principal sponsor of biodefense research, "over the last 10 years has lost funding and key people. We have to define what we need and what we expect. I won't be bored."
And neither will those around him, said Donald S. Burke, director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins.
"You don't find many impressive scientists who are as hard-headed as he is," Burke said. "He has an ability to interpret cutting-edge science and ask what is the impact today or in the future."
Henderson established his formidable international reputation in the 1960s and '70s as head of the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program, demonstrating that a comprehensive worldwide vaccination campaign could effectively exterminate one of humankind's great scourges.
Today, it is clear that his career as a public health professional has shaped his view that an act of biological terrorism is a phenomenon akin to an outbreak of infectious disease -- "an epidemic, almost by definition."
"Except we haven't really had an epidemic since [the flu in] 1918," he said. "We've become complacent about infectious diseases, and with reason. We've had new vaccines and antibiotics."
But success has had a price: "Departments of microbiology closed, research programs shrank and the number of hospitals went down as hospital occupancy went up," Henderson said. "That was good economically, but terrible for surge capacity during an epidemic. Fifty or 100 cases of a new disease would pretty much tax a city like Washington."
Henderson left the WHO in 1977 to join Johns Hopkins, then retired in 1990 only to become associate director of former President George H.W. Bush's Office of Science and Technology Policy. He served at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton years, then returned to Hopkins as director for the newly formed Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.
Throughout the last 30 years, Henderson has been at the forefront of almost every debate over biological warfare agents or terrorism. During the 1980s, he was a leading advocate for destruction of the world's two remaining stocks of smallpox virus -- in the United States and Russia -- a controversial position overruled in Washington, where policymakers were wary of the former Soviets and worried about having supplies of pathogen for research.
This year, Henderson has voiced opposition to vaccinating the entire U.S. population against smallpox, holding that the vaccine is awkward to use and will cause serious adverse effects in a significant number of people. Instead, he advocates a "ring" approach -- vaccinating family members and others who interact with a smallpox victim during the final, infectious stage of the disease.
And for more than a decade, Henderson has urged that greater attention be paid to the dangers of biological attack and the proliferation of strange pathogens. AIDs brought a "wake-up call," Henderson said, but "they told us we'd have a vaccine in two years." The danger of an attack, or another difficult-to-cure new disease, has not dissipated today, he said, "but is heightened."
When Thompson tapped him Nov. 1 to lead the Office of Public Health Preparedness, Henderson had to build a national biodefense infrastructure almost from scratch. But even as he planned for the future, he needed to get short-term protection in place.
"We had $3 billion [in new money] in January," he said. "There were those who argued that we needed four to five months to get it out, but what if we had another event? The last thing you want is to have the money just sitting there."
Henderson's solution was to divide $1 billion among the states, and notify each that they could have 20 percent of their allotment immediately, and the rest as they complied with 17 "benchmarks," ranging from designation of a single person as a coordinator for state biodefense to preparation of plans to monitor urgent disease reports on a 24-hours-a-day basis.
In his new job, Henderson will look primarily at longer-term research on vaccines and other biodefense issues, and expects to "work 80 hours a week, down from 100." He doesn't enjoy commuting fom his home in Baltimore, he said, and would like "a quieter life."
Not likely, said Burke. "My guess is D.A. will never retire."
--------
House, Senate Compromise on Bioterror
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterrorism-Congress.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a bioterrorism bill that would spend billions of dollars to stockpile vaccines and help states prepare for a biological disaster.
The bill, which is expected to come before the full House Wednesday, would also hire more border inspectors to protect food supplies and better regulate laboratories that work with deadly agents.
``Because of this bipartisan legislation, Americans will be able to sleep better at night in the knowledge that our nation is taking the steps necessary to protect them and their families against the deadly threat of bioterrorism,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., said, ``In a post-Sept. 11 world, it is essential that Congress strengthen our public health infrastructure at the national, state and local levels to better protect the American people.''
Kennedy and Tauzin have been the lead negotiators of the deal.
Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician who has taken a lead role in bioterrorism preparation, called the measure a ``strong bill'' and said it was critical that Congress ``renew our local, state and national public health systems to work in a more coordinated way.''
The total dollar amount of the bill has yet to be determined, but earlier estimates were around $3 billion.
States would get $1.5 billion in grants to prepare for a biological attack, using a formula included in the compromise. The House had wanted grant dispersal to be at the discretion of the Health and Human Services Secretary.
The compromise also calls for drinking water systems to assess their vulnerability to terrorist attack, develop emergency plans and submit those plans to the Environmental Protection Agency. House Republicans had argued that the agency did not have the capacity to handle such sensitive information, but the compromise includes strict security controls to protect the information.
The bill also includes $300 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to upgrade its facilities.
The compromise would also include language to renew a law that allows the Food and Drug Administration to charge fees to pharmaceutical companies to pay for speedier review of new medications. Negotiators also included $45 million to help speed the review of generic drugs and $27 million to help the FDA monitor pharmaceutical advertising aimed at consumers. Both amounts would be spent over five years.
The House bill is H.R. 3448.
The Senate bill is S. 1715.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- drug war
Court rules error is not a shield
May 21, 2002
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020521-876663.htm
A unanimous Supreme Court ruled yesterday that an indictment's technical error does not shield "large-scale" drug criminals from the maximum sentence.
"The fairness and integrity of the criminal justice system depends on meting out to those inflicting the greatest harm on society the most severe punishments," said the 9-0 opinion that threw out portions of a historic and often cited 1887 Supreme Court decision.
Members of a Baltimore drug gang sought to have their sentences reduced because of an error in court documents. But in a strongly worded ruling written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the court unanimously condemned such use of technicalities in cases where the defendant's guilt is clearly established.
"Even assuming [defendants´] substantial rights were affected, the error did not seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings," Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote.
"The real threat would be if [criminals], despite the overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence that they were involved in a vast drug conspiracy, were to receive a sentence prescribed for those committing less substantial drug offenses because of an error that was never objected to at trial," the court said.
While the decision primarily keeps mistakes from thwarting justice, the president of an anti-crime legal group found hope in the court's blunt words.
"This indicates the court is united in agreeing that the process is not going to be more important than the evidence and the truth in the case," said Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. "The evidence is clear, and the danger is substantial. We're very encouraged, and the public should be encouraged as well."
Yesterday's decision overturned portions of a 115-year-old ruling, known as "Ex parte Bain," that nullifies jurisdiction when a trial considered matters not charged in a grand jury indictment.
The ruling yesterday kept seven members of what the court called a "vast drug organization" in Baltimore from escaping sentences of up to life in prison.
Gang leader Stanley Hall Jr. and six conspirators received sentences higher than the 20-year maximum under guidelines that apply when large amounts of crack cocaine are involved. The high court decision said jurors saw "overwhelming" evidence of large-scale dealing, even though the final indictment accidentally omitted specific amounts of drugs.
The 1887 ruling said, "A defective indictment cannot be aided by a verdict." That premise was applied when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Hall's gang effectively "received a sentence for a crime with which they were neither charged nor convicted."
Timothy J. Sullivan of College Park, who argued the prisoners' case in the Supreme Court five weeks ago, was unavailable yesterday, and the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore did not reply to calls.
The decision favoring prosecutors ran counter to perceptions that technicalities always favor criminals. "By saying it's not a jurisdiction issue, they're stopped a million habeas corpus writs by everyone who was convicted of a drug offense and got more than 20 years," said John K. Zwerling of Alexandria.
Mr. Zwerling, a criminal defense lawyer, has written about the application of the Bain decision in the high court's Apprendi ruling two years ago. The Apprendi decision required that virtually every fact used to make a sentence more severe be charged in the indictment and proved to the jury.
"They're telling attorneys they have to constantly file what might appear to be frivolous motions and make frivolous objections if they want to serve their clients. I don't think that serves justice well," said Mr. Zwerling, who wrote a Georgetown Law Review article interpreting Bain. His view is that, even when defendants do not object, an appeals court must notice the error and rule a trial court without jurisdiction to try, convict, take a guilty plea or sentence someone "for an offense not charged in the indictment."
Tracy Power, a Washington lawyer appealing an inmate's conviction for escaping from a penal institution while he was under commitment at his home but not yet confined, quoted the Bain decision heavily in her brief.
"Bain always is the starting point for analyzing the validity of an indictment. When you overturn Bain, you're overturning something that is fundamental, that stood the test of time," Miss Power said yesterday.
Vanderbilt University law professor Nancy J. King said the ruling will short-circuit hundreds of similar arguments from pre-2000 convictions already jamming the appeals courts. Two related cases awaiting the justices' decision by next month involve penalties for crimes involving weapons and whether the judge or jury has the last word in death sentences.
Among more than 400 published decisions citing Bain over the years was U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene's 1989 order limiting government options in revising the indictment accusing John M. Poindexter of conspiracy in the Iran-Contra case.
-------- india
Powell 'Angered' by Killing of Kashmiri Separatist
May 21, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-southasia-kashmir-powell.html
WASHINGTON - The United States, poised to launch a diplomacy mission between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, Wednesday condemned the killing of a Kashmiri separatist leader but assigned no specific blame in his death.
``I was saddened and angered to hear this morning that Abdul Gani Lone, a Kashmiri political leader, was assassinated,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said of the killing Monday in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir, the Himalayan territory at the center of the latest tensions between India and Pakistan.
``We have not seen any claim of responsibility for the murder, but this is a direct attack on hopes for a fair political process in Kashmir,'' Powell said of the killing that Pakistan blamed on India.
``His killers are clearly among those who oppose a peaceful political resolution there. This was a terrorist act designed to undermine the hopes of the Kashmiri people for free and fair elections without violence,'' he said.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is expected to embark on a mission to India and Pakistan in early June. The two countries have a million men deployed along their border and tensions are running high after a series of deadly attacks that India has blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf threw his lot in with the U.S. war on terrorism when Washington bombed neighboring Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and has taken steps to crack down on Islamic militancy at home.
But India blames him for failing to stop militants crossing the border to launch attacks including one on India's parliament in December and one on an army camp last week.
Washington clearly interpreted the killing of Lone, who was seen as a moderate among the Kashmiri separatists fighting Indian rule, as a blow to hopes for peace.
``The United States condemns this crime in the strongest possible way. Mr. Lone sought to achieve his goals through peaceful, democratic means and courageously stood up to extremists,'' Powell said.
Lone, killed while attending a meeting, was a leader of the All Parties (Hurriyat) Freedom Conference, an alliance of 23 parties campaigning against Indian rule in Kashmir, which is at the center of the India-Pakistan military standoff.
--------
Villagers Flee as Fighting in Kashmir Is Unabated
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By BARRY BEARAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/international/asia/21INDI.html
NEW DELHI, May 20 - Intense Indian-Pakistani artillery barrages persisted today for the fourth day, sending thousands of villagers in Kashmir fleeing for safety as fears of even fiercer fighting deepened.
While the two armies fired shells, militants continued their campaign of terror against the Indian military, carrying out at least three deadly sneak attacks in the Jammu region of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In themselves, neither the artillery blasts nor the guerrilla attacks are exceptional in Kashmir, the Himalayan region that India and Pakistan both claim. The territory has been the backdrop for an insurrectionist movement since the late 1980's.
But the most recent hostilities come at a time when the Indian government has repeatedly vowed to teach Pakistan a lesson - most recently after 32 people were killed last week in Jammu, most of them the wives and children of soldiers.
"We will leave no stone unturned to defend our interests," Nirupama Rao, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said recently when asked about international efforts to urge restraint on New Delhi.
Though it was once homegrown, the militancy in predominantly Muslim Kashmir is now increasingly the work of Islamic jihadists from Pakistan and other countries.
India accuses Pakistan of controlling the valves of terrorism in Kashmir, using jihad as a way to fight a war by proxy against its archrival. Pakistan insists that it provides only moral support to the militants in a justifiable struggle.
The world watched this bloodshed with only moderate alarm until May 1998, when India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices. Now there is ample reason for global anxiety. Since December, when terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament building, a million Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been mobilized along their common frontier. Tension has ebbed and flowed. Now it is flowing fast.
On Sunday, India shifted command of its sizable paramilitary forces to the army and its coast guard to the navy. The redeployment, said Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, "is an indication that we are moving in a certain direction." Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is to leave on Tuesday for a tour through Jammu and Kashmir.
Before dawn today, the Jammu area was the scene of at least three attacks by militants that caused at least three deaths among the Indian security forces, the military said.
Also today, many businesses in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital, shut down in protest after an auto-rickshaw driver was murdered on a central street, allegedly by a member of India's border security force.
--------
'There will be war,' after heat subsides
May 21, 2002
By Rahul Bedi
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020521-97550579.htm
NEW DELHI - India prepared for war with Pakistan yesterday, although senior officers said offensive operations would have to wait for the end of searing summer temperatures and the monsoon rain that follows.
Delhi placed all paramilitary units along the border under army control and the coast guard under naval command.
The foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, said this was "standard operating procedure" when preparing for war.
The country's military is planning for conflict in September, although New Delhi has announced a diplomatic offensive to avoid conflict.
In Washington, State Department officials said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage plans to travel to the region, probably early next month, in an attempt to ease tensions between the nuclear armed rivals.
With the subcontinent enduring a heat wave that has sent temperatures soaring as high as 122 degrees officers conceded that an offensive at the moment would be impossible.
"There will be war but, in all likelihood, it will take place after the summer and the monsoon rains," a senior army officer said, declining to be named.
There was no other way the Indian army could "let off steam and teach Pakistan a lesson," he said.
The two sides continued to trade artillery fire across the border for the fourth day in a row.
Indian officials rejected proposals by Pakistan for independent observers to be deployed along the border.
"The figures of infiltration [by Islamic militants] have gone up," said an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nirupama Rao. "There's no point in seeking to deflect attention by talking of involving third parties."
In Pakistan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan appealed for international efforts to ease tensions.
"We hope the international community will increase further its efforts considering the hostile postures adopted by India and convince India to see reason and come to the negotiating table for discussions and dialogue."
India accuses Pakistan of providing Islamic militants with bases and sending them to fight in Kashmir.
Nearly 1 million men have been mobilized on both sides of the border since an attack by militants on the Indian Parliament five months ago.
Pro-war sentiment is widespread in India. Retired Maj. Gen. Afsir Karim, a member of the National Security Council Advisory Board, said: "We have neither economic nor diplomatic clout against Pakistan and the only instrument left is the military one."
--------
Pentagon Opens Talks With India
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-India.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon on Tuesday opened two days of talks with Indian defense minister Yogindra Narain in an effort to broaden strategic relations with New Delhi.
The talks come as Bush administration and international officials seek to dampen spiraling violence that threatens war between India and nuclear rival Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region.
U.S. defense officials, led by Undersecretary Douglas Feith, met with their Indian counterparts under the auspices of the India-U.S. Defense Policy Group, an effort suspended after New Delhi tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and resumed last December.
Defense officials said at midday that it was unclear whether the subject of Kashmir had yet been discussed.
During the Cold War, India called itself nonaligned but depended politically and militarily on the Soviet Union. Relations warmed under President Clinton, who in 2000 made the first visit by an American president in 22 years.
President Bush lifted some of the sanctions after the terrorists attacks Sept. 11, as he asked both India and Pakistan for help in the war against terrorism.
In a symbol of expanding ties, U.S. and Indian soldiers last week began their first joint military exercise in several years. One hundred and eighty Americans and 150 Indian troops are taking part in the training in special operations and airborne assault.
And though it has imported most of its conventional military hardware from Russia, New Delhi has also opened up to the American defense market with a $146 million deal to buy weapons-locating radars for anti-insurgency operations in Kashmir.
The Bush administration on Monday urged talks between India and Pakistan and made plans to send Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to try to ease tensions over Kashmir.
Officials said Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the administration were focused, first, on trying to end the terror attacks in Kashmir and, then, working toward a withdrawal of Indian and Pakistan troops from nose-to-nose confrontation along the border between the two countries and along a cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. A million troops have faced off in a cross-border war alert since December.
-------- iran
Iran Parliament Debates U.S. Ties
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- For the first time in two decades, Iran's hard-liners and reformers on Tuesday debated the prospect of resuming relations with the United States, a lawmaker said.
Senior politicians and lawmakers attended a closed meeting at the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee to listen to ``expert views'' on the complexities of Tehran-Washington ties, the lawmaker said.
``The meeting was the beginning of discussions on clarifying the dimensions of ... Iran-U.S. relations and prospects of how to get out of the present circumstances,'' Elaheh Koolaee told The Associated Press. ``The meeting sought to accurately identify the issues in order to deal with them.''
Koolaee, a committee member and a Tehran University professor, refused to go into details, but said Tuesday's meeting had nothing to do with reports of secret talks between Iranian and U.S. officials that both countries have denied.
Over the past two months, Iranian newspapers have reported that talks had been held with American diplomats in Cyprus and elsewhere in Europe. The State Department has denied the reports.
On Sunday, Iran's Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi denied remarks by a top reformist lawmaker that secret talks did take place.
Lawmaker Mohsen Mirdamadi, head of the parliamentary committee, said in remarks published Tuesday that he had evidence pointing to the talks.
Mirdamadi was quoted as saying by his newspaper Nowruz, a reformist daily, that he was surprised by Yunesi's denial, which came a day before he was to brief the deputy intelligence minister about any contacts between American and Iranian officials.
Earlier this month, the government ordered the Intelligence Ministry to investigate reports of Iran-U.S. talks.
Improving ties with Washington remains a thorny topic in Iran.
While hard-liners believe the only authority to decide on Iran-U.S. relations is the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, some reformist lawmakers have suggested the issue should be decided in a referendum.
Khamenei has repeatedly rejected the resumption of ties with the United States. But reformist President Mohammad Khatami said last month ``if America's incorrect behavior and language changes ... there will a possibility for improving relations between the two countries because we haven't said we will never hold talks or relations with America.''
Iran and the United States broke relations after the storming of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Khatami has endorsed ``people'' contacts, but has stopped short of encouraging higher-level exchanges.
President Bush has identified Iran among three ``axis of evil'' members, along with Iraq and North Korea, accusing it of developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Tehran denies the accusation.
-------- iraq
New Round of Iraq - U.N. Talks to Be Held in Vienna
May 21, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-un-talks.html
UNITED NATIONS - A new round of talks between Iraq and the United Nations on the return of U.N. arms inspectors is set for Vienna in early July, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Tuesday.
Eckhard did not give precise dates except to say the third round of talks this year between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri would be held in early July in the Austrian capital rather than New York.
He said Iraqi envoys had mentioned that the talks would take place in Vienna ``so I can confirm that.''
Iraqi officials have complained frequently the United States has held up visa applications, thereby forcing some of their delegates to arrive late. This was even true during this month's gala conference on children's rights, they said.
The inspectors first went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, spending seven years checking for weapons of mass destruction, a key requirement before any suspension of U.N. sanctions against Baghdad. The embargoes were imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
The arms experts left shortly before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998 and have not been allowed to return since.
Annan, after the second round of talks on May 3, said he hoped that when the Iraqis returned ``they can take some decisions and come back to us with some positive news.''
Some diplomats said this meant he wanted a clear answer from Iraq in the forthcoming round before any subsequent discussions were scheduled. But others said they did not expect an unconditional ``yes'' at the July talks.
The Iraqis earlier submitted political questions to Annan on topics such as U.S. threats to topple President Saddam Hussein and the unilaterally imposed American-British no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.
Annan did not answer these queries but the United States and Britain, among other council members, said such issues could not be raised in the negotiations, which were to focus on arms inspectors.
At the May meeting, the 16-member Iraqi delegation included several top level weapons experts.
They discussed technical issues with two U.N. officials: Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Ejects Orthodox Party, Cutting Coalition's Edge
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/international/europe/21MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, May 20 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fired ministers from the rigorously Orthodox Shas Party from his cabinet tonight after they voted against an emergency economic package in Parliament. Mr. Sharon's action significantly narrowed his government's political base and raised the possibility of early elections.
The move against Shas would end its partnership in Mr. Sharon's governing coalition and would mean the loss of the party's 17 votes in the 120-member Parliament. It would make Mr. Sharon heavily dependent on the Labor Party, his former rival, for survival in power.
Labor, with 24 parliamentary seats, joined forces with Mr. Sharon in a unity government after he won a landslide victory in national elections last year, but differences over policy toward the Palestinians have occasionally strained the partnership and raised pressures within Labor to leave the coalition.
Without Shas, the parliamentary majority for Mr. Sharon's coalition is reduced from 82 to 65. However, his support is likely to be further reduced, to 60, by the expected departure from the coalition of another strictly Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism. Its deputy ministers were also fired by Mr. Sharon after they joined tonight's vote against the economic package. Support by 60 lawmakers is still considered a working majority under Israeli law.
Officials in Mr. Sharon's Likud Party said that the strongly pro-secular Shinui party, with six seats, could join a coalition free of the Orthodox parties, a move that would bring Mr. Sharon's support back up to 66.
Whatever the final outcome, Mr. Sharon's move tonight had the effect of rescrambling political alignments, and it raised speculation about the possibility of early elections. With the government's parliamentary base now substantially diminished, any further departure from the coalition, especially by Labor, could force new elections.
The new political situation "is a snowball, and a snowball can grow and also lead us to early elections," said Yaron Dekel, political analyst for Israel Radio.
Shas traditionally has been a kingmaker in Israeli politics, playing a vital role in the formation and survival of governing coalitions. One of its four fired ministers, Shlomo Benizri, predicted that there would be early elections and suggested that Mr. Sharon was taking a grave political risk by ejecting the party from his government. "We wish him all the luck if he thinks he can go to elections without Shas or other ultra-Orthodox parties," he said in a radio interview.
The $2.7 billion emergency economic package was meant to reduce a growing budget deficit caused by higher defense spending during the 19-month-old Palestinian uprising and by lower tax revenues.
Shas and United Torah Judaism, which both derive substantial support from economically depressed communities, opposed the package on the grounds that it would reduce social welfare payments and raise taxes. Shas has for years presented itself as the defender of Israel's poor, and Mr. Benizri said tonight that it could not vote for a package that would hurt people with low incomes.
The government plan was rejected by a vote of 47 to 44, a ringing defeat for Mr. Sharon, who responded by firing the dissenting ministers and deputy ministers. The dismissals go into effect in 48 hours.
A statement from Mr. Sharon's office said that the economic package would be approved again by the cabinet in a vote by telephone tonight, so that it could be resubmitted to Parliament for another vote later this week. Israel Radio reported later that the plan was re-approved and would be returned to the legislature on Wednesday.
Mr. Sharon's dismissal of the Shas ministers came at a time when he enjoys high popularity among Israelis, following a military sweep of the West Bank that was credited with having brought a reduction in suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis.
After an initial lull, however, the attacks have resumed. This morning a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a busy intersection near the city of Afula when he was stopped for a security check. There were no other casualties. The episode followed a suicide bombing in Netanya on Sunday in which three Israelis were killed.
In Beirut, a car bomb killed the son of Ahmed Jabril, leader of the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. Israeli radio reports said that the son, Jihad Jabril, was involved in smuggling arms and explosives to Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Ahmed Jabril accused the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, of responsibility for the killing, but a spokesman for Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Israel was not involved.
--------
Sharon Faces Test, Palestinians Head for Exile
May 21, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html
JERUSALEM - Israel's rightwing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced a tough test of his authority on Wednesday after firing ministers from a coalition partner for voting down an austerity bill.
Finance Minister Silvan Shalom insisted the government had enough support to push the bill through and reverse the embarrassing defeat, in which coalition members including five ministers of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party voted against it.
``Tomorrow the bill will pass by a majority, even a clear majority, and the program will go back on track,'' Shalom told Israeli television on Tuesday night.
Sharon's letters of dismissal to the four ministers of Shas, Israel's third biggest party, go into effect on Wednesday night, giving coalition members time to thrash out a solution.with a narrowed parliamentary majority and the possible threat of early elections, although leading politicians and independent analysts said both sides had a major stake in healing the rift.
While the tough stance against Shas brought Sharon praise from some Israelis at home, it raised concern abroad where the international community has been trying to revive peace talks after nearly 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The crisis erupted on Monday when parliament voted 47-44 against a $2.7-billion package to rein in a budget deficit swollen by higher defense spending to cover Israel's offensive against Palestinian towns in the West Bank.
Without the 17 votes commanded by Shas, Sharon's support in the 120-seat Knesset would fall from 82 seats to 65 seats.
His backing drops to 60 when Sharon's dismissal of deputy ministers of another smaller religious party is factored in. That party, United Torah Judaism, also broke ranks in the vote.
That would leave Sharon just one vote away from the risk of losing a no-confidence motion, which would bring down his broad-based coalition government and force new elections, a year before they were due to take place.
Sharon's popularity has risen recently because of the West Bank military offensive he launched after a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks killed dozens of Israelis.
The departure of the two religious parties would increase Sharon's reliance on Labour, which backs a more conciliatory approach toward Palestinians waging an uprising against Israeli military occupation of Arab land.
FLIGHTS INTO EXILE
In Larnaca, Cyprus, European planes prepared to fly a dozen Palestinians into exile on Wednesday, ending nearly two weeks of squabbling among fractious EU states.
Thirteen Palestinian activists on Israel's most wanted list have endured luxurious if heavily guarded limbo at a Cypriot seaside hotel while European Union politicians and diplomats bickered over the terms of their dispersal across Europe.
The deal ended a 39-day siege by Israeli troops of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity -- revered as the birthplace of Jesus -- where the 13 men had holed up during the Jewish state's military offensive in Palestinian cities.
Cypriot officials said a Spanish transport plane landed at Larnaca late on Tuesday to take several of the Palestinians, three of them to Spain itself. An Italian aircraft was also preparing to leave Larnaca at 8 a.m. (1 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday with another three Palestinians on board.
With Spain and Italy taking three men each, Greece and Ireland will take two each and Portugal and Belgium one apiece.
The 13th will stay in Cyprus, an EU candidate country, for the time being although Cyprus has made clear it wants him out.
Some EU countries have cited domestic laws for not being able to admit men whom Israel regards as ``terrorists'' and whose extradition it might still seek. If Israel did request the extradition of any of them, the host country would consult closely with the rest of the EU before taking a decision.
``The most dangerous one is staying in Cyprus,'' said one diplomat. He was believed to be referring to Abdullah Daoud, one of Israel's most wanted men, who was in charge of Palestinian intelligence in Bethlehem.
PEACE MISSIONS
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said a visit to the Middle East by CIA director George Tenet had been delayed, but the spy chief would eventually make the trip.
President Bush said after meeting Sharon on May 7 that Tenet would go to the Middle east to work on a Palestinian security force.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said he will visit the region this week with a message urging Palestinians to stop guerrilla violence while asking Israelis to return to the negotiating table and pull troops out of Palestinian areas.
Preparing for a June meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Eight nations, which he will chair, Graham said he would largely be supporting the U.S. approach to the conflict.
-------- nato
NATO should take Russia 'warts and all'
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
May 21, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020521-95469576.htm
Your May 20 editorial "Wake up NATO" was both right and wrong at the same time. It is true that the "NATO at 20" formula means the alliance is less of a military pact and more of a political one. You also were correct that Russia has been given unprecedented power and authority for a nonmember. However, your warnings about these developments betray a failure to recognize the changes in Europe since 1989. We no longer need NATO to be a collective defense organization. Where is the threat? Russia does not fill that role.
Kosovo was the only place where the alliance went to war, and that ethnic conflict never represented a threat to the allies - despite what former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and British Prime Minister Tony Blair argued. In that sense, a European military alliance is irrelevant. A political security pact in which the United States is directly involved, however, is still very useful in promoting transparency and coordinating policies in areas of mutual relevance. "Warts and all," it is far better for long-term European stability if Russia is inside NATO councils.
BEN LOMBARDI
Toronto
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Seeks Monitors to Cool the Simmering Crisis in Kashmir
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/international/asia/21KASH.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 20 - Pakistan sought to defuse its deadly standoff with India today by calling for international monitors to be stationed on their mutual border in the disputed Kashmir region.
The offer, after four days of increasingly heavy artillery duels at the border, was made at a news briefing by the foreign ministry spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan.
Pakistan, increasingly defensive over whether it is keeping its promises to crack down on Islamic militants, denied India's accusations that separatist rebels are being allowed to infiltrate the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir from the Pakistani side of the border.
Two Indian soldiers were killed and six wounded in the attacks on Monday. On the Pakistan side of the Line of Control, which separates nearly a million soldiers mobilized by the two countries, border villages were evacuated today after 10 people were reportedly killed over the weekend in fighting with mortars and heavy machine-gun fire.
"We are ready for the deployment of independent international observers on both sides of the Line of Control to see for themselves there is no cross-border activity taking place," said Mr. Khan, the foreign ministry spokesman. He also urged India to accept dialogue with Pakistan and said other nations must play a bigger role in defusing tensions between the two bitter rivals.
Pakistan has sought to convey an image of moderation for several days now, scarcely reacting, for example, to the expulsion of its ambassador in New Delhi on Saturday. Kashmir has been the cause of two of the three wars between the two countries, and Pakistan has been on the diplomatic defensive since their last near-war in 1999.
At that time, Pakistani forces captured Kashmiri territory traditionally held by India at Kargil, causing fierce battles and leading to a military buildup a year after both countries tested nuclear arms.
Foreign diplomats say, moreover, that with Indian politicians' increasingly bellicose statements, Pakistani leaders have grown worried about a full-blown war with its much bigger and better-armed neighbor.
"The frightening thing is that the Pakistanis are so weak on the conventional side as a results of all the sanctions these last 10 years or so," said a senior Western diplomat who recently served in South Asia.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has nurtured a strong alliance with Pakistan in the effort to prevent terrorism. But the United States has also pressed Pakistan to end its support of groups that carry out attacks in Kashmir.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that he would send his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, to India and Pakistan early next month, after Secretary Powell returns from a European trip with President Bush. Mr. Armitage runs the State Department in Secretary Powell's absence.
"I'm worried," Mr. Powell said in an interview, noting that he had talked to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's leader, on Sunday after speaking to him on Friday. "We should be worried."
Diplomats here are divided in their assessments of how much actual change there has been in Pakistan's support for Kashmiri militants. In a widely praised national address in January, General Musharraf declared that, "No organization will be allowed to indulge in terrorism behind the garb of the Kashmiri cause."
Since then, however, most militants who were arrested in a major sweep have gone free. As the attacks by Islamic separatists have increased, following the melting of the snow in Kashmir's mountain passes, India has asserted that nothing has changed.
Asked today whether General Musharraf had done enough to crack down on Pakistani militants and violence, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said: "He's taken a number of very specific steps with regard to the groups. But I think he himself would say that process is by no means over."
Assistant Secretary of State Christina B. Rocca, who visited the two countries last week in an effort to lower tensions, sent a sharp message to Pakistan about its role in Kashmir. She called attacks like the one last Tuesday that killed 35 Indians, mostly wives and children of soldiers, "just the type of barbarism the international war on terrorism is determined to stop."
A former Western diplomat with extensive experience in this region said: "I don't know whether Musharraf is playing a double game, but it is not like him to do so. Whether or not the government, without his permission, is running agents across the border, or whether this is something that is simply beyond the government's control, we simply don't know."
Other diplomats, however, said that General Musharraf, an army chief of staff who presided over the 1999 battle for Kargil and whose career has been closely associated with the Kashmiri separatists' cause, had stopped short of an aggressive effort to stamp out cross-border incursions.
"These militants are not automatons, and the Pakistanis cannot simply snap their finger and make this all come to a halt," said another Western diplomat. "Still, I cannot conceive of the army effectively stopping the separatist action, because those militants represent, in Pakistani eyes, their leverage over India."
Others, however, say that cracking down too hard on the militants in Pakistan would threaten Mr. Musharraf's hold on his own army.
A senior Asian diplomat said: "Musharraf has bit the bullet once, by dropping the Taliban under American pressure. But dropping the Kashmiri cause is asking him to bite a second bullet, and that bullet could well explode in his face."
Indeed, Pakistanis, even here in the capital, express strong support for government backing for the Kashmiri cause. "Why should Pakistan put an end to cross-border activity?" asked Khalid Mehmoud, a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad. "The Kashmiris are fighting a justified fight against illegal occupation, and their friends have a right to help them. What they call terrorism, Pakistan considers a war of liberation."
In recent days, Pakistanis have complained that the crisis with India has not received the kind of attention it deserves from the rest of the world, and in particular from the United States. Newspapers here have been full of complaints that the visit by Mr. Armitage, may not be soon enough.
"The Rocca visit sent a strong message to Pakistan, and I would expect an Armitage visit to do the same thing for India," said the former senior Western diplomat. "He'll need something from the Indians, like an agreement for extended dialogue, in order to let both sides cool it."
-------- spy agencies
The U.S. ignored foreign warnings, too
John K. Cooley
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/58269.htm The road to Sept. 11
When the hubbub about what the White House did or didn't know before Sept. 11 dies down, Congressional or other investigators should consider the specific warnings that friendly Arab intelligence services sent to Washington in the summer of 2001.
Jordan and probably Morocco advised U.S. and allied intelligence that Al Qaeda terrorists controlled by Osama bin Laden planned major airborne terrorist operations in the continental United States.
After verifying the authenticity and content of those messages, Washington-based investigators should find out how seriously they were considered and what defensive operational conclusions, if any, were drawn.
First, the Jordan case. Since the early 1990s, that kingdom's well-organized and efficient intelligence service, the General Intelligence Division (GID), has carefully tracked the CIA-trained or Pakistan-trained guerrillas - or terrorists, or freedom fighters, or whatever you choose to call them - who survived their victorious 1979-89 war to expel the Soviet invaders from Afghanistan.
On returning to their homelands, thousands of these Arab veterans organized Islamist uprisings or supported civil wars - in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, the Philippines and Indonesia - or carried out specific terrorist acts (cinemas in Jordan; the World Trade Center in New York in 1993).
Jordan's GID hunted the returned fighters, capturing and bringing to justice several who became active terrorists. The GID aided the U.S. government in countless ways, even helping U.S. law enforcement officers to apprehend Al Qaeda and other operatives who had formed cells in the United States or Canada.
Sometime in the summer of 2001 GID headquarters in Amman, Jordan, made a communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relayed its contents to Washington, probably through the CIA station at the U.S. Embassy in Amman.
To be doubly sure that the message got through, it was passed through an Arab intermediary to an Iranian-born German intelligence agent who was visiting Amman at the time.
The text stated clearly that a major attack was planned inside the continental United States. It said aircraft would be used. But neither hijacking, nor, apparently, precise timing nor targets were named. The code name of the operation was mentioned: in Arabic, Al Ourush al Kabir, "The Big Wedding."
When it became clear that the information about the intercept was embarrassing to Bush administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations.
As for the Moroccan case, last November a French magazine and a Moroccan newspaper simultaneously reported a story that has since met a wall of silence.
The reports said that a Moroccan secret agent named Hassan Dabou succeeded in infiltrating Al Qaeda. Several weeks before Sept. 11, the story ran, he informed his chiefs in King Mohammed VI's royal intelligence service that Osama bin Laden's men were preparing "large-scale operations in New York in the summer or autumn of 2001." The warning was said to have been passed on to Washington.
Dabou was said to have told his bosses in Rabat that bin Laden was "very disappointed" by the failure of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 to topple the towers.
Though Dabou won bin Laden's confidence at first, according to an unnamed French intelligence agent cited in the reports, after he was invited to the United States to tell his story he lost contact with Al Qaeda, curtailing his ability to help prevent Sept. 11. Nonetheless, the story goes, he was given asylum and a new identity in the United States and is said to be helping out in the "war on terror."
The first of these cases has been authenticated by this reporter. The second remains to be proved beyond doubt. But the moral of both is that no U.S. administration should ever downgrade or dismiss the help it gets from friendly countries, Arab or otherwise.
The writer, an American foreign correspondent, is author of "Unholy Wars: America, Afghanistan and International Terrorism," which will appear in a third, updated edition this summer. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
--
The CIA's Wall Street connections
Transcript of interview with Michael C. Ruppert on Guns and Butter:
The Economy Watch with Kellia Ramares and Bonnie Faulkner
Aired on KPFA 94.1 FM,
Berkeley, CA
Friday, October 12, 2001
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Ramares-Faulkner101701/ramares-faulkner101701.html
FAULKNER: On September 29, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that investors had yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. The uncollected money raises suspicions that the unidentified investors had advance knowledge of the attacks. The securities and exchange commission is investigating high levels of short sales and purchases of "put" options, on the stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines in the three business days before the attacks. Short sales and put options are bets that a stock will fall in price.
Meanwhile, the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank headed by former Israeli intelligence officers, has issued a report on Osama bin Laden's finances, saying insiders profited by nearly $16 million dollars on transactions involving the two airlines and the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. And that report excluded other unusual trading activity involving insurance companies with significant exposure to damage claims resulting from the attacks.
Joining us by phone from Southern California is Michael C. Ruppert. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles Police Department field officer and narcotics investigator whom the CIA twice tried to recruit.
In the course of investigations in the mid 1970s, he came across information the CIA was trading drugs in order to fund covert operations. He was forced out of the LAPD in November 1978 after being shot at and threatened for speaking out about CIA drug activity.
At a Town Hall meeting on November 15, 1996, Ruppert publicly confronted then-CIA director John Deutsch with information about three specific CIA drug operations. The confrontation led to an invitation to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he spoke and presented written evidence concerning the CIA's infiltration of and illegal relationships with a number of police departments throughout the country.
Michael Ruppert publishes "From The Wilderness," a magazine which deals with the effects of illegal covert operations on our society. He's here today to discuss his latest article for that magazine . . . about the CIA's knowledge of, and connections to, the suspect trading that occurred in the days prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Michael Ruppert, welcome to "Guns and Butter: The Economy Watch."
RUPPERT: Good to be here.
FAULKNER: Good to have you. Do you think the CIA had advance knowledge of the attacks? Did they know a specific attack was coming?
RUPPERT: I am absolutely convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency had complete and perfect foreknowledge of the attacks, down to date, time place and location, yes.
FAULKNER: Tell us how the CIA monitors the stock market.
RUPPERT: Well, I have written several stories about this over the years. One of the primary functions of the Central Intelligence Agency by virtue of its long and very close history of relationships with Wall Street, I mean to the point where the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a mandate to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look for anomalous trades, indicative of either economic warfare, or insider currency trading or speculation which might affect the US Treasury, or , as in the case of the September 11 attacks, to look for trades which indicated foreknowledge of attacks like we saw.
One of the vehicles that they use to do this is a software called Promis software, which was developed in the 1980s, actually 1979, by Bill Hamilton and a firm called INSLAW, in [the] Washington D.C. area. And Promis is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had the ability to integrate a wide range of databases using different computer languages and to make them all into one readable format. And secondly, in the years since, Promis has been mated with artificial intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect trades that are anomalous, as a result of those projections. So, as recently as last year, I met with members of the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] national security staff, who came down to Los Angeles where I am, who are investigating stolen applications of Promis software and its applications, and we reconfirmed at that time that, not only the US, but Israel, Canada, and many other countries use Promis-like software to track real-time trades in the stock markets to warn them of these events.
RAMARES: Kellia Ramares here. Mike, is it possible that the terrorists could have gotten hold of this software?
RUPPERT: Uh, no, it's, well, it is and it isn't. The key piece of evidence around September 11 is not that the software would have had any impact. The key evidence, as I heard you describing, was the trades themselves, the so-called put options and the short selling of American Airlines, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and a couple of reinsurance companies in Europe, which are just really off the maps. You wouldn't need software to look at these trades and say, "Oh my God, this is directly connected to World Trade Center."
RAMARES: OK, but hindsight is 2020. United Airlines had a lot of trouble last year: labor disputes, lots of cancellations. We were on a verge of a recession going into the attacks and Morgan Stanley's an investment banking firm. Some day traders could have seen some activity and joined the party entirely innocently. How can you make a prediction of an attack?
RUPPERT: Herzliyah, International Policy Institute in Israel which tracks counter-terrorism, also tracks financial trading. That's a clear cut sign about how closely the two are related. And their reports are very clear that between September 6 and 7 the Chicago Board Options Exchange, CBOE, saw purchases of 4,744 put options on UAL, but only 396 call options. On September 10, the day before the attacks, 4,516 put options were placed on American Airlines, against only 748 calls, calls being bets that the stock will go up, puts being that the stock will go down. No similar trading in any other airlines occurred on the Chicago Exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday. That means that someone had advance knowledge that only the stocks of these two airlines would be adversely impacted. Had it just been an industry-wide slump, then you would have seen the same kind of activity on every airline, not just these two. But what is also very anomalous, very out of whack here, is the fact that the number of put options placed, that the level of these trades was up by 1,200 percent in the three days prior to the World Trade Center attacks.
RAMARES: Give us a brief overview, really, of the connections between the CIA and the banking and investment community. Your article suggests there is a revolving door between Wall Street and the CIA.
RUPPERT: Oh, indeed there is. First of all, it's very important to note right up front that European investigators, who are tracking trades in the insurance companies, as well as the Israeli institute, have disclosed that the UAL put options were primarily held by Deutsche Bank-A.B. Brown. And its very important to note that the current Number Three at CIA, the Executive Director, a man by the name of A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, was, until 1998, the chairman of A.B. Brown. The company went from being owned by Banker's Trust to being owned by Deutsche Bank. But this is a man effectively running CIA, who came from the bank that handled the trades.
Historically speaking, we go back to 1947, we look at Clark Clifford, who wrote the National Security Act, in 1947. He was a Wall Street banker, and a lawyer from Wall Street. He was the chairman of First American Bancshares that brought BCCI onto US shores in the late 1980s. He was given the design for the CIA by John Foster and Allen Dulles, two brothers: John Foster becoming Secretary of State, Allen becoming director of Central Intelligence, who was fired by John Kennedy. They were partners in what is until this day the most powerful law firm on Wall Street: Sullivan Cromwell. Bill Casey, the legendary CIA director from the Reagan/Iran Contra years, had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange commission under Ronald Reagan. He, in fact, was a Wall Street lawyer and a stockbroker. I've already mentioned Dave Doherty, the Vice President of NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] who is the retired CIA general counsel. George Herbert Walker Bush is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, very influential on Wall Street. "Buzzy" Krongard is there. John Deutsch, the former CIA director, who retired a couple of years ago, a few years ago, is now on the board of Citibanc or Citigroup. And his number three, Nora Slatkin, the Executive Director at CIA is also at Citigroup. And Maurice "Hank" Greenburg, who is the chairman of AIG insurance, which is the third largest investment pool of capital in the world, was up to be the CIA director in 1995 and Bill Clinton declined to nominate him. So there is an inextricable and unavoidable relationship between CIA and Wall Street.
FAULKNER: Michael Ruppert, this is Bonnie Faulkner. Does the CIA itself invest in the stock market?
RUPPERT: That's unknown. What is known, and what was disclosed by hearings chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1976, is that the CIA was known and proven in the Congressional Record to operate proprietary companies, some of which do trade their stock on Wall Street. One of these, Southern Air Transport, excuse me, was at it during the Iran Contra years. There are others: Evergreen Air, which may or may not be a proprietary, but has strong CIA connections; there are tons of these companies out there. It's not known if CIA manipulates markets, although I really believe that they do.
FAULKNER: Is the CIA's budget public knowledge?
RUPPERT: No. By law. Under the National Security Act of 1947 the CIA's budget is hidden in the budgets of all the other departments of government. We've never been able to pin down, because it's a secret, exactly how much money CIA gets. But the best estimates available-and these are from very good sources-are that it's around 30 billion dollars a year.
FAULKNER: So I'm assuming then that no one knows where they keep their budget. I mean, do they keep it in the bank drawing interest? I guess we don't know.
RUPPERT: Well, no, the way it would work under the NSA-National Security Act-is that if the budget is $30 billion , $10 billion may be in the Department of Defense, five in the Department of Justice, three in US Treasury. That's how they hide the funds.
RAMARES: Michael, Kellia Ramares again. You've laid out a scenario which would suggest that the CIA is so involved in Wall Street, they knew these trades were happening; they knew why. Why would the CIA let such a horrendous thing happen if they knew about it? All the loss of life, all the economic damage that we led off our show with that's going to happen to everyday people, state and local governments, small investors, businesses. Why did they let it happen if they knew?
RUPPERT: Well, first of all, let's look at history. I'm a great addict of the History Channel and all this year on "The Secrets of World War II," one of their series, they have run maybe three, four, five times, a documentary showing clearly that Franklin Roosevelt had absolute knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor on December the seventh. Navy had broken the codes. That information was made Top Secret. And Roosevelt allowed the attacks to happen with the express purpose of bringing the US into World War II. So there is historical precedent for this. What I have been writing in "From the Wilderness" for more than two years, and we've been publishing four years now, was of huge economic inconsistencies, bubbles that were about to burst, about a pending collapse of the US economy that was going to happen anyway.
Just two days before the attacks, I sent a bulletin to my subscribers saying there's a monstrous derivatives bubble, to the tune of about 20 trillion dollars that's about to burst. The price of gold has been manipulated, and the stock market's ready to crash. And in fact, we had seen the Dow drop by almost 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. So, in point of fact, the economic crash was going to happen anyway. As a result of the attacks, now there are two benefits for the government: Number One, there is a convenient enemy upon whom to place the blame for the economic crash. And second, the legislation passed by Congress has unleashed a torrent of short term, and what are going to be extremely expensive, solutions which are keeping the US economic bubble inflated. This incentive: now it's about 100 billion dollars so far I believe, between 40 for the military and another 60 in tax cuts, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I am absolutely convinced that Social Security is toast and this was their way to get their foot in the door on that.
RAMARES: Yes, but what about their plans to privatize Social Security? I don't want my retirement in the stock market after what you've said and even what I saw before.
RUPPERT: I sure don't either. You have to remember that the current Bush administration is a reincarnation of the administration we saw during Iran-Contra, and during the years of President Bush's presidency from '89 to '93. These are the people who brought us the savings and loan crisis, which took $500 billion dollars out of US taxpayer pockets. These guys know how to loot an economy. There are very credible, well-documented stories from GAO [General Accounting Office] that have been written even in the Washington Times [a very conservative newspaper] showing that the Department of Defense has, and this is the right word, has lost more than three trillion dollars in the last two years. That money is not lost; it's been stolen. More than 59 billion dollars has been taken out of HUD [US Department of Housing and Urban Development]. There are monstrous economic costs which are going to fall on the American taxpayer. But they will not fall on the administration or its allies on Wall Street.
RAMARES: Speaking of Wall Street, it doesn't feel like it's a level playing field for the small investor, the person who has their kid's college fund in something in Wall Street to try to make it grow.
RUPPERT: No. It absolutely is not. In 1929, some 15 percent of all the stock in circulation was owned by households. In 2001, 75 percent of the stock in circulation was owned by households. That tells you who's carrying the burden.
If you look at some of the market activity in recent years, for example, two years ago, Goldman Sachs went public. And that means that households bought their stock but Goldman Sachs took the money and cashed out. There has been a strong trend in the movement of money by the very rich offshore, out of the country, into safe havens, so that when the bubble does break, it'll be the taxpayer holding the bag.
RAMARES: Is Congress knocking on your door to look more into this? Are we going to see congressional hearings into possible knowledge of the CIA of the attacks? I mean we're talking about they let mass murder happen.
RUPPERT: Yes . . . I have spoken confidentially to two members of the House of Representatives. And I have to tell you that my take on their view, and these are members who I consider to be allies and very progressive and awake: they're basically frightened. The climate is one of near hysteria. There is an overwhelming attitude in the general public of wave the flag and kill the bad guys. And it's not politically wise, I guess, in their viewpoint, to risk their careers by raising questions. But some of them have to and some of them must.
Every day, there are more and more holes in all of the stories surrounding September 11, and this avoids people from looking at a broader agenda in Central Asia, which has to do with the drug trade and the oil. Bear in mind that Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has documented that 300 billion dollars a year in drug money moves through the US banking system. And that was in a minority report to the Senate Banking Committee released this February, I believe it was. But that money is now an integral component to sustaining the bubble. And that's why we're seeing CIA operatives moving willy-nilly into Uzbekistan, to give us immediately another Laos, just like we had in the Vietnam era with Air America planes flying with tons of heroin to markets in the US and Western Europe. And that's what's coming out of this. Also, there's a huge grab for oil and a major pipeline to run from Uzbekistan down to the Pakistani coast, which will weaken Russia's grip on the region. And I believe, long term, the economic motive is to Balkanize Russia. But members of Congress now faced with this are kind of overwhelmed. There have been a few voices speaking up here and there to oppose civil rights legislation that was punitive, to address issues of the war-making powers. But Congress needs to find its legs and its lungs real quickly.
FAULKNER: Michael Ruppert, this is Bonnie Faulkner. We have one minute left. You've mentioned when the bubble is going to burst. A lot of people think that the bubble has already burst . . .
RUPPERT: Oh no.
FAULKNER: What do you expect to see?
RUPPERT: I was already predicting that the Dow would be at 8,000 or below by the end of October. Now the . . . who knows what the short-term impacts of all of the money that's being poured out of the Treasury are going to have. But bear in mind there is still a huge bubble. According to Russian economists-I was in Russia in March-there's 300 trillion dollars in derivatives waiting to pop. Now what that means is one more good terrorist attack and we could really understand what a bubble is.
RAMARES: And the FBI has said watch out for terrorist attacks in the next few days and the CIA says that we're at 100 percent risk of terrorist attacks. Give us your web site and little bit about your magazine for those who might be interested in learning more.
RUPPERT: OK, the web site is www dot cop v like in Victor CIA dot com. Copvcia.com. "From the Wilderness" is a newsletter we publish 11 times a year. We're read in 17 countries, by 16 members of the US Congress, including the Intelligence Committees of both houses, as well as by professors at 11 universities in the US and Canada. It's a monthly subscriber. The web site is free; the subscribers get a little more information and a little newer. But we take great pride in the fact that we document everything that we publish so we don't ask anybody to take anything on faith.
RAMARES: OK, Thank you very much for joining us. You have been listening to Michael C. Ruppert, publisher of "From the Wilderness" magazine and author of an article on the CIA, the stock market and the terrorist attacks. Again his web site is www.copvcia.com. Again, thank you for joining us.
RUPPERT: My pleasure.
-------- us
Icons of the Crusade
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, May 20, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44956-2002May20?language=printer
The Army's Crusader artillery gun should be cancelled. But so should the Navy's cruise missile submarine, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, and extended- and long-range cruise missiles the Air Force is toying with.
And why is the United States spending more than $850 million in this year alone on a smorgasbord of "smart" anti-armor weapons: the Brilliant anti-tank (BAT) sub-munition, the Line-of-Sight Anti-tank (LOSAT) system, the Army's Tactical Missile System Block II, Javelin, the Short-range Antitank weapon, and the sensor fuzed weapon?
And what about the $213 million the Pentagon is proposing to pay this year and next to just start developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)?
What is more, does the United States really need both the F-22 "Raptor" and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?
I hate to play the game of picking systems out of air to criticize, thereby buying into competing concepts of warfare or giving aid and comfort to dueling industries or interservice rivalries. I know exactly the Navy admiral who is going to call me this week to tout his service's submarine conversion. Air Force friends are going to shake their heads in dismay that I would jump on an anti-F-22 bandwagon.
Bad Company
Still, many readers and friends have asked my opinion about the cancellation of the Crusader, the Army's 60-ton tracked gun. Yet I find it impossible to declare my position without applying some of the same standards to other systems.
Anyone who's been following the debate knows the pro-Crusader argument: troops need what's called fire support and Crusader can do that better than current guns. Even Iraqi artillery "outranges" and "outguns" U.S. artillery. Sadly, we still live in a world in which on-paper capability is confused with real capability. The Iraqis were so shell-shocked in the Gulf War, so unable to assimilate their own technology no matter how good it might have been on paper, they could have had golden guns and it wouldn't have made a difference.
Then there are the arguments against Crusader. Mostly that it is too big. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld loves to say that it would take 64 C-17 airliners to move 18 guns into a battle. "The question is where do you land them, how do you move them, will they go across a bridge with those kinds of weights?," he said last week.
No argument from me there. But that's where my list of weapon systems above comes from. Do we really need so many redundant precision weapons? Has the U.S. military had trouble getting to targets with its current capabilities? Has it had any difficulty killing enemy tanks and armored vehicles in the last three major wars? Can it really justify its Cold War program to develop a gaggle of anti-tank systems when the Soviets are gone? Even without such systems, Iraqi tank armies were soundly defeated.
And why do I throw in the new cruise missile submarine and fighter planes? Because it's not just about how big, or good, something is. It's also about timing. Do we really need two new fighter planes this decade, regardless of whether these are even the right planes to buy? We already have an Air Force, however "aging" and supposedly threatened by mythical air defenses, that performs again and again as the envy of the entire planet.
And a new ICBM? Let's ignore President Bush's visit with his Russian counterpart this week. What is conceivably "transformational" about a 1960's nuclear armed totem poll that the U.S. wouldn't even field until after 2020?
Lonely at the Top
If Secretary Rumsfeld's proposal to cancel Crusader is rejected because Congress or the defense industry wins, or Army troglodytes are successful in saving their hallowed gun, the blame lies with Rumsfeld. He and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz have done poor jobs of articulating what is otherwise a basically sound decision. Here's what we heard from them in the past week in repeated interviews and testimony: poor us fighting against the Pentagon bureaucracy and Congressional pork, it's so hard to "transform" and change, no one likes to give up their program, someone has to make the tough decisions.
"What we have to do is look at other ways to do things," Rumsfeld told Rush Limbaugh on Thursday. "What I think the country needs is more precision munitions ..."
The Pentagon is going to "move the money from [Crusader] and to invest in more truly transformational technology," Wolfowitz echoed.
And what exactly is transformational? It's completely in the eye of the beholder. And sometimes it is a meaningless buzzword. In their interviews this past week, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have cited the conversion of four existing Trident submarines into cruise missile submarines as a "transformation" initiative. "We're taking those incredibly valuable submarines and converting them to be cruise missile carriers so that we will give those submarines the kind of conventional crunch that is transformational," the Secretary said.
Hello? Converting the submarines rather than scrapping them might be a better idea, but is it transformational? We already have stealthy attack submarines, surface ships, and bombers galore that can fire cruise missiles, now and into the future. There is nothing transforming here. The promiscuous use of the transformation magic wand points to a basic conceptual problem with the very articulation of what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz say they want to do.
Under the current defense leadership, some things are transformational and others are not. But there's no particular reason. It's okay in the case of artillery to cancel Crusader and instead improve the projectiles and sensors and existing systems to get the job done. It is even okay to force the Army to come to grips with the idea that it might have to depend on the supporting cast of the air forces to provide "fire support" for guys on the ground. But in the case of fighter airplanes or cruise missile submarines, the same transformers support the inconsistent stance that the current generation isn't good enough and that a new generation of weapons and sensors would "transform" the new platforms into superior systems to improve air defenses and bombing ability.
Why is the Air Force's articulation of its need for F-22 any sounder than the Army's desire for Crusader? Because there is a sense that airpower is more relevant than heavy ground forces for the types of conflicts that the United States will have to face in the coming years and decades. But would defense leaders actually favor one mode of warfare over another? Would they ever dare to really transform and take money from one service and give it to another?
No. And that's why the debate over the Crusader cancellation is a food fight. The true decision to go after one weapon and not another is political and capricious, and the articulation of favored weapons is weak because it is so lacking in vision and honesty. With no common standard to apply, with no integrated understanding of what all services bring to the fight, with no sense of proportion about what we need and when, why shouldn't Congress and industry and the services fight for they want?
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U.S. military recruiting legal aliens holding green cards
May 21, 2002
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020521-22085692.htm
Even if you are not a U.S. citizen, Uncle Sam wants you.
About 47,500 military people are noncitizens, roughly 4 percent of the total, and the Pentagon is recruiting more.
"We recruit everywhere. We like to look like America and recruit anyone who is qualified," said Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman.
Mr. Cassella said the noncitizens must have green cards certifying they are legally in the country. They may serve only a single term of enlistment - two to four years - before applying for citizenship and cannot hold a military job that requires a security clearance.
The same legal residents are barred from working as civilian airport screeners in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Some noncitizen servicemen say they thought defending the United States automatically made them an American.
Alberto Castillo learned the hard way that isn't the case. He left Chihuahua, Mexico, as a child and has lived in America for nearly 50 years, four of which were spent in the Army and 21 in the National Guard.
Nobody told him he wasn't a citizen until he applied for a civil service job after leaving active duty. He was referred to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which told him he needed to apply for citizenship.
"If the military is picking up people left and right, they should make you a citizen automatically," said Mr. Castillo, 55, of San Antonio. He is applying for citizenship now.
Marine Lance Cpl. Karina Bejarano, 24, also mistakenly believed she was a citizen.
"You have to swear in and swear to defend this country. I would figure you do that and boom-boom, you become a citizen," said Cpl. Bejarano, who was born in Peru and moved to the United States when she was 10. She plans to apply for citizenship next month.
Maj. Ben Owens, a Pentagon spokesman, said there is no policy requiring recruiters to discuss citizenship.
The military does provide a faster route to citizenship. Legal permanent residents may become U.S. citizens after serving in the military for three years; the wait for civilians is five years. But their service does not exempt them from civics and English proficiency tests or immigration fees.
Rep. Martin Frost, Texas Democrat, has written legislation to reduce the required military service to two years, waive fees and let soldiers go through the citizenship processes at U.S. embassies. Mr. Frost said that under current policy, noncitizen service members stationed abroad must pay their way back to the United States for citizenship tests and their naturalization oath.
"If people serve two years honorably in the military, certainly they should be able to become citizens," said Mr. Frost, who is married to a two-star Army general. "Anyone putting his or her life on the line to defend the country has established that he or she is a great American."
Mr. Frost will try this week to include the measure in an emergency spending bill.
-------- propaganda wars
They've Got a Secret -- Lots, Actually
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47633-2002May20?language=printer
Since President Bush took office, the press and members of Congress have complained about his administration's extraordinary secrecy -- and the American public has yawned.
But last week's flap, over what Bush was told in August about Osama bin Laden's designs to hijack American airplanes, may be different. Americans don't blame the president for doing too little to prevent an attack, but they are displeased that the White House sat on the information for eight months. In a USA Today/CNN poll, 68 percent said the administration should have disclosed this information earlier.
The guarding of the hijacking information for eight months -- and acknowledging it only after a leak -- brought predictable outrage from Democrats, who had been urged by the White House to postpone and restrict probes. "Why was it not provided to us, and why was it not shared with the general public for the last eight months?" Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) demanded.
Even allies were critical. Conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote that "in a sense, Bush and his team have themselves to blame" because of a "passion for secrecy." Had they agreed early on to a commission investigating Sept. 11, he wrote, it "might have revealed in orderly fashion what is being leaked piecemeal -- fueling conspiracy theories and aiding irresponsible Democratic members of Congress."
For the Bush White House, this has become a common tale. By declining to share information in public or with Congress, it gives the impression it is covering something up when the information inevitably dribbles out -- thus provoking congressional hostility and disproportionate media attention.
First came Vice President Cheney's energy task force. More than a year ago, White House officials declined media requests for names of outside groups with which the task force had met. Environmental groups filed lawsuits, and members of Congress asked the General Accounting Office to investigate. The resulting GAO lawsuit against Cheney, scheduled for September, guarantees that a story that might have expired in a day will last at least 18 months.
Next came the probes of Enron's collapse. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, sent the White House a letter requesting information about contacts between the failed energy trader and the White House. Bush aides declined to provide the information. Lieberman will ask his committee on Wednesday to issue subpoenas to the White House demanding the information -- further extending the life of the Enron story.
The administration "has a real penchant for secrecy," Lieberman said over the weekend. "But you know, in this city, in this time, very little remains secret. And if you don't put it out yourself, it's going to come out, and people are going to wonder why you didn't put it out."
At the same time, the White House has been engaged in a nasty spat with both Democrats and Republicans over whether Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge must testify. The standoff has fueled a series of news stories and efforts in Congress to give Ridge Cabinet status -- so he can be called to testify at will.
Now comes the eight-month gap in telling the public about al Qaeda's interest in airplanes. The episode is consistent with Bush's earlier effort to keep the intelligence committees from receiving counterterrorism briefings.
The White House shows no sign of changing. Cheney said he still opposes an independent commission, and he said the Aug. 6 presidential security briefing mentioning bin Laden and hijackings would not be given to congressional intelligence committees. They cannot be trusted with what Cheney calls "the family jewels."
Bush's allies have no trouble defending his actions before Sept. 11, but more difficulty rationalizing the delay in releasing the information. Asked about the delay, former Bush campaign adviser Ed Gillespie said: "It may take a while to explain it."
So far, the White House has contended that the hijacking information wasn't significant enough to share. "You know, frankly, it didn't pop to the front of people's minds, because it's one report among very, very many that you get," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice ventured. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer suggested security reasons. "It's always a balance between information that is classified, information that deals with sources and methods," he said.
Clinton administration veterans, who learned the hard way about the futility of holding back information, said that explanation won't wash. "Once that cynicism deepens that you're not getting the straight story out, you can be in a world of hurt pretty quick," said former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta.
Bush and his loyalists believe the public's longstanding indifference to charges of administration secrecy will continue. "I don't think it's uppermost in people's mind," said Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a Bush point man on the Hill.
While Portman says the White House's secrecy is grounded in a good principle -- strengthening executive powers that have been eroded in recent decades -- "it's hard to explain in a country where most of us are instinctively for disclosure. Maybe there could be some critical mass that builds up where through some television ads it becomes more of a political issue."
Battle-scarred Clinton hands say it's just a matter of time.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Spying at Home
By Fareed Zakaria
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47971-2002May20?language=printer
"Never did we imagine what would take place on Sept. 11," said Ari Fleischer last week, "where people used those airplanes as missiles and as weapons."
Actually, as is becoming increasingly clear, many people did imagine it. Forget about government reports. Tom Clancy closed his 1994 best seller, "Debt of Honor," with an enraged pilot loading an airliner with fuel and crashing it into the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress, killing most members as well as the president of the United States.
But even if George W. Bush had read his Clancy and taken heed of his intelligence reports, he would not have been able to prevent Sept. 11. For that, this country needed something else, something we have always shied away from: a domestic intelligence agency, a CIA that spies on Americans.
There is a scandal about the events leading to Sept. 11, but it does not involve the Bush White House -- or, for that matter, the Clinton White House. It's a few blocks over, at the FBI. How could the bureau, given all the bits of information it had received, not have aggressively investigated the suicide bombers? Why did it not connect the pieces of information into an incriminating whole?
It's simple. No one at the FBI had the job of strategic analysis -- i.e., of connecting the dots. And even if someone had made the connections, what could the agency have done? The answer, in hindsight, is clear: tap phones, raid computers and track bank accounts. (In this case, following the money would have been the real tipoff, since Zacarias Moussaoui was being funded by the same source as the other terrorists.) But the FBI needed court approval to do most of this, and it had scant evidence to make its case. And peeping into bank accounts wasn't easy; the American system is not set up to investigate people at whim.
It is not simply a matter of a bad organization. The FBI is a law-enforcement agency, not an intelligence outfit. For it to begin a massive operation, a crime needs to have been committed.
To have properly analyzed and investigated the leads that pointed to Sept. 11, the FBI would have to have been a different organization, a kind of domestic intelligence agency, focused not simply on investigation after the fact but on preemption and prevention. "The paradox is that once someone enters the United States, they become invisible, shielded by all our laws and restraints," explains Philip Zelikow, director of the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "The National Security Agency and the CIA can keep tabs on people around the world -- but not here. We just caught a terrorist in Pakistan. Had he been in America, he'd have been safe."
The FBI is already changing. Director Robert Mueller has created an Office of Intelligence. He is hiring 100 "strategic analysts" and setting up a college to train more of them. The bureau is now coordinating counterterrorism activities in 56 cities across America. Recent legislation has made it easier to track bank accounts and share information among agencies, including the CIA.
So the FBI will now tap phones, track bank accounts and work with the CIA. Does this sound familiar? The last time the FBI got involved in "political intelligence," during the Johnson and Nixon years, it was more politics than intelligence. (Remember the phone taps on Martin Luther King Jr.?) In fact, it was those abuses of power that produced many of the restraints that prohibit the FBI from acting as an intelligence agency.
We must learn from those errors and get it right this time. We need a domestic intelligence capability. Every major power in the world has one, most with too much power. Britain's M.I.5 and France's Renseignements Generaux can open mail and tap phones at will. (Many in Washington believe that one reason so many terrorists operated out of Germany is that -- fearful of creating another Gestapo -- it has a weak internal security agency.) In an age of terrorism, when the enemy will often be operating inside America, we can't remain blindfolded.
There's only one way to get security and liberty at the same time: Authorize the FBI to engage in domestic intelligence with clearly demarcated powers; put the agency under much stronger "civilian" oversight, including from Congress, and let it know specifically what it can and cannot do.
"Without a national reorganization, every agency in government will get into domestic intelligence furtively, and that will be much worse for civil liberties," says Zelikow. "As last week's frenzy makes clear, no one will want to be blamed for missing a lead after the next terrorist attack."
The writer is editor of Newsweek International and a columnist for Newsweek.
----
U.S. Rules Out Firearms in Airline Cockpits
By Jonathan D. Salant
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50193-2002May21?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The federal government said Tuesday that pilots will not be allowed to have guns in the cockpits of commercial airplanes.
The announcement was made at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing by John Magaw, undersecretary for transportation security. It followed months of debate over whether arming pilots would be a deterrent to hijackers.
Both Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge previously indicated their opposition to arming pilots.
Magaw announced his decision in response to a question from Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the committee.
"Pilots need to concentrate on flying the plane," Magaw said later in the hearing. Specially trained air marshals should be the only armed officers on board, he added.
"These marshals are trained not only in the use of weapons but all the things that build up to that," Magaw said. "They have to practice all of these things in a tight aircraft. They have special firearms training. We don't want them shooting the firearm with the potential of bringing that airplane down."
Magaw said the pilots could use in-flight maneuvers to keep the hijackers off guard and suggested installing cameras in the cabin so pilots can see the results of any actions they take.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., a co-sponsor of legislation to arm pilots, asked Magaw to reconsider his opposition.
"Those who want to be armed will put themselves through the same training the air marshals go through," Burns said.
Magaw said a formal announcement of the decision will be made later in the week.
Airline pilots have been pushing for guns, saying it would allow them to confront a hijacker who breaks into the cockpit. Hijackers took over four commercial airlines on Sept. 11, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Flight attendants, meanwhile, have advocated nonlethal weapons, such as stun guns, that they could use in emergencies.
Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., who chairs the Commerce Committee, said guns would not be needed as long as pilots kept cockpit doors locked while in flight.
"You can put the rule in right now and cut out all the argument about pistols and stun guns," Hollings said.
Opponents of arming pilots have said reinforced cockpit doors now required on all planes mean that pistols are unnecessary. They have also expressed concern that an errant shot might hit a passenger or damage a key electrical system on the plane.
Besides the Senate bill, a bill in the House would allow pilots to be armed. The House Transportation Committee is scheduled to take up the bill this week.
----
FBI Warns of Suicide Bombs
Mueller Calls U.S. Attacks Akin to Those on Israel 'Inevitable'
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45241-2002May20?language=printer
Adding to the Bush administration's stark warnings about terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday that a walk-in suicide bombing like the ones that have terrorized Israelis is "inevitable" in the United States.
Mueller, in a closed session at the meeting of the National Association of District Attorneys in Alexandria, acknowledged that the FBI and other intelligence agencies have difficulty infiltrating terrorist groups built on fanaticism.
"There will be another terrorist attack," Mueller said, according to an Associated Press account. "We will not be able to stop it. It's something we all live with."
Mueller's assessment came a day after Vice President Cheney warned of "a real possibility" that Palestinian-style suicide bombers would carry out attacks within the United States.
One Justice Department official said yesterday that Mueller's statements about suicide bombers are "consistent with the patterns we've seen overseas, and consistent with the information we've been seeing over the past few weeks."
Bush administration officials have said in recent days that intelligence analysts have noted a surge in communications among al Qaeda terrorist operatives regarding an assault. Officials said the activity is the greatest since the Sept. 11 attacks, which the United States has blamed on al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
However, Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the intelligence provided no specific information about an attack or whether one is imminent.
After recent bombings in Russia linked to al Qaeda-allied Chechen militants, the FBI issued a caution to U.S. terrorist task forces last week that al Qaeda terrorists might rent apartments and bomb them.
Despite such warnings, the Bush administration has not moved to put the nation on a higher stage of alert. Homeland security officials unveiled a five-tiered, color-coded alert system in March and since have kept the nation at stage "yellow," connoting a significant risk of attack. The next level up, orange, would mean officials believe there is a high risk of a terrorist strike.
The warnings follow fierce debate on Capitol Hill over how aggressively Congress should be allowed to probe possible intelligence failures before Sept. 11. Democratic leaders said yesterday that they plan to oppose the White House's effort to confine a congressional inquiry to the joint investigation already underway by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have access to classified information.
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he will sponsor a bill to establish an independent commission to analyze the Sept. 11 attacks. "It's imperative that in addition to improving our ability to gather intelligence, we also do a better job of coordinating, disseminating and acting upon this intelligence," Gephardt said.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) might begin moving a similar bill as soon as this week, an official said.
Cheney and other administration officials have refused to release publicly a copy of a CIA briefing paper presented to President Bush Aug. 6, which warned that al Qaeda terrorists might hijack U.S. airplanes.
Mueller and the Justice Department have rebuffed congressional requests for a copy of a July 10 memo from a Phoenix agent to FBI headquarters. It warned that bin Laden might be using U.S. flight schools to train terrorists.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is considering whether to issue Mueller a subpoena for the document this week, sources said.
The FBI did not share the Phoenix memo with other agencies or with FBI agents in Minnesota, who were scrambling to determine why alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui had been taking flight lessons before his arrest last August.
FBI officials have said that the information on Moussaoui was shared with several agencies, including the CIA and Federal Aviation Administration. But the FAA, which had issued a flurry of hijacking warnings last summer, did not alert airlines to the case.
FAA spokesman Scott Brenner said yesterday that the FBI "said they didn't think he was involved with anybody else, that there was not an imminent threat, and, most importantly, he was in jail."
Staff writers Mike Allen, Bill Miller and Don Phillips contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
State Dept. Releases Report on International Terrorism
Libya, Sudan Remain on List of Seven Governments
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50801-2002May21?language=printer
Libya and Sudan have moved to distance themselves from terrorism and cooperate in the American-led battle against militant groups but have not yet done enough to be removed from a U.S. list of seven governments sponsoring terrorism, according to an annual State Department report released today.
Iran, North Korea and Syria have also taken modest steps to join in the international effort against terrorism although they continue to host militant groups and take other actions supporting those groups, the report finds. Iran, in particular, remained "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2001," according to the findings.
The report noted no progress by Cuba and Iraq, the other two governments on the terrorism list. Indeed, the report beefs up the criticism of these two countries from last year.
These conclusions were included in the State Department's survey of global terrorism for 2001. After the devastating attacks on New York and Washington in September and the subsequent launch of President Bush's war on terrorism, this annual report has taken on a new significance.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, briefing reporters on the report, said the events of the past year show the need to enhance U.S. efforts against terrorism. Echoing similar remarks from other administration officials in the past several days, he said terrorists are hard at work seeking weapons of mass destruction, "whether radiological, chemical, biological or nuclear."
But he applauded the progress that has been made.
"Country by country, region by region, coalition members have strengthened law enforcement and intelligence cooperation," he said.
"We have tightened border controls and made it harder for terrorists to travel, to communicate and therefore to plot. One by one, we are severing the financial bloodlines of terrorism organizations."
It found that all seven governments "clearly heard the president's message" that every nation had to decide whether it was on the side of the United States or on that of the terrorists. "While some of these countries appear to be reconsidering their present course, none has yet taken all the necessary actions to divest itself fully of ties to terrorism," the report said.
"Sudan and Libya seemed closest to understanding what they must do to get out of the terrorism business and each has taken measures pointing it in the right direction," the report said.
This was the second year in a row that the annual evaluation had noted positive actions by Sudan. The report said that the U.S. discussions that began in 2000 with Khartoum about fighting terrorism intensified last year.
Sudan also condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and stepped up its counterterrorism cooperation with the United States, investigating and arresting suspected militants, the State Department found. Administration officials have previously said Sudan has increased its sharing of intelligence about extremist groups with the United States.
But the report said Sudan also remained a haven for militants aligned with several groups, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization and Egyptian and Palestinian organizations.
The State Department noted that Libya had also strongly condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and repeatedly denounced terrorism since then. The Tripoli government has reduced its support for international terrorism and "sought to recast itself as a peacemaker," the report said.
Libya, however, has not been able to shed its status as a state sponsor of terrorism because of its earlier involvement in attacks, such as the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, the report said. The State Department said Libya must still comply with U.N. Security Council requirements that it accept responsibility for the action of its officials in connection with the downing of the airplane, fully disclose what it knows about the incident and pay appropriate compensation to the victims' families.
The report said that Iran, North Korea and Syria "have, in some narrow areas, made limited moves to cooperate with the international community's campaign against terrorism."
The State Department said, "Iran and Syria, however, seek to have it both ways." While these governments have provided some cooperation in the American-led campaign against al Qaeda, they have continued to support militant groups such as the Palestinian organization Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.
Although North Korea has made public statements opposing terrorism, the Pyongyang government has not backed these up with effective actions, the report concluded.
The latest State Department report said Cuban President Fidel Castro has "vacillated" over the counter-terrorism effort and accuses his government of harboring fugitives, including Basque militants. On Iraq, the report faults President Saddam Hussein for not condemning the Sept. 11 attacks and for providing a base to several militant groups, including Palestinian and Kurdish organizations.
----
Ashcroft Learned of Agent's Alert Just After 9/11 but Bush Was Not Told
New York Times
May 21, 2002
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/national/21INQU.html
WASHINGTON, May 20 - Attorney General John Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks that the F.B.I. had received a memorandum from its Phoenix office the previous July warning that Osama bin Laden's followers could be training at American flight schools, government officials said today.
But senior Bush administration officials said neither Mr. Ashcroft nor Mr. Mueller briefed President Bush and his national security staff until recently about the Phoenix memorandum. Nor did they tell Congressional leaders.
The disclosure is certain to magnify criticism of the F.B.I.'s performance, including its failure to act on the memorandum before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The two men have not said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum, but the officials said that within days of the attacks senior law enforcement officials grasped the document's significance as a potentially important missed signal.
Today, several F.B.I. and Justice Department officials said that in the chaotic days after the attacks, discussions between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller were hurried and that their recollection of events were somewhat blurred by the frenetic pace of activity. Some officials said they recalled high-level discussions about how the hijackers had attended American flight schools, but one Justice Department official did not recall a briefing about the memorandum.
Spokesmen for Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ashcroft would not discuss the issue today. A senior Justice Department official said, "The attorney general was not briefed in any detail or with any specificity about the document known as the Phoenix memo until about a month ago."
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, who was traveling today with the president in Miami, said, "We have nothing that indicates the president had seen or even heard about this memo prior to a few weeks ago."
Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last Thursday that the president had not heard about the memorandum before the hijackings and had only recently learned of it. "I personally became aware of it just recently," Ms. Rice said, adding that she had asked Mr. Mueller and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to review the matter.
The Phoenix memorandum, written by Kenneth Williams, an agent in Phoenix, was sent to F.B.I. headquarters as an electronic computer message on July 10. It was reviewed by midlevel supervisors, who headed the agency's bin Laden and Islamic extremist counterterrorism units.
But the officials said the memorandum was never sent to top F.B.I. managers, including Thomas J. Pickard, who was acting director in the summer of 2001 before Mr. Mueller took over early in September. Other senior officials were unaware of the memorandum before Sept. 11, including Michael Rolince, who managed the bureau's international terrorism unit, and Dale Watson, his superior, the officials said.
The issue of when top officials knew of the Phoenix memorandum is emerging as a main focus in Congressional inquiries getting under way. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has asked the F.B.I. to identify anyone at the agency who knew about the memorandum before the attacks.
But lawmakers also want to know when Bush administration officials learned about the memorandum after the attacks. Some lawmakers have asked whether administration officials were told about it soon after the attacks, but were slow to disclose it.
Several lawmakers, including Richard C. Shelby, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have already singled out the F.B.I. for blunt criticism after Mr. Williams's memorandum came to light several weeks ago.
The Phoenix memorandum is one of two documents under heavy scrutiny by Congressional investigators. The other is a daily intelligence report, shown to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6. The report mentions the threat of Qaeda members' carrying out hijackings in the United States. The White House has refused to produce the document, and administration officials have said that the information was too vague to act on.
Mr. Mueller has acknowledged that the bureau's failure to evaluate the Phoenix memorandum fully was an analytical failure that the F.B.I. has tried to correct.
"It is a very worthwhile process and a process we are undertaking to change what we do in response to that instance and others where perhaps we did not have the analytical capability," Mr. Mueller said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 8.
"We did not have the people who were looking at the broader picture to put the pieces in place," he said, adding that nothing in the memorandum would have enabled the F.B.I. to thwart the attacks.
The memorandum remains classified, and much of its contents are unknown. But officials have confirmed that it expressed concern that Mr. bin Laden and other groups could be using the flight schools to prepare for terror attacks. It urged F.B.I. officials to check the visas of foreigners at American aviation academies. But no action was taken before Sept. 11.
The memorandum was sent to counterterrorism offices in two cities - one copy went to John O'Neill, then the top counterterrorism agent in the F.B.I.'s New York office. Mr. O'Neill retired from the F.B.I. in late August. He had just begun a job as the security chief of the World Trade Center when he was killed in the attacks.
Usually, internal investigative proposals that involve agencywide resources are reviewed by high F.B.I. officials. But in this case F.B.I. officials have said that officials who read the memorandum were distracted by other cases, a plot against American interests in France and the investigation of the attack in October 2000 on the destroyer Cole.
Two or three days after the attacks, Dale Watson, who was then assistant director for counterterrorism, brought the memorandum to the attention of Mr. Pickard, who had returned to his job as deputy director after a stint as acting director, officials said.
Mr. Pickard and several other agents then briefed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ashcroft on its existence, the officials said.
The Phoenix agent's memorandum was not based on intelligence but on concerns and recommendations based on "conjecture and assumptions," said a senior official who has read it.
"There appeared to be a lot of Middle Eastern guys taking flying lessons in the Phoenix area," the official said. "This was just a good investigator taking a look at something. It was pure hunch."
For that reason, the official speculated that the memorandum had not set off strong alarms among other law enforcement officials who had reviewed it at the bureau.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency have said that they did not receive a copy of the memorandum until several weeks ago. But F.B.I. officials have said that the names of Middle Eastern men in the Phoenix area who were identified in the memorandum, were referred to the C.I.A. in the summer of 2001.
F.B.I. officials have said that the C.I.A. reported back that none of the men appeared to be connected to Al Qaeda.
Intelligence officials, however, have said that two or three of the men have recently been linked to the Qaeda network. These men remain at large, the officials said.
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U.S. Releases List of Nations That Sponsor Terrorism
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terrorism-Report.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department branded Iran the world's most active sponsor of terror Tuesday as the Islamic fundamentalist state intensified support for Palestinian militants attacking Israel.
On the other hand, Libya and Sudan were taking steps ``to get out of the terrorism business'' and North Korea and Syria took smaller steps in that direction, but continued to host militant groups, the department said in its annual report to Congress.
The report named seven states as sponsors of terror, including Cuba and Iraq, the latter concentrating its terror on opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but also providing bases for anti-Israel terror groups.
``The terrorist threat is global in scope, many-faceted and determined,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said. ``The campaign against terrorism must be equally comprehensive.''
Releasing the 22nd annual report, Powell said, ``Terrorists are trying every way they can to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, whether radiological, chemical, biological or nuclear.''
Francis X. Taylor, coordinator of the department's Office to Counter Terrorism, summarized the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and said, ``Additional terrorist attacks are very, very likely.''
The al-Qaida terror network is trying to regroup, and ``we are very much concerned,'' he said, despite 1,600 arrests around the world and the uprooting of the group in Afghanistan.
In listing Iran, the department said the country has matched rhetoric with action, acting on supreme leader Ali Khamenei's denunciation of Israel as a ``cancerous tumor'' that must be removed.
On the other hand, Libya last year sharply decreased its support for international terrorism, trying to shed its ``pariah status,'' and Sudan also moved toward cooperation with the U.S. campaign against militant groups, the department said in ``Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001.''
Lebanon, which was not listed, nonetheless was accused of refusing to hand over three Hezbollah operatives who are on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists for their role in the hijacking of a TWA airliner in 1985.
Taylor said the State Department had no reason to question the validity of documents provided by Israel that seek to link Yasser Arafat and other senior Palestinian officials to the financing of terror attacks on Israel.
``We have not been able to make a final judgment who and how far up in the Palestinian Authority'' may have been involved, Taylor said. But he said of Arafat, ``We believe he can do much more to control those activities.''
At the same time, Taylor said Jewish extremists accused in the report of attacking Palestinian civilians were as much terrorists as Palestinian suicide bombers. The report, without elaboration, accuses Israel of destroying the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus, an allegation Israel disputes.
Iran is described as the most active sponsor of terrorism.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continued to refer to Israel as a ``cancerous tumor'' that must be removed.
The State Department said there was no evidence that Iran sponsored or knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks, a point U.S. law enforcement officials have made privately. But Iran continued to supply Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian groups with funds, shelter, training and weapons.
Hard-liners who hold the reins of power in Iran thwarted efforts to end the country's support, the report said.
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., is drafting legislation to cut off future payments by the United States to the World Bank should the bank approve any new loans to Iran. ``By borrowing from the World Bank to meet its domestic needs Iran can use its other revenues for terrorism and nuclear weapons,'' he said in an interview.
In certain areas, including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, state sponsors remained a driving force behind terrorism, the report said. Iran, Iraq and Syria were all cited for backing terror groups.
Iraq provided training and political encouragement to many terror groups, but its main focus was on dissident Iraqis opposed to President Saddam Hussein, the report said.
It also noted that Syria and Lebanon cooperated with the United States in the fight against al-Qaida, but refused to recognize other groups that conduct terrorism against Israel, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as terrorists.
In Damascus, Syrian political analyst Imad Shuaibi said the report was ``an internal American affair which doesn't concern Syria.''
``Syria doesn't accept the policy of being dictated to and responding to those dictates,'' he said.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, meanwhile, views terror as a legitimate revolutionary tactic, but he signed all 12 U.N. counter-terror conventions, the report said. At least 20 Basque militants and several other terror suspects are given haven in Cuba, it said.
On Monday, President Bush denounced the Castro government and said U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba would be extended.
Overall, terrorist attacks claimed a record number of lives -- 3,547 -- last year, about 90 percent of them on Sept. 11, the State Department said.
The number of international terror attacks declined to 346 from 426 in 2000. A little more than half of the attacks, 178, were bombings against an international oil pipeline in Colombia.
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Suicide bombs 'inevitable'
May 21, 2002
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020521-18112752.htm
Suicide bombers similar to those who have attacked Israel eventually will attack public sites in the United States, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday.
"I think we will see that in the future. I think it's inevitable," Mr. Mueller said in response to a question posed during a speech to the National Association of District Attorneys in Alexandria. "I wish I could be more optimistic."
Mr. Mueller, sworn in as FBI director just a week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, said there was little that federal law-enforcement authorities could do to stop walk-in suicide bombers who target restaurants, bus stops or other public places.
The director also predicted that Americans would experience "another terrorist attack," although he did not elaborate.
"We will not be able to stop it. It's something we all live with," he said, adding that law enforcement has a difficult time infiltrating the inner circles of terrorist groups because informants would find it hard to fake the needed level of fanaticism.
There have been about 80 suicide bombings in Israel since Palestinians began their latest intifada in September 2000. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group belonging to the Palestinian Authority's dominant Fatah organization founded and headed by Yasser Arafat, has claimed responsibility for the majority of suicide bombings and "suicide shootings" in recent months.
During the weekend, the FBI warned that terrorists aligned with Osama bin Laden could target U.S. apartment buildings, and they told Florida authorities about a general threat to the water supply in the Orlando area.
Last month, the FBI alerted 1,200 Northeast banks of the threat of terrorist attacks and warned local law enforcement about unconfirmed reports that terrorists were planning attacks on supermarkets or shopping centers.
In addition to the Mueller warnings, Vice President Richard B. Cheney said Sunday that a new attack on the United States was "almost certain" as U.S. intelligence agents continue to monitor signals suggesting that a new al Qaeda strike is in the works.
Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that despite major military successes against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the terrorist group and other organizations remain a threat.
"We have always said this is about more than one person - one network - and certainly is about more than Afghanistan," Mrs. Clarke said.
Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, yesterday said Islamic groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Egypt's Islamic Jihad also could be planning attacks in the United States and may be more able to do so than bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
"Our enemy is not al Qaeda alone," the Florida Democrat said on NBC's "Today" show, referring to the terrorist group responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed about 3,000 people.
"There are several international terrorist groups which have abilities - in some cases greater abilities than al Qaeda - and a similar desire to attack the United States," he said, making specific reference to Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
Mr. Graham later said in a CNN interview that he was "almost certain" another attack would take place within three to five years.
Hezbollah is a radical group dedicated to the creation of an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon and the removal of all non-Islamic influences from the area. It is strongly anti-Western and anti-Israel and is closely allied with and often directed by Iran.
With several thousand supporters and a few hundred terrorist operatives, it is suspected of involvement in numerous anti-U.S. attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984.
The group also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and is a suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires.
The Islamic Jihad is an extremist group active since the late 1970s and has been a close partner of al Qaeda. Its primary goals are to overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with an Islamic state, and to attack U.S. and Israeli interests in Egypt and abroad.
The organization specializes in armed attacks against high-level Egyptian government personnel, including Cabinet ministers, and car bombings of official U.S. and Egyptian facilities. The group was responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The Jihad has not conducted an attack inside Egypt since 1993 and has never targeted foreign tourists there, but the organization was responsible for bombing the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan in 1995. In 1998, an attack against the U.S. Embassy in Albania was thwarted. The Egyptian government says both Iran and bin Laden support the group.
A 1999 report for the CIA that said bin Laden's network might attack the United States by crashing an aircraft into the Pentagon, the CIA or the White House also named Hezbollah as a group that could carry out a U.S. attack.
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Bill eyed to probe warning failures
May 21, 2002
By Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020521-93392.htm
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt yesterday announced he will introduce a bill to create a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the September 11 terrorist attacks in the wake of reports that Democrats were retreating from their criticism of the Bush administration.
"I hope the president will work with us," the Missouri Democrat said. "I hope the Republican majority will agree with me that this legislation deserves immediate consideration."
Vice President Richard B. Cheney reiterated Sunday that the White House opposes an independent investigation because it could reveal sensitive intelligence.
And congressional Republicans said yesterday they likely have the votes to block the creation of such a panel. Many Republicans favor going forward solely with a joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees.
"We have a current investigation," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. "Why don't we give them a chance to investigate? Republicans and Democrats are both involved in that."
In the Senate, a Republican leadership aide said the GOP probably could block a bipartisan bill to establish an independent commission, although he said momentum for the legislation seemed to be fading already.
"The steam is running out of it quickly," the staffer said. "Democrats are backtracking."
Mr. Gephardt on Thursday called for an "inquiry" into whether President Bush had advance warning that Osama bin Laden's network of terrorists planned to hijack American airliners. At the time, Mr. Gephardt did not specify whether such a probe should be included in an ongoing joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees or be done independently.
But on Sunday, Mr. Gephardt agreed with Mr. Cheney that the White House probably should not be required to turn over to Congress a classified briefing paper that the president saw last August. Those documents are being sought by Mr. Gephardt's Democratic colleague in the Senate, Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
Mr. Gephardt's remarks led to press reports that Democrats were retreating in their criticism of the White House.
Frustration was evident among Democrats yesterday as they renewed the call for a commission.
"The vice president doesn't want you to talk about anything distasteful to him," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat. "I am really sorry he feels that way, but my job is to lead me to the truth. I like the idea [of a commission], but I don't know where it's going to go."
She disputed reports that Democrats have been stung by charges they went too far in criticizing the administration's motives.
"That's what the press is saying," Mrs. Boxer said. "No one has backed off."
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said he doubted the Senate would act this week on the commission proposal. And he suggested that an independent probe might not be necessary.
Mr. Reid said he supports "whatever way we can get the information out and still protect the security of the country."
Administration officials have suggested that some lawmakers may have leaked sensitive information about intelligence assessments prior to September 11.
Congressional sources say the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating whether any of its members may have leaked information about intelligence reports given to the White House before the terrorists struck.
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NYC Warned of Possible Threats
May 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-NY-Warning.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The FBI warned city officials Tuesday it had received uncorroborated information that terrorists have made threats against New York and some of its landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly characterized the information as ``general threats'' but patrols were increased at some popular sites, including the statue and the bridge.
A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said the information came from an unidentified detainee who spoke with the FBI.
The FBI in a statement said it had no information on the date or method of a possible attack, but had alerted New York officials ``out of an abundance of caution.''
The warning came one day before the start of Fleet Week, an annual maritime celebration expected to draw 6,000 naval personnel to the city through the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
It also comes about a week before the city plans to end search and recovery work at the site of the World Trade Center, where more than 2,800 people died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Kelly said the NYPD was prepared for ``any eventuality.''
``We are taking all necessary precautions and are communicating with the appropriate law enforcement agencies on both the state and federal levels,'' he said.
Security was increased around monuments and landmarks after the warning was relayed to New York, the official said. Kelly would not confirm any details, but heightened security was visibly in place at City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge.
The city is preparing for Fleet Week 2002, an annual gathering that this year boasts the largest number of U.S. Naval vessels ever sent to New York City by an Atlantic Fleet commander. Sailors, marines and Coast Guard personnel will be aboard 22 ships, including six warships.
The public is invited aboard ships participating in the festival.
Gov. George Pataki urged people to visit New York despite the threats.
``We cannot allow threats to take away our freedom or our confidence,'' Pataki said. ``There are going to be threats for the foreseeable future.''
Pataki said the state has received all types of threats over the past eight months, but state and city officials have taken security steps. He said the threats were aimed at ``dividing us and frightening us and taking away our freedom by fear.''
Nearly every major tourist attraction, including all the big museums, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, were closed following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
Liberty Island, home to the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island -- both national parks -- were closed to visitors for 100 days after the attacks. The statue itself remains closed.
Security zones also remain in place, barring vessels from operating within 150 yards of the United Nations building, Ellis Island or Liberty Island. Also, no vessels can operate within 25 yards of bridge piers, abutments, tunnel ventilators or waterfront facilities. Additional restrictions were announced Monday for Fleet Week.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he didn't see any reason why people shouldn't enjoy Fleet Week and other activities over the weekend.
``The more people that are out the safer this city will be, and we are used to hosting big events. Fleet Week is just another one,'' he said. ``There are always threats unfortunately, but fortunately, most are hoaxes.''
New Yorkers seemed to be taking the warning in stride.
``I think if you are going to live in New York, you're not going to let your life be dictated by crazy people,'' said Evelyn Krasnow, 31, outside a Starbucks coffee shop in midtown Manhattan.
-- Associated Press writer Ted Bridis contributed to this story.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Australian city water supply to generate power
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
May 21, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16042/story.htm
MELBOURNE - The Murray River in South Australia will be used to generate renewable energy for around 1600 homes, Hydro Tasmania announced yesterday.
In a joint venture partnership with the South Australian water authority SA Water, Hydro Tasmania will use mini-hydro technology to harness energy from the local supply which takes water from the Murray and Adelaide Hills catchments.
It will be the first time in Australia an established city water supply system will be used to generate renewable energy.
"This means that when Adelaide water consumers turn on their taps, they will also help create clean, green renewable energy," Hydro Tasmania's commercial manager Anton Rohner said in a statement.
The proposed mini-hydro scheme plans to tap into the renewable energy potential of Adelaide's water supply in the Tea Tree Gully and Onkaparinga Council areas.
Following approval of the project by the South Australian Government's Public Works Committee, Hydro Tasmania expects the project to be completed in around 10 months.
-------- environment
Army Corps Completes Hasty Project Review
By Cat Lazaroff
May 21, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-21-06.html
WASHINGTON, DC, Of the 172 civil works projects that were put on hold April 30 for review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, all but eight have been cleared for continued construction, the agency announced Monday. Conservation and public interest groups said the speed of the Corps' decision indicates that the agency never intended a thorough, comprehensive review of the projects' environmental and economic justification.
On Monday, the Corps published a list of 172 projects that had been examined to determine whether detailed economic or other reviews were required. Of that list, 46 projects were already undergoing a more thorough reevaluation.
Independent auditors have criticized a number of massive Corps projects including proposed expansions of the lock and dam system on the Upper Mississippi River, a project the Corps has spent about $60 million to study. (Photos courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
The Corps has identified just eight additional projects that it says require further study of their underlying economic justification.
The Corps' director of civil works, Major General Robert Griffin, ordered a halt to further development of the 172 projects on April 30 after conservation groups and a number of news organizations raised questions about the accuracy of the agency's economic and environmental analyses in support of the projects.
Environmental groups, Congressional leaders and newspaper editorial boards welcomed the move and urged the Corps to conduct the review in a transparent manner to enhance trust in the agency, which has been tainted by scandal over several major projects in recent years.
The Corps has a backlog of projects that will take more than $50 billion in taxpayer dollars to complete, and it proposes more projects every two years. Two independent watchdogs, the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Army Inspector General, have determined that the agency has a bias toward large construction projects, and has on at least one occasion manipulated data to deceive Congress about the costs and benefits of a proposed project.
The current review included projects that the Congress has authorized but which are not yet under construction. The Corps has now singled out those projects with an economic assessment produced before 1999, and those where the agency believes economic, engineering or environmental conditions may have changed.
Based on those criteria, the Corps cleared 118 projects to proceed on schedule, called for new economic analyses for seven projects, and authorized a new analysis of just one project.
"We learned after calling for the pause that many of the projects were already under review," Griffin said. "We must be careful to ensure that all our projects constitute a sound investment for our nation and are environmentally sustainable."
In April, the Corps suspended a dredging project on the Delaware River after a Congressional review raised questions regarding whether the project is financially justified.
Monday's announcement by the Corps was the first public release of the full list of projects the agency was reviewing. Critics say the Corps' decision rubber stamped many of the nation's most wasteful and controversial water projects.
"The Corps of Engineers had the opportunity to come clean," said Jeff Stein, policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "They had the chance to restore some of the agency's credibility on how they conduct business, but they blew it."
The two week review performed since the Corps is the only reexamination that will be given to those 118 projects. Many of the most controversial projects that appear on the full list, including nine projects highlighted in a 2000 report by Taxpayers for Common Sense and National Wildlife Federation as the most wasteful Army Corps water projects in the nation, received no more than this brief look, the groups noted.
The conservation group American Rivers was particularly critical of the Corps' decision on two controversial projects - the construction of the Yazoo Pumps near the mouth of the Big Sunflower River in Mississippi and proposed navigation improvements along Arkansas' White River.
In April, American Rivers placed the Big Sunflower and the White River on its annual "America's Most Endangered Rivers" list and called on the Corps to abandon these projects.
"Most Americans believe that there ought to be a sensible balance between protecting the environment and growing the economy," said American Rivers president Rebecca Wodder. "There is nothing sensible about the Corps spending tax dollars to build projects that cost more than they're worth and damage the environment at the same time."
The Corps' announcement comes at Congress prepares to consider legislation to reform Corps operations. In March, Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, joined Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, in introducing the Corps of Engineers Modernization and Improvement Act of 2002 (S 1987).
Army Corps dredging for beach renourishment on Tybee Island, Georgia. (Photo by Jonas Jordan)
The bill would require independent peer review of costly or controversial projects and mandate other steps to ensure that the Corps practices good accounting and environmental stewardship at its proposed water projects.
This week, critics of the Corps said its hasty project review lends ammunition to the bill's supporters.
"This list is a sham that creates further doubt that this agency can be trusted with spending billions of taxpayer dollars," said Stein. "With the review, many of us thought that the Corps was heading down the road to reform. But, this list just proves that this agency is incapable and unwilling to reform itself."
A list of the reviewed Corps projects is available at: http://www.amrivers.org/docs/armycorpslist.pdf
-------- genetics
University's cloning patent raises a 'mammal' issue
May 21, 2002
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020521-6594693.htm
Adding another layer to the contentious debate over cloning in Congress, a patent watchdog group said last week that the University of Missouri at Columbia has received a patent for technology that can be used to clone human beings.
The patent covers laboratory procedures for creating cloned mammals, but it extends to the direct products of those cloning processes, including humans, said Peter DiMauro, director of Patent Watch.
"It says 'mammals' and it doesn't have a disclaimer for humans," said Mr. DiMauro, whose project tracks patents for the International Center for Technology Assessment.
University officials said the patent, issued last year, was never intended to apply to human beings. It was issued to a university researcher and applied to technology that allows the cloning of swine.
"The intent of the patent was to allow for research on swine," said Missouri spokeswoman Mary Joe Banken, who said school officials are meeting today to discuss narrowing the patent's language to exclude humans. "It was never the intent of the university to use the technology on humans."
Mr. DiMauro said he respects that, "but the flaw is in the law."
The Senate is awaiting a debate on the human-cloning issue. Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, has a bill to outlaw the cloning of human embryos for any purpose, including for medical research. The House has passed an identical bill and the president is pushing for it.
Mr. DiMauro said his group has found three pending patents similar to that in Missouri. He called on Congress to clarify in law that patents cannot apply to human beings - including human embryos or fetuses.
Mr. Brownback said he will introduce legislation this week to do so.
"The central point in the debate over human cloning revolves around our view of the human embryo and whether or not the human embryo is a person or a piece of property," Mr. Brownback said. "If we allow for the patenting of human embryos, we will be sending the message that humans are property and that they can be exploited and destroyed for profit."
A bill competing with Mr. Brownback's cloning ban, by Sens. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, and others, would outlaw the implantation of a cloned human embryo in a uterus but would allow the human-cloning procedure to be done for medical research, including the extraction of stem cells. Advocates of this approach say the cloning procedure does not produce a human embryo, since no sperm is involved.
Patent Watch's DiMauro said the Specter-Feinstein cloning bill contains "nothing to address the large scale commercialization of human embryos created through cloning."
He said it "seems to permit the status quo of the law, which is to allow the patenting of human embryos."
When asked whether scientists would be able to obtain patents on their human-cloning research under her bill, Mrs. Feinstein said she did not know because her bill does not deal with the patent issue.
"I do not know; I cannot answer that," she said.
-------- health
Mammoth Cave Bioprospecting Produces Potential Cancer Drug
May 21, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-21-09.html#anchor7
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, A bacterium discovered in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park produces a substance that may be an effective anti-cancer drug, researchers announced Monday.
"We have isolated numerous bacteria from Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. One of these bacteria produces a substance that appears to inhibit the activity of a protein involved in the formation of new blood vessels [angiogenesis]," said Dr. Ryan Frisch of Grand Valley State University, one of the researchers on the study.
"When cancer cells begin to form tumors, one of the requirements is the formation of new blood vessels to provide the tumor with oxygen and nutrients," explained Frisch. "One of the strategies in the fight against cancer is to discover drugs that are anti-angiogenic because, if blood vessels are not produced, the tumor does not grow and prosper. These experiments indicate that the substance produced by this bacterium may be a new tool in the fight against cancer."
The research was released this week at the 102nd General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Salt Lake City.
Human diseases, such as cancer and the increasing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria, require a constant supply of new drugs for effective treatment. Screening substances from native plants and bacteria, which often have far more complexity than compounds synthesized in the laboratory, is considered a major opportunity for drug discovery.
One rich source of new, uncharacterized species is found in inaccessible ecosystems such as those found in caves, or in the geothermal springs of Yellowstone National Park.
But the biological exploration of these areas, dubbed bioprospecting, is controversial. Bioprospecting - the exploration for and collection of biological resources for commercial purposes - has been sanctioned in national parks for the last decade as part of larger research projects.
Under a proposed new policy, the Park Service would reap financial rewards from bioprospecting through benefit sharing agreements with business and industrial groups that would be permitted to take samples of species on park lands and patent the products they produce. The potential profits for the agency could create a conflict of interest and encourage the Park Service to issue more bioprospecting permits than natural ecosystems can bear.
The Park Service is now soliciting public comments on the scope of an upcoming Environmental Impact Statement on bioprospecting. Several conservation groups are urging the agency to require individual environmental studies, including public comment periods, for all bioprospecting contracts on public lands.
-------- imf / world bank
International financial agencies send workers home after anthrax scares
Tue May 21, 2002
By LAURA MECKLER,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020522/ap_wo_en_ge/us_anthrax_investigation_3
WASHINGTON - More than a thousand World Bank employees worked from home after an anthrax scare, and its sister agency, the International Monetary Fund, found evidence of spores in its mail room.
One hundred IMF employees and four World Bank employees were taking antibiotics as a precaution, officials said late Tuesday....
-------- ACTIVISTS
600th arrest at Mothers' Day Action at Nuclear Navy's Submarine Transmitter Site
From: "Nukewatch" <nukewatch@lakeland.ws>
Date: Sun, 12 May 2002
SIX ARRESTED AND RELEASED DURING MOTHERS' DAY PROTEST AT NAVY ELF SITE
CLAM LAKE, WI -- 100 anti-war activists braved Saturday's rain and wind to protest the Navy's submarine transmitter system, Project ELF, and six were cited for trespass, during the 15th annual Mothers' Day gathering at the site.
The six who crossed the line onto government property and sat in the roadway included Judy Miner, a Registered Nurse from Madison, and an Eau Claire attorney, John Bachman, who has defended other nuclear weapons opponents in State and Federal courts in Wisconsin.
They face a maximum of 6 months in prison and/or a $5,000 fine, and were ordered to appear June 11 in U.S. District Court in Madison.
The arrests brought to 600, the number of citations given to line-crossers at the site since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Navy's rationale for ELF and the submarine fleet.
Those arrested were: John Bachman, 47, an attorney from Eau Claire; Cory Bartholomew, 33, a construction worker from Blue Mounds; Jane Hosking, 34, a house painter, and John LaForge, 46, a staff member at Nukewatch, both of Luck; Jeff Leys, 37, a labor union employee from Milwaukee; and Judy Miner, 59, a Registered Nurse from Madison.
In a related event, four of the six activists arrested at the ELF site on Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday weekend will go on trial in U.S. District Court in Madison May 22.
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