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NUCLEAR
Home Radiation Detectors Criticized
Truck carrying nuclear waste in accident
India - Pakistan Timeline
South Asia's Hair Trigger
Japan Explains Position on Weapons
Japan PM Under Fire After Aide's Nuclear Faux Pas
Koizumi Aide Hints at Change to No-Nuclear Policy
Pakistan Explains Nuclear Policy
Musharraf: Nukes Could Be Used
Pasko case to be examined by Supreme Court on June 25th
UN chief says to help Ukraine on Chernobyl, AIDS
NORTH CAROLINA SUED OVER REJECTED WASTE DUMP
Ex - `M - A - S - H' Star Lobbies Congress
John Ashcroft's Power Grab
Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins
The spring fashion in flip-floppery
MILITARY
Pentagon to Sell Missles to Kuwait
The Stinger missile boomerangs
Home Radiation Detectors Criticized
Iran's Khamenei Accuses US of Murder
Gephardt Backs Use of Force on Saddam Hussein
Arafat Presents Palestinian Security Plan to Tenet
Can Pakistan Avoid Sliding Into War?
Pakistan Acts to Stop Attacks on India, U.S. Says
GIs in Philippines could see action
CIA digs in to get bigger and nastier
Mum's the word on NSA ads
Another CIA fiasco
United Nations Seeks Funding to Halve World Hunger
Twin Hijacking Exercise Tests U.S.
Army officials fear more cuts
Mum's the word on NSA ads
POLICE / PRISONERS
A 'Final Exam' Begins for Security Agencies
CIA Gave FBI Warning On Hijacker
Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts
Profiling worries called hindrance
Al Qaeda Active, Rumsfeld Says
FBI Questions U.S. Scuba Operators on Terror Threat
OTHER
Tests show 8 metals in river dumping
Hybrid Embryo Mixture May Offer New Source of Stem Cells for Study
ACTIVISTS
Tilting at Nuclear Reactors
Smaller Turnout for Tiananmen Memorial
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Home Radiation Detectors Criticized
June 4, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Home-Radiation-Detectors.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- A California company has sold hundreds of $149 home radiation detectors since it began advertising them on cable TV channels last week, its co-owner says, but experts say the devices would be of little use in a true nuclear emergency.
The nine-employee company's Web site warns of the possibility of gamma radiation from so-called ``dirty'' radiological bombs, as well as ``nuclear spills or meltdowns, terrorist attack on nuclear power plants, accidents or sabotage.
``With the recent increase in terrorism you and your family are at more risk than ever,'' the Web site states. ``The nuclear power plant near you may be the next TERRORIST TARGET!''
The site juxtaposes photos of a nuclear explosion's mushroom cloud, cooling towers of a nuclear plant and the flaming twin towers of the World Trade Center -- felled by jetliners, not a nuclear explosion.
``We want to give awareness to people that crazy things happen,'' said Jack Khorsandi, the chief financial officer and co-owner of Homeland Protection Inc., the West Hollywood, Calif.-based company selling the devices.
``The chance that people have a suitcase bomb, it's there,'' said Khorsandi, who said his company had sold hundreds of the detectors since the ads began running last week on channels with heavy news content including CNN. ``There's never been the thought that such a crazy thing could happen to our country. It's a kind of wake-up call.''
At the federal Office of Homeland Security, spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted that environmental monitoring for radiation already takes place near the country's nuclear power plants, as well as at U.S. ports of entry. He said the office is not looking to purchase or distribute radiation detectors among the U.S. public.
``We have no information that indicates that terrorists have been successful in obtaining nuclear or radiological devices,'' Johndroe said.
In a true nuclear emergency, anyone within earshot of the detector's alarm would already be afflicted by radiation, said Jon Wolfsthal, an associate with the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
``If anything, it sounds like a way to exploit the fears of the American public as opposed to protecting them,'' he said. ``I wouldn't plunk down $149 of my own money on one of these things.''
Recent stories in the media have examined the possibility of terrorist use of nuclear weapons.
During the post-Sept. 11 period of anthrax mailings that killed five and sickened 13 people in the United States, a number of home anthrax detection kits emerged that critics said sought to capitalize on public fears.
On the Net:
http://www.raditect.com
--------
Truck carrying nuclear waste in accident
June 4, 2002
WKYC in alliance with Cleveland.com
http://www.wkyc.com/news/morelocal/medina/020604hazmatsituation.asp
MEDINA COUNTY, Ohio -- A vehicle carrying low-level radioactive material was involved in a traffic accident Tuesday in Liverpool Township.
According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, John Singleton, 42, was driving a truck hauling 23 containers of low-level radioactive material when he struck a truck driven by Pamela French, 50.
French was taken to Medina General hospital for treatment.
No leak of radioactive material was found.
Singleton was cited for failure to control his motor vehicle.
The crash on state route 252 is still under investigation.
--
[That was last week. Here's another possible horror story from Ohio in 2000.]
Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/426307.html
Health officials found no contamination yesterday after a tractor-trailer hauling low-level radioactive waste was rear-ended yesterday afternoon near I-270 and Rt. 33 on the Southeast Side.
The crash occurred just after noon when a garbage truck struck the rear end of a flatbed trailer hauling radioactive sludge. Neither driver was injured.
The truck was hauling three large steel crates filled with radioactive sludge, including uranium and thorium compounds, said Jim Colleli, a health physicist with the Ohio Department of Health.
The shipment, from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was traveling to the Alaron company in Pennsylvania, where it was to be processed.
A liquid, thought to be water, was found leaking from the side of one of the crates and health officials were notified. They found no radioactivity, Colleli said.
Eastbound traffic on I-270, which runs parallel to stretches of the Big Walnut Creek, was backed up for more than seven hours.
The Portsmouth plant produces enriched uranium used as fuel for the nuclear-power plants that supply about 20 percent of the country's electricity.
--
Truck Shipments of Low-Level Radioactive Waste from Fernald Ohio Leaked Liquid
December 16, 2000,
State of Nevada
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts/ohio05.htm
December 16, 1997 --- Press Release: Nuclear Waste Project Office: "Truck Shipments of Low-Level Radioactive Waste from Fernald Ohio Leaked Liquid
http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/ohio.htm
December 16, 1997 --- Press Release: Senator Richard Bryan blasts DOE for shoddy, dangerous shipments of low-level radioactive waste following DOE announcement of leaking transportation canisters in Nevada and Arizona.
http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/ohio04.htm
December 17, 1997 --- Shipments of a waste liquid from Fernald, Ohio, did not threaten the public, a DOE spokesman says. By Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/ohio02.htm
December 19, 1997 -- Senator calls for safer routes for nuke waste, press account (Las Vegas Sun)
http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/ohio06.htm
December 19, 1997 --- Letter from Governor Bob Miller to the Honorable Federico Pena, Secretary of Energy. http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/ohio03.htm
January 28, 1998 --- Letter from Energy Secretary Federico Pena to Governor Bob Miller. (The Secretary's letter explains DOE's approach to assessing the cause of the Fernald low-level radioactive wastes "Leakage" incident -- several attachments are also included with the letter.)
http://207.12.87.1/nucwaste/nts/pena01.htm
March 13, 1998 -- "State Review Comments - Type B Accident Investigation Board Report [12/15/997] Leakage of Waste Containers near Kingman, Arizona." Letter from Robert R. Loux, Agency For Nuclear Projects to David R. Kozlowski, DOE/Ohio
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts/loux02.htm
March 24, 1998 -- Press Release, Governor's Office - "Nevada review of DOE report finds public safety concerns go unaddressed"
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts/press01.htm
April 1, 1998 -- Letter from David R.Kozlowski, DOE Fernald to Robert R Loux, State of Nevada NWPO. (This is DOE's response letter to the State of Nevada's Comments on the Type B Investigation Report)
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts/ohio07.htm http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts/loux02.htm
-------- india / pakistan
India - Pakistan Timeline
June 4, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan-Timeline.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Following are significant dates in relations between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan:
August 1947: Pakistan is created as a nation on Aug. 14. The next day, India gains independence from Britain after two centuries of colonial rule.
October 1947: War breaks out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir over rival claims to the mountainous territory. The United Nations brokers a truce 16 months later.
September 1965: The two fight a second war over Kashmir, ending in a U.N.-brokered cease-fire after three weeks.
Jan. 3, 1966: India and Pakistan sign Soviet Union-sponsored peace deal intended to permanently end hostilities.
December 1971: A third war breaks out -- this time over Bangladesh, which had been East Pakistan.
July 1972: India and Pakistan agree that a cease-fire line called the Line of Control would divide Kashmir. Neither country recognizes it as an official border.
May 1974: India conducts first nuclear test.
November 1989: Islamic insurgency starts in Kashmir.
October 1990: U.S. halts military and economic aid to Pakistan over suspicion that it is developing nuclear weapons.
May 1998: India conducts five nuclear tests and declares itself a nuclear-armed state. Pakistan carries out its first nuclear tests. The United States and several other nations impose economic sanctions on both. India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declares India will not be first to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan does not match the assurance.
Feb. 21, 1999: Indian and Pakistani prime ministers meet in the Pakistani city of Lahore and sign a declaration promising to notify each other of missile tests to prevent an accidental war.
April, 1999: India successfully tests a missile capable of delivering a nuclear bomb deep inside Pakistan. Pakistan then successfully tests its own similarly capable missile.
May-July 1999: India and Pakistan fight limited 11-week battle in Kashmir.
April 2001: U.S. Congress begins to dismantle all sanctions against India and Pakistan.
Oct. 1, 2001: Islamic militants slam explosives-laden car into the state assembly in Jammu-Kashmir, in India-controlled Kashmir, killing 40 people. India blames Pakistan. Pakistan denies responsibility.
Dec. 13, 2001: Five suspected Islamic militants shoot dead nine people in attack on India's parliament before being killed in the suicide attack. India rushes hundreds of thousands of troops to frontier with Pakistan and puts military on war alert.
May 14, 2002: Islamic militants attack a passenger bus and an army base in Jammu-Kashmir, killing 34 people, mostly soldiers' wives and children. Fears of war resurface.
May 21, 2002: Separatist Kashmiri leader Abdul Ghani Lone is shot to death during a memorial rally attended by thousands in Jammu-Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar.
May 25, 2002: Pakistan carries out the first of a series of missile tests.
June 4, 2002: Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf attend regional security summit in Kazakhstan, but no talks are held.
--------
South Asia's Hair Trigger
New York Times
June 4, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/opinion/04TUE2.html
Tensions between India and Pakistan eased slightly yesterday but remain dangerously high. This latest crisis demonstrates the urgency of getting Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons and the policies governing their use under much firmer control than they now are.
In the four years since the two countries unwisely began their nuclear arms race, each has built up a stockpile of usable warheads, shortened the launch times of its missiles and talked recklessly about potential nuclear exchanges. India is thought to have about 40 operational Hiroshima-size atomic bombs and Pakistan around 20, deliverable to each other's major cities by military aircraft or missiles. Liquid-fuel missiles can be readied for launch in about six hours. The solid-fuel variety both countries are developing can be launched more quickly. Once the warheads are on their way, warning times would be less than eight minutes. The Pentagon estimates that a nuclear exchange could instantly kill 12 million people and injure 7 million more.
India, which is much the stronger military power, says it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan makes no such disclaimers. Instead it repeatedly proclaims its readiness to go nuclear in response to a decisive Indian conventional attack. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are theoretically under the control of the country's top military commander, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. India's, like America's, fall under the authority of the elected civilian leadership. Unfortunately, India's current political leaders have shown little sense of responsibility or restraint.
The internal and mutual constraints that prevented American and Soviet nuclear weapons from being used during the cold war seem conspicuously absent on the South Asian subcontinent. Military miscalculation and diplomatic non-communication have become a way of life between India and Pakistan, leading to three full-scale wars and innumerable crises since the two became independent states in 1947. Now that both have nuclear weapons, this has to change.
Pakistan must no longer wink at the infiltration of armed terrorists into Indian-controlled Kashmir. Missile tests ought not to be conducted in the midst of military crises. The existing hot lines should be used to provide advance notice and explanations of troop and weapons movements. Petulance is a luxury these nuclear rivals can no longer afford.
-------- japan
Japan Explains Position on Weapons
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 4, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56355-2002Jun4?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Weapons.html
TOKYO -- Hoping to quell concern over a senior official's statement that Japan might someday arm itself with nuclear weapons, the government told its Asian neighbors Tuesday that the comments mark no change in the country's non-nuclear policy.
Japan's government has been on the defensive since Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters in Tokyo late last week that geopolitical changes in the future could prompt the Japanese people to choose to possess nuclear weapons.
Fukuda and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi quickly stressed that the remarks were merely hypothetical and that the government had no intention of giving up its long-standing policy of neither possessing nor developing nuclear arms.
Fukuda on Tuesday said that position had been conveyed to South Korea and China. Japan's Asian neighbors, who bore the brunt of its military aggression in the last century, are particularly concerned by any moves by Japan to beef up its military.
"I believe they sufficiently understood the true meaning of what I said," Fukuda said. "I think all the countries understand that we have no intention of changing our policy."
The remarks also hit a sore nerve at home. The public in Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear weapons, is strongly against their possession.
In the western city of Hiroshima, where 140,000 people were killed by a U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, nearly 100 people protested Fukuda's comments in the city's Peace Park, which is memorial to the victims.
Opposition lawmakers likewise criticized the Fukuda's comment as inappropriate, with some calling for him to step down. Koizumi has backed his aide saying the remarks were misunderstood.
--------
Japan PM Under Fire After Aide's Nuclear Faux Pas
June 4, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-politics.html
TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, his popularity slipping, came under fresh fire on Tuesday for seeming to shrug off remarks by a close aide hinting Japan might abandon its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons.
Last week's remarks by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, a central figure in Koizumi's cabinet, have upset China and North Korea, and sparked a furor at home just as the prime minister struggles to enact key bills before the current session of parliament ends.
``Commentators are saying that the remarks by this most pivotal figure were ill-timed,'' said Hiroshi Kumagai, a senior executive in the main opposition Democratic Party.
``But this is not a joke. This is not a matter of timing. This is a very fundamental matter,'' Kumagai told a news conference. ``How can the prime minister say this is no big deal?''
North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) slammed the remarks as ``dangerous.''
``An endless string of remarks made by the Japanese authorities about having access to nukes clearly suggest that the Japanese reactionary forces are becoming more undisguised in their moves to turn Japan into a military power and go nuclear,'' KCNA said.
DOWNPLAYING AND DENIAL
Fukuda went public on Monday, admitting he was the unidentified official quoted by the media as saying Japan, the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack, could review its ban on nuclear arms.
Fukuda has since spent much of his time denying that he meant to imply the Koizumi cabinet would revise Japan's ``three non-nuclear principles.'' Adopted in 1971, these ban the possession, production and import of nuclear arms.
On Tuesday, he told a news conference he was sure his true intention had been conveyed to China and South Korea, Asian neighbors always sensitive to signs of any revival in Japanese militarism.
Koizumi has sought to play down the row, but that has only served to trigger fresh opposition outrage.
``This whole thing has been blown out of proportion,'' he told reporters on Monday. He said he did not plan to reprimand Fukuda.
Japan's opposition parties on Tuesday called for Fukuda to be fired and for Defense Minister Gen Nakatani to be sacked over another affair in which ministry officials made lists of private data about individuals who had sought the disclosure of public information, Japanese news agencies reported.
On Monday, the opposition boycotted a debate on legislation that the government says is needed to improve Japan's ability to defend itself from attack, saying Koizumi should answer questions about the flap.
Conservative politicians have become more outspoken in challenging Japan's postwar pacifism, but fears over domestic and diplomatic fallout have meant they are usually forced to retract suggestions Japan should drop its ban on nuclear weapons.
PUBLIC SUPPORT
Doubts about Koizumi's leadership and commitment to reform have slashed his public support ratings from 90 percent when he took office a year ago with promises to rein in Japan's huge public debt, clean up the bad loans in the financial system and remove the heavy hand of government from the economy.
More than two-thirds of voters now fear Koizumi cannot keep his promises of political and economic reform, a new survey showed.
Seventy-one percent of those who responded to the weekend survey by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a business daily, felt that he would not be able to push through reforms. That was up 11 points from February.
A mere 23 percent still believed reform was possible under Koizumi, the newspaper said.
Mirroring the trend in other recent polls, the Nihon Keizai survey showed voter support for Koizumi slipped another five points from a March survey to 43 percent, below the 46 percent who now view him with disfavor.
Forty-seven percent of those who looked askance at Koizumi cited a lack of leadership as the cause, while 39 percent gave poor policies as the reason.
Nearly two-thirds said Koizumi's top policy priority should be the economy, while about one-third voiced a desire to see steps to cope with Japan's high jobless rate. Seventy percent said they did not expect the economy to improve for a while.
--------
Koizumi Aide Hints at Change to No-Nuclear Policy
June 4, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/international/asia/04JAPA.html
TOKYO, June 3 - A senior official has said Japan might someday possess nuclear weapons, creating a furor here and enraging the country's neighbors.
The official, Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, the most senior aide to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told reporters on Friday that Japan might one day break with its so-called three non-nuclear principles, a decades-old policy officially forswearing weapons of mass destruction.
"The principles are just like the Constitution," he said. "But in the face of calls to amend the Constitution, the amendment of the principles is also likely." The principles say that Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear weapons, will never make them, possess them or allow them on Japanese territory.
Mr. Fukuda was speaking to reporters on the condition that he not be identified, but the harshly critical reactions from Japan's neighbors and calls from opposition parties for the resignation of the official who made the comments prompted Mr. Fukuda to step forward today and acknowledge his statements.
"I only said there is a chance the government could take another look at the three non-nuclear principles in the future," said Mr. Fukuda, known as Mr. Koizumi's right-hand man. "There is absolutely no chance that this cabinet will discuss revising these principles."
Mr. Koizumi said the issue had been "blown out of proportion." The prime minister, whose government has been on the political defensive and losing support for weeks, said no action would be taken against Mr. Fukuda. "Why is this causing such a stir?" Mr. Koizumi said. "It makes me wonder because even I myself have never said I would review this policy." But Mr. Koizumi's remarks did not placate Japan's neighbors.
"At the present time when peace and development have become the main themes of the times and continued progress is being made in international nuclear disarmament, it is shocking to hear remarks like this from a senior Japanese official," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said, according to the New China News Agency. South Korea also criticized Mr. Koizumi's government today.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Explains Nuclear Policy
By LAURINDA KEYS
Associated Press Writer
JUNE 04, 2002 12:25 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=india&SLUG=INDIA%2dPAKISTAN
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) - Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf refused Tuesday to renounce first use of nuclear weapons, as efforts to bring him together with his Indian counterpart to defuse tensions over Kashmir appeared to fail.
In New Delhi, a senior Indian government official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that India was paying close attention to diplomatic pressure being applied by Washington and other capitals. The Americans had persuaded India's government to show restraint, at least for now, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged ``a full-court diplomatic press'' on the two nations.
``It would be absolutely horrible in the year 2002 for any nation to use nuclear weapons in a situation such as this,'' Powell said Tuesday while attending an international conference in Barbados.
Trying to keep diplomatic efforts alive, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders met separately with Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at an Asian summit in Kazakhstan and, according to Musharraf, invited them to Moscow for possible talks. The discussions presumably would try to prevent the conflict from exploding into a fourth full-scale war between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Musharraf accepted the invitation before leaving Kazakhstan, but the timing of the proposed meeting was vague, and the Kremlin said Vajpayee was not invited. Putin will visit India late this year.
Tuesday morning, the two leaders angrily blamed each other for more than five decades of conflict as they sat across a table while their troops fired at each other in the disputed Kashmir region.
Musharraf, when asked to state Pakistan's nuclear policy and explain why it will not renounce first use of nuclear weapons as India has, said: ``The possession of nuclear weapons by any state obviously implies they will be used under some circumstances.''
He said, however, that it would be irresponsible for a leader to discuss such things, and that Pakistan's ``deeper policy'' is for denuclearization of South Asia.
India National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra responded, ``We will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. I hope the enormity of the use of nuclear weapons is understood by the president of Pakistan.''
Earlier Tuesday at the summit, Vajpayee said: ``Nuclear powers should not use nuclear blackmail.''
Russia and China pressed India and Pakistan to enter face-to-face talks, but the effort failed to bring Musharraf and Vajpayee together for a direct meeting.
``India is continually threatening Pakistan for an attack and also refusing dialogue,'' Musharraf said after meeting with Putin.
``Everyone was desiring a meeting between me and Mr. Vajpayee,'' Musharraf said. ``I think the whole world is disappointed that we two did not talk and meet here.''
Vajpayee said Tuesday he is willing to have a dialogue with Pakistan but that there must first be a halt to cross-border terrorism, which India says is carried out in its part of Kashmir by Pakistan-based Islamic militants who have been fighting for 12 years.
After meeting both leaders, Putin said they showed ``positive signs'' and that neither intends to use force to solve their problems. India repeated its policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, Putin said earlier, while Musharraf ``said on the territory of Pakistan there won't be militants. This is what the whole world eagerly awaited from the two leaders.''
But with no breakthrough in sight, some of the 1 million Indian and Pakistani soldiers posted along both sides of the 1,800-mile frontier unleashed fresh artillery and gunfire at each other in Kashmir on Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but eight civilians died in shelling Monday.
Earlier Tuesday, as Musharraf sat about 15 feet across from the Indian leader at a long, horseshoe-shaped table in the Kazakh city of Almaty, Musharraf insisted his country did not want the conflict to erupt.
``We do not want war. If war is imposed on us, we will defend ourselves with the utmost resolution,'' he said.
``The people of South Asia continue to pay a heavy price for the refusal by India to resolve the Kashmir dispute in accordance with resolutions of the United Nations and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.''
In response, Vajpayee rejected Musharraf's repeated assurance that ``Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for any terrorist attacks outside or inside its boundaries.''
Vajpayee said violence in India's portion of Kashmir and infiltration of Islamic militants from Pakistani territory had not decreased since Musharraf first made that assurance Jan. 12.
``We have seen in the following months that cross-border infiltration has increased, violence in Jammu and Kashmir has continued unabated and terrorist camps continue to operate unhindered across our borders,'' Vajpayee said of India's northernmost state.
``We have repeatedly said that we are willing to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including Jammu and Kashmir. But for that, cross-border terrorism has to end.''
Vajpayee and Musharraf both sat with pursed lips and stony stares as the other spoke. With the 14 other delegates, they signed a declaration condemning ``all forms and manifestations of terrorism'' and promising ``to strengthen cooperation and dialogue.''
When delegates mingled and greeted each other as the conference ended, the two stood on opposite sides of the room and did not interact.
``We cannot but be concerned about the explosive situation in the relations between Pakistan and India, which threatens to destabilize the situation in the whole Eurasian continent,'' Putin said, adding that world leaders would make every effort to defuse the crisis.
India says Islamic militants crossing the frontier from Pakistan have carried out terror attacks, including a deadly assault on the Indian Parliament in December and on an Indian army base in Kashmir last month, which left 34 dead, mostly wives and children of army officers.
Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon insisted Monday that the militants had not come from his nation's part of Kashmir and said his country had stepped up monitoring of the Line of Control, the 1972 cease-fire line dividing the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
--------
Musharraf: Nukes Could Be Used
By Judith Ingram
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, June 4, 2002; 3:35 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58941-2002Jun4?language=printer
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Pakistan's president traded angry accusations with his Indian counterpart Tuesday and then said having atomic weapons implies they might be used - stoking fears the conflict over Kashmir will explode into full-scale war.
Efforts by Russia, China and other nations failed to get Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to hold face-to-face talks Tuesday.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to see progress toward such negotiations, and Indian officials said they saw signs the situation in Kashmir was becoming calmer.
Despite the diplomatic maneuvering, some of the 1 million Indian and Pakistani soldiers posted along both sides of the 1,800-mile frontier unleashed fresh artillery and gunfire at each other in Kashmir on Tuesday.
Pakistan reported that India shelled four sectors of Kashmir, killing one civilian and injuring nine. The Pakistan army said it retaliated by destroying at least four Indian bunkers, causing some casualties among Indian soldiers.
While speaking at an Asian security conference attended by both Musharraf and Vajpayee, Putin likened their impasse over the Himalayan province to the 1961 Cuban missile crisis. Today, as then, world leaders have to take responsibility to quash the risk of nuclear war, Putin said.
After holding separate talks with Musharraf and Vajpayee, Putin said he detected progress.
"In any case, both leaders expressed their interest in direct contacts, even though they still see the conditions for organizing such meetings differently, but both sides have the desire for such contacts," Putin said after the meetings.
"No less important, both leaders of both states underlined that they do not intend to use force to solve their problems."
Musharraf said he accepted Putin's invitation to attend possible talks in Moscow.
He said he did not know whether Vajpayee, who also met Putin, would go to Moscow for talks. But the Kremlin press service said Putin did not plan to bring Vajpayee to Moscow since the Russian leader already is scheduled to visit India in December.
At the security conference Tuesday morning, the Indian and Pakistani leaders sat across a long, horseshoe-shaped table and angrily blamed each other for more than five decades of conflict. The countries have fought three wars since 1947 - two of them over Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety.
Vajpayee reiterated his willingness to talk with Pakistan, but said there first must be a halt to cross-border terrorism in India-controlled Kashmir, such as the deadly assaults on the Indian Parliament in December and an Indian army base in Kashmir last month, which left 34 dead, mostly wives and children of army officers.
India says the terrorism is carried out by Pakistan-based Islamic militants fighting the past 12 years for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.
Alluding to Pakistan, Vajpayee said, "Nuclear powers should not use nuclear blackmail."
Musharraf, asked at a news conference to state Pakistan's nuclear policy and explain why it will not join India in renouncing first use of nuclear weapons, said, "The possession of nuclear weapons by any state obviously implies they will be used under some circumstances."
He said, however, it would be irresponsible for a leader to discuss such things and Pakistan's "deeper policy" is for denuclearization of South Asia.
India's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, responded: "We will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. India hopes the enormity of the use of nuclear weapons is understood by the president of Pakistan."
Tensions between India and Pakistan seem to be easing slightly amid international diplomatic efforts, an Indian military spokesman said Tuesday. But it was too soon to say whether the situation would become calmer and stay that way, said P.K. Bandopadhyay, an India Defense Ministry spokesman.
"There is a little softening, but it is premature," Bandopadhyay told The Associated Press. "We are on the diplomatic path."
While attending an international conference in Barbados, Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday pledged "a full-court diplomatic press" on the two nations, saying, "It would be absolutely horrible in the year 2002 for any nation to use nuclear weapons in a situation such as this."
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected in the region this weekend, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is due to visit Pakistan and India this week.
Mishra also said India heard that Musharraf issued orders to end raids across the Line of Control separating the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir.
"A statement from the United States says there is some movement in that direction, but it (the infiltration) has not stopped. We want to wait and see on the ground," Mishra said.
In Washington, a U.S. official told AP the State Department was due to issue a new travel warning Tuesday strongly urging the more than 60,000 Americans in India and Pakistan to depart. This is a tougher approach than past statements urging Americans to consider leaving.
-------- russia
Pasko case to be examined by Supreme Court on June 25th
Bellona Foundation
In Brief,
June 4, 2002
http://www.bellona.no/en/20393.html#24446
The Pasko Case - http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/envirorights/pasko/index.html
The Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court will examine the defence and prosecution appeals on Pasko case on June 25th. Grigory Pasko has been waiting in the solitary cell for the Supreme Court decision since December 25, 2001. General-lieutenant of justice Yury Parhomchuk has been appointed a presiding judge for this hearing. Back in February 2002, he rejected the defence request on changing the measure of restraint for Grigory Pasko, and he had to stay in custody. The defence seeks a full acquittal, but the prosecution demands 12 years imprisonment for Pasko.
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UN chief says to help Ukraine on Chernobyl, AIDS
REUTERS UKRAINE:
June 4, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16247/story.htm
KIEV - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used his first visit to Ukraine yesterday to pledge his support to millions of people who suffered from the world's worst civil nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Almost 16 years after the explosion, Ukraine fears that Chernobyl has become a forgotten crisis and President Leonid Kuchma frequently says the West has never made good on promises of million of dollars in aid.
Annan called for a joint effort to help Ukraine.
"I think we all have a responsibility to do whatever we can to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy and to ensure that it does not happen again anywhere," he said after a visit to the Chernobyl museum, built in the capital Kiev to commemorate thousands of victims.
On April, 26, 1986, one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, spewing a deadly cloud of radioactivity over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and some of Western Europe. It contaminated large areas of land and left a legacy of health problems.
Annan told reporters his visit to the museum was "a very moving experience" and said the United Nations and the world community would work together with Ukraine to ensure the development of the region and help people hit by the tragedy.
"It is our collective duty and responsibility," he said. "We must remain focused, particularly in dealing with the human aspects of the crisis. We are going to remain engaged."
The United Nations has said the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant should be promoted as an eco-tourism destination to develop it economically.
Annan also said the United Nations would loan Ukraine about $9 million to help the country fight the rampant spread of AIDS and appealed to Ukrainians to unite in their efforts to combat the disease.
Ukraine and Russia now have the fastest growing rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. The United Nations estimated last year that about one percent of Ukraine's adult population carries HIV/AIDS and the figure could rise to about six percent in 2010.
Annan, who met Kuchma and other senior officials, stays in Ukraine until Tuesday when he visits Moscow for two days before flying to Switzerland and then to Italy.
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-------- north carolina
NORTH CAROLINA SUED OVER REJECTED WASTE DUMP
June 4, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-04-06.asp
RALEIGH, North Carolina, Four southern states and a regional waste commission are suing the state of North Carolina for its opposition to a planned low level radioactive waste dump within North Carolina's borders. The suit accuses North Carolina of failing to meet its obligations as a member of the Southeast Compact Commission, a group charged with building the regional radioactive waste repository....
-------- us nuc waste
Ex - `M - A - S - H' Star Lobbies Congress
June 4, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Mike-Farrell.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Actor Mike Farrell, armed with a letter signed by 70 fellow celebrities, urged senators on Tuesday to vote against a plan to bury the nation's nuclear power waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Calling claims of safety for the Yucca site ``technically unfounded,'' the former ``M-A-S-H'' star said transporting the 77,000 tons of waste to Nevada would create ``an enormous target for someone who has an ill intention.''
Farrell, who now plays a veterinarian on the NBC series ``Providence,'' delivered the letter a day before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee plans to vote on whether to override Nevada's objections to the proposed waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The full Senate must approve the resolution by July 26, or the project will come to a halt.
The House overrode Nevada's veto in May.
Co-signers of the letter include actors Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, comedians Paula Poundstone and Rob Reiner, and singers Barbra Streisand and Harry Belafonte.
On the Net:
Senate Energy Committee: http://energy.senate.gov/
-------- us politics
John Ashcroft's Power Grab
The saga of a troubled -- and troubling -- attorney general.
By Brian Doherty,
Reason Magazine,
June 2002
http://www.reason.com/0206/fe.bd.john.shtml
When U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was eight years old, his father, J. Robert Ashcroft, took the boy up in a Piper Cub airplane. Then Dad blessed young John with a special treat.
"John, I'd like you to fly this plane for a while," he said.
"I was one awestruck kid," Ashcroft remembers lovingly at the very beginning of his 1998 memoir, On My Honor: The Beliefs That Shape My Life. But he was also a lost one: "What do I do?" he shouted to his pa.
"Just grab the stick and push it straight forward."
Which of course sent the plane into a terrifying "bombing-raid dive toward a farm"I lost all sense of time or place as fear gripped my insides."
Turned out it was all just a practical joke. Dad saved them in the nick of time -- and, recounts John, "had a good chuckle" at the expense of his naive son.
Was young John mistrustful of his trickster father after such an intense prank? In his autobiography, Ashcroft chooses the high road, completely recasting what might seem a particularly mean bit of joshing as a deliberate attempt to teach him a valuable lesson. The lesson, Ashcroft writes, is that "actions have consequences."In a positive sense, I learned that wherever I was, if I put my hand to something, I could make a difference."
Uh, yeah. The boy in the famous joke, digging through the pile of manure looking for the pony, has nothing on our nation's top cop. The most obvious response to Ashcroft's version of this story is, What the hell is wrong with this guy? While it's certainly the type of thing a boy is apt to remember, what would possess a man writing a memoir -- meant largely to honor dear old dad -- to start his book with this particular anecdote?
The stories we choose to tell on ourselves are, well, telling. Given its place of pride in his book, Ashcroft's father tricking him seems to be his most beloved, or at least most vibrant, childhood memory. Ashcroft, one can infer, believes in something like Tough Love. (Indeed, treating juvenile crooks as adults has been a pet theme through his entire political career.) And if the attorney general, the "nation's top cop," is the symbolic disciplinarian and parental figure for American society, then we're all Ashcroft's kids now -- which could mean some harrowing times ahead.
Yet Ashcroft is a far more complicated father figure than most of his enemies grant. They see him in one role only: the stern disciplinarian driven by an unshakable belief that God and he are as one, a man so prudish he can't tolerate unclothed statuary. But the American father-figure template includes many different roles, and Ashcroft has filled more than a few during his public life. At times, he's come across as an obsessive, driven, and ultimately self-destructive tyrant given to fits of rage (think Robert Duvall in The Great Santini). Other times, he's an overly earnest goody-two-shoes quick with an uplifting Bible verse (think The Simpsons' Ned Flanders). And sometimes, he comes across as a sleepy-brained, bumbling doofus falling into trouble (think Blondie's Dagwood Bumstead).
Especially given the immense power he's holding in post-9/11 America, it's worth contemplating the varied facets of John Ashcroft -- and their flaws. He's a religious man at loggerheads with the dominant culture; a politician who has mostly been (despite surface appearances) a failure; and an attorney general who may be turning into something worse than his enemies anticipated -- though perhaps not in the way they assumed.
True Believer
In December, The Weekly Standard, as staunch a friend as Ashcroft has in the media, did a laudatory cover story on "General Ashcroft," praising the fightin' spirit that 9/11 brought out in the former senator from Missouri. Indeed, Ashcroft is a man at war not simply with Muslim extremists, but with secular America. Central to any consideration of him is his religion, which was also one of the reasons, rightly or wrongly, that he was hated and feared by the left long before 9/11. Born in 1942, Ashcroft grew up the dutiful child of a roving Assemblies of God minister who later settled down to run various Bible colleges in Missouri. Grandpa was an Assemblies holy man as well.
The Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostalist denomination in America, with 2.3 million members in the United States and 30 million worldwide. It was the first centralized religious institution to emerge from the radically decentralized Pentecostal movement that began to sweep America in the first decade of the 20th century. Pentecostals believe that every child of God should be his own minister, imbued directly with the Holy Spirit and the gift of speaking in tongues. Ashcroft is thus that most derided figure on the American religious landscape, the Holy Roller -- an actual, serious one. (The notorious Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, icons of ridiculous religiosity, were both Assemblies preachers.)
Besides speaking in tongues, the Assemblies practice such peculiarities as faith healing. In short, it's the sort of religion that scares cosmopolitan secularists witless. In biblical style, Ashcroft has had himself anointed in oil (Crisco, if that's all that's on hand) upon ascending to political office. He once vowed that were he ever to become president, he would publicly kneel and pray for divine guidance while being sworn in. That's the sort of statement that makes centrist liberals, hardcore lefties, and the odd atheistic right-winger fear Ashcroft as much as he fears God. And the attorney general follows other Assemblies dictates that further place him outside the American mainstream: He's staunchly opposed on religious grounds to drinking, gambling, and even dancing.
Yet he is, in his own straight-laced and traditional way, a radical cultural rebel. Despite his outsider status and the opprobrium it generates, he won't give in. Like a caring though peculiar dad advising against peer-group conformity, he stands against the crowd and is publicly (and by all accounts privately) true to the values of a serious religious conservative with one-and-only-one wife (Janet, a law professor with whom he's collaborated on legal textbooks) and three kids.
He's also hopelessly corny, creating waves of contemptuous mirth all across the Internet, where clips of him singing one of his self-composed gospel songs abound. While a member of the Senate, he and three colleagues formed a vocal quartet, the Singing Senators, to record and perform patriotic and devotional ditties. The group even trekked to that capital of American cornpone hokum, Branson -- tellingly located in Ashcroft's home state -- to croon with the Oak Ridge Boys.
Ashcroft's squeaky-clean Christian image is built on more than personal habits. People have reported that while being interviewed for jobs by Ashcroft, they were asked if they had ever committed adultery. (One applicant reports being asked if he were gay, a story Ashcroft denies.) He was the first senator to publicly call upon President Clinton to resign over his affair with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. As Missouri governor, he vetoed a Sunday liquor sales bill, signed into law the first Missouri restrictions on underage smoking, restricted rentals of violent movies to minors, and cracked down on casual drug use (even as one of his top aides was exposed by a squealing college buddy as a pothead and coke-sniffer and quietly resigned). As federal attorney general, he has revived the sort of porn prosecutions that languished in the Bill Clinton-Janet Reno era.
Still, Ashcroft is not some backwoods, Holy Roller hick. He is part of a generation of Pentecostals who have engaged the larger world rather than staying within their own separatist institutions. Hence, Ashcroft attended college at Yale and law school at the University of Chicago. "Ashcroft," notes Edith Blumhofer, a historian at Wheaton College who has written several books on the Assemblies, "was brought up in what was in some ways a conservative Assemblies of God home. His father was very pietist and devoted to prayer. Yet Ashcroft was not told to go to Yale and fight the battle -- he went there simply as a student, with no agenda to convert the place." For a devout member of the Assemblies, says Blumhofer, Ashcroft was exceptional in combining the secular and the religious.
The religious historian Grant Wacker once described Pentecostals as having a "jut-jawed stress on personal autonomy," and Ashcroft is the first Assemblies worshipper to be elected either governor or senator. In that context, Ashcroft's political career can be read as an experiment in the assimilation of a peculiarly independent religious tradition into the mainstream.
The experiment can only be described as an awkward semi-success so far. Certainly, John Ashcroft is the attorney general of the United States -- a position of considerable power and influence. But by following the dictates of his faith and upbringing, he has crafted a public image that media sophisticates on both coasts see as charmingly goofy at best and dangerously retrograde at worst. Though many Americans agree with him (at least generally) about such matters as God, family, and abortion, Ashcroft has surely noticed that it just isn't OK to the opinion makers to be who he is.
One reason the very Pentecostal Ashcroft has been able to make the headway he has in national politics is because, despite his demonization as a zealot, he's always been more Ned Flanders than Cotton Mather. He's never fought back at his critics with fire and brimstone. Instead, he's more likely to appear in friendly surroundings, such as Orange County, California's famous Crystal Cathedral, and quip, "I always thought that if I was accused of being a strong Christian there was enough evidence to convict me."
As he shifted his political ambitions from Missouri, where serious Pentecostalism is less outré than elsewhere, to the national stage, Ashcroft has insisted again and again that "it's against my religion to impose religion on people." At least once, though, while speaking to the Christian magazine Charisma, he let slip that "I think all we should legislate is morality."
Yet it's safe to say that Ashcroft is a gentler kind of modern religious man, a compassionate conservative before it was cool. As senator he worked to allow religious groups to administer federal aid of various sorts. He made new flextime requirements one of his major concerns -- so parents can attend Little League games (as, he notes glumly in his memoirs, his traveling preacher father didn't) and take care of scraped knees.
It's worth noting about Assemblies members that, as historian Blumhofer says, "When they look at the world, the divine is quite immanent to them." Practices such as morning prayer meetings in the office are as natural as breathing to Ashcroft, even if they are anathema to a large segment of the populace he is supposed to serve. His strong and oft-expressed religiosity makes for an awkward relationship between Ashcroft the cop and the beat he walks.
Born to Lose
Take a quick look at his résumé, and you'd conclude that John Ashcroft has had a stunningly successful political career. A deeper read, however, suggests something more complicated, a pattern of embarrassing defeats and hollow victories.
After graduating from Yale in 1964 and the University of Chicago Law School three years later, Ashcroft taught law at Southwest Missouri State University -- a position of such vital national importance that he used it to get an occupational deferment during the Vietnam War. His political career began poorly with two defeats, the first in a GOP primary while running for Congress in 1972. His respectable 45 percent showing in the primary brought him to the attention of Republican Gov. Kit Bond, who appointed Ashcroft to a midterm vacancy for state auditor. But Ashcroft lost the job when he actually had to face the voters in '74.
It was all uphill from there -- at least in Missouri, and at least on paper. In 1975 he was appointed to assistant attorney general of the state. In 1976, he squeaked through a tight election and became Missouri's attorney general. He went on to serve eight years in that post, followed by eight years as governor and then six as U.S. senator.
But Ashcroft's political tenure in Missouri seems more comic-gothic than inspiring or statesmanlike. Events just didn't give him many occasions to rise to. Instead, we see Ashcroft signing the papers to disincorporate the city of Times Beach, victim of a notorious dioxin scare; urging tourists to avoid his state lest they interfere with an ongoing FBI manhunt for neo-Nazis; petulantly refusing for a time to return a commemorative silver dinner set to its rightful owner, the U.S.S. Missouri; commuting a death sentence because the condemned man's attorney told the jury, "Why sully your hands with this piece of flotsam?"; being sued on behalf of a fetus whose lawyers claimed was illegitimately imprisoned inside a ne'er-do-well mom; legalizing rape due to a clerical error; begging constantly for federal aid as his hapless state was battered by floods and crop failures; and unsuccessfully bowing and scraping on Donahue to General Motors execs in the hopes that they would site new auto plants in his state. Colorful, sad, besieged place, Ashcroft's Missouri.
Ashcroft did win something important during his Missouri days, though: a couple of powerful national enemies in the civil rights and women's lobbies. Eventually they would help make his confirmation process for U.S. attorney general so grueling (and so amusing to read about). Accusations of racism have stalked Ashcroft from his days as Missouri's attorney general, when he fought a court-imposed school integration plan -- not out of any racist intention, he insisted, but because it placed an unfair tax burden on the people of Missouri.
If his opposition to the school plan issued from his principles, it's less clear what motivated him to block Bill Clinton's appointment of the black Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White to a federal judgeship. Ashcroft advanced inchoate feelings that White just might be too "activist" and got the entire GOP to go along with him by spreading misleading accounts of White's being soft on capital punishment. In reality, Judge White had voted to uphold death penalty convictions 41 out of 59 times, and almost always voted with the panel majority. So at the very least, there was rank demagoguery behind Ashcroft's campaign against the judge. Speaking at the anti-race-mixing Bob Jones University and giving an interview to the Confederate fan magazine Southern Partisan -- which he praised for trying to convince Americans that the Confederates were not "giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda" -- didn't help Ashcroft's reputation with the civil rights cognoscenti either.
In attempting to deflect accusations of racism, Ashcroft's goofy, hapless
Dagwood Bumstead persona comes to the fore. He assures readers of his memoir that his father possessed "the foresight to prevent his son's prejudices at an early age" by playing him Mahalia Jackson records and making him read the left-wing black novelist Richard Wright (while not, Ashcroft assures us, "subscrib[ing] to everything Wright advocated"). A further sign of the Ashcroft family's progressive stance on race is that his parents let black guests rake leaves in the backyard -- just as they would any other visitor. The women's movement has had it in for Ashcroft since he came up with a startling antitrust innovation in the late '70s. As Missouri's attorney general, he sued the National Organization for Women because they were leading a boycott of the state over its failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. The boycott, Ashcroft argued, was a "restraint of trade." Get it? The judge didn't either. Ashcroft lost.
His steadfast rhetorical objection to abortion (except to save the life of the mother) and some restrictions on it he either passed or advocated in Missouri (he wanted to completely ban second abortions, for instance) have also made him a women's movement pariah.
Yet even his enemies typically grant that there's a certain kind of basic personal integrity that we can expect from Ashcroft. He is unlikely to screw the interns, accept bribes, gamble, or, God forbid, dance. Of course, that is the least important kind of integrity to expect from a politician.
When it comes to a more substantive integrity -- devotion to core political principles -- there aren't very many important ideas that Ashcroft is solid on. He is more likely to adopt specific proposals in an ad hoc, disconnected way. He was for trade sanctions against Sudan because they don't respect religious freedom; yet he later plumped (rightly) to end the Cuban boycott (after earlier supporting it). He was foursquare against national standards for education but insists on them for drug and suicide laws.
Ultimately, Ashcroft's appeal to conservatives seems to be rooted more in his persona and his religiosity than actual conservative legislative achievements. And that appeal has proven pretty thin outside Missouri. Although he won with 64 percent of the vote in his second gubernatorial race and swept every county in his first Senate race, Ashcroft was a nobody on the national stage until Bush tapped him for attorney general. Dating back to the first Reagan administration, Ashcroft had been a perpetual name floating up as someone who just might be named attorney general in a Republican administration. Similarly, he was a prominent might-have-been vice presidential candidate for Bob Dole in '96. He ran hard for president through most of '97 and '98 in that "just looking" way, rousing much excitement among the likes of Pat Robertson. But he eventually acknowledged in January 1999 that the support wasn't there.
It hadn't been there earlier in the decade, either, when Ashcroft made a spectacularly weak run for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He'd been term-limited out of the Missouri state house in '93 and was cooling his heels before he could run for Senate in '94. Despite having far and away the most prominent political experience of any of the candidates for chairman, Ashcroft came in third on the first ballot, behind Haley Barbour (then just a former Reagan aide) and current Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham (then just a former Dan Quayle aide). He was so despondent at his loss that he avoided the traditional stand-on-the-dais-together unity display.
Later, even his home state let him down. In 2000, Ashcroft famously suffered what is surely one of the most humiliating political defeats in American history. Not only did he fail to get re-elected to the Senate -- something 80 percent of incumbents pull off -- but he lost to a dead man, Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan. What made the loss all the more dramatic was the longtime rivalry between Ashcroft and Carnahan, who had been lieutenant governor when Ashcroft was Missouri's chief executive.
Bad blood between them flowed long and deep, from the days when Ashcroft went to court to establish that he didn't cede power to his lieutenant every time he left the state. Ashcroft even pettily ended the practice of paying Carnahan a pro-rated higher salary on days Ashcroft was absent. Their Senate election was bitter and mean: If Carnahan tried to insinuate Ashcroft had a race problem, John's boys would distribute old photos of Carnahan in blackface. The Show Me State, indeed.
Then, less than a month before the election, Carnahan's plane crashed, killing the governor, his eldest son, and a trusted aide. When the person who wins Senate elections in Missouri can't serve, the governor -- in this case, Democrat Roger Wilson -- appoints someone to the vacancy until the next election. Wilson made it clear that he would choose the grieving widow and mother, Jean Carnahan. In the pollster's argot, the late Mel suddenly had no negatives and Jean's mere ability to stride in public purposefully with the ghosts of husband and son hovering nearby was enough to dig Ashcroft's political grave.
There Ashcroft was, then -- a small-account politician of no particular achievement or rigor from a difficult little state, repudiated on the national stage and suffering a uniquely stinging political defeat. Yet Ashcroft gallantly chose not to challenge the election, though he had various procedural tacks he could have taken. In his highly praised concession speech, Ashcroft said that "the will of the people has been expressed with compassion" and that he "hope[s] that the outcome"is a matter of comfort to Mrs. Carnahan."
However tough that loss must have been, it must have been even more bruising when, a few months later, the new Sen. Carnahan voted against Ashcroft for attorney general. Mr. Dithers couldn't have humiliated poor, hapless Dagwood any better.
Angry Attorney General
It might have seemed that Ashcroft was politically dead after losing to the late Carnahan. But as he wrote in his memoir, for every crucifixion there's a resurrection. President George W. Bush rolled away the stone by nominating Ashcroft for attorney general, and even the doubting Thomases in the Senate hearings had to recognize that Ashcroft had arisen. Even then, though, Ashcroft was not a first choice, but a compromise sop to the GOP's religious right wing. His confirmation battle was brutal even by contemporary standards, and a lifetime's worth of political foes portrayed Ashcroft as a freakish chimera of Anita Bryant, Torquemada, and George Lincoln Rockwell. His own performance in the hearings seemed to hurt, not help, his cause. Analysts predicted at the beginning of the hearings that a good 80 of his erstwhile colleagues would support him, but he eventually squeaked through by only four votes, 52-48.
As he launched the newest phase of his career, Ashcroft first played the role of the dad with the soft touch, shuffling along, doing whatever it takes to keep the family happy. He seemingly scheduled every day around publicly kissing up to the people who hate him most. He was no racist, by God, so he said he was going to make ending "racial profiling" his major concern. (Post-9/11, of course, profiling is back with a vengeance, and with a new target about whom no one seems upset.) Does Ashcroft's religion think homosexuality is an abomination? Sure, but that wouldn't stop him from meeting with the Log Cabin Republicans. Despite his consistent opposition to racial preferences while a legislator, Ashcroft's Justice Department filed an enthusiastic defense of such programs in the Adarand case -- a case that Sen. Ashcroft particularly liked to moan about. The staunchly anti-abortion Ashcroft ordered federal marshals to protect abortion doctors, and his DOJ collared the killers of abortionists in France.
We cannot presume to know what a politician really thinks, even, or perhaps especially, from listening to what he says. So we must imagine how the long series of defeats and disappointments -- and the constant attacks from the country's dominant culture -- must have burned in Ashcroft's psyche before 9/11. Ashcroft's immediate response to the attacks was to sink into a dark Orwellian morass of secret detentions, warrantless wiretaps, and eavesdropping on lawyers. Meanwhile, he instructed his charges at the Department of Justice to do whatever was legally possible to ignore and stonewall Freedom of Information Act requests. It's irresistible to wonder if the post-9/11 Ashcroft is a long-suffering, go-along-to-get-along dad who finally snaps, yanks up his trousers tight, and stomps forth, insistent that he just ain't gonna take it anymore. The days of pushing around Big John Ashcroft are over. Round up the Arabs and convene the military tribunals. And no, Mr. Liberal Media, I won't tell you who I've got locked up over here.
In prepared statements -- not unscripted press conference bluster -- Ashcroft famously warned his critics that they are essentially traitors. "Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty," he inveighed before Congress, "your tactics only aid terrorists." He needed only to add "and comfort" to his statement to charge dissenters worried about infringements on civil liberties with the constitutional definition of treason.
The right-wing media are still loyally on his side. National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote a painful syndicated column excoriating the liberal media for their "canards" about Ashcroft. It centered on the notion that since Ashcroft didn't use the word traitor it is completely unfair to characterize that statement as saying such. "So now Ashcroft is calling people 'traitors'? Go back and read what he actually said," Goldberg instructs of the quote above. "He didn't say anyone who questions the government is wrong, let alone a traitor." Sure -- and calling someone a "long-eared, slow, patient, sure-footed domesticated mammal" isn't the same as calling him an ass.
In any case, it is surely no small matter, even during wartime footing, that Ashcroft has ordered the detention of hundreds of people without making public their identities or the charges they face. This is not simply an affront to the detainees, but to all of us. We deserve transparency from our government and justice that acts according to settled and traditional rules -- even toward immigrants without full constitutional protections.
To the delight of small-government mavens, Ashcroft once averred, "We are here to make government smaller, not larger. We are here to uphold personal freedom and responsibility, not"construct an even bigger Nanny State to micro-manage our lives." Yet he has proven that his conservative side trumps any alleged libertarian leanings, even when the topic is completely unrelated to the war on terrorism.
He's spearheaded the Drug Enforcement Administration in actions against people in states that have passed liberal laws on medical marijuana and assisted suicide. Despite his years in state government talking up the blessings of federalism, Ashcroft has proven he barely meant a word of it.
As the Cato Institute's constitutional expert Roger Pilon puts it, "one can understand that the executive branch's job is to see that the laws be faithfully executed. At the same time we all know that discretion is a key element of the prosecutorial function." The attorney general's supporters try to rescue him from charges of hypocrisy by saying it's his job to enforce the law; but where he chooses to aim his resources is up to him, and his prosecutorial indiscretions mark him as a hypocrite on states' rights.
And elsewhere. Sen. Ashcroft was a firm defender of Internet privacy. Of the Clipper Chip and other surveillance features the government sought to build into computers and communications hardware, he said that "individuals will be outraged when they understand that the administration wants to hand the FBI access to your private communications." But Attorney General Ashcroft has enthusiastically pushed for and embraced USA PATRIOT Act provisions that give increased authority for warrantless Internet taps.
Of course, these ideas have long been in play. They're not Ashcroft's personal new wave of tyranny. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Lee Tien, a fan of Ashcroft's senatorial stance toward electronic privacy, says, a lot of it is the hat he's wearing as attorney general in a time of crisis. But he isn't wearing it well. Even in non-terrorism issues, Ashcroft shows a peculiar tone-deafness to First Amendment liberties. His Justice Department is behind the vindictive assault on journalist Vanessa Leggett, who had been jailed for nearly six months for not turning over notes relating to a murder to a grand jury, a civil contempt charge. Ashcroft's DOJ had threatened her with the possibility of a criminal contempt charge for the same thing -- potentially adding years in jail to the months she's already languished. Then in January the DOJ went ahead and indicted the accused murderer in question on federal charges related to the same murder for which he's already been acquitted by the state of Texas -- without using Leggett's evidence, and raising disturbing double jeopardy questions. (Leggett still fears being subpoenaed in that case.) If Ashcroft hasn't yet lived up to the worst fears of his foes, he seems more than willing to let civil liberties fall by the wayside if he thinks there's any excuse for it.
Reckless Pilot
There were areas, like abortion and civil rights, where his foes feared his personal beliefs would shape his law enforcement. So far, that seems not to be the case. Anywhere his beliefs might lead toward less enforcement of laws, they have had no effect at all. Just as the death-penalty-hating Janet Reno signed many a federal death warrant, Ashcroft will not be making his personal preferences the law of the land.
But he is known, as one conservative activist who has worked with DOJ officials under Ashcroft told me, for being "good in a chameleon-like way at representing his constituencies within conservatism." That's the best way to explain the one thing he's done as attorney general that has lived up to liberal fears -- and libertarian hopes -- about him: In a May 2001 letter to the National Rifle Association, he stated unequivocally that he considers the right to bear arms an individual one.
Having stated that, he has shown it in only two rather restrained ways. First, he reduced the time that records of gun background checks are kept from 90 days to one. Second, he extended one procedural courtesy to those mysterious, anonymous, locked-away aliens: He refused to check whether they had made gun purchases, agreeing with FBI lawyers that such an investigation went beyond the statutory purpose of the Brady Bill. As Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Center says regarding Ashcroft's rhetoric on Second Amendment rights, "It doesn't clarify any federal policy and it doesn't give guidance to the ATF or FBI. It ends up being a political sop to a very powerful political interest."
So his pro-gun statements, as revolutionary as they may seem on the surface, merely maintain the status quo. His admirers are reinforced in their admiration, his enemies are reassured he is everything they hate him for, and the law basically stays the same.
For all his flaws and foibles, Attorney General Ashcroft has his hand on the control stick of the Department of Justice. He is a man whose upbringing and beliefs place him at odds with the dominant cultural elite, who dog and question his every move and decision. He's a man who has occupied many offices with little to show for it all except one huge, unique humiliation -- after which he has been thrust into a position of great legal power in a time when the country is uniquely ready to roll over to authority. Given his Assemblies of God background and its concomitant sense of the divine in the mundane, it's impossible to think that (though he'd never admit it to a secular press) Ashcroft isn't feeling that it's part of God's providence that he's attorney general during a time of national crisis and panic. That it's an occasion that Ashcroft, the stern and firm father figure, should rise to.
Which may well be reason to worry. Constitutionalists view the attorney general's job as representing the people of the United States and their Constitution. Ashcroft seems to think differently. His policies to date show it, and so do some telling words. When asked to defend one of his actions as Missouri's attorney general during his confirmation hearing, he noted, "When the state is attacked, I think it's important to expect the attorney general -- .to defend the state." This has been the alarming philosophy behind almost all of his post-9/11 decisions and pronouncements. His power as attorney general may well be, to him, as reckless and out of control as that Piper Cub he remembers so strongly from his childhood.
But this time, we're all stuck with him in the pilot's seat.
Brian Doherty is an associate editor at Reason.
--------
Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins
New York Times
June 4, 2002
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/politics/04INQU.html
WASHINGTON, June 3 - Early on Sept. 11, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter J. Goss were having a quiet breakfast meeting in the Capitol with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss, the chairmen of the two Congressional intelligence committees, were quizzing their guest about Osama bin Laden and other issues when an aide to Mr. Goss rushed in with a note.
A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Goss furiously scribbled a reply, asking his aide to find out more. A few moments later, the aide came back with another note - a second plane had crashed into the trade center. "We're out of here," Mr. Goss announced. Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, have been immersed in the attacks ever since. On Tuesday, they begin joint oversight hearings to examine the painful subject of a colossal intelligence failure and who in the government knew what before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Fingerpointing, some of it pitting the F.B.I. against the C.I.A., already threatens to overshadow the joint committee's actual hearings. Today, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency moved quickly to counter new accusations that it had identified two Sept. 11 hijackers as Al Qaeda operatives months earlier than previously believed but had not shared the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A C.I.A. official said today that the agency had found proof - e-mail messages from January 2000 - that at least some F.B.I. officials had been told what the agency knew at the time about the two men.
But other officials said the agency failed to share with the bureau more significant information it learned later, including that the two men had visited the United States, one of them showing multiple entry stamps on his Saudi passport. Moreover, the C.I.A. did not tell the F.B.I. in December 2000 or January 2001 that the two men were linked to suspects in the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole.
In addition to the intelligence hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony on Thursday from the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, as well as from Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who protested the refusal by F.B.I. headquarters to seek a search warrant to examine a laptop computer belonging to Zacarias Moussaoui, who the authorities say was to have been the "20th hijacker."
Ms. Rowley, whose impassioned 13-page letter accused Mr. Mueller of failing to candidly acknowledge the mistakes by F.B.I. officials in the Moussaoui case, is to arrive in Washington on Tuesday and is expected to meet privately with lawmakers on the intelligence committees before her appearance at Thursday's hearing, officials said.
President Bush, responding to new disclosures that his administration missed crucial clues to the attacks, today said that the F.B.I. was doing a better job of sharing intelligence findings with the C.I.A.
"When you read about the F.B.I., I want you to know that the F.B.I. is changing its culture," Mr. Bush said during a political appearance in Arkansas. "The F.B.I. prior to Sept. 11 was running down white-collar criminals - and that's good - was worrying about spies - that's good. But now they've got a more important task, and that is to prevent further attack."
The unusually close friendship between Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss across party lines, meanwhile, is sure to be tested by the growing rift between the parties over whether the signals the administration missed before Sept. 11 should become an election-year issue. Both men must also deal with criticism that they are too close to the intelligence community, and will not hold the C.I.A. and F.B.I. fully accountable.
Congressional critics of the two agencies - most notably Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who is the party's ranking member on the Senate intelligence panel - chafe at the Graham-Goss alliance and yearn for a more freewheeling and aggressive investigation than the two Florida lawmakers seem likely to conduct.
Mr. Goss, a former C.I.A. case officer, and Mr. Graham, a former governor of Florida, both disdain the highly confrontational style that has become the hallmark of other recent Congressional investigations, and both prefer to conduct Congressional oversight of the intelligence community the old-fashioned way: behind closed doors. Tuesday's hearing, for example, during which their newly hired 24-member staff will brief members on the progress of their investigation, will be closed, as will sessions on both Wednesday and Thursday, when one witness might be called. The first public hearings will not be held until late June, when both Mr. Mueller and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, are expected to testify.
"There are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who know that the American people want us to do a responsible, adult job in looking into this," Mr. Goss said in a recent interview. "I think that is the mood that has prevailed now. We have members from both sides thanking us for avoiding the partisan mines."
But their reticence has left a political vacuum, one others are stepping into. The staff of the joint committee has, for example, already conducted private interviews with Ms. Rowley.
Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, and other Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are still pushing for an independent commission to conduct a separate investigation of Sept. 11, apparently out of a fear that the joint committee will not be aggressive enough.
Mr. Goss's background as a C.I.A. officer and his longtime public support for Mr. Tenet fuel many of the doubts about the joint committee. Mr. Goss played a quiet but influential role in persuading the Bush administration to keep Mr. Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He has also emphasized that he wants the joint committee to focus on looking forward at needed reforms, not back on missed clues.
Of course, Mr. Goss's belief in the gravity of the Sept. 11 review has not halted the typical Washington cycle of leak and counterleak. Today, the C.I.A. responded to the charges that it had waited too long to notify the F.B.I. about the two hijackers by disclosing that it had found e-mail traffic between C.I.A. and F.B.I. employees showing that the bureau was notified that a man named Khalid al-Midhar was about to attend a meeting in Malaysia.
The C.I.A. passed along Mr. Midhar's name and Saudi passport number to an F.B.I. official, according to agency records. In a Jan. 6, 2000, e-mail message between a C.I.A. employee and an F.B.I. official working for the counterterrorism center at C.I.A. headquarters, the C.I.A. employee noted that the bureau already had the information about Mr. Midhar.
"It wouldn't surprise me, however, if different people continue to ask you for updates, not having gotten the word that the F.B.I. already has the facts," the e-mail message said, according to the C.I.A.
A C.I.A. official said such correspondence about Mr. Midhar showed that "to say we held out information on him is wrong."
In the midst of the leaking, Mr. Goss's caution appears to have influenced Mr. Graham. The senator, for example, has frequently said he believed that Mr. Tenet should remain at the C.I.A. despite the intelligence failure on Sept. 11.
Mr. Graham took over as chairman of the Senate intelligence panel only a few months before Sept. 11, after Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party and tilted control of the Senate to the Democrats. Though he had been on the committee for some time, Mr. Graham was still getting used to running the panel and immersing himself in the details of the intelligence world when the attacks occurred.
In the months since, Mr. Graham and his staff forged an alliance with Mr. Goss and his aides to get the C.I.A. and the rest of the intelligence community billions of dollars in more financing as well as new powers to fight terrorism. "Senator Graham and I have been through a lot, and we are comfortable working together," Mr. Goss said.
Senator Shelby and his staff felt increasingly isolated as Mr. Graham was able to circumvent them to forge an alliance with the House Republican leadership.
Both Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss said they have no objection to the creation of a Sept. 11 commission, perhaps because they both know that the proposal seems destined to die in the Republican-controlled House.
"It doesn't really affect what we are doing," Mr. Graham said recently. "We will continue to do our investigation whether or not there is a commission."
--------
The spring fashion in flip-floppery
Pruden on Politics
June 4, 2002
Washington Times
Wesley Pruden
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020604-1089682.htm
George W. Bush is one clever dude. We can only imagine how confused his enemies are, because he has thoroughly confused his friends.
The flip-flop is apparently the new fashion in manly footwear at the White House.
Only yesterday we learned that the administration, in a breathtaking U-turn, has conceded in a report to the United Nations that Bill and Hillary Clinton and their bright-green friends were right all along, that the globe is warming and "human activity" is responsible. That's the bad news. The good news is that the government doesn't intend to act on its revised convictions. The president's crack political consultants no doubt imagine that will satisfy one and all.
Some of the other flip-floppery has more immediate and graver implications. George W. first defines Iraq as the linchpin of the "axis of evil," warning the European weenies that like it or not he's going to do something about it. Then he sends Colin Powell off to Europe to grovel, to boast that the Bushies have mellowed, grown, healed and assumed all the other goo-goo attributes that are the mark of the very model of the oh-so-sensitive modern major generals.
Then it's off to West Point, where, evidently overcome by the ghosts of Lee and Jackson, of Grant and Sheridan, MacArthur and Patton, all hovering close over the plain above the Hudson, he warns the evildoers of the world in stern and emphatic language that the Cold War strategy of containment and deterrence is dead, that Americans will strike first to defend themselves. The only notice terrorists deserve is to wake up in hell.
"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he tells the cadets. "We must take the battle to the enemy. The only path to safety is action, and this nation will act." Tough and eloquent stuff, but this is only Tuesday. (By Thursday or Friday the secretary of state may be back in Brussels.)
Stung by the mounting evidence of gross incompetence - or worse - in the security and intelligence services, embarrassed by credible assertions that someone in his administration should have known that September 11 was coming and he should have been alerted in time to do something about it, George W. praises Robert Mueller and George Tenet, who presided over the incompetence (or worse), as being his kind of guys. Good manners and loyalty to friends - even to Inspector Clouseau and Fearless Fosdick - is a Bush family trait.
Coleen Rowley, the agent in the Minneapolis office of the FBI who was on to Zacarias Moussaoui last summer and tried and failed to get someone in Washington to listen, says that "jokes were actually made that the key FBI headquarters personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hanssen, who were actually working for Osama bin Laden." An experienced agent doesn't make "jokes" like that unless she's trying desperately to get a serious point to someone in authority. The reference to Hanssen, the FBI agent who sold national-security secrets to the Soviet Union in the last days of the Cold War, should be chilling enough for someone in Washington with enough testosterone to clean house.
Newsweek reports this week that the CIA chiefs sat on the evidence that could have prevented September 11. The agency actually tracked one of the suicide pilots from a planning session in Malaysia in early summer to the United States, even linking him to the bombing of the USS Cole. But the agency wouldn't share this information with either the FBI or the State Department, which routinely renewed his visa barely two months before he flew a plane into the Pentagon. Not to worry, said one CIA officer to the New York Times: Sharing the information with the FBI might not have prevented September 11, anyway. (Besides, what's more important, saving 3,000 American lives or keeping the FBI off CIA turf?)
The president understands the problem. "The FBI is changing its culture," he told an audience yesterday in Little Rock. "Now they've got a more important task, and that is to prevent further attack, and so the FBI is changing, and they're doing a better job of communicating with the CIA."
What the president might not understand is that saying it doesn't make it so. Leaving Inspector Clouseau and Fearless Fosdick in charge at the FBI and the CIA, where the screw-ups were not only not disciplined but promoted, might reassure George W., but it doesn't reassure the rest of us.
The FBI's assumption of vast new powers to pry into the affairs of the innocent - the Fearless Fosdick strategy of shooting everyone in the supermarket to make sure no one gets the can of poisoned beans - is likely only to empower the screw-ups still in charge to mismanage on a vastly larger and far more deadly scale.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
<a name="military"></a>
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Pentagon to Sell Missles to Kuwait
June 4, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Kuwait-Missiles.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is planning to sell Kuwait advanced air-to-air missiles to help the country protect itself against what the Defense Department called ``hostile neighbors.''
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Tuesday it had notified Congress that it plans a $58 million deal that would include 80 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), launch equipment, training missiles, software updates and other related equipment and services.
The system allows a fighter pilot to launch the weapon from beyond visual range of his target. It also provides a greater capability to attack low-altitude targets.
``Kuwait is threatened by hostile neighbors with credible air, land and sea forces,'' the DSCA said in a statement. ``While the nation depends on external support, the Kuwaiti Air Force must have adequate ... capabilities to protect its vital resources during the early part of a possible invasion until allies can arrive with reinforcements.''
Small, oil-rich Kuwait is a strong ally of Washington, which led the international coalition that fought the 1991 Gulf War to end the seven-month Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
Kuwait still depends on its Western allies, mainly the United States and Britain, for defense. U.S. and British war planes fly from Kuwait to patrol a no-fly zone over southern Iraq established after the war to protect the Shiite Iraqi opposition from Iraqi troops.
--------
The Stinger missile boomerangs
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
June 4, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020604-78482305.htm
Recent warnings about the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists armed with Stinger shoulder-launched missiles ("Terrorists smuggle missiles into U.S.," News, May 31) is another reminder of how American weapons shipped abroad can come back to haunt us in unexpected and potentially tragic ways.
Any Stingers currently in al Qaeda's possession probably date back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, during which the CIA distributed more than 1,000 of the shoulder-fired missiles to rebels fighting the Soviets. Despite a decade-old buy back program, hundreds of these missiles remain at large.
While certainly among the most troubling, the lost Stingers are only one of many examples of U.S. weapons and weapons technologies ending up in the wrong hands. The Israelis have repeatedly diverted U.S. missile technology to China. Iraq was able to improve the targeting system of its Scud missiles with the help of American technology obtained from the Brazilians.
It is time to reconsider our role as the world's largest arms exporter. The lives of American soldiers and civilians may hang in the balance.
MATTHEW SCHROEDER
Research Associate
Arms Sales Monitoring Project
Federation of American Scientists
Washington
-------- business
Home Radiation Detectors Criticized
By Jim Krane
AP Technology Writer
Tuesday, June 4, 2002; 8:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56796-2002Jun4?language=printer
NEW YORK -- A California company has sold hundreds of $149 home radiation detectors since it began advertising them on cable TV channels last week, its co-owner says, but experts say the devices would be of little use in a true nuclear emergency.
The nine-employee company's Web site warns of the possibility of gamma radiation from so-called "dirty" radiological bombs, as well as "nuclear spills or meltdowns, terrorist attack on nuclear power plants, accidents or sabotage.
"With the recent increase in terrorism you and your family are at more risk than ever," the Web site states. "The nuclear power plant near you may be the next TERRORIST TARGET!"
The site juxtaposes photos of a nuclear explosion's mushroom cloud, cooling towers of a nuclear plant and the flaming twin towers of the World Trade Center - felled by jetliners, not a nuclear explosion.
"We want to give awareness to people that crazy things happen," said Jack Khorsandi, the chief financial officer and co-owner of Homeland Protection Inc., the West Hollywood, Calif.-based company selling the devices.
"The chance that people have a suitcase bomb, it's there," said Khorsandi, who said his company had sold hundreds of the detectors since the ads began running last week on channels with heavy news content including CNN. "There's never been the thought that such a crazy thing could happen to our country. It's a kind of wake-up call."
At the federal Office of Homeland Security, spokesman Gordon Johndroe noted that environmental monitoring for radiation already takes place near the country's nuclear power plants, as well as at U.S. ports of entry. He said the office is not looking to purchase or distribute radiation detectors among the U.S. public.
"We have no information that indicates that terrorists have been successful in obtaining nuclear or radiological devices," Johndroe said.
In a true nuclear emergency, anyone within earshot of the detector's alarm would already be afflicted by radiation, said Jon Wolfsthal, an associate with the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"If anything, it sounds like a way to exploit the fears of the American public as opposed to protecting them," he said. "I wouldn't plunk down $149 of my own money on one of these things."
Recent stories in the media have examined the possibility of terrorist use of nuclear weapons.
During the post-Sept. 11 period of anthrax mailings that killed five and sickened 13 people in the United States, a number of home anthrax detection kits emerged that critics said sought to capitalize on public fears.
On the Net:
http://www.raditect.com
-------- iran
Iran's Khamenei Accuses US of Murder
By Afshin Valinejad
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, June 4, 2002; 4:17 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59178-2002Jun4?language=printer
BEHESHT-E-ZAHRA, Iran -- Iran's supreme leader accused the United States on Tuesday of "massacring" innocent Afghans during its war on terrorism, and said Iran was ready to fight if attacked.
Addressing thousands of people on the 13th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the United States launched the war in Afghanistan to get rid of Sept. 11 terror suspect Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization, but instead massacred civilians.
"In Afghanistan, in the poor and wronged country of Afghanistan, they entered the arena under the guise of combating a group or even a few individuals. They did not get their hands on those individuals, but they massacred many innocent people, bombarded them, killed them," Khamenei said. "...This imposition of violence or expression of violence cannot help America achieve its aims and succeed."
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "The United States helped liberate the Afghani people from repression."
Fleischer noted that Iran played a constructive role in the Bonn talks in December that established the interim Afghan administration and "we expect them to play a constructive role now."
But amid chants of "Death to America," on Tuesday, Khamenei called the United States "the most hated regime in the world."
Cars and buses carrying Iranians from around the country jammed the highway leading to the glittering, golden-domed shrine of Khomeini, where Khamenei spoke.
Iran and the United States have had no relations since the 1979 revolution, when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters, has repeatedly ruled out talks with Washington, despite calls by some reformist lawmakers that the issue of U.S.-Iran relations be decided in a referendum.
The United States accuses Tehran of seeking nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. President Bush has lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korean in what he says is an "axis of evil" threatening world peace.
"If a dramatic event comes about, which makes the people of Iran feel that they have to come into the arena with their bodies and lives, all the eyes of the world will see that the people's enthusiasm and eagerness will be even greater than in the imposed Iran-Iraq war," Khamenei said, referring to his country's 1980-88 war with neighboring Iraq that left more than 1 million people dead or wounded.
"What the enemy should know is that by using this arrogant rhetoric, they cannot force the Iranian nation to surrender," he said, in an apparent reference to the United States.
-------- iraq
Gephardt Backs Use of Force on Saddam Hussein
June 4, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-politics-gephardt.html
WASHINGTON - House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, a possible presidential contender in 2004, Tuesday endorsed the use of force to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but said President Bush was moving too slowly on homeland security.
In a wide-ranging speech laying out his foreign policy and security priorities, Gephardt said the Bush administration deserved credit for its conduct of the war in Afghanistan and its vow to strike first when necessary to protect the United States.
He promised to work with Bush to find a way to ``terminate the threat'' posed by Saddam, who has been accused by the administration of backing international terrorism and trying to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
``I share the president's resolve to confront this menace head-on,'' Gephardt said. ``We should use diplomatic tools where we can, but military means when we must to eliminate the threat he poses to the region and our own security.''
But Gephardt directly challenged Bush on the issue of domestic security, saying there was a lack of urgency about strengthening U.S. homeland defenses.
``Almost nine months after September 11, America still has not crafted a strategy to significantly strengthen our nation's security, despite a series of warnings from our government,'' he told policy makers at the Council on Foreign Relations and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Gephardt called on Bush to make Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge a Cabinet member, giving him budgetary authority and bringing his office under formal congressional oversight.
The Bush administration has resisted that call and refused to let Ridge formally testify in public on Capitol Hill.
``On the home front, we are moving too slowly to develop a homeland defense plan that is tough enough for the new war,'' Gephardt said, adding that Ridge should give the U.S. Congress a comprehensive strategy.
The speech was Gephardt's second major policy address this year. Three other Democratic presidential possibilities -- Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts -- gave major speeches this year as Democrats try out themes for the 2002 election.
Gephardt urged Bush to reject isolationism and build foreign partnerships, saying Afghanistan was a crucial test.
``It will be shortsighted if we stop now and withhold support for expanding the international security presence beyond Kabul, as interim President Karzai has urgently requested,'' he said.
``Instead, we must take steps to make that nation a prime example of the coalition's unbending commitment to democracy and development.''
Gephardt called for the United States to lead peace efforts in the Middle East, but stopped short of criticizing Bush for waiting too long to become involved. ``The United States must speak frankly -- there is no moral equivalence between suicide bombings and defending against them,'' he said.
The Missouri Democrat said Washington should work with developing nations to create universal education systems, and with Arab governments to force blatant anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric out of textbooks and classes.
He also called for deeper effort to modernize the military, saying he would back more troops in 2003 and push to link new technologies with existing ones to modernize weapons systems.
He endorsed a bipartisan advisory commission to build a consensus for modernizing the armed forces, and backed the creation of military academies to train officers from all services.
In response to a question, Gephardt said the administration had not developed a ``collaborative process'' with Congress and the Pentagon for evaluating weapons systems. The decision to cancel the Crusader howitzer system, now pending in Congress, deserved a ``re-look'' to see if it made sense, he added.
Gephardt, who will decide sometime after the November elections whether to seek the White House, said the United States should stop using the term ``foreign aid.''
``Traditional foreign aid may have worked as a Cold War construct, but our goal now should be what I call American Partnerships'' based on shared values, he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Arafat Presents Palestinian Security Plan to Tenet
June 4, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Responding to growing U.S. pressure to fight terror, Yasser Arafat presented CIA Director George Tenet with a plan Tuesday for restructuring the unwieldy Palestinian security apparatus. Israel called the proposals ``worthless.''
The Palestinian leader appointed a 73-year-old general to head the new security array, but Israel said the proposed changes are largely cosmetic because Arafat, who has done little to rein in militants in the past, remains in charge. Some Palestinians also were skeptical, because the reform would still leave six different security branches.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, gave in to pressure to prevent suicide bombings and approved construction of a fence between part of the West Bank and Israel, defying supporters who fear it would lead to Israel's giving up most of the territory.
Sharon is to travel to Washington to meet Monday with President Bush, their sixth visit. Arafat has yet to be invited to the White House.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is to meet Bush over the weekend. Mubarak will recommend that the U.S. administration set a timetable for creation of a Palestinian state, an aide said Tuesday.
Tenet wound up his mission and was leaving Tuesday after a day of meetings with Palestinian officials. He met with Arafat and then held separate talks with three Palestinian security chiefs -- Jibril Rajoub, Amin al-Hindi and Mohammed Dahlan.
Paul Patin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said U.S. officials would judge the reform efforts by results. ``If there is a cessation of terror, then it's good. If there's not a cessation of terror, it's not good,'' he said.
The plan presented to Tenet calls for cutting the number of Palestinian security services in half. They would include police, border guards, internal security and external security, military intelligence and Arafat's personal guard unit.
Israel was skeptical. ``Reforms that have no substantial change in strategy and policy are ... worthless,'' said Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser. Israel accuses Arafat of doing little to stop attacks or actually encouraging militants.
Israeli media reported that Tenet told Arafat the reform plan was unacceptable. According to Israel TV's Channel 2, Tenet told Arafat he must appoint an interior minister, a post Arafat has held since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994.
Palestinian officials said the new security chief is to be Maj. Gen. Ahmed Razak Yehiyeh, who was the commander of the Palestine Liberation Army before Arafat and his leadership returned to Gaza in 1994 and set up the Palestinian Authority. The PLA operated in Lebanon and other Arab countries as the military wing of Arafat's PLO.
There was no official announcement of the appointment.
Since 1994, Yehiyeh has not had a field command. Instead, he has been in charge of the Palestinian delegation in a joint council with Israel, designed to deal with security problems, a body that has met only rarely in recent years.
Yehiyeh's appointment was seen as a slap in the face to several current commanders, especially Dahlan, the powerful Gaza chief, who was hoping to take overall command. Some Palestinians said Arafat's appointment of the elderly general was a way of maintaining control himself.
Dahlan announced his resignation from the Gaza security post late Tuesday, but said Arafat offered him alternative positions, which he was considering. A senior Palestinian official said Dahlan was offered the role of national security adviser.
Haider Abdel Shafi, a veteran Palestinian opposition figure and anti-corruption crusader, said the appointment ``disturbs me very much.''
``It raises my doubts about the sincerity of doing the necessary reforms,'' he said. ``It seems still the idea of factionalism is there, pleasing one side or another.''
In the West Bank, Israeli troops raided several Palestinian areas in search of suspected Palestinian militants. In one confrontation, a 16-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by soldiers dispersing stone throwers, doctors said.
Near Nablus, Israeli soldiers opened fire at an armored vehicle carrying two photographers from the Reuters news agency. No one was hurt, but the vehicle was slightly damaged. The photographers said the vehicle was clearly marked as a press car. The Israeli military told Reuters it would check the incident, but the vehicle was apparently in a closed military zone.
Sharon reluctantly approved building a fence between part of the West Bank and Israel's narrowest sections, blocking the way from Palestinian towns on the unmarked line and Israeli cities a few miles away.
The cities, including Netanya and Hadera, have been frequent targets of Palestinian bombers, and residents have been pressuring their government to block access.
The main complication is political. Sharon believes Israel must keep much of the West Bank for security reasons, and in his camp are Jewish settlers who oppose territorial concessions to the Palestinians.
Some Israeli doves recommend a unilateral Israeli pullout from most of the West Bank, dismantling many settlements and fortifying a temporary border that would be open to negotiation at a later stage.
The Palestinians want a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in east Jerusalem, demanding a total Israeli withdrawal to the cease-fire lines that ended the 1948 war that followed creation of the state of Israel. Instead, in interim peace accords, the two sides pledged to negotiate their boundaries. Peace talks broke down in January 2001 amid Mideast violence that is still going on.
The fence is to run 68 miles from a point northeast of Tel Aviv to southeast of Haifa, a stretch of country parallel to the Mediterranean Sea. At some points, Israel's narrow coastal strip is only nine miles wide.
-------- pakistan
Can Pakistan Avoid Sliding Into War?
New York Times
June 4, 2002
By MICHAEL KREPON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/opinion/04KREP.html
WASHINGTON - Over the weekend, the likelihood of a war between India and Pakistan receded slightly. Secretary of State Colin Powell has confirmed that orders have been relayed to Pakistani forces manning border posts to stop infiltration by militants across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, as President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan promised on May 27. As a result, Indian leaders are now willing to give American diplomacy more time to turn General Musharraf's pledge into a permanent commitment.
With Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveling to the region in the next few days, the essential elements of a move back from the nuclear precipice are now in plain view. These steps need to be taken quickly, however, because spoilers are now in Kashmir who would like nothing better than to spark a war that destabilizes Pakistan, kills Hindus and disrupts American military operations against the Qaeda network.
General Musharraf's announcement that infiltration has ended clearly implies what is well known but cannot be publicly acknowledged by his government - that the Pakistani Army and intelligence services have long provided logistical and military support for these crossings.
His pledge to end this assistance is an important start, but it is insufficient. Militancy cannot be turned on and off like a spigot to accommodate political pressures. His promise will mean little unless he is willing to close down the training camps and staging areas for militants on the Pakistani side of the Kashmir border. Since operations that originate from these camps could lead to war, nothing short of immediate action by the Pakistani Army to dismantle the camps, with monitoring by the United States and India, will foster stability in the area.
Pakistan's proposal to add international monitors along the Line of Control would not make the 450-mile border harder to infiltrate. Much of this terrain is quite rugged, and most of the crossings by militants happen at night. Before the current deployment of forces to the border, the Indian Army maintained more than six divisions with approximately 70,000 troops along this divide and was still unable to stop infiltration. Nonetheless, even a symbolic increase in international peacekeepers - there are now a few dozen in place - could usefully signal the international community's determination that Pakistan put an end to the incursion into Indian territory.
Even now, it is clear to Pakistani military leaders that another loss on the battlefield - should India retaliate against border crossing with conventional warfare, much less a nuclear strike - would further damage the army's standing, which has fared poorly in previous wars with India.
It is also clear that the Pakistanis would have to fight another war essentially alone because the United States and China are now more strongly opposed than in the past to Pakistan's links to terrorist organizations. Finally, most Kashmiris, on whose behalf this war would ostensibly be waged, want to see an end to terrorist activities that are destroying their already weakened economy.
The reduction of tension in Kashmir also requires positive steps from India. With the verifiable closure of the Pakistani militant camps, India should begin a phased demobilization of troops from the border areas. The last phase would be a reduction of forces on the Line of Control after the state elections in Indian Kashmir this fall. Equally important are a resumption of substantive dialogue over the Kashmir issue and new efforts at nuclear risk reduction. The framework for a structured dialogue has already been agreed to in previous bilateral discussions dating back to the mid-1990's.
This outcome requires that the United States play a sustained, proactive role in South Asia, a role that it has been very reluctant to take on until now. For a start, Washington needs to help India monitor whether Pakistan is fulfilling its pledges. Nuclear security, the successful prosecution of the war against Al Qaeda and regional stability in South Asia all demand demonstrable changes in Pakistan's failed Kashmir policy.
Michael Krepon is founding president of the Henry L. Stimson Center.
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Pakistan Acts to Stop Attacks on India, U.S. Says
June 4, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-southasia-usa.html
WASHINGTON - The United States, addressing an issue at the heart of a standoff between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, said Tuesday Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had taken steps to stop militants entering Indian territory but such infiltrations had not yet stopped.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has entertained the possibility of talks with Musharraf if he stops border crossings by Pakistan-based militants accused by New Delhi of attacking its parliament in December and an army base in May.
Sources among separatists in Pakistan-ruled Kashmir have said that, under instruction from Islamabad, they had virtually halted incursions across the 1948 cease-fire line dividing the territory where they want to end Indian rule.
``We have been watching the situation very carefully. We do have some indications that Pakistani actions go beyond words. But I'd say it's too early for us to say that there's been a cessation of infiltration,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing in Washington.
But he stressed the military standoff remained dangerous as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage prepared to depart for a crisis mission to Pakistan and India on June 6 and 7.
He will be followed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part of a coordinated international effort to avert a war the world fears could go nuclear and kill millions of people.
The United States grew so fearful of a possible escalation in the conflict last week that it ordered its citizens to leave India and gave many of its diplomats an option to come home. It is now reviewing whether to order out all but essential staff.
``I would say at this moment that the situation remains largely unchanged. It continues to be very, very tense in the region,'' Boucher said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the British Broadcasting Corporation on Friday that instructions had been given to stop militants getting into Indian territory.
Boucher declined to say what steps had been taken beyond promises and instructions but, asked if the move was in the positive rather than the negative direction, he said: ``Yes.''that New Delhi had seen an increase in infiltration since Musharraf promised in a January speech that his territory would not be used for terrorism. He did not say whether the increase had continued right up to the present. INDIA CAUTIOUS
Vajpayee also noted a May 27 pledge by Musharraf to stop infiltration but said India treated his promise with caution.
``If we see that action on the ground corresponds to the promises made by President Musharraf, we will naturally take appropriate consequent steps,'' Vajpayee added.
The U.S. strategy is to try to get proof for India that Musharraf has completely stopped infiltration so New Delhi can then start a de-escalation that would presumably include withdrawing troops from the border, where between them the two sides have a million men backed up by tanks and artillery.
The Times of India on Sunday quoted highly placed officials in Vajpayee's office as saying India had received an assurance from Washington that it won a commitment from Musharraf to end permanently infiltration and guerrilla violence in Kashmir.
In an article written from aboard Vajpayee's plane, the newspaper quoted one such official as saying this assurance, along with the first hints of a Pakistani government effort to stop infiltration, could help India stay its hand.
``Certain wireless intercepts of communication between terrorists suggest that there has been an 'order' from Pakistan to stop infiltration,'' the official was quoted as saying.
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GIs in Philippines could see action
June 4, 2002
By Marc Lerner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020604-93389000.htm
CEBU, Philippines - U.S. troops will get closer to the battle front and are likely to extend their stay in the southern Philippines where they are advising local soldiers fighting Muslim terrorists, U.S. and Philippine officials said yesterday.
"There was consensus that training will be intensified and pushed forward to the company level," said a spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after a meeting with the visiting U.S. deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. "This is closer to the action."
More than 1,000 U.S. troops are here on a six-month joint training exercise supporting local soldiers battling the Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamic separatists-turned-kidnappers who are holding hostage two Americans.
The U.S. troops, including 160 Green Berets, have been training large groups of local soldiers. By beginning to accompany smaller groups of Philippine troops into the field, the Americans are more likely to encounter the rebels who have been holding American missionaries Garcia and Martin Burnham for more than a year.
"We are not talking of sending in U.S. troops to do the job of the Philippine armed forces," Mr. Wolfowitz said before meeting the president Sunday night.
Instead, Mr. Wolfowitz said, the United States is interested in "improving the capability of the Filipino armed forces to do the job themselves."
Mr. Wolfowitz said his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, must decide whether to seek an extension of the U.S. presence in the southern Philippines, where many of the country's 4 million Muslims live. Mrs. Arroyo, in a weekend radio address, indicated that an extension might be possible.
While many nationalist groups oppose the U.S. presence, Americans have been welcomed in Basilan, the island province in the Muslim south where the Burnhams are being held hostage.
In the town of Lamitan, residents on Sunday marked the first anniversary of an Abu Sayyaf raid on a local hospital. After five days on the Sulu Sea, the heavily armed kidnapers arrived in the remote area on June 2, 2001, with 17 Filipinos and three Americans, including the Burnhams.
They engaged Philippine troops in a firefight before inexplicably slipping through a military cordon, escaping into the jungle with their hostages and new victims taken from the hospital. One of those hospital workers, Philippines nurse Ediborah Yap, continues to be held along with the Burnhams. An American tourist taken from the diving resort, Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded by the Abu Sayyaf last June.
"We are uneasy with the thought that the Americans who are giving us moral and civic support will be leaving after their stay of six months," the petition said. "We are insecure with the thought that their absence will bring us back to square one. Please, Madame President, prolong the Americans' stay with us."
In addition to the U.S. troops, Washington has provided arms and other equipment to the ragtag armed forces of the Philippines as part of the U.S. war on terrorism. Last week, the State Department offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of any or all of five top Abu Sayyaf leaders.
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CIA digs in to get bigger and nastier
Intelligence: Under pressure over terrorism, the CIA will triple its force of overseas case officers and let them recruit unsavory individuals as spies.
By Tom Bowman,
Baltimore Sun National Staff,
June 4, 2002
http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.cia04jun04.story
WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency, prodded by Congress as part of a renewed effort to penetrate terrorist groups, has relaxed a 7-year-old internal rule to make it easier for its overseas case officers to work with human rights abusers and other undesirables, lawmakers and officials say.
"If you're going to deal with terrorism, the kind of people we seek information from are not at embassy parties. You've got to get down in the dirt with them," said Alabama Republican Sen. Richard C. Shelby, a comment echoed by other lawmakers. "Look at the Mafia. How did the FBI break them up?"
Responding to the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency also plans to vastly expand its clandestine operations to include a threefold increase in case workers, who recruit foreign spies and serve as their liaison officers.
The CIA also is being pressed by Congress to hire more first-generation Americans from the Middle East and other key areas of interest, where their appearance, language and knowledge of local customs will allow them to blend more easily with the population.
In the past, the agency generally shied away from this candidate pool, concerned about lingering overseas loyalties or possible family ties to terrorist groups.
The changes come against a backdrop of heightened congressional scrutiny of the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies. The House and Senate intelligence committees begin joint closed-door hearings today to determine how much those organizations knew of terrorist activity before Sept. 11.
The CIA came under criticism this week after Newsweek magazine reported that the agency was keeping track of two of the hijackers as far back as January 2000, but failed to take the actions necessary to bar them from the United States.
President Bush, meanwhile, visits the eavesdropping National Security Agency at Fort Meade today, the first president to do so since his father in 1991, the White House said.
Under the new agency guideline for dealing with undesirables, a CIA official stationed overseas can decide on the spot to hire a human rights abuser who might have important information about an impending attack or access to a terrorist group, according to an intelligence official, who said the measure will "speed our ability to obtain information in the fight on terrorism."
Previously, CIA case officers were required to notify top CIA officials in Washington before hiring a human rights abuser as an agent, a measure some lawmakers, intelligence analysts and former CIA operatives viewed as cumbersome.
There is still an element of central control under the new guideline. Several days after a human rights abuser is hired, the CIA's deputy director of operations must be notified and has the authority to terminate the relationship with the agent, the official said.
A strong message
Though the change might seem minor, lawmakers view it as sending a strong message through the CIA leadership that field agents need to be more aggressive in fighting terrorism, even if it means dealing with drug dealers, murderers and other human rights abusers.
The 1995 guideline was triggered by activity in Guatemala in the 1990s, when CIA officials failed to inform Congress of paid informants who were torturers, murderers and kidnappers. After the guideline was issued, foreign spies who were considered human rights abusers were thrown off the agency payroll in what officials termed an "asset scrub."
Crafted by then CIA Director John M. Deutch, the guideline was part of his effort to make the agency more accountable to Congress and less susceptible to charges of abuse. Spying, he said, must conform to "American interests and values."
But Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged that the 1995 rule "put the handcuffs" on CIA field officers trying to do their jobs, while the GOP chairman of the House intelligence panel, Rep. Porter J. Goss of Florida, termed it "yesterday's wisdom."
Reached at MIT, where he is a professor, Deutch declined to comment on the change.
Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat, who at the time was among the strongest advocates of a strict accounting of contacts with human rights abusers, disagreed with the concerns of his colleagues. The Deutch rule was not designed to prevent CIA field officers from penetrating terrorist groups, he said.
Dealing with murderers and drug dealers might produce information "not worth the diplomatic embarrassment," said Torricelli.
CIA officials, meanwhile, told lawmakers last fall that they have never turned down a request from a field officer asking to recruit anyone in a terrorist organization.
As for beefing up the agency, the Directorate of Operations, the section that oversees the handling of foreign spies, will increase by about 25 percent over the next five years, said Tom Crispell, an agency spokesman.
Although the exact number of employees in the directorate and the agency itself is classified, the entire CIA work force is estimated at 19,000, said government sources.
Undercover officers
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the number of CIA case officers is expected to triple by 2004 from what it was in the late 1990s. At that time, according to a former case officer, the agency employed about 900 such officials overseas, working out of U.S. embassies or under what the CIA calls "non-official cover," for example, posing as a businessman or a college professor.
Shelby said there will be a "substantial increase" in CIA funding to train and equip the added case officers and pay foreign agents. Though he and others declined to specify the costs, officials said funding is expected to reach at least several hundred million dollars for next year alone.
A $35 billion job
The entire annual intelligence budget - which besides the CIA covers NSA; the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds surveillance satellites; and Pentagon intelligence agencies - is now about $35 billion.
As for hiring practices, lawmakers conceded that there are legitimate security concerns, but the agency must try harder to recruit first-generation Americans from Middle Eastern countries and other troubled regions.
"I think we ought to cast off the attitude we can't look at first-generation Americans," said Graham. "There has been a reticence [by the agency] based on a concern of loyalty."
"We need the first generation," said Goss. "We need to take advantage of the opportunities."
The CIA has been inundated with requests for job applications since the Sept. 11 attacks, about 100,000 through last week, said Crispell, the agency spokesman. During the same period the year before, the CIA rece