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NUCLEAR
Pills for Nuclear Plant Radiation
Feds Stockpile Anti - Radiation Pills
Federal agencies stockpile pills to counter radioactive iodine
Cuban Missile Crisis Declassified
Czechs restart second reactor at Temelin plant
Rumsfeld Ends South Asia Visit With Plea for Talks on Kashmir
Nonnuclear policy to stay as is: Koizumi
Senate Missile Defense Cuts Draw Veto Threat
Navy to Test - Fire Interceptor Rocket
Pentagon Starts Dash for 2004 Missile Shield
Democrats Complain About Missile Test Secrecy
US climbdown over 'dirty bomb' claim
How Bad Would A Dirty Blast Be? Here's What The Experts Say.
Not your average Mohammad's kind of bomb
Terror concerns spark nuke drug sales
Us Buries ABM Treaty, Bush Praises Missile Defense
Bush Hails End of ABM Treaty
Fines for Nuclear Security Lapses
Nuclear Power Risks
Bruce Power damages tube at Ontario nuke in outage
Vt. Nuclear Reactor Sale Approved
Rumsfeld Backs Off al Qaeda Assertion
Questions irk White House
Dirty bomber poses awkward questions for US
A Closer Look
Bush Meets Saudi Foreign Minister on Middle East
President Truman called `Hiroshima' a military base!
MILITARY
World Military Spending on Rise After Sept. 11
Karzai Gets the Nod as Candidate for Afghan Top Post
Face of Rwanda Genocide Now on U.S.-Backed Wanted Posters
Special Report - The Arms Lobby
Anthrax Theory Emerges
US offers India hi-tech surveillance
U.S. Said to Weigh Provisional State for Palestinians
"I made them a stadium in the middle of the camp"
Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda
Pakistan Denies Al Qaeda Link to Kashmir
Pakistan Says It Alerted U.S. Over 'Dirty Bomb' Man
Gulf buildup: U.S. has doubled troops in Kuwait this year
US military personnel killed in terror war
Defusing the hype surrounding 'dirty bomb'
Stink Bomb
POLICE / PRISONERS
Lawyer for suspect in 'dirty bomb' plot calls case weak
Names of terror detainees can stay secret, court rules
Holbrooke won't testify in open court
Now showing on satellite TV: secret American spy photos
F.B.I. Talked of Following Bomb Suspect Before Arrest
Echo of F.B.I. Abuses in Queries on New Role
Support for a New Agency but Concern About the Details
Outdated Systems Balk Terrorism Investigations
U.S. Faulted on Chemical Plants' Security
ENERGY AND OTHER
Shell to use ethanol in California by year-end
Bush advisers split over energy policy
W.T.O. Loophole Allows a Surge in Protectionism
ACTIVISTS
Critic of Corruption in Rural China Is Arrested
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Pills for Nuclear Plant Radiation
New York Times
June 13, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/opinion/13THU2.html
Spurred by memories of Sept. 11, more than a dozen states are beginning to acquire potassium iodide pills to protect people living or working near nuclear plants from potential radiation exposure should a terrorist attack or accident occur. Both those who are apprehensive about a terror attack and those who think, as we do, that the likelihood of a successful attack is small should welcome any effort to stockpile potassium iodide as a sensible precaution. The pills carry little risk except to those with iodine sensitivities, thyroid problems or certain rare conditions. They provide substantial protection against thyroid cancer if taken just before or within a few hours after exposure to radiation.
The pills will not prevent harm from all the radioactive constituents of any plume that might emerge from a stricken plant. They protect only against the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid. But that is no trivial matter. Studies after the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine found that thyroid cancer, especially in young children, was overwhelmingly the worst consequence to public health. Children lucky enough to be given potassium iodide largely escaped harm.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered the pills free to any of the 34 states with people living within 10 miles of nuclear power plants. Thus far 13 have accepted, including New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Westchester County began distributing pills to residents living within 10 miles of the Indian Point nuclear reactors last Saturday. The pills are also available over the counter at some drugstores, and on the Internet. Since prompt administration is critical, it makes sense to have supplies available at home, in schools and workplaces or at dispensing sites that can be reached quickly.
Health authorities stress that no one should start popping pills until officials evaluate a plume and issue instructions. Adults over 40 should take the pills only if the predicted exposure is high enough to destroy their thyroid, which may not happen.
Nuclear advocates fret that making the pills available will exaggerate public fears, while nuclear critics worry that the pills will breed complacency about nuclear risks. Federal and state officials stress that the pills are only a supplement to other measures to mitigate any danger, not a substitute for them. It remains vitally important to ensure the security of nuclear plants and to provide sound evacuation plans.
--------
Feds Stockpile Anti - Radiation Pills
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Pill.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal agencies in Washington ordered 350,000 potassium iodide pills this week from a North Carolina company to protect people from cancer caused by radioactive iodine, which can be released in nuclear explosions.
The agencies are stockpiling the pills ``in case of a nuclear event,'' said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security.
``It's been an ongoing effort,'' Johndroe said, adding that it is not a direct result of the arrest of Jose Padilla, a suspected al-Qaida member who may have been planning a ``dirty bomb'' attack on Washington.
The government orders Monday and Tuesday represent 9 percent of NukePills.com's business this year and were 18 percent higher than the company's total 2000 sales, said owner Troy Jones. Private citizens are buying as well.
``In 2000, who ever heard of potassium iodide?'' Jones said Thursday. Until then, his only clients were survivalists and those who lived near reactors.
After Sept. 11, many people were ordering the pills that protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine, a cancer-causing agent that can be released in huge plumes in atomic explosions.
The orders have nearly overwhelmed Jones' three-person sales team since Monday, when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla's arrest.
However, experts believe a ``dirty bomb'' would release other kinds of radiation. Potassium iodide, which sells for about $1 a pill, would be helpful only if a dirty bomb used radioactive iodine instead of other radioactive substances, and then only for people close to the explosion.
People aren't buying this product because they think they're going to protect themselves from a dirty bomb, Jones said. ``They're buying it because they think something worse is going to happen to this country, (such as) an attack on a nuclear plant or a suitcase (nuclear) bomb.''
Johndroe isn't going that far, but he acknowledged the government is making large buys of potassium iodide.
The purchases were made by agencies including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Food and Drug administration approved over-the-counter sales of potassium iodide in 1982. It recommends that anyone exposed to radioactive iodine take one tablet daily for up to 14 days, and recommends smaller doses for children.
Jones said he was getting about one order per minute online, and most of the new clients were from the Washington area.
The Padilla arrest, Jones said, ``was a wake-up call.''
-------- business
Federal agencies stockpile pills to counter radioactive iodine
By Tom Ramstack
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20020613-20005068.htm
U.S. government agencies in the Washington area ordered 350,000 potassium iodide pills Monday and Tuesday from a company that sells the medicine intended to protect the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine.
The government orders this week represent nearly 9 percent of NukePills.com's sales this year and are 17.5 times more than its total sales in 2000, said Troy Jones, president of the Mooresville, N.C., company.
The sales followed the FBI's announcement on Monday of the arrest of a Chicago man, Abdullah al Muhajir, born Jose Padilla, who is suspected of working with al Qaeda terrorists to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive surrounded by radioactive material that is released when the bomb explodes.
Mr. Jones would not identify the agencies that purchased the potassium iodide pills, citing protection of customer privacy.
"I think that what happened is that these people are privy to information that neither you or I know," Mr. Jones said. "Anytime an unsolicited government agency calls to make a mass purchase of potassium iodide, that's a signal to me something is amiss."
A spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security acknowledged the government is making large purchases of potassium iodide but said that they are part of an "ongoing effort" not directly tied to the arrest of al Muhajir.
"You bet we are, and we have been for some time," said Gordon Johndroe, Homeland Security spokesman.
Most of the purchases were made by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human Services, he said.
The NRC has regularly purchased potassium iodide to give to nuclear power plant workers nationwide. Under a contract in February, the NRC purchased 9 million doses from manufacturer and distributor Anbex Inc., based in Florida Government agencies are stockpiling the medicine "in case it's necessary to be shipped because of some kind of a radiological event," Mr. Johndroe said. He mentioned an attack on a nuclear power plant or a dirty bomb as the likely scenarios.
The Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of potassium iodide in 1982. It recommends that anyone exposed to radioactive iodine take one tablet daily for 10 to 14 days.
Additional doses are optional and harmless for anyone who is not allergic to them.
"This is an incredibly safe drug," said Anbex President Alan Morris.
The thyroid is a gland in the neck that secretes growth hormones. Radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid, where it can cause cell damage leading to cancer. In a nuclear catastrophe, radioactive iodine represents the greatest threat from radioactivity because of its tendency to spread - perhaps hundreds of miles away - in a vaporized form.
"The younger you are, the more susceptible you are to damage," Mr. Morris said.
Doctors administering radiation treatment to cancer patients take it regularly. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in the Soviet Union, 30 million people who might have been exposed to radiation took potassium iodide.
Most sales are over the Internet, although pharmacies are increasingly stocking it.
Mr. Morris said three or four pharmacies in the Washington area sell potassium iodide.
Federal officials acknowledge risk has given urgency to their decision to stockpile the medicine.
"We know that al Qaeda has been attempting to obtain nuclear or radiological material to use it as part of a bomb," Mr. Johndroe said. "We have no information that they have been successful. We are not going to let our guard down."
Until recently, most of NukePills.com's customers consisted of workers at the nation's 65 nuclear power plants and nearby residents.
The closest nuclear power plant to the Washington area is about 40 miles away at Calvert Cliffs, Md., on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Others in the region are at North Anna and Surry, both in Virginia.
Iodine is only one of several radioactive substances that could be released either in a nuclear explosion or by a conventional explosion that spreads radioactive material. The potassium iodide pills would be ineffective against other radioactive substances, such as plutonium, strontium or tritium.
NukePills.com has sold about 4 million pills nationally and internationally this year. About half of them were sold to U.S. government agencies. In 2000, NukePills.com sold 20,000 pills.
The pills are sold in packages of 14 for $9.95. The company, which sells only over the Internet, is running a sale allowing customers to buy 10 packs and get one free.
Anbex's sales of potassium iodide also are up sharply, Mr. Morris said.
"This week has been the biggest week we have had by far," he said. "There seems to be a recognition that radiation weapons by terrorists are a reality."
The biggest markets for the companies are in the District and New York. In the Washington area, typical customers include "defense contractors, federal employees and branches of the federal government," Mr. Jones said. "They won't tell me what they're going to do with it."
The largest one-day sales for the 3-year-old NukePills.com came Monday through yesterday.
"People have been putting it off, but now there's someone who was actually preparing to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States," Mr. Jones said. "That was the wake-up call."
-------- cuba
Cuban Missile Crisis Declassified
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cuban-Missile-Crisis.html
HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba will declassify secret government documents about the Cuban missile crisis during an international conference in October marking the 40th anniversary of the event that put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, who organized a similar conference last year on the Bay of Pigs invasion, provided no details about the documents in announcing the conference on Thursday.
Entitled ``The Crisis of October: A Political Vision 40 Years Later,'' the Oct. 11-12 conference in Cuba is expected to include people from the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Most Russians associated with the 1962 crisis have died, but several of the late President Kennedy's advisers are living, Fernandez said. He said conference organizers are studying the possibility of taking participants to sites related to the crisis in the Havana area.
The Cuban missile crisis ``was the most dramatic episode of the Cold War,'' said Fernandez.
He said the conference's aim is to shed light on events leading up to the crisis, which peaked when the United States learned there were Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba -- an island just 90 miles from the United States.
Following several tense days of negotiations with Washington, Moscow withdrew the weapons without consulting with Havana -- a move that enraged Fidel Castro's government.
-------- europe
Czechs restart second reactor at Temelin plant
REUTERS CZECH REPUBLIC:
August 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17267/story.htm
PRAGUE - Czech generator CEZ said yesterday it had restarted the second reactor at its Temelin nuclear power plant, following a month of repairs on a non-nuclear part of the unit.
The second block was halted early in July, just a month after its initial launch, due to technical problems on the electricity generator.
CEZ said in a statement it will perform tests at the turbine before it is connected to the reactor and the output is raised.
The $3 billion Soviet-designed plant, located near the border of strongly anti-nuclear Austria, sparked a row between the neighbours with Austria threatening to block Czech Republic's entry into the European Union.
The two countries agreed earlier this year on joint monitoring of the station.
Temelin's first reactor ran at 85 percent yesterday morning, supplying 830 megawatt output to the nationwide power grid. It produced 3.2 terrawatthours so far this year.
The full launch of the two reactors should allow CEZ to close some of its ageing coal-burning plants in the northern Czech Republic.
State-controlled CEZ is eastern Europe's largest electricity producer with ambitions to further penetrate western Europe to offset losing share on the liberalised doestic market.
-------- india / pakistan
Rumsfeld Ends South Asia Visit With Plea for Talks on Kashmir
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By THOM SHANKER with CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/13CND-RUMS.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 13 - Completing a shuttle-diplomacy mission across south Asia, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that the leaders of both India and Pakistan were "concerned and determined" to reduce tensions, and he called for a resumption of dialogue between the two nuclear rivals.
"I think that progress is indeed being made," Mr. Rumsfeld said after talks with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan over ways to halt the violent standoff over the disputed region of Kashmir, which just days ago seemed on the verge of becoming a full-scale war.
Assessing talks on Wednesday with senior officials in India and his meetings here today, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the world was witnessing "leadership that is concerned and determined that steps be taken to de-escalate the tension."
But he noted with concern that the militaries of both nations remain on high alert and that miscalculation could destroy recent tentative steps toward accommodation. And he said that increased diplomacy between the two would be necessary to resolve the issue.
"Countries need to talk to each other," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
The growing tensions between India and Pakistan forced the Bush administration to confront what previously had been an unshakable but lingering concern in its pursuit of a global campaign against terror: What should the administration do when two important allies swap accusations of terrorism?
In its antiterrorism effort, the Bush administration has sought help from dozens of longtime military partners and struck alliances with scores of new ones. In some cases, most notably India and Pakistan but also between Armenia and Azerbaijan, these coalition partners have the dead bodies and wounded pride as proof that acts of terrorism may even today push them toward conflict and weaken the American-led effort to combat terror.
The leadership in New Delhi portrays itself as the injured party, and has astutely captured President Bush's own rationale for the American fight against terror when it describes how vicious strikes by militants crossing from Pakistan give India the right to respond, and even attack pre-emptively, to deter future bloodshed on its soil.
At the same time, Pakistan is an American ally literally on the front line of the offensive to capture or kill Al Qaeda fighters. Pakistani bases and airspace were indispensable for carrying out the war in Afghanistan; its troops still press Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, despite the mobilization at the opposite front with India; its law enforcement authorities continue to round up terror suspects throughout the country.
"Terrorism is as much a threat to your government as everyone else's," Mr. Rumsfeld told his Pakistani hosts during informal conversation before one meeting today.
American officials, while stating that there is no hard intelligence to prove that Al Qaeda-linked fighters are operating in Kashmir, nonetheless point out how promoting tension between Pakistan and India could divert forces and ease the plight of their terrorist comrades seeking to regroup along the Pakistani-Afghan border.
Mr. Rumsfeld expressed certainty today that should Pakistan find Al Qaeda fighters within its borders, it "would go and find them."
President Musharraf has pledged to halt the infiltration of militants across the Line of Control from the Pakistani side of Kashmir. India remains skeptical. American officials warn that so many fighters may already be in the region or might have previously crossed the mountains into Indian territory that a full measure of effort from Pakistani troops may be insufficient to prevent more terrorist violence in India.
What remains unknown is whether New Delhi can acknowledge this fact, and whether politically and, equally, whether emotionally India can absorb another terrorist attack, and also understand that President Musharraf may have been wholly incapable of preventing those terrorists from sneaking into India.
If India cannot pause for consideration of these issues should it be victim to another terrorist blow, then the next attack could undo all of the confidence-building steps and good will shown in recent days, American diplomats warn.
Mr. Rumsfeld's visit was a continuation of the shuttle diplomacy carried out by a number of senior Western officials on the South Asian subcontinent in recent weeks.
The goal has been to find specific ways to ease tensions between the nuclear rivals, but the series of visits has also keep Islamabad and New Delhi in conversations with third parties rather than fighting each other ahead of the monsoon season, which begins later this month and makes conventional combat increasingly difficult.
Mr. Rumsfeld also noted that the continued high-alert maintained by the Indian and Pakistani militaries was placing a potentially intolerable stress on both nations, and he said that, too, may prompt New Delhi and Islamabad to step back from the brink.
Concluding a visit carried out under tight security, Mr. Rumsfeld left Islamabad tonight, bound for Washington to brief President Bush on his trip to the region.
-------- japan
Nonnuclear policy to stay as is: Koizumi
The Japan Times:
June 13, 2002
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20020613a6.htm
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated Wednesday that his administration will never change the nation's nonnuclear weapons policy.
"We never said we are going to change our nonnuclear policy (of never possessing, producing or allowing any country to bring into Japan nuclear weapons)," Koizumi said during a session of debates with opposition leaders in the Diet.
"There will be no change whatsoever to this policy that we have kept to date," the prime minister said in answer to a question by Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan.
A remark made by Yasuo Fukuda, chief Cabinet secretary and Koizumi's top aide, during an off-the-record conversation with reporters last month sparked criticism against the government and raised suspicion that Koizumi's administration may be considering an immediate change in the policy.
Fukuda apparently suggested that Japan may claim the right to possess nuclear weapons in the future as the international security environment changes.
Asked to comment on the United States preparing contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons against countries including Iran, Libya and Syria, Koizumi showed his understanding of the policy.
"(I understand) that the U.S. has its own national security policy and keeps all options available," Koizumi said.
This prompted Kazuo Shii, the Japan Communist Party leader, to claim that Tokyo's "attitude of just following in the U.S.'s footsteps was behind Fukuda's thoughtless remark."
-------- missile defense
Senate Missile Defense Cuts Draw Veto Threat
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-congress.html
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Thursday threatened to veto a $393 billion defense authorization bill unless Congress restores some $800 million the Senate Armed Services Committee cut from Bush's missile defense program.
With the Democratic-led Senate set to take up the bill before the July 4th holiday recess, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned he would recommend a veto ``if the missile defense provisions in the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the bill were to be adopted by the Congress.''
The Republican-led House of Representatives last month passed its version of the bill, which lays the groundwork for a military buildup and provides the $7.8 billion Bush wants for next fiscal year to continue efforts to develop a national system to intercept missiles.
In their bill, Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats cut $814 million from Bush's missile defense request.
Complaining about the administration's insistence on secrecy over much of the missile defense program, they also imposed a number of restrictions and reporting requirements that Rumsfeld said ``would undermine our ability to manage the program effectively.''
``We seek a broad array of research, development and testing activities to yield a system as soon as feasible. The committee's actions would hamper that objective,'' Rumsfeld wrote to the Armed Service Committee.
But Democrats are skeptical a high-tech missile interceptor system will work, and argue it is draining resources from immediate military needs.
The committee's senior Republican, John Warner of Virginia, said two-thirds of the Republicans on the committee ``very reluctantly voted against the authorization bill'' because of the cuts in missile defense funding and restrictive language in the bill.
--------
Navy to Test - Fire Interceptor Rocket
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Navy ship in the Pacific was the planned launching pad Thursday night for an interceptor rocket aimed at a dummy warhead in the latest test of one troubled element of the missile defense program.
The exercise was meant to test whether a rocket guided by a warship's radar system can knock down a medium- or long-range missile under controlled conditions. Pentagon officials said the test wasn't meant to be realistic but would help gather data to guide further development of ship-based anti-missile systems.
Ship-based systems are among several defense methods being tested under the Bush administration's drive to create a shield against long-range missiles. President Bush's decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which banned development of such missile defenses, went into effect Thursday.
Pentagon officials say the Navy test would have complied with the ABM treaty because it would not measure whether the ship-based system really could shoot down an intercontinental missile.
That's one of the ship-based system's major shortcomings, said Philip Coyle, a former Defense Department testing chief. Coyle said the interceptor isn't fast enough to hit an intercontinental missile and the ship's Aegis radar system isn't powerful enough to distinguish between a missile and a decoy traveling through space.
``Either way, whether it hits or misses, it's not demonstrating or trying to demonstrate a capability to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles at long ranges,'' said Coyle, who headed the Pentagon's testing office under President Clinton.
The test plan called for an Aries dummy missile to be fired from a test facility in Kauai, Hawaii, and an interceptor rocket to be fired from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific. The Lake Erie's radar system was to track the dummy warhead and guide the interceptor to collide with it more than 100 miles above the ocean.
The interceptor hit the dummy missile in a similar test in January, although the collision was not the main goal of that test.
The interceptor system is largely a legacy of a Navy anti-missile system that was canceled in December because it was running as much as 62 percent over budget. That Navy system had been meant to defend U.S. warships from short- and medium-range missiles -- not to defend U.S. territory from long-range missiles.
One goal of Thursday's exercise was to gather information on whether the interceptor, called an SM-3, could be used to defend Navy ships as well as bring down intercontinental missiles, said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Missile Defense Agency.
In marking the demise of the ABM treaty Thursday, Bush said the United States needs a missile defense to protect against the threat of ``rouge states'' which might fire long-range missiles at America.
Critics say the Bush program is too costly, will take too long to develop and relies too heavily on unproven technology to be effective.
``Everyone recognizes that the United States is a long way from employing an effective and militarily significant missile defense, and they (enemies) have years to react with offensive buildups,'' said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to cut $814 million from Bush's request of $7.8 billion for missile defense development in 2003. Bush has threatened to veto any Pentagon budget that includes those cuts.
--------
Pentagon Starts Dash for 2004 Missile Shield
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-missiles.html
WASHINGTON - The death of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on Thursday cleared the way for digging interceptor silos in Alaska and for futuristic missile tests barred by the pact.
A groundbreaking ceremony was to take place on Saturday at Fort Greely, Alaska -- where President Bush plans a test facility that he hopes could also serve as an emergency defense by September 2004.
As the U.S. exit from the treaty was taking effect at midnight Eastern time, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency planned to shoot down a mock warhead launched from Kauai, Hawaii, using the Navy's Standard Missile-3 interceptor aboard the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis guided missile cruiser.
The sea-based bid to smash a ballistic missile-delivered target would have been legal under the ABM treaty, and the timing of the test was ``sheer coincidence,'' said Chris Taylor, a Missile Defense Agency spokesman.
No coincidence, however, was the start of earth work for silos to house future interceptors at Fort Greely, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Breaking ground for a national missile defense base was barred by the treaty.
The so-called Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Test Bed ''is not intended as a deployment site for an operational system at this time,'' the Defense Department said in a statement Thursday.
Still, such a central Alaska site would be an ``optimum location for an operational system if a decision is made to deploy a GMD interceptor force,'' it said.
White House spokesman Air Fleischer said Thursday Bush was committed to deploying a missile defense ``as soon as possible to protect the American people and our deployed forces from the growing risks of terrorist nations or terrorists possessing weapons of mass destruction.''
FUTURE TESTS
The first of the previously banned flight tests likely would take place in mid-August, said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, another Missile Defense Agency spokesman. It would involve tracking a long-range missile and the interceptor with a sea-based Lockheed Martin Corp. AN/SPY 1 radar, something barred under the treaty, he added.
Article 5 of the treaty -- a cornerstone of U.S.-Soviet nuclear deterrence -- barred not only the deployment but the development and testing of sea-based, air-based, space-based or mobile land-based systems.
Bush is aiming to build a multi-layered missile shield to defend the United States, its troops in the field and U.S. allies against missile attacks by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
Critics say no such system -- including the ground-based midcourse that is furthest along in development -- is likely to be capable of providing a missile defense well beyond the 2004 target for Fort Greely to be up and running as a test bed.
``Missile defense is the most difficult thing the Department of Defense has ever tried to do,'' said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under President Bill Clinton.
``The challenge for the Missile Defense Agency will be to sustain the current pace of testing while adding complexity and realism'' such as decoys, he told a House Government Reform subcommittee on Tuesday. Coyle said ``it is not conceivable'' to meet Bush's goal for having a test bed in place that can double as a stop-gap defense as he winds up his first term in office.
Lisbeth Gronlund of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program said there would be ``little or no basis by 2004 to be confident in the performance of the Fort Greely interceptors under realistic operating conditions.''
Until 2007, the intercept tests are designated as research and development, in other words to guide design modifications but not to assess the system's effectiveness in battle conditions.
Instead of building silos with no testing utility, Gronlund testified Tuesday, the Missile Defense Agency should focus on countermeasures -- steps an attacker could take to confuse, overwhelm or otherwise thwart the defense.
--------
Democrats Complain About Missile Test Secrecy
The New York Times
June 13, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/politics/13MISS.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 - Leading Senate Democrats today accused the Missile Defense Agency of excessive secrecy in reporting on its tests, timetables and cost estimates.
Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, criticized a decision by the Defense Department to restrict information about targets and decoys to be used in antimissile tests.
The director of the agency, Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish of the Air Force, said, "The charge of excessive secrecy is wrong." General Kadish was quoted in an article in The Washington Post today that reported the new limits. He did not respond to a message left at his office today.
Mr. Levin said, "Their instinct seems to be to keep everything close to the vest." He added, "We've seen this not just in the area of defense, but in the area of energy and Enron and just about everything else around here."
The Defense Department expects to start work on Saturday on several missile silos in Alaska, made possible by the administration's decision to scrap the 30-year-old Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Recently, officials have curtailed reports to Congress on cost estimates and timetables on missile research.
Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee that works on strategic weapons, said the Missile Defense Agency was even restricting access for people from other Pentagon departments.
"There's a disturbing trend to not being forthcoming with the Missile Defense Agency," Mr. Reed said. "It seems to be going beyond the concerns about security." General Kadish has defended his agency, saying Pentagon planners and Congressional overseers will have ample time to study results before crucial decisions are made.
-------- terrorism
US climbdown over 'dirty bomb' claim
By Toby Harnden in Washington
13/06/2002
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/06/13/wdirt13.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/06/13/ixport.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=130400
The White House has reprimanded John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, for exaggerating the extent of an alleged "dirty bomb" plot and acknowledged that the threat was minimal.
Amid clear signs of a climbdown by the Bush administration, officials were briefing that Mr Ashcroft's warnings had been unnecessarily alarming, even though some of them had echoed his ominous words earlier.
The leaking of a rebuke to a cabinet minister is highly unusual in America. The arrest of Jose Padilla, an American who calls himself Abdullah al Muhajir, was announced by Mr Ashcroft in Moscow on Monday.
Padilla was transferred into military custody and is being held indefinitely without charge while he is interrogated by the CIA. Some Democrats have questioned the timing of the announcement, suggesting that the administration was seeking to make political capital out of the arrest, which took place at O'Hare Airport, Chicago, on May 8.
"The information was available earlier. Why was it not announced?" asked Tom Daschle, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, who added that there "may have been a rush to bring it before the news media" after recent criticism of the CIA and FBI.
In the past week, the administration has succeeded in shifting the Washington news agenda away from the intelligence failures before September 11. Now it is dominated by warnings of fresh attacks and the need to prosecute the war against terrorism with increased vigour.
There is little doubt that this will help President George W Bush to pursue his plan to create a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. The latest Washington Post-ABC opinion poll showed that he now has a job approval rating of 77 per cent.
The Padilla arrest was immediately used by the administration to bolster its case for the new government department. "Grave threats are accumulating against us and inaction will only bring them closer," said Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Mr Bush said yesterday: "You know, we're under attack. That's just the way it is . . . and we've got two courses of action. One is to run them down wherever they try to hide and bring them to justice. That's precisely what we're going to do."
Aides from the Justice Department were called to their desks in the early hours of Monday to help prepare Mr Ashcroft for the announcement that the authorities had "disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive 'dirty bomb'."
A day later, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, said on CBS television: "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and obviously to plan future deeds."
By yesterday, the administration's position had softened considerably and Padilla was being described as a "scout" on a reconnaissance mission rather than a would-be bomber, and was considering many types of attacks, and not only the use of a dirty bomb.
Mr Ashcroft was the scapegoat yesterday, but his announcement was part of an aggressive news management strategy that was recently put into action.
Frustrated that the press was almost obsessively investigating intelligence failures before September 11 and afraid that Mr Bush's popularity could be affected, the White House decided to seize the initiative a week ago.
Mr Bush, the press was told, had decided to call for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as part of the biggest government reorganisation since the start of the Cold War.
----
How Bad Would A Dirty Blast Be? Here's What The Experts Say.
By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 13, 2002; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41297-2002Jun12?language=printer
Another day, another "credible" terrorist threat. The disaster scenario du jour is now the so-called dirty bomb, so called because this is a conventional bomb that plays dirty. Experts say a dirty bomb could range in size from a small "suitcase" device to a truck bomb, and maybe larger. Its explosive may be as ordinary as dynamite, but it's packaged with radioactive material that, detonated, is scattered in fragments and airborne dust -- or "dirt." Hence the name.
You have probably heard public officials and terrorist experts say a dirty bomb's real threat is psychological. And that it is a weapon of terror, fear, panic and disruption rather than one of mass destruction. But what else does the public need to know about dirty bombs? How bad are they, really? Here's the dirt:
What could happen if a dirty bomb went off in downtown Washington?
Experts envision scenarios that could be on the scale of Timothy McVeigh's 1995 truck bombing in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people -- with the added dimension of radiation contamination. But it could be much less if it involved a small device, such as one set off by a backpack bomber.
"But even a big one would do much less damage than Hurricane Andrew did in Florida," says Randy Larsen, director of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, a nonprofit research organization in Alexandria.
Almost all deaths and serious injuries would be confined to the immediate vicinity of the explosion. The downtown area would shake from the blast. Anyone nearby would know a bomb had exploded but would have no clue it was a dirty bomb -- you can't smell, taste, feel or see radiation -- until authorities announce they have detected it.
How widespread the damage?
In March, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies simulated what would happen if terrorists detonated a 4,000-pound dirty bomb in a school bus parked outside the National Air and Space Museum. In the simulation, the museum ended up almost destroyed and nearby buildings damaged. An estimated 10,000 people were in the immediate vicinity; how many would have died isn't known, but the acute threat was confined to a radius of a few city blocks.
Although in the simulation, prevailing winds carried contamination into southern Pennsylvania, the amounts were very small because radiation dissipates quickly.
The highest contamination would occur in the blocks surrounding the blast -- or about 10 percent of the District, says Philip Anderson, senior fellow for homeland security initiatives at CSIS, who specializes in anti-terrorism strategies. People there would get about a 5-rem-per-hour dose of radiation. That's the amount the Environmental Protection Agency says is the maximum safe dose to absorb in one year, a standard that is considered very cautious; even absorbed in hours, the amount is not likely to make you sick.
Another 10 percent of the District -- people a half-mile to a mile from the blast -- would be in contaminated areas, but not seriously contaminated. The dose would be so small, says Anderson, that it would probably take days or weeks to exceed the EPA maximum yearly safe dose. "The key point," he says, "is that nobody is going to become sick or die from radiation."
John Zielinski, professor of military strategy and operations at the National War College in Washington, estimates that, generally, someone a mile from the blast is likely to walk away unscathed. And "you could be within a couple hundred yards of it, and if you are upwind, you might not have a problem at all," he says. "If they set it off in a street and you are one block over and behind a building, there might be no risk."
What casualties?
Beyond those inflicted by the blast itself, the number of deaths and injuries is likely to be minimal -- depending on the radioactive material used, the size of the explosive, wind conditions and the effectiveness of the evacuation response.
Most experts play down any probability of radiation-related deaths. "Threat to life? Not worried about it other than the explosive device itself," says Larsen. "The main thing is, people should not lose much sleep over this.
"Just imagine if Timothy McVeigh had put five pounds of radioactive material and blew that up in Oklahoma. . . . No more people would have probably died than did."
Long-term effects of radiation exposure? Most experts say that except for people in the immediate area of the blast who survive, the odds are against anyone absorbing enough radiation to suffer long-term effects, such as radiation poisoning or cancer.
And the history of radiation exposure is on our side. In a nuclear disaster second only to Chernobyl that occurred in Brazil in 1987, junkyard workers pried open a metal canister from a cancer clinic. Inside was glowing blue radioactive cesium-137 dust. By the next day, dozens of locals had been exposed. "Several ingested it," says Anderson.
Of the 20 seriously exposed victims, "four died. But 100,000 plus people had to be medically evaluated. Most of those -- 47,000 people -- had to take a shower and be monitored down the road."
Although the devastation was unimaginable and an estimated 200,000 people died from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- from the explosion and radiation poisoning in the first year -- the long-term health-related problems for survivors hasn't been as horrific. Charles B. Meinhold, president emeritus of the National Council on Radiation Protection, a nonprofit international clearinghouse for research on radiation safety, says studies of those survivors since 1950 show that of 86,572 people exposed to levels of radiation thousands of times greater than a dirty bomb could produce, cancer deaths exceeded the expected numbers for that population by 335.
What should I do if I'm in the vicinity of the explosion?
The basic rule is to stay inside or get inside, then listen to the radio or television for further information.
The amount of radioactive dust that could seep inside or enter a building through its air-filtering system isn't likely to be significant. "If you are inside of a building, your chances are like getting several X-rays' worth of exposure," Zielinski says.
If you're outside, determine whether the wind is coming your way. "You don't want to be running down the street," Zelinski says. "Get into a building and reduce the amount of dust that gets on you."
Close to the explosion? Covered with residue? Stay put. "If the response is good, they are going to try to decontaminate folks closer in as opposed to those fleeing," says Zielinski. "Even if it takes an hour for authorities to respond, you are going to get better treatment there than going to a hospital."
Worst reaction? Racing for mass transit or trying to drive home. Not only could you contaminate your car, but you could also spread radiation to your family. And experts are concerned that people trying to flee the city would jam traffic routes and delay emergency teams from getting to the scene.
Experts say what the public needs to remember most about dirty bombs is that if you survive the explosion, the amounts of radiation are most likely so low that a few hours of exposure isn't going to be harmful.
"The public health people would be there within three hours or sooner," says Meinhold. "Let them worry about evacuation, decontamination, etc."
How about washing?
"Most or a large portion of the decontamination effort is going to involve a soapy shower and a change of clothes," says the CSIS's Anderson, who recommends that if you think you are near a potential terrorist target, it may make sense to keep extra clothes, shoes, soap and shampoo on hand.
Says Zielinski: "The first thing [is] to try to get as much off as you can, get the clothes off of you and put them in a trash bag. Then take a shower."
Can you drink the water?
There may be some contamination of water and food in some areas. "You can drink it, but there are definite issues there," warns Anderson, explaining that although a good rain would help clear contamination, the runoff might affect the groundwater supply.
Bottled water might be the safe way to go until authorities have tested drinking water, he says.
Would a gas mask help any?
Gas masks, experts say, may help in protecting against "particulate matter," since radiation attaches to particles in the air. But when you get much beyond the area of the blast, the dust is going to dissipate quickly anyway. "I'm not not sure it would make a difference," says Anderson.
Should we stock up on potassium iodide?
Again, the solution and the problem may not match well in a dirty-bomb attack, experts say. Potassium iodide protects the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive isotope of iodine -- a component of radioactive fallout that causes radiation sickness.
"I'm not sure we're going to get to the point where we will have many people, if any, suffering from radiation sickness," says Anderson.
How likely is an attack?
Many experts believe that terrorists already have the crude radioactive materials needed and that a dirty bomb attack is one of the more likely terrorist scenarios -- some even say "inevitable." But Anderson cautions that "it's a simple plan that is still reasonably difficult and complicated to coordinate."
But the biggest problem in making a dirty bomb is that even if you find all the parts, assembling them can kill you. True, some terrorists are already suicidal. Still, "first you've got to find it, then you've got to carry it around," says Zielinski. "By the time I get it, move it to a site that is secure and grind it, I've probably already lost several people."
To make and transport a dirty bomb safely would require a lead container or shielding that makes it nearly impossible to move. Handling the material can cause burns on the hands and body, even through a backpack. And making a bomb without a shield means almost certain death from the concentrated radiation levels of a radioactive rod or "clump."
What do we have to fear?
Experts say the answer is fear itself. Dirty bombs can be as devastating as any conventional bomb. People will die in a dirty-bomb attack. But they believe very few people will die or get sick from its radiation. And the radiation is the terrorist wild card for causing panic and psychological trauma.
Experts are concerned that public panic is the biggest risk. "It stems from our society's inherent fear of radiation," says Anderson, explaining that he's not discounting the tremendous social and economic implications of a contaminated area in an urban center.
The blast area, he says, could be off-limits for several months during intense cleanup efforts, and that could disrupt the local economy.
Still, "a lot of this stuff, you just take a big fire hose out and you wash it down," says Larsen. "It's a heavy metal, so it goes to the bottom of the river. It shouldn't be too much problem. So then we have low levels of radiation. That's not as bad as smoking cigarettes. I'd rather be a half-mile from a dirty bomb site than smoke cigarettes."
----
Not your average Mohammad's kind of bomb
Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
June 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020613-93683924.htm
With all the current concern about "dirty bombs," there are a few things, based on simple calculations, that should be kept in mind.
First, it's the explosion that kills, not the radioactivity. Although prolonged exposure can make you sick, you may not want to stick around long enough for that to happen.
Second, assembling the radioactive material is almost sure to kill any terrorist. After all, a square mile of contamination needs to be compressed into less than a few cubic feet. That's a several-million-fold concentration. The stuff would get so hot, it would melt most containers.
There are ways to get around such technical difficulties, but they are not easy. Then again, terrorists can spread radioactivity more slowly - without using a bomb to disperse it - and achieve almost the same psychological effects.
S. FRED SINGER President The Science & Environmental Policy Project Arlington, Va.
----
Terror concerns spark nuke drug sales
June 13, 2002
Jim Hu, Staff Writer,
News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1023-935471.html
Some Web retailers are discovering that fear sells.
A smattering of small businesses selling potassium iodide--an FDA-approved drug that mitigates potential effects from radiation exposure--have witnessed sales of the drug skyrocket over the past few days. Individuals and government agencies flocked to the Internet to purchase mass quantities of pills on the news that the U.S. government had thwarted a terrorist plot to detonate a "dirty bomb," an explosive that spreads radioactive material.
"Since Monday, when this dirty-bomb scare came about, (sales) increased almost a thousandfold," said Troy Jones, founder of NukePills.com, based in Mooresville, N.C. "Heaven forbid if there's ever a real radiation disaster in this country, because one can only imagine a huge reaction to this product."
With the spotlight on terrorism and the U.S. Department of Justice's recent detainment of a suspected Al Qaeda operative who allegedly planned to detonate a dirty bomb in a major city, a cottage industry has formed around the morbid idea of protection against a radioactive blast.Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, questions about the security of the nation's nuclear power plants also caused a brief surge in sales of drugs and equipment to protect against radiation.
Potassium iodide is administered in the form of a pill. The properties of the drug prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine, which can cause many forms of cancer, into the thyroid gland. If a nuclear plant were to melt down or if a nuclear device were detonated, radioactive iodine has a long enough lifespan to spread hundreds of miles in certain weather conditions.
Still, even though the drug helps protect against one form of radiation, it by no means covers the wider spectrum of damage that arises from a nuclear blast. Potassium iodide will not protect people from the immediate dangers of gamma radiation, for instance.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January 2001 required states to consider issuing potassium iodide as a supplement to standard sheltering and evacuation procedures for people within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant. To date, only 14 states out of the 34 states home to nuclear power plants have responded, California being the most recent one.
Still, NukePills' Jones and other purveyors of the drug have seen online sales mushroom in conjunction with breaking news about potential terrorism attacks. Jones said that its online orders were coming in once every 20 seconds for 20 hours a day since the news of the dirty-bomb plot surfaced Monday.
Many other small businesses specializing in post-radiological attack products have seen their sales surge online as well.
Last spring, Shane Connor, who operates KI4U.com, rented 12 tractor trailers and hauled away 120,000 Geiger counters that had been shelved in a federal depot in Ft. Worth, Texas. Geiger counters measure the amount of radiation in the air.
Conner hired a few former technicians from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to recalibrate and recertify the counters. Since Sept. 11, the bet has been paying off; online sales of the counters, among other products on Conner's Web site, have taken off.
"I'm thrilled we're selling as much we're selling, but I've got kids too," Conner said. "We hope it sits on their shelf gathering much dust over the years."
Even fallout shelters, which seem like relics from the Cold War, are making a comeback. Two TigersRadiological of Wilmington, N.C., which uses "Tools for Nuclear Emergencies" as its tagline, has seen sales of its $3,200 fallout shelters reach five to seven units a week, an exponential rise from pre-Sept. 11 levels.
Steven Aukstakalnis, founder of the company, said recent fears of a dirty-bomb attack caused a spike not only in sales, but also in traffic to the general information pages throughout his site. Aukstakalnis has turned the site into a full-fledged information hub to answer any questions surrounding a nuclear or radiological attack. The home page features the color-coded chart of the homeland Advisory Security System, domestic terror alerts, and an information database about radiation and nuclear attacks.
The site even has a question-and-answer section about what to do during a nuclear attack or meltdown. Some questions include, "What are the Nuclear Blast and Thermal Pulse Effects?" and "So, how much blast or overpressure is too much to survive?" Answers are accompanied with diagrams.
For entrepreneurs such as Aukstakalnis, current events are bittersweet. On the one hand, business has never been better; but on the other hand, the idea of selling products meant to protect against the unthinkable has been an odd paradox.
"It's great on a personal level to have something successful, but on the other side I hope to hell no one has to use the products that they're buying," he said. "It's an odd state of mind to be in."
-------- treaties
Us Buries ABM Treaty, Bush Praises Missile Defense
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-abm.html
WASHINGTON - The United States formally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on Thursday and President Bush called for an aggressive push to build missile defenses against ``terrorists'' and ``rogue'' states who could work together to try to destroy U.S. civilization.
The 1972 treaty served as a bedrock of U.S.-Soviet nuclear deterrence by essentially barring either side from building missile defenses, leaving each vulnerable to the other's arsenal and therefore with little incentive to attack because of the likely massive retaliation.
Bush on Dec. 13 announced his decision to pull out of the treaty in six months, having derided it as a Cold War relic and warned of new threats from what he has called rogue states or terrorists that might attack the United States.
In a sign of Bush's determination to push ahead with a missile defense system, the Pentagon is set to break ground this week at Fort Greely, Alaska, on the previously prohibited construction of six underground silos for missile interceptors.
``As the events of Sept. 11 made clear, we no longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed,'' Bush said in a written statement marking the formal U.S. withdrawal from the 30-year-old treaty.
``We now face new threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilization by any means available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles,'' he added. ``Defending the American people against these threats is my highest priority as commander in chief.''
The term ``rogue states'' dates to the Clinton administration and is used to denote countries viewed by the United States as a threat, generally including Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- the three nations that Bush has called an ``axis of evil.''
The U.S. president's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty was initially opposed by Russia, China and European nations who argued it could undermine nuclear deterrence and spur an arms race, but criticism has since died down.
Bush made clear he would aggressively pursue a defense system against enemy missiles despite questions about how long it would take to develop one, how effective such a system would actually be and how many billions of dollars it would cost.
``With the treaty now behind us, our task is to develop and deploy effective defenses against limited missile attacks,'' he said. ``I am committed to deploying a missile defense system as soon as possible to protect the American people and our deployed forces against the growing missile threats we face.''
The president also called on Congress to fully fund his $7.8 billion budget request for missile defense for the U.S. fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1, 2002.
TREATY SIGNED BY NIXON AND BREZHNEV
In burying the ABM Treaty, Bush noted the dramatic progress that the United States and Russia have made since the Soviet Union's collapse, including an agreement struck last month to slash their deployed strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 each over 10 years from the current level of 5,000 to 6,000 each.
The ABM treaty was signed in Moscow by President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on May 26, 1972, and entered into force the following October. It barred the nations from putting in place systems capable of defending their entire territories from intercontinental ballistic missile attacks.
It also banned development, testing or deployment of mobile land-based, sea-based, air-based or space-based antiballistic missile systems.
Buoyed by four successful missile tests in a row, senior Pentagon officials have said they are on schedule to deploy a rudimentary missile shield in Alaska by the fall of 2004.
A small group of U.S. House of Representatives Democrats made a last-minute stab at preserving the ABM pact, filing a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging Bush failed to consult Congress before ordering a unilateral withdrawal from the treaty.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the lawsuit was ''highly likely heading toward dismissal,'' saying the president had the right to end treaties as long as their termination was in accordance with the treaty's provisions.
--------
Bush Hails End of ABM Treaty
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-ABM-Treaty.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush hailed the demise of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on Thursday, and urged Congress to develop defense systems to guard against strikes by terrorists now that the ban is lifted.
``As the events of Sept. 11 made clear, we no longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed,'' Bush said in a statement, choosing not to publicize the treaty's death with a public appearance.
He took the low-key approach out of sensitivity to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reluctantly went along with Bush's push to scrap the ABM treaty. Bush gave notice six months ago that the United States would withdraw. The decision took effect Thursday.
Critics say Bush's missile defense goals are unreliable and expensive.
Treaty supporters included much of the international community, many U.S. lawmakers and arms control advocates. Until recently, NATO foreign ministers had routinely described the treaty as the ``cornerstone of strategic stability,'' and many Europeans still support it.
``We now face new threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilization by any means available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles,'' the president said in a four-paragraph statement.
Pentagon officials will mark the passing of the treaty at a ceremony Saturday in Delta Junction, Alaska, breaking ground on a test site for the administration's $64 billion missile defense system.
The treaty had banned such construction.
Urging Congress to approve his missile defense budget, the president said, ``I am committed to deploying a missile defense system as soon as possible to protect the American people and our deployed forces against the growing missile threats we face.''
Putin and Bush agreed last month to cooperate on missile defense, including expanding military exercises, sharing early-warning data and exploring potential joint research and development of missile defense technologies.
------- u.s. nuc facilities
Fines for Nuclear Security Lapses
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Fines.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Security lapses involving radioactive materials have led to scores of enforcement actions against universities, construction companies, hospitals and even the U.S. Army in recent years, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records.
In at least 16 cases violators were fined thousands of dollars.
But NRC officials said that the breaches either did not lead to a loss of radioactive material, or involved amounts so small they could not have been useful to terrorists seeking to craft a ``dirty bomb.''
NRC officials acknowledge they cannot say for certain that no radioactive material has been diverted. Tracking of most of these industrial-use materials is left largely to private industry. With 2 million radioactive sources in commerce, there is no certainty all of it can be accounted for, the officials say.
``The reality is it's a very large volume of material that's out in the community and I can't give you any assurance that (some) material might not have been diverted by now,'' said Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in an interview Wednesday.
Meserve said he was reasonably certain that no large radiation sources -- such as the foot-long ``pencils'' of cobalt-60 used to irradiate food, or larger amounts of cesium-137 used in medicine -- have been stolen. None has been reported missing, although the NRC gets on average 300 reports of small amounts of radioactive materials -- usually material in gauges or other equipment -- missing each year. About half eventually is recovered.
As for the larger sources, the materials are highly radioactive and must be heavily shielded. ``It is a very difficult (material) for a terrorist to handle without receiving a lethal dose himself,'' said Meserve. Nevertheless, he said, transporters and users of these materials have been told to boost security.
NRC enforcement records show more than 54 cases requiring ``elevated enforcement actions'' over the last five years because of security violations involving industrial nuclear materials. Violators facing fines from $2,500 to $15,000 included government agencies, universities, hospitals, military facilities and construction and engineering companies.
Three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a New Jersey dentistry school was fined $3,000 for ``failure to ... maintain constant surveillance'' on its nuclear material. Three months later the University of Wisconsin-Madison was fined $3,000 for not securing radioactive material.
The Army was fined $8,000 for not properly securing nuclear materials at its Rock Island Arsenal. In 1997, an employee at the Defense Logistics Agency in Pennsylvania was found to have stolen an item containing radioactive material; in 1999, the Interior Department was cited by the NRC for security lapses. Neither of those cases involved fines.
Construction and engineering firms in a number of states were cited for not keeping track of moisture gauges that contain small amounts of cesium-137. Last November alone, three companies were fined $3,000 each for not properly securing portable moisture gauges.
John Hickey, of the NRC office dealing with industrial nuclear materials, said the enforcement actions -- as well as virtually all the missing material reports -- involved extremely small amounts of material.
For example, according to the NRC, between 1996 and 2001 a total of 11.3 curies of cesium-137 was reported missing. Most -- perhaps all -- of that material reflects thefts of gauges used in construction and medicine, each of which would contain a small fraction of a curie of cesium.
While the NRC must license all users of these materials, it does not keep track of the radioactive material, relying largely on self-regulation. Hickey said users are required to inventory the material every six months and report if anything is missing.
MDS Nordion, a supplier of medical isotopes that ships radioactive material to 80 countries, says it keeps constant check on where its material is located across the globe. Referring to its shipments of cobalt-60, company spokeswoman Paula Burchat said, ``We know where every `pencil' is. We recycle the cobalt and it comes back to us.
``We have very tight security.''
--------
Nuclear Power Risks
New York Times
June 13, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/opinion/L13NUKE.html
To the Editor:
Re "A Message in an Arrest" (news analysis, front page, June 11):
You say a "dirty" bomb - a bomb that uses conventional explosives to spew potentially lethal radioactive material - could contaminate "a wide area" and while probably not causing many deaths, would necessitate cleanup costs and other effects like those after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Given this scenario, I find it inexplicable that our government allows nuclear reactors to operate.
Millions of dollars and years have been spent to deny the consequences and risks of reactor accidents. Does our government believe that a terrorist act is the only possible cause of reactor accidents?
LORNA SALZMAN
East Quogue, N.Y.,
June 11, 2002
-------- new york
Bruce Power damages tube at Ontario nuke in outage
REUTERS USA:
June 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16406/story.htm
NEW YORK - Bruce Power damaged a pressure tube in the 860 megawatt Bruce 6 nuclear unit in Ontario during a maintenance outage, the Canadian nuclear power company said in a statement yesterday.
The company said the incident does not pose any safety threat.
The pressure tube, which normally holds fuel, was empty when the damage occurred at about 9:45 p.m. EDT Tuesday night.
"It's too soon to say whether this incident will delay the unit's restart," said Bruce Power spokesman Steve Cannon.
He would not say when the unit was expected to return to service because of the competitive nature of the wholesale power market. It shut in March.
The company did note in the statement that "the operational impact is not believed to be significant."
Bruce power issued the statement in accordance with its Safety First culture. They classified this incident as a reportable event and notified the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Emergency Measures Ontario in keeping with regulatory requirements.
The plant condition is stable and crews are working to rectify the situation, which has had no effect on the remaining three units in Bruce B.
Bruce is an eight unit, 6,140 MW station divided into two groups of reactors - Bruce A and Bruce B.
The four 860 MW Bruce B units 5 through 8 entered service between 1985 and 1987.
The four 825 MW Bruce A units 1 through 4 began operating between 1977 and 1979, and were removed from service between 1995 and 1998. Bruce Power plans to restart units 3 and 4 by 2003.
The Bruce station is located on the shores of Lake Huron between Kincardine and Saugeen Shores, about 250 kilometers (165 miles) northwest of Toronto.
The station is owned by Bruce Power, a unit of British Energy plc , the UK's largest electricity generator; Cameco Corp. (15 pct), the largest uranium fuel supplier in the world; and the two main unions that represent employees on the Bruce site, the Power Workers' Union (up to 4%) and The Society of Energy Professionals (up to 1.2%).
-------- south carolina
S.C. Loses Plutonium Shipment Ruling
By JACOB JORDAN
Associated Press Writer
JUNE 13, 2002 17:37 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=NATIONAL&SLUG=PLUTONIUM%2dSTANDOFF http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
AIKEN, S.C. (AP) - A federal judge on Thursday denied Gov. Jim Hodges' request to block shipments of weapons-grade plutonium, which could begin arriving in South Carolina as early as this weekend.
Hodges has threatened to use state troopers to block roads into South Carolina's Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, and said he would lie down in the road if necessary to stop the plutonium-carrying trucks.
Hodges' attorney William Want said the governor would appeal immediately.
The U.S. Department of Energy has said it intends to begin shipping the plutonium as early as Saturday from its Rocky Flats weapons installation in Colorado to the Savannah River Site, where the material would be converted into nuclear reactor fuel over the next two decades.
Hodges sued to stop the shipments, fearing the government would fail to find the money to convert the plutonium and end up leaving it in South Carolina. He warned that the plutonium would ``paint a bull's-eye on South Carolina'' and make it a terrorist target.
The state argued Thursday that the Energy Department failed to complete environmental impact statements, a process that can take years, and backed out of signing a binding agreement that the plutonium would be stored in the state only temporarily.
``We don't know the most basic thing about what they're planning to do,'' Watt told U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie.
However, the judge ruled that the state had not provided enough proof of any violations to stop the plutonium from being shipped.
An Energy Department spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.
The government plans to ship about 6 1/2 tons of plutonium from Colorado to the South Carolina site.
The plutonium had been set to begin arriving May 15, but the shipment was postponed after Hodges sued the Energy Department on May 1.
The Energy Department argued that Hodges' attempts to block the shipments were unconstitutional and were preventing the federal government from cleaning up and closing Rocky Flats.
Energy Department lawyer Robert Daly told the judge there was no harm in shipping the material to Savannah River then deciding later how to dispose of it.
``It doesn't matter if there's a clear exit strategy for 10 years,'' Daly said.
An Energy Department employee from Rocky Flats told the judge that 600 cans of the material were ready for transport. And Allen Gunter, an employee at the Savannah River Site, said that two facilities are under construction to handle the fuel conversion, one to be operational by May 2003, and the second to running six months later.
Hodges, a Democrat up for re-election, has long accused President Bush of trying to remove the plutonium from Colorado to help get Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., re-elected and restore GOP control of the Senate.
Hodges also argued that transporting the plutonium 1,500 miles from Colorado to South Carolina is too risky. Federal officials said the nuclear material would be under constant guard, and its path and time of arrival would be kept secret.
On the Net:
http://www.em.doe.gov/rtc2000/srs.html
-------- vermont
Vt. Nuclear Reactor Sale Approved
June 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Vermont-Yankee-Entergy.html or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46551-2002Jun13?language=printer
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- The owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant won state regulatory approval Thursday to sell the reactor to Mississippi-based Entergy Nuclear Corp.
The decision, which could be appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court, was the deal's last major regulatory hurdle. It has already been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The plant's current owners and Entergy announced their intended deal last Aug. 15, a multifaceted agreement calling for Entergy to pay $180 million in cash for the plant and for Vermont's two major utilities to buy the plant's power for the next 10 years.
But the board placed tough conditions on the sale -- conditions that the Vermont utilities and Entergy said during hearings might cause them to back out of the deal.
The board said any money left in the plant's decommissioning fund after Vermont Yankee eventually is dismantled would be returned to electric consumers. Entergy initially had planned to keep any excess in the fund, which currently stands at about $300 million, and later agreed that it might split it with Vermont Yankee's current owners.
The board also turned aside the utilities' request for a guarantee that it never would revisit the terms of the power buyback agreement with Entergy. The utilities insisted they did not want a repeat of their ill-fated 1991 deal to import power from Hydro-Quebec -- a deal the board later said was too expensive and couldn't be fully charged to ratepayers.
The Entergy deal resulted from an auction launched by Vermont Yankee's owners after an earlier deal with AmerGen Energy Co. of Philadelphia failed to win PSB approval.
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld Backs Off al Qaeda Assertion
June 13, 2002
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/28/world/printable510280.shtml
NEW DELHI, India, Completing a peace mission to India and Pakistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday praised both for trying to ease tensions but cautioned that their forces facing each other across the border are "beginning to feel the stress of high alert."
Rumsfeld said the United States had no evidence that al Qaeda militants were operating in Kashmir, but said he was confident Pakistan would deal with them if any were found.
Rumsfeld had raised the possibility over al Qaeda at a news conference in India on Wednesday, but said in Pakistan on Thursday he had only heard "speculative" reports rather than hard evidence. Pakistan has already dismissed the allegation as Indian propaganda.
"The facts are I do not have evidence and the United States does not have evidence of al Qaeda in Kashmir," he told a news conference after meeting Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. "We do have a good deal of scraps of intelligence that come in from people who say they believe al Qaeda are in Kashmir, or are in various locations," he said. "It tends to be speculative, it is not actionable, it is not verifiable. The cooperation between the United States and Pakistan is so close, and so intimate and so cooperative, that...if there happened to be any actionable intelligence as to al Qaeda anywhere in the country, there isn't a doubt in my mind Pakistan would go find them and deal with them."
Some of the Pakistani militants in Kashmir do have long-standing ties to al Qaeda, and some trained in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. A few non-Pakistani al Qaeda supporters are believed to have sought refuge in Kashmir, U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Rumsfeld, in a joint appearance with Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, urged the two countries to begin a dialogue on ways to reduce military forces along the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani sectors of Kashmir.
For his part, Sattar said Pakistan appreciates the role the United States has played in trying to defuse the crisis over Kashmir. But he suggested Washington could do more.
Rumsfeld was asked whether either Pakistan or India is ready to make major reductions in forces in Kashmir. He responded that the high level of alert both the nuclear-armed nations have maintained for months is taking a toll. "My impression is we're at a point where, instead of having the tensions go up, we're beginning to feel the stress of high alert," he said. "And one would hope that those stresses would result over time in a ... somewhat reduced alert status."
Rumsfeld has frequently expressed confidence in Musharraf's commitment to rooting out all remnants of al Qaeda in Pakistan. The defense secretary alluded to this as he mingled with Musharraf aides before meeting the president in his offices.
For months, U.S. and allied forces hunted for remnants of al Qaeda in Afghanistan but found almost none, leading many to conclude most had fled to Pakistan or elsewhere.
Rumsfeld met Wednesday in New Delhi with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other senior government officials, including Defense Minister George Fernandes, who told reporters that he and Rumsfeld had reached an "understanding on how to deal with some of the immediate problems" between his country and Pakistan. Fernandes did not elaborate, nor did Rumsfeld give details.
In New Delhi, Rumsfeld said al Qaeda terrorists may be operating in the Kashmir region dividing India and Pakistan.
"I have seen indications that there, in fact, are al Qaeda in the areas we're talking about, near the Line of Control" that separates the Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir, Rumsfeld told a news conference.
For some time, Indian officials have claimed that al Qaeda members have infiltrated Kashmir, in part because that would draw a parallel to the U.S. war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. An Indian official said this week there is evidence of one dozen to two dozen al Qaeda fighters in the Indian part of Kashmir.
Attacks on India by Muslim militants who want Kashmir to be independent, or part of Pakistan, are a main source of tensions between the two countries.
----
Questions irk White House
By Dave Boyer and Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020613-951837.htm
The White House yesterday angrily denied suggestions that the administration revealed the capture of a "dirty bomb" suspect to deflect criticism of federal law enforcement.
"These very few people who want to make such outlandish political accusations represent the most cynical among the most partisan, and they're not to be taken seriously," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
But Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said the announcement on Monday by Attorney General John Ashcroft was crucial in reassuring the public that the FBI and CIA are cooperating in the war against terrorism.
"It was very important for America to witness the collaboration between or among the respective agencies that ultimately resulted in the apprehension of this individual," Mr. Ridge told reporters. He added that such a "public revelation gives the country greater confidence."
His comments seemed to support accusations by some lawmakers that the announcement, made one month after the arrest of Abdullah al Muhajir, was designed to deflect criticism of federal law enforcement.
For example, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Tuesday that he wants to know why Mr. Ashcroft disclosed the May 8 arrest on Monday.
"The information was available earlier - why was it not announced?" he asked.
"There may have been a rush to bring it before the news media" in the wake of last week's criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies, Mr. Daschle said.
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, said the administration was waging so much of its war on terrorism in secret that "I'm getting concerned that this [announcement of a suspect] is a little hype here."
Some lawmakers also have raised questions about the strength of the case against al Muhajir, but intelligence sources said the evidence is strong.
A U.S. intelligence official said it would be inaccurate to say al Muhajir, also known as Jose Padilla, is not a major catch for the United States.
"He is a guy who clearly had received training in explosives and wiring and was planning to do harm," the official said.
The plot to build and detonate a radiological bomb - a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material - was "in the initial stages" but involved meetings with senior al Qaeda terrorists who were plotting an attack against U.S. targets, including hotels or gas stations.
"Is he an Abu Zubaydah or a Khalid Shaikh Mohammed? No," the official said. "But he was clearly part of a terrorist operation."
Zubaydah is the al Qaeda operations chief who was captured by the United States in Pakistan in March. Mohammed is a Kuwaiti national who is believed to be a key al Qaeda operative and who was involved in planning the September 11 attacks.
U.S. intelligence officials say they believe al Muhajir, who was carrying $10,000 cash when he was arrested, may have been conducting a reconnaissance mission to identify targets.
He also may have been preparing for an attack when he was arrested May 8.
The Washington Times first reported on May 13 that two al Qaeda terrorists were operating a secret cell within the United States and were planning to construct a radiological bomb.
The two men were identified by U.S. intelligence as an American national and an African national who were to obtain radioactive material for a so-called "dirty bomb" from inside the United States, either by purchasing it illegally or stealing it.
The plot was disclosed by Zubaydah.
Democrats raised more questions yesterday about the timing of the announcement on al Muhajir's arrest and of President Bush's decision last week to create a Cabinet-level post for homeland security after months of resisting the idea.
Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., Tennessee Democrat, criticized comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that al Muhajir may never be tried if he provides information to authorities.
"I would think you'd want to punish the guy if he's guilty of a fraction of what they allege," Mr. Ford said. "It would seem to me he's a candidate for punishment."
Mr. Ford said Mr. Ridge "kind of danced around" lawmakers' questions at a closed House briefing yesterday about how the new department will coordinate state offices and share information between agencies.
"I feel bad for the guy," Mr. Ford said. "It's like he didn't have enough information. He kept repeating himself using different language. Because they don't have answers to these basic questions, that's why more and more people believe this might have been politically motivated."
Mr. Ridge said the proposal is "a work in progress." And he said the administration would have been second-guessed no matter how it handled the announcement of al Muhajir's arrest.
"If you don't bring attention to it, you'll be criticized for close-hold and not telling anybody, and if you do bring attention to it, you're accused of hyperbole," Mr. Ridge said.
Mr. Fleischer said the announcement of al Muhajir's arrest was delayed because "there can be an advantage in not allowing the people who sent him here to have the information that he's been detained, to see if we can't find anything else out about whatever it is they may be planning."
He also said much of the information about al Muhajir's plan was developed in the weeks after his May 8 arrest.
After weeks of second-guessing by congressional Democrats and the media about whether the Bush administration should have released information that the president received in a CIA briefing Aug. 6 - including reports that al Qaeda members planned to hijack U.S. airliners - Mr. Fleischer said the government is erring on the side of caution.
"Very often in the war on terrorism we are not going to have exact down-to-the-detail, precise information," he said. "We're going to have somewhat generalized information about people who have plans, intentions to bring harm to our country. In this case, because of his training and because of the evidence we have that was brought forth by sources and methods which I'm not going to discuss, we have strong reason to fear the worst."
The spokesman said the administration does not regret how the matter has been handled.
"The fact of the matter, again, is a very dangerous man has been taken off of the streets of the United States where he will no longer be in a position to do harm to our citizenry," Mr. Fleischer said.
• Joseph Curl contributed to this report.
----
Dirty bomber poses awkward questions for US
UK Times foreign editor's briefing
by Bronwen Maddox
June 13, 2002
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-325137,00.html
THERE are at least three troubling points about the sudden appearance of the "dirty bomber", the latest "villain" on a stage rather short of prime suspects.
Yes, most obviously, the timing is politically inspired, beyond dispute. The Bush Administration announced on Monday that authorities had arrested Abdullah al-Mujahir, that he was a terrorist threat and that he had been planning to build a "dirty" bomb to spread radioactive contamination. Then it emerged that he had, in fact, been in custody since May 8.
Could the timing be related to the White House's nervous bid to drum up support for its messy and controversial new Department of Homeland Security? Tom Daschle, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, revealed why he will never have the drama of delivery to make a plausible presidential candidate, offering only that "I have questions about why it was announced (on Monday), but I am certainly confident that the Administration would not politicise this issue".
The new Department, if it does get off the ground, will be an extraordinarily untidy organism, it is clear. It will include all kinds of government laboratories, such as Lawrence Livermore in California, which do a lot of work that is nothing to do with national security, but leave out the still uncoordinated FBI and CIA. Both parties in Congress are having a field day pointing out why it won't work, and they are right.
Much more important, this may be yet another dud suspect. Born Jose Padilla, to a Brooklyn family of Puerto Ricans, al-Muhajir is an unlikely al-Qaeda recruit. His life was too chaotic, too criminal, with an attention-catching record of violence, and not, until recently, particularly Muslim.
We are told that authorities were tipped off about his supposed links with al-Qaeda by Abu Zubeida, one of the few of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants to have been caught. That does not mean that the information is good. The yield from the much trumpeted capture of Zubeida in Pakistan this spring has been confusing and generally disappointing, it seems.
Third, there is the civil liberties question. This is beginning to rumble in a very muted way in the United States, having never shown the inflammatory power it has done in Europe. But civil liberties groups are beginning to clock up the number of suspects held in the name of September 11 - including the 300-odd prisoners still held in Guantanamo Bay and yet to be charged.
They are building up one case in particular to drum up support for the issue. A Boston suspect, Nabil Almarabh, a Kuwaiti-born Syrian, was held in solitary confinement for more than eight months without seeing a judge, which the groups reckon is the longest such period for anyone detained after September 11.
He was taken into custody on September 18, but was not brought before a federal magistrate to face charges until May 22. News reports when he was arrested said that officials thought that he was linked to two of the September 11 hijackers, but the eventual charges stem only from his attempt to enter the US illegally in June 2001. The Justice Department maintains that "he had no right to see a judge because he had been previously deported" and forfeited that right when he entered the country again.
So far there has been little public clamour about these cases. But, as the stirrings of criticism of Bush's "homeland" protection begin to build, the protests may, too, particularly if the allegations against al-Muhajir crumble as quickly as those against other suspects have done.
Powell out on a limb
IT WAS a brave try by Colin Powell, but a futile one. President Bush's remarks this week have left the United States's policy on the Middle East in a thorough muddle, leaving the strong impression that the US has abandoned Yassir Arafat.
No matter that the Secretary of State has tried to salvage matters, insisting that a conference on the region is still set for next month. No one is going to believe him, because in this week's battle Powell has lost almost as much ground as the Palestinian leader.
Today Bush meets Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister. At the weekend he met President Mubarak of Egypt. But the trouble stems from his remarks after his meeting with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, on Monday, which have taken American policy backwards and sent out mixed messages.
He endorsed more Israeli military attacks on Palestinian targets, saying that Israel had a right to defend itself, and he sounded sceptical about the value of a conference on the peace process this summer, pencilled in for late July, which had been a firm plank of Administration policy.
Most important, he appeared to share Sharon's position that "we don't yet see a partner" in Arafat, in saying that conditions were not right for such a meeting because "no one has confidence" in Arafat. The Palestinian leader had let down his people, Bush added.
His remarks took European governments by surprise, as they had thought that the Administration shared the view that it was necessary to deal with Arafat, for want of a better alternative. European officials are now sceptical that the conference will take place this summer at all.
Powell launched an immediate damage-limitation exercise, to salvage proposals with which he has been closely identified but which have been constantly under attack by other more hawkish members of the Administration.
He said that Bush would set out his views on how to move forward on the Middle East "in the very near future"; according to officials, this probably means next week. "He will make known to the American people and to the world and especially the people in the region his vision of how to move forward," Powell said.
"I think we still see utility in planning for such a conference in the course of the summer," he insisted bravely. "I think we are pulling the pieces together now that might make such a conference useful, and we haven't backed away from the idea yet."
Powell's problem is that his colleagues in the Administration appear determined to do to him what Bush has done to Arafat this week: declare him a person with whom it is not worth negotiating. It is therefore hard to take his reassurances as a reliable guide to what the Administration might now do; for that, we must wait for Bush's "vision" next week.
--------
A Closer Look
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/opinion/13HERB.html
Eventually, almost certainly, a distinguished bipartisan commission will be convened to examine the conditions that led to the catastrophe of Sept. 11.
The Bush administration doesn't want this. And Republicans in Congress are fighting to prevent it. But it will happen.
The American public remains largely in the dark about the terrorist threat that is still out there, and the nation's preparedness to deal with it. The periodic terror-related announcements by top Bush administration officials often seem calculated not to educate or to illuminate, but rather to frighten the public and intimidate the political opposition.
That is not acceptable in a free society. Despite the preferences of the administration, which likes to operate behind closed doors with the windows shut and the shades drawn, the public has a right to more information, not less. A thoroughly independent, non-Congressional inquiry is essential.
And that sentiment was poignantly expressed this week by a group of women whose husbands were lost in the World Trade Center attack. They traveled to Washington for a round of meetings and demonstrations in an effort to build support for an independent investigation. "It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."
The calls for such an inquiry are coming with more frequency.
"History will demand an independent inquiry," former Senator Gary Hart told me in an interview last week. "We might as well get on with it and do it properly."
Mr. Hart was co-chairman, along with former Senator Warren Rudman, of a special commission on national security that warned as recently as the spring of 2001 that the United States was becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack by terrorists and other hostile groups. The commission concluded that sometime in the first quarter of the 21st century "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."
Mr. Hart said that in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, "The amazing thing to me is how little demand there has been by the public for information. The assumption seems to be that everything's being taken care of."
Part of the problem has been the success the administration has had in managing the news and keeping fears of terror at a heightened pitch. Every time serious criticism of the nation's preparedness begins to emerge, the administration tries to trump it with some terror warning or some big new antiterror initiative.
Gone are the days when a Franklin Roosevelt would try to defuse an economic panic by cautioning a nation against the fear of fear itself. Or when a Winston Churchill would rally a war-stricken nation by proclaiming, "We shall not flag or fail."
Instead we have Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press" saying another attack on the U.S. by Al Qaeda is "almost certain." And we have the director of the F.B.I., Robert Mueller, telling a gathering of district attorneys that suicide bombings like those in Israel are "inevitable" on American soil.
It's a peculiar leadership strategy that depends for its success on routinely scaring the heck out of the population.
The government-induced anxiety was ratcheted way up by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that terrorists "inevitably will get their hands" on weapons of mass destruction, which include chemical, biological and nuclear arms.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Now what can we do about that?
An independent inquiry would give us a better understanding of the various threats (including some reasonable sense of their likelihood), and would let the nation know how prepared (or ill prepared) we are to meet them. A proper inquiry would not be sensational or political. It would be a learning process. The commission would thoroughly examine what happened and what went wrong in the weeks, months and years leading up to Sept. 11, and it would assess our current readiness to deal with the continuing threat.
It would build confidence, ease fears and provide a blueprint for the prevention of future attacks. It would also, as Mr. Hart pointed out, establish "as clear and factual a contemporary record as we can possibly get."
This has to happen. So why not sooner rather than later?
--------
Bush Meets Saudi Foreign Minister on Middle East
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-mideast-usa.html
WASHINGTON - President Bush met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal on Thursday at the White House as he concluded a series of consultations with Middle East leaders in advance of U.S. proposals for the next stage in the peace process.
Bush is preparing to unveil, probably next week, a new policy reflecting his recent decision to step up U.S. involvement in Middle East peace efforts after months on the sidelines.
Secretary of State Colin Powell this week raised the possibility that an interim Palestinian state might be necessary in order to set up a state called Palestine.
However, the White House quickly made clear on Wednesday it was not a U.S. proposal, with Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer explaining it was one of many ideas the president has heard in his consultations with Arab and Israeli leaders.
Asked about his comments, Powell told reporters on a flight to Canada he was simply trying to lay out ``the range of ideas that are out there, the issues that the president is examining.''
The Bush administration for weeks has been deliberating a shift in policy that would offer a timetable for negotiating a peace settlement and creating a Palestinian state.
Bush has called for the creation of a Palestinian state, but the U.S. is pressing Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to implement reforms first.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the creation of a Palestinian state would be acceptable only at the end of a long and incremental peace process after the complete cessation of Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Bush held his sixth round of White House talks with Sharon earlier this week, following a weekend meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Camp David presidential retreat in the mountains of Maryland.
Bush signaled in a speech on April 4 plans for deeper U.S. involvement in trying to bring about a Middle East peace settlement.
U.S. officials had hoped to convene a peace conference as early as this month. However, Bush told reporters on Monday the time was not ripe for a conference to chart a course for peace because ``no one has confidence'' in Arafat's Palestinian government.
--------
President Truman called `Hiroshima' a military base!
By Gursharan Dhanjal,
June 13, 2002,
Hindustan Times
http://167.216.192.98/faceoff/lead110602.shtml
New Delhi: Donald Rumsfeld, 68, a hardcore Republican, considers himself a friend of the leaders of both India and Pakistan. India has reciprocated by ordering an end of its Western Fleet patrols off Pakistani waters in the Arabian Sea and head back for the port.
But Rumsfeld is not sure, "I cannot say I see a trend that it is getting better or worse." This, when Pakistan has been continuing shelling along the LoC in the Kashmir region. His arrival happens amidst reports of US authorities capturing a suspected al-Qaeda operative, who arrived in the US from Pakistan last month, carrying out reconnaissance for an attack with a radioactive "dirty bomb." Rumsfeld certainly has a tough task in his hands.
Rumsfeld, an outspoken Republican hawk, the mentor of an earlier attempted Republican Revolution - a leading group known as "Rumsfeld's Raiders" trying to push a reform bill through Congress - is the youngest secretary of defense in history, serving under President Ford from 1975-77. As recently as 1999, he led a congressional commission that heavily promoted the idea of a national missile defense system, citing threats from Iraq and North Korea. George W Bush and Dick Cheney both support such a system.
And before he was nominated as defense secretary, Rumsfeld was said to be at the top of Bush's list to become CIA director.
The dynamic, hard-charging "Rummy" was legislatively conservative, supporting a strong defense against the Soviet Union and opposing legislation to curb urban poverty - but supporting civil rights bills. His aggressive, ambitious demeanor won him a friend in Richard Nixon, but enemies in Congress. Various jobs in the Nixon administration led to his being appointed Ford's White House chief of staff. By all accounts, he ran a tight ship, distributing a manual called "Rumsfeld's Rules" to White House Staff. Rule #1: "Don't play President - you're not."
Later, serving as secretary of defense under Ford, Rumsfeld was a hawk: he built up the military and opposed the SALT II strategic arms reduction treaty. But he improved the Pentagon's relations with Congress.
But Rumsfeld has never been far from the presidency. He publicly sought the vice-presidential nomination in 1980 and briefly ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 against the elder George Bush, before dropping out and backing former Kansas Senator Bob Dole for the job. Rumsfeld was called back into service in 1999 to head the nine-member Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, a byproduct of wrangling between congressional Republicans and the Clinton administration over a missile defense system. His report supported the Republicans' contention that a missile defense was needed, and he blasted CIA director George Tenet for increasing secrecy within the agency to such an extent that it was damaging the quality of intelligence provided to Congress.
In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger described Rumsfeld as a "skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly." Pengaton today, under Rumsfeld is at the center of the new "war" on terrorism, co-ordianting perhaps the most difficult and complicated campaign in its history. However, the truth remains, that Rumsfeld has a larger agenda in the region than just diffusing the Indo-Pak face-off. Osama bin-Laden is still at large and reportedly hiding in Pakistan. There have been threats of September 11 'Part II' sometime in near future. And American armies are yet to find a permanent foothold in the region including Pakistan. The only apparent route to achieving the larger objective is to broker peace between New Delhi and Islamabad. Only after this happens will theatre shift towards a renewed war on terrorism. Even President Bush, hours ahead of Rumsfeld's arrival in India, said, "We have made progress in a very tense situation. The situation is getting better, but so long as there are troops massed...there is always a threat that something that can happen." If we read in between the lines, that Bush Administration takes the credit for New Delhi's decision to pull back the warships; as long as there is tension on Indo-Pak border Washington can not talk of launching an offensive to catch Osama and that there is a threat to the US for which may be Washington does not have much time. Historically, Republicans have favored Islamabad while Democrats favored New Delhi. But this time round it appears unlikely so. Rumsfeld must move while it is not too late?
President Truman wrote in his diary on 25th July, 1945 that he had ordered the bomb dropped on a "purely military" target, so that "military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not woman and children."
On August 9, the day Nagasaki was bombed, he called Hiroshima a "military base". It seems unlikely that he was not aware that Hiroshima was a city. In a radio speech, on that day, he said, "the world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians..."
President Truman's decision came in contravention of the existing war conventions to which US has been a signatory and a supporter for long. For instance, "Rules of Aerial Warfare" were supported by the US (but never adopted by the US) at The Hague in February 1923. It prohibited targeting civilian population through military attack by air for all purposes. Further, the US signed "Protection of Civilian Population against Bombing from the Air in case of War" resolution under the League of Nations on 30th September, 1938. In an appeal to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy and His Britannic Majesty, on "Aerial Bombardment of Civilian Populations," President Franklin Roosevelt, on September 1, 1939, called such an act of ruthless bombing of civilians in unfortified centers as act of "inhuman barbarism".
More than anything else, it seems the US had little choice than to bomb the Japanese cities. Pearl Harbor bombing was only a catalyst. The atomic bombing of Japan occurred three months after the surrender of Germany, whose potential for creating a Nazi A-bomb had led Einstein to push for the development of an American A-bomb for the Allies. In an article in the New York Times on August 19,1946, Einstein wrote he was "not sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate."
But Truman's monumental decision to drop these bombs was born out three major factors: military, domestic and diplomatic.
The military pressures stemmed from discussion and meetings Truman had with Secretary of War, Stimson, General Marshall, and Admiral William Leahy, among others. On 18th June, 1945, General Marshall and Stimson convinced Truman to set the invasion of Japanese island of Kyushu, code named Downfall - for 1st November, 1945. Truman understood the need to minimise what he felt would inevitably be a long, bloody struggle. The military pressure lay heavily on his mind. This came out clearly when he ordered the bombing of "military targets" in Japan. Add to this was second invasion planned for March 1946, consisting of a landing and bombardment of mainland Honshu.
In fact, New York Times quoted Truman on 7th August as saying "Hiroshima was a major military target," and, "we have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history - and won."
Second major source of pressure on Truman to drop the bomb was diplomatic tensions with Russia. Truman broke away from his predecessor's program of cooperation and good relations with Russia and adopted a "hardline" approach. In fact, Truman wanted to postpone Postdam till the time bomb is tested. This would have given him an upper hand over the Russians, or as Secretary of State Byrnes told Truman, the bomb could, "put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war."
The third major source of pressure on Truman and his advisors to drop the atomic bomb came from domestic tensions and issues of re-election, combined with a collective American feeling of hatred toward the Japanese race. Truman had once called Japanese as "savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic..." Truman knew that if he backed down and did not remain firm on his stance with Japan the American public might be outraged. Furthermore, if the bomb was not dropped, Truman feared that it would prove extremely difficult in post-war America to justify the two billion dollars spent on the Manhattan Project.
In hindsight, it appears as if there existed five major alternatives to the dropping of the atomic bombs: a non-combat demonstration, a modification of the demand for unconditional surrender, a pursuit of "Japanese peace feelers," awaiting Soviet entry into the war and lastly continuing conventional warfare - aerial bombing of the cities and naval blockade. But given the fact that Truman was a new incumbent with an `A-bomb' bent of mind, seeking support of the armed forces, with a larger agenda to nail Germany and overtake Russia and to gain sympathy of American people at large, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was inevitable.
-------- MILITARY
World Military Spending on Rise After Sept. 11
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-spending.html
STOCKHOLM - World military spending grew two percent last year, according to official figures, but the increase is much bigger when outlays prompted by the September 11 attacks are included, a security policy think-tank said on Thursday.
``World military expenditure in 2001 is estimated at $839 billion,'' the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in the 33rd edition of its yearbook.
The 15 biggest spenders, led by the United States, accounted for more than three quarters of total world military expenditure, it said.
SIPRI researcher Elisabeth Skons said the $839 billion represented two percent growth in real terms compared with 2000.
``But it is an underestimate based on adopted budgets. I'm sure the increase will be much larger due to September 11, which has led to additional expenditure in the United States but also in other countries,'' Skons told a news conference.
Excluding such supplementary budgets, global military expenditure last year accounted for 2.6 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP), said SIPRI, whose data are widely recognized for their reliability.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a recent report on the effects of September 11 that increased military spending reduced economic growth in the longer term.
``Rough calibrations suggest that an increase in public military-security spending by one percent of GDP and private security spending by 0.5 percent of GDP would reduce output by about 0.7 percent after five years,'' the OECD said.
SIPRI Director Daniel Rotfeld said combating terrorism had become a high priority for Western governments after September 11.
``However, the transatlantic community is confronted with a disagreement over the main aim: whether to focus on disrupting and defeating the al-Qaeda network or eliminating the roots of terrorism with a broader range of policies,'' he said in the yearbook. Al Qaeda is blamed for the September 11 attacks.
NUCLEAR THREAT
SIPRI said: ``The magnitude of the changes that are needed to protect nuclear material against terrorist attacks has not been widely appreciated.
``There is evidence that terrorists and thieves have already threatened or attacked nuclear facilities and tried to purchase or steal nuclear and other radioactive material.''
Rotfeld said one effect of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington was that the pace of NATO enlargement had accelerated.
Another was that the countries of Central Asia had gained in importance in the field of security policy while Europe, as a relatively more stable region, had become marginalized.
The SIPRI yearbook said Russia overtook the United States in 2001 as the world's largest supplier of weapons to other countries. Russian arms transfers increased 24 percent last year.
China was the largest recipient of arms, its imports increasing 44 percent from 2000, while imports by India increased 50 percent, SIPRI said.
``It is impossible for arms suppliers to control whether arms deliveries will stabilize or destabilize a particular bilateral relationship, as illustrated by the case of India and Pakistan,'' the institute said.
SIPRI researcher Shannon Kile told the conference the Kashmir conflict looked like ``one of the most perilous situations'' the international community had faced in a long time.
SIPRI said there were 24 major armed conflicts in 22 locations in 2001, down from 25 conflicts in 23 locations the year before. Roughly half were contests for control of government and the other half for territory.
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Gets the Nod as Candidate for Afghan Top Post
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By JAMES DAO with TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/asia/13CND-AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 13 - After a day devoted largely to complaints and criticism, the grand council did what had been expected of it today by formally nominating the interim leader Hamid Karzai as a candidate for Afghan head of state.
"I'm very happy," Mr. Karzai told the delegates in a speech accepting his nomination. "After 25 years, all the Afghans are gathering under one tent. The refugees are coming back. It is a proud moment for me."
Although challenged by three other delegates, Mr. Karzai is widely expected to win.
Also nominated for the position were Masooda Jalal, a female employee of the World Food Program; Glam Fareq Majidi and Mir Mohammed Mahfoz Nadai. No details were immediately available about Mr. Nadai and Mr. Majidi, whose candidacy was declared invalid because he garnered only 101 signatures of support.
Ms. Jalal said, "I thank God that after so many difficulties, the sun is rising over our country."
The final vote was expected to take four to five hours, with results by the end of the day.
Mr. Karzai, praised for his reconciliation efforts during his six months in power after the Taliban was ousted by forces led by the United States, looked to the future.
"We need security, we need peace, we need stability, we need an administration in control of all of Afghanistan," Mr. Karzai said, speaking alternately in Pashto and Dari, the country's two main languages.
Mr. Karzai appealed for reconciliation, including with at least some of the former ruling Taliban.
"I know many Taliban," he said. "And they were taken over, hijacked by the foreign people. Those people were against Afghanistan. Those who were responsible for the massacres, those who were responsible for the burning" were foreigners.
"We want an improved economy," he said. "We want the people to trust each other. We want investment in Afghanistan. We want to start a reconstruction program to rebuild the roads, the irrigation channels." He added: "We don't want to miss this chance. This is our best chance for reconstruction."
After the head of state is selected the council is to consider the details of how the transitional government will be set up.
The vote was pushed back by at least a day after delegates spent most of Wednesday arguing over a variety of topics.
They complained about the food. They ridiculed the man running the meeting. They even criticized the warlords in the front row.
Inside an air-conditioned white tent that billowed gently in the wind, Afghan democracy took a baby step forward.
In the first day of open debate in the loya jirga to select a transitional government, the 1,551 delegates proved Afghans could be as adept in debate as on the battlefield; they raucously argued over issues ranging from poverty to the national anthem to ceremonial titles for the king.
After two decades of Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban oppression, Afghan leaders were freely expressing their political ambitions without the aid of guns. To many, it seemed a revelation.
The loya jirga "is an exercise in voice," said Ashraf Ghani Ahmedzai, senior adviser to Mr. Karzai. "The people of Afghanistan are acquiring voice for the first time in 23 years."
With that free expression, they did not get much work done. By the end of a very long day, the delegates had covered less than half their agenda, succeeding only in casting ballots for the five-member panel that will run the rest of the proceedings this week.
Many delegates also expressed concerns that political bosses, backed by foreigners, were engineering backroom deals to select a new government without their input. In particular, supporters of the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, accused American officials of pressuring him to refuse being a candidate.
But for scores of others, the proceedings seemed a cathartic opportunity to bicker, cajole, lecture - and even to discuss things calmly. Although the sessions were not open to the public, they were broadcast around most of the country on radio and to some parts on television.
Asadullah Nawabi, a former director of education in Oruzgan Province, expressed the spirit of the day when he complained that "six days is not enough time" for people to discuss the nation's problems. The loya jirga, which opened on Tuesday and is scheduled to end on Sunday, is supposed to appoint a government that will oversee drafting a new constitution and will run the country until elections in 18 months.
"The delegates here are representing the people," Mr. Nawabi said. "People who do not have clothing, who do not have sandals, who do not have food. You say we do not have time. Why did we come?"
Another man rose to complain that people were getting sick from the food. Yet another scoffed at a proposal to bestow upon the former king the title of father of the nation.
Several speakers complained about the presence of military commanders in the tent, saying the rules of the loya jirga forbade war criminals from taking part. Many of the warlords have been accused of killing civilians during the civil war that raged through the 1990's.
"You said no one would be a delegate who was a murderer or criminal," said Safar Muhammad, a delegate from Kandahar. "There are a lot of military people in this meeting. Is this a loya jirga or a military shura?" A shura is a traditional council.
Those military men included Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum from Mazar-i-Sharif, now the deputy defense minister; Ismail Khan from Herat, Gen. Daoud Khan from Kunduz; and Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf from Kabul.
-------- africa
Face of Rwanda Genocide Now on U.S.-Backed Wanted Posters
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/africa/13RWAN.html
NAIROBI, June 12 - Félicien Kabuga, who is accused of sponsoring the 1994 genocide in Rwanda by supplying machetes and hoes for weapons, has long used his huge bank account and official connections to keep one step ahead of the law, authorities say.
The United States government began circulating wanted posters today here in the Kenyan capital, one of his known hideouts, in an attempt to use its own resources and official connections to catch him.
"Accusation: Financed the massacre of Rwanda's men, women and children," read a poster published in local newspapers, bearing Mr. Kabuga's photograph and listing numerous aliases.
For the past year, the United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for the capture of Mr. Kabuga, an ethnic Hutu multimillionaire businessman in his late 60's. Now, however, American officials are seeking to step up the pressure.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is based in Tanzania, indicted Mr. Kabuga in 1998 for abuses ranging from importing farm tools knowing they would be used for murder to running the radio station used to fan Hutu hatred of Rwanda's Tutsi population. Officials say his wealth is now being used to support the Congo-based interahamwe militiamen, a Hutu group fighting Rwanda's government.
Since the frenzy in Rwanda in 1994, in which an estimated half-million civilians were shot, hacked or beaten to death, the tribunal's progress in bringing suspects to justice has been fitful, partly because of the sheer number of people implicated and partly from a lack of cooperation.
Seeking to increase that cooperation, the United States Congress passed legislation in October 2000 authorizing the use of reward money. The program did not become official until January 2001, and the effects of the allocation have only recently begun to be felt in places like Nairobi.
"It is now time for Mr. Kabuga to come out of hiding and face the charges against him," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, the American ambassador for war crimes issues. "It is time for those who have information to come forward and time for those who are harboring Félicien Kabuga to cease their protection."
Mr. Prosper's words were aimed not only at everyday Kenyans but also at government officials. In the months before his indictment in 1998, Mr. Kabuga was once traced to a house owned by Hosea Kiplagat, a nephew of President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, according to a report published in 2001 by the International Crisis Group, a research organization. The study also detailed how investigators for the International Criminal Tribunal uncovered evidence that a Kenyan police officer might have tipped off Mr. Kabuga in 1997 that an arrest was imminent.
"The finger of protection still points strongly toward the highest Kenyan authorities," the report said. Amos Wako, Kenya's attorney general, disputed allegations that Kenya has not been diligent in its search.
Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the tribunal, has sought to bring Mr. Kabuga in by cutting off his money supply. Authorities have frozen millions of dollars in accounts held by Mr. Kabuga in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
Mr. Kabuga is not the only suspect at large. At least eight suspects under indictment are thought to be hiding in Congo, and Mr. Prosper is to meet with that country's president, Joseph Kabila, on Thursday to press for his cooperation.
-------- arms sales
Special Report - The Arms Lobby
by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG,
The Nation,
June 13, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=hartung20020613
There has been little criticism of the Bush-Putin nuclear accord from within the military-industrial complex, and for good reason. The arms lobby helped to develop the Bush nuclear policy, and it stands to profit from its implementation.
The centerpiece of the Bush nuclear doctrine is a "New Triad" of long-range strike systems, missile defenses and a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will involve at least $33 billion in new spending over the next five years. Far from impinging on this new nuclear buildup, the Bush-Putin agreement will help to facilitate it by creating a smokescreen behind which a new generation of nuclear weapons will be developed.
The major themes and many of the specific details of the Bush nuclear policy were developed by corporate-backed conservative think tanks like the National Institute for Public Policy and the Center for Security Policy. NIPP's January 2001 report on the "rationale and requirements" for US nuclear forces served as the model for the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which endorsed an expansion of the US nuclear "hit list" and the development of a new generation of "usable," lower-yield nuclear weapons. Three members of the study group that produced the NIPP report--National Security Council members Stephen Hadley and Robert Joseph and Stephen Cambone, a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy--are now involved in implementing the Bush nuclear policy. NIPP director Keith Payne, best known for co-writing an infamous 1980 essay on nuclear war titled "Victory Is Possible," has recently joined the Pentagon as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Ever since he left the Reagan Pentagon in 1988 to form the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney has been a central player in the missile defense lobby, bringing together conservative think tanks, anti-arms control members of Congress and major arms makers like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to press for the deployment of a multitiered missile defense system. Among the twenty-two CSP alumni now serving in the Bush Administration are Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Secretary of the Air Force James Roche and Richard Perle, who chairs the Defense Policy Board. At CSP's November 2001 "Keeper of the Flame" awards dinner, Donald Rumsfeld remarked on the large number of center associates serving in the Bush Administration and joked that "I was thinking of calling a staff meeting, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow."
While conservative ideologues like Frank Gaffney and Keith Payne have been out front in shaping the Bush nuclear policy, they have received critical backing from weapons contractors. CSP has received more than $3 million in corporate donations since its founding in 1988, including major contributions from companies, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, that benefit directly from the policies it advocates. Charles Kupperman, Lockheed Martin's vice president for missile defense programs, serves on the board of directors of both CSP and NIPP. In addition to being a major missile defense contractor, Lockheed Martin runs the Sandia nuclear weapons laboratory and builds the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile, both major beneficiaries of the Bush nuclear buildup.
Beyond their links to conservative think tanks, the weapons makers like Lockheed Martin have their own networks of influence inside the Administration. Of the thirty-two former executives, consultants or major shareholders of weapons manufacturers that have been appointed to important positions in the Bush Administration, eight of them have ties to Lockheed Martin. Key company alumni include Undersecretary of the Air Force Peter Teets, who has authority over the acquisition of military space systems, and Everet Beckner, who is in charge of nuclear weapons activities at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
In short, the nuclear weapons industry doesn't need to lobby the Bush Administration--to a significant degree, they are the Bush Administration.
-------- biological weapons
Anthrax Theory Emerges
Scientists: FBI Questions Suggest Insider Grew Spores At Lab, Refined Them Elsewhere
By DAVE ALTIMARI And JACK DOLAN,
Hartford Courant Staff Writers
June 13 2002
http://www.ctnow.com/hc-anthrax0613.artjun13.story
The FBI is investigating whether the anthrax spores used in last fall's attacks could have been grown secretly inside an Army lab and then taken elsewhere to be weaponized, according to three sources familiar with the ongoing probe.
A former government microbiologist, who was interviewed in recent days by the FBI, said agents focused their questioning on the logistics of how someone with access to the U.S. Army's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., might carry out the scheme. The microbiologist, who once worked at Fort Detrick, said the agents did not indicate if they had evidence that such an incident had occurred.
"They asked me, if I wanted to grow something I wasn't supposed to, would there be somebody asking me about it and could I have taken it out of the lab," said the scientist, who did not want to be identified. "I told them no one checked, and it was far easier to get something out of Fort Detrick than into it."
A second bioterrorism scientist who also has been questioned by the FBI said the agents' "operating theory" appeared to be that the Fort Detrick labs were the source of the anthrax, and that spores were somehow removed covertly. This scientist also did not want to be identified.
The scientists' accounts are among several developments that suggest the FBI is seriously exploring the possibility that a knowledgeable Fort Detrick insider could have clandestinely produced and removed anthrax spores to a private location, where they could be refined into the lethal powder sent through the mail last fall.
That premise also is at the center of a new assessment of the investigation by a prominent bioweapons expert, who says five biodefense experts have given the FBI the name of a former Fort Detrick scientist who had access to "a remote location" that could have been used to refine anthrax spores into a weaponized form.
In her assessment - scheduled to be posted today on the Federation of American Scientists' web site - Barbara Hatch Rosenberg all but names the scientist, and provides details about his background. The Courant obtained an advance copy of the six-page paper written by Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of the federation's working group on biological weapons.
She says, in her assessment, that the unnamed scientist suffered a career setback last summer that "left him angry and depressed" and that the FBI, with his consent, searched his home and computer. Rosenberg claimed that although the FBI had the scientist's name for months, the bureau dragged its feet before searching his home, and therefore could have lost valuable evidence.
The unnamed scientist has declined interview requests, but in a voice-mail message left for a Courant reporter last month he denied that he was a suspect: "I happen to have a letter from our attorneys, who went up to see the FBI, who say I never was a suspect and am not a suspect now. I actually have no idea where you got this presumption."
His attorney has declined to comment on any aspect of the case, including his client's claim about contacts with the FBI. He did not return repeated calls Wednesday.
The accounts of scientists who have been drawn into the sweeping anthrax inquiry do not provide a complete picture of its scope. But they shed light on a line of inquiry by the FBI that has slowly emerged in recent months - the possibility that the anthrax, and its user, have ties to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.
Questions about lax security at Fort Detrick were first raised earlier this year in a series of stories in The Courant. The stories, based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former Fort Detrick scientists, described how relatively easy it would have been to smuggle biological agents out of the labs, and how inventories were rarely kept up to date, making it difficult to determine whether dangerous substances were missing.
The notion that anthrax could disappear from Fort Detrick was underscored by a 1992 inquiry that found pathology specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens had, in fact, become missing. Army officials insisted that the samples did not pose a risk, and that most were later accounted for, although at least one set of anthrax spores still had not been tracked down as of February.
The same 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label "antrax" in the machine's electronic memory, according to the documents obtained earlier this year by The Courant.
More recently, early results of genetic testing confirmed suspicions that the anthrax used in last fall's attacks was from a strain that originated at Fort Detrick, and was genetically indistinguishable from the anthrax used in the Army's biodefense program. That revelation was followed by the news, a few weeks ago, that the FBI intended to interview and conduct polygraph tests on more than 200 former and current employees of Fort Detrick and the army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where anthrax tests have been conducted.
An FBI source said there are only about 25 people from Dugway on the list of those to be interviewed and tested, meaning the vast majority of scientists to be scrutinized are from Fort Detrick.
Rosenberg has been increasingly critical of the FBI's handling of the investigation, asserting in her assessment to be released today that the FBI has blundered by taking "a profoundly unscientific approach."
"There has been a tendency to write off a direction of inquiry, or to swing radically in the opposite direction, on the basis of superficial results or incomplete data," she wrote. "The likely outcome for the investigation is continued stalemate, marking time on the off chance that an unknown informer will turn up with a smoking gun."
An FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday night that the bureau would not have a response to Rosenberg.
"At this point, we are continuing the investigation to identify a suspect or suspects," said the spokesman, Steven Berry.
Elsewhere in Washington, Rosenberg's opinions appear to be getting the attention of senators who plan to include the FBI's handling of the anthrax investigation as part of the ongoing congressional hearings into the government's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Next week, staffers for Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Tom Daschle, D-S.D., plan to discuss with Rosenberg details of her continuing assessment of the anthrax investigation, including some she believes are too sensitive to publish on the federation's website, said David Carle, a Leahy spokesman.
In a public congressional hearing last month, Leahy asked FBI Director Robert Mueller polite, general questions about his agency's progress in the anthrax investigation. More recently, Leahy privately submitted a long list of much more pointed questions on the topic, requesting reams documents to back up the bureau's answers.
Rosenberg has said there are similarities between the FBI's actions in the anthrax probe and its missteps prior to Sept. 11, including a lack of communication among agents and slow reaction to possible leads.
-------- india
US offers India hi-tech surveillance
From Catherine Philp in Delhi
June 13, 2002
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-325114,00.html
WASHINGTON has offered the use of Western surveillance equipment and expertise to help India to assess whether Pakistan is living up to its pledge to stop militants crossing the Kashmir frontier.
Verifying the level of guerrilla activity along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan is seen as crucial in the attempt to avert a conflict between the nuclear rivals. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, made the offer in meetings with Indian officials in Delhi yesterday in an attempt to persuade India to start moving back troops from the border with Pakistan.
A million men have been massed on the border since an attack by Islamic militants on the Indian parliament in December, and India has refused to pull back its forces or to begin a dialogue until it sees a permanent end to the flow of militants into Kashmir.
American and Indian officials said that Mr Rumsfeld had discussed gathering surveillance experts from the United States, Britain, India and Pakistan to set up ground sensors to assess guerrilla activity along the frontier.
After meeting Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Rumsfeld is expected to put the suggestion to Pakistan's leaders on a visit to Islamabad today.
The proposal appears to be a compromise between Pakistan's desire to bring in foreign troops to monitor the frontier and India's proposal to patrol the frontier with a joint Indian and Pakistan force. Officials said that there had been no mention of any proposal to deploy an American and British monitoring force. Washington is aware of India's strong opposition to such a plan.
Mr Rumsfeld praised India for the constructive steps that it had taken in recent days to ease tensions and expressed hopes that progress would continue. Islamabad, however, said that it was less impressed by the conciliatory gestures and urged India to resume dialogue on Kashmir.
Mr Rumsfeld is said to have asked India to pull back its forces from "strike" positions along the border to peacetime positions. Indian sources indicated that the Government was considering pulling back aircraft and taking some troops on the border off "war alert", but any withdrawal in Kashmir has been ruled out until after state elections in October.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. Said to Weigh Provisional State for Palestinians
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/middleeast/13DIPL.html
WHISTLER, British Columbia, June 12 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the Bush administration was considering backing the formation of a Palestinian state even before its borders and other details are agreed on, but he emphasized that the idea was only one of several still under review.
No final decision has been made, Secretary Powell said in an interview published today in Al Hayat, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper, and later to reporters. But he said that President Bush had not backed away from his goal of establishing a Palestinian state, and that the question was how best to do so.
"He knows that to get to that vision, it may be necessary to have a provisional state, an interim step; it may take several steps to get there," Secretary Powell said in the Al Hayat interview, conducted on Monday.
He added, "I think almost everybody has come to the agreement that there is a need for provisional or interim steps; the question is for how long should that be the case, and how does one get to the comprehensive solution at the end."
Secretary Powell made his comments to reporters today while aboard his plane on the way to a meeting here of the foreign ministers of eight leading industrial nations. Even before he had landed, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, seemed to minimize Secretary Powell's statements in the Al Hayat interview.
"The secretary, from time to time, will reflect on the advice that he gets and do so publicly, which is his prerogative, of course," Mr. Fleischer said. "If the president has anything further to indicate, he will."
In recent days, Mr. Bush has sounded skeptical about prospects for a Middle East peace conference or a concrete timeline for progress, while Secretary Powell has spoken optimistically. The shifting tone has sown some confusion among Arab and European allies about the administration's future plans.
As Mr. Powell did in his interview with the Arabic-language newspaper, Mr. Bush spoke forcefully about the determination for a Palestinian state in his meeting last weekend with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at Camp David. He was less upbeat after his meeting on Monday in Washington with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
Administration officials insist that the differences in tone reflect Mr. Bush's determination to finish consultations with foreign leaders and his advisers before revealing the administration's plans, not a reluctance to move forward.
Secretary Powell and aides traveling with him underscored that discussions within the administration were still under way and that no decisions had yet been made. On his plane, Secretary Powell said senior administration officials would be conducting a last set of internal discussions before the president announced his plans.
"It's not something far in the future," he said. "Our consultation process is pretty much winding up."
Secretary Powell and his advisers also took pains to play down any suggestion that the Bush administration was necessarily preparing to make the idea of an interim state a centerpiece of its approach. But they acknowledged its potential appeal as a means to bridge differences.
"Everybody in the region knows this is one of the ideas out there," one senior State Department official said. "In and of itself, it doesn't solve any of the big questions, but it's kind of a point of intersection of a lot of ideas."
Mr. Sharon of Israel and Mr. Mubarak of Egypt are among those who have suggested varying degrees of openness to declaring a Palestinian state whose precise borders would be negotiated later, though they have differed sharply on timetables, conditions and motives for doing so.
Some in the Arab world support the idea as a means of speeding the process of negotiations on a final settlement, while Mr. Sharon seems to see it as a way to slow negotiations down. Indeed, Secretary Powell made his initial comments after the Al Hayat interviewer suggested that Mr. Sharon wanted only "interim measures" toward a settlement.
Speaking to reporters on his plane, Secretary Powell acknowledged that "there are some who are concerned that if you just state a provisional state idea, you may never get to the end state."
He repeatedly said it was premature to talk about who would lead such a state, what its borders or capital would be, or whether it would be viable on land already under Palestinian control. All are questions that could lead to a breakdown in negotiations, as ultimately happened when the parties reached agreement on broad outlines for peace in the 1993 Oslo accords, then foundered on details.
But he noted: "If it's going to be a state, it will have to have some structure. It will have to have something that looks like territory, even though it may not be perfectly defined forever. And it will have to have institutions within it to be a state."
Mr. Bush is to meet on Thursday with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal. And Nabil Shaath, Yasir Arafat's planning minister and one of his closest political aides, is scheduled to meet with Secretary Powell on Friday, according to Palestinian officials in Washington.
"These are the kinds of issues that we are working through," Secretary Powell told reporters on his plane, referring to the path to Palestinian statehood. "They are tough issues, and the kinds of issues that we'll be examining in the days ahead."
In the Al Hayat interview, Mr. Powell repeated that he still planned to lead an international conference of foreign ministers on the Middle East this summer, "and it's not the last conference."
He added: "It will be one, I think, of a number of conferences that we hold in the future to move forward. It will be a conference that is intended to talk politics in a very open kind of way, and talk things like security in a very definitive kind of way."
Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, responded coolly to Secretary Powell's suggestion of a provisional or interim state. "I don't know what he means by that," Mr. Erekat said. "The main thing here is to end the Israeli occupation and to have Israel withdraw" to its old borders, he said.
Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said Secretary Powell's statement was important but vague. He asked: "What does provisional mean? Does this mean that we take some of the land now and keep it temporarily or provisionally?"
The Middle East was one of several topics expected to occupy a two-day meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 8 industrialized nations. Secretary Powell was also seeking support for a proposal in which the United States would spend $1 billion a year over the next 10 years, matched by a like amount from the rest of the G-8 together, to develop programs to curtail the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that could be used by would-be terrorists.
----
"I made them a stadium in the middle of the camp"
By Tsadok Yeheskeli, Yediot Aharonot;
Gush-Shalom (Israel),
June 13, 2002
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/kurdi_eng.html
[GUSH SHALOM COMMENTS:
This is a unique document. It was published in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's most widely circulated tabloid paper, on May 31, 2002. It is the first absolutely sincere Israeli eye-witness testimony on what actually happened in Jenin, by one of those who did it and are proud of it.
Apart from the shocking revelations, this is also a startling human document.
After publication - and in spite of it - the unit to which the man belongs received from the army command an official citation for outstanding service.
This is the incredible, self-told Story of Moshe Nissim, a fanatic football fan and a permanent troublemaker, who begged his commanders in the reserves unit for a chance to take part in "the action".
By "action" he was referring to the wide scale destruction carried out by the Israeli army in many Palestinian locations, especially in the Jenin Refugee camp.
He was sent into Jenin, riding a 60 ton demolition bulldozer - and equipped with 16 years of pent-up personal frustration, plenty of whisky and only two hours of training on that armored tool.
"Enough training to drive forwards and make a flat surface", as he himself testifies in the interview.
His story may be extreme, and this man must answer to many serious questions, but Moshe Nissim is not much different from thousands of other frustrated and violent football fans, who terrorize cities in Europe after a football match.
But then again, Of course, it is unconceivable, that the British army would send a drunken and frustrated Manchester fan into Belfast riding a D-9 bulldozer.
Therefore, the really troubling questions must be directed at the system that sent him into Jenin on this mission of destruction. This system is the Israeli army.
1. What kind of army puts a 60 ton, multi-million dollar demolishing bulldozer in the hands of such a person, who has not operated one before?
2. How could his rampage go on, without being stopped by any of the officers, at any rank?
3. How can such an army insist it is the "most moral army in the world"?
4. Does this interview shed more light on Israel's refusal to have it's actions in Jenin investigated?
5. What did happen in Jenin?
We hope that after reading this sickening interview, you will find ways of sending these questions, and others you might have, to the Israeli government through it's ambassadors, to the Israeli army, who, we are sure, will not tolerate its fine tools being used in such a brutal and unlawful manner.}
--
Moshe Nissim, nicknamed "Kurdi Bear(1)", the D-9 operator who became the terror of the Jenin refugee camp inhabitants, speaks with no censorship about his time of glory:
"I entered Jenin driven by madness, by desperation, I felt I have nothing to loose, That even if I 'get it', no big deal.
I told my wife: "If anything happens to me, at least someone will take care of you!".
I started my reserve service, in the worst conditions possible. Maybe this is why I didn't give a damn. Not about explosive charges, not about gun fire.
"My life was in deep shit for the past one and a half years. For almost half a year I am suspended from work as a senior inspector in the Jerusalem municipality.
I worked there for 17 years, till that cursed day, January the 20th, exactly my 40th birthday, when the police came and arrested me.
They said that I and my colleagues in the inspection unit are suspected for being bribed by contractors and other business owners, that in fact, we are a corrupted bunch.
"This is a terrible injustice. I am a very friendly guy, and in this job you mix with people you inspect. But bribery? Me?
I am in debt for hundreds of thousands of Shekels long before all this story. Had I taken bribes, I would have money, but I couldn't even pay the lawyer. Since then I am suspended. My wife was fired as well, and I have four children to keep.
"This was not the first blow. A few months earlier, I was injured badly in my back, my wife was fired, and my son got run over and had to be operated to save his leg.
Today he is OK, but his big dream, and mine, that he will once be a player in the Beitar Jerusalem team, this dream is probably gone forever. Pity. He was really talented. I have already promised him to get him into the children's Beitar team.
"For two years, it is just one blow after another. I haven't got a cent, but I love people. I cannot be indifferent. Every holiday, I distribute food packages for the needy. The same at Passover. I ran around like crazy. And just then, I started getting phone calls from the guys: "Kurdi", they said, "we are all being recruited to do reserve service, but you are not called."
"Truth is, that I understood my commanders. Hey, I've been doing my reserves duty for 16 years now, and I was useless. I did nothing but make trouble.
"During my obligatory Military service(2) I was constantly sentenced to prison, because I refused to be a vehicle electrician. In my unit as well, in the bulldozer unit, I was supposed to be an electrician, but actually, I did nothing, just messed around. I would come to the unit, and immediately open a card table, open a bottle. If any officer would dare send me to guard duty, I would send him first. Kurdi always did his thing.
If I felt like going to a Beitar football match, or going home, no one could stop me. I would just start the car and go.
"Truth is, they didn't even know me. When I am given responsibility, I can act differently, In the "Versailles" disaster(3) I was in charge of all the inspection team on location. When I was seen by one of the guys of my military unit, he was shocked.
He said: "In the army you can't tie your shoelaces, and here you are a big chief!"
The truth is that when I finally decide to do something, I am one stubborn guy. I will go for it till the end. This time was one of those moments. What haven't I done for them to take me? I sent the guys to twist the battalion commander's arm, I phoned the company commander, I drove them mad. "I promise to work", I pleaded with the battalion commander. Finally, he agreed to give me a chance.
"I said to myself: "Kurdi, you can't let them down. No more running wild!".
The speaker is Moshe Nissim, AKA "Moshe Nissim Beitar Jerusalem".
In the Jenin refugee camp, he was called, over the military radio: "Kurdi Bear".
Kurdi, because this is the name he insisted on. Bear, after the D-9 he was driving, demolishing house after house.
There was not one soldier in Jenin that did not hear this name. Kurdi Bear was considered the most devoted, brave and probably the most destructive operator.
A man, that the Jenin camp inquiry committee, would want very much to have a word with.
For 75 hours, with no break, he sat on the huge bulldozer, charges exploding around him, and erased house after house.
His story, which he tells openly and with no inhibitions, is far from being a regular war myth. Medals, so it seems, will not be awarded for it. (Actually, his company was later awarded a citation for outstanding service.)
The experience
"The funny bit is, I didn't even know how to operate the D-9. I have never been an operator. But I begged them to give me a chance to learn.
Before we went into Shekhem (Nablus), I asked some of the guys to teach me. They sat with me for two hours. They taught me how to drive forwards and make a flat surface.
"I took it on with no problem and told them: 'That's it. Move aside and let me work.'.
This is what happened in Jenin as well. I have never demolished a house before, or even a wall. I got into the D-9 with a friend of mine, a Yemenite. I let him work for an hour, and then told him, 'OK. I got the idea.'
"But the real thing started the day 13 of our soldiers were killed up that alley in the Jenin refugee camp.
"When they brought us in, I knew that nobody wanted to work with me. They were afraid to be with me on the bulldozer. Not only did I have a reputation of a troublemaker, but also of a man who knows no fear, and they were right about that. I really have no fear. They knew I had no fear, that I don't give a damn, and that I can go anywhere, without asking questions, without an escort of tanks or APC's or anything. Once, in Jenin, I left the tank that escorted us everywhere. I wanted to have a spin around the camp, see what's going on. Gadi, the other operator who was with me, nearly fainted. He started going mad: 'Get back,' he shouted, 'we have no escort!', but I had to get to know the place better, to find an exit, just in case we needed one. I was not afraid to die. At least I was insured. This would have helped my family.
The Flag
"When we got into the camp, the D-9's were already waiting. They where hauled from Shekhem (Nablus). I got the big D-9 L, me and the Yemenite, my partner. First thing I did was to tie the Beitar team flag. I had it prepared in advance. I wanted the family to be able to identify me. I told the family and the kids: 'you will see my bulldozer on television. When you see the Beitar flag, that will be me'. And this is exactly what happened.
"I know it sounds crazy, but for me, to hang this flag was completely natural. Like eating. Here, look at this Beitar pendant around my neck. It never comes off. Not off me, and not off the kids. I carry the Beitar flags everywhere I go. Look at my car, all covered with these flags. This is the way I am. I always go to the Beitar matches, in a Beitar colored Galabia (an Arab man's dress), and a big drum of the Kurds from the C. Once, after our first national championship, I took a ride on the roof of a car, carrying the drum, all the way to Jerusalem.
"Beitar is a kink in my brain. There is no other way to explain it. After my family, it is the most important thing in my life, and the only thing that can kill me. In Jenin, I was not scared for a moment, but I cannot go to the Beitar matches for half a year now. The suspense kills me, and I am constantly afraid of getting a heart attack. Sometimes, I can walk around 'Teddy' (the main Jerusalem stadium) with a ticket in my hand, and I can't go in. In one match, in Beit Shean, I fainted after they scored a goal. I know how this sounds, but that's the way it is. Incurable. At home, they know better than to talk to me if Beitar lost a match.
"So now you understand why the Beitar flag was on the bulldozer in Jenin. Someone told me that my commander wanted to take it off. But no way. If I had a say in the matter, there would be a Beitar flag on the top of the mosque in the camp. I tried convincing the Golani (an infantry brigade of the Israeli army) officer I worked with to let me go up there and hang it, but he refused. He said I would be shot if I tried. Pity.
"The flag was the most outstanding object in the camp. Reservists who went home on short leave came back with Beitar flags, just to imitate me. It made a lot of noise, my flag. The Golani soldiers were stunned. 'You brought Beitar here,' they told me. And I said: 'I am going to make a Teddy stadium here. Don't you worry.'.
"On the radio, they wanted to call me 'Moshe-Bear', but I insisted on Kurdi. I told the Golanis, I am Kurdi, and I won't answer if you call me by any other name.' That is how 'Kurdi Bear' was born. This is my name, and I am stubborn.
"In the reserves, they already got used to my signature: 'Moshe Nissim Beitar Jerusalem'.For a while they asked me to stop it, but finally they just gave up.
Going in
"The moment I drove the bulldozer into the camp, something switched in my head. I went mad. All the desperation, caused by my personal condition, just vanished at once. All that remained was the anger over what had happened to our guys. Till now I am convinced, and so are the rest of us, that if we were let into the camp earlier, with all our might, twenty-four soldiers would not have been killed in this camp.
"The moment I went into the camp, for the first time, I just thought of how to help these soldiers. These fighters. Children the age of my son. I couldn't grasp how they worked there, were a charge blows up on you, with every step you take.
"With the first mission I was given, to open a track inside the camp, I understood what kind of hell this was.
"My first mission, voluntarily, was to bring the soldiers food. I was told: 'The only way to get food in there, is with the D-9'. They haven't eaten in two days. You couldn't poke your nose out. I filled the bulldozer till the roof, and drove the bulldozer right up to the door of their post, so that they would not have to take even one step outside their shelter. One step was enough in order to lose an arm or a leg.
"You could not tell where the charges were. They (the Palestinian fighters) dug holes in the ground and planted charges. You would just start driving, and you would hit a 3" pipe, welded on both ends. As you touch them, they go off. Everything was booby trapped. Even the walls of houses. Just touch them, and they blow up. Or, they would shoot you the moment you entered. There were charges in the roads, under the floor, between the walls. As you make an opening, something goes off. I saw a bird cage blow up in some pet shop, where we opened a track. A flying birdcage. I felt sorry for the birds. They just planted charges everywhere.
"For me, in the D-9, it was nothing. I didn't mind. You would just hear the explosions.
Even 80 Kilos of explosives only rattled the bulldozer's blade. It weighs three and a half tons(4). It's a monster. A tank can get hit in the belly. It's belly is sensitive. With the D-9, you should only look out for RPG's or 50 Kilos of explosives on the roof. But I didn't think about it then. The only thing that mattered was that these soldiers must not risk themselves just to eat or drink something."
"I fell in love with those children. I was willing to do with my bulldozer anything they would ask for. I begged for work: 'Let me finish another house, open another track.'
They, in return, protected me. I would leave the bulldozer without weapons, nothing. Just walked in. They told me I am mad, but I said: 'Leave me alone. Anyhow, the armored vest will not save me.' This is how I worked. Even without a shirt. Half naked.
"Do you know how I held out for 75 hours? I didn't get off the bulldozer. I had no problem of fatigue, because I drank whisky all the time. I had a bottle in the bulldozer at all times. I had put them in my bag in advance. Everybody else took clothes, but I knew what was waiting for me there, so I took whisky and something to munch on.
"Clothes? Didn't need any. A towel was enough. Anyhow I could not leave the bulldozer. You open the door, and get a bullet. For 75 hours I didn't think about my life at home, about all the problems. Everything was erased. Sometimes images of terror attacks in Jerusalem crossed my mind. I witnessed some of them."
The purity of our weapons
"What is 'opening a track'? You erase buildings. On both sides. There is no other choice, because the bulldozer was much wider than their alleys. But I am not looking for excuses or anything. You must 'shave' them. I didn't give a damn about demolishing their houses, because it saved the lives of our soldiers. I worked where our soldiers were slaughtered. They didn't tell all the truth about what happened. they drilled holes in the walls, holes for gun barrels. Anyone who escaped the charges, was shot through these holes.
"I had no mercy for anybody. I would erase anyone with the D-9, just so that our soldiers won't expose themselves to danger. That's what I told them. I was afraid for our soldiers. You could see them sleeping together, 40 soldiers in a house, all crowded. My heart went out for them. This is why I didn't give a damn about demolishing all the houses I've demolished - and I have demolished plenty. By the end, I built the 'Teddy' football stadium there.
"Difficult? No way. You must be kidding. I wanted to destroy everything. I begged the officers, over the radio, to let me knock it all down; from top to bottom. To level everything. It's not as if I wanted to kill. Just the houses. We didn't harm those who came out of the houses we had started to demolish, waving white flags. We screwed just those who wanted to fight.
"No one refused an order to knock down a house. No such thing. When I was told to bring down a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses; not because I wanted to - but because when you are asked to demolish a house, some other houses usually obscure it, so there is no other way. I would have to do it even if I didn't want to. They just stood in the way. If I had to erase a house, come hell or high water - I would do it. And believe me, we demolished too little. The whole camp was littered with detonation charges. What actually saved the lives of the Palestinians themselves, because if they had returned to their homes, they would blow up.
"For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap. I thought about saving them. I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.
"Many people where inside houses we stto demolish. They would come out of the houses we where working on. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. and I didn't see house falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. I am sure people died inside these houses, but it was difficult to see, there was lots of dust everywhere, and we worked a lot at night. I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn't mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down.
Satisfaction
"I didn't stop for a moment. Even when we had a two-hour break, I insisted on going on. I prepared a ramp, to destroy a four-story building. Once I steered sharply to the right, and a whole wall came down. Suddenly I heard shouting on the radio: 'Kurdi, watch it! It is us!' Turns out there where our guys inside, and they forgot to tell me.
"I had plenty of satisfaction. I really enjoyed it. I remember pulling down a wall of a four-story building. It came crashing down on my D-9. My partner screamed at me to reverse, but I let the wall come down on us. We would go for the sides of the buildings, and then ram them. If the job was to hard, we would ask for a tank shell.
"I couldn't stop. I wanted to work and work. There was this Golani officer who gave us orders by radio - I drove him mad. I kept begging for more and more missions. On Sunday, after the fighting was over, we got orders to pull our D-9's out of the area, and stop working on our 'football stadium', because the army didn't want the cameras and press to see us working. I was really upset, because I had plans to knock down the big sign at the entrance of Jenin - three poles with a picture of Arafat. But on Sunday, they pulled us away before I had time to do it.
"I bitched them to give me more work. I would tell them, over the radio: 'Why are you letting me rest? I want more work!' All this time, I was really sick. I had fever. I got back from Jenin wiped out. Torn to bits. The next day, I went up again. One of the guys was ill, and I volunteered to help. I got back there. The battalion-commander was in shock when he saw me. The other operators all cracked up and needed rest, but I refused to leave. I wanted more.
"I had lots of satisfaction in Jenin, lots of satisfaction. It was like getting all the 18 years of doing nothing - into three days. The soldiers came up to me and said: 'Kurdi, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot'. And I hurt for the Thirteen(5). If we had moved into the building where they were ambushed, we would have buried all those Palestinians alive.
" I kept thinking of our soldiers. I didn't feel sorry for all those Palestinians who were left homeless. I just felt sorry for their children, who were not guilty. There was one wounded child, who was shot by Arabs. A Golani paramedic came down and changed his bandages, till he was evacuated. We took care of them, of the children. The soldiers gave them candy. But I had no mercy for the parents of these children.
I remembered the picture on television, of the mother who said she will bear children so that they will explode in Tel Aviv. I asked the Palestinian women I saw there: 'Aren't you ashamed?'
"After I finished the work, I got out of the bulldozer, piled up some clothes on the side of the road, and fell asleep. They looked after me, so that I won't get run over by a tank or something. All the fatigue of the past 75 hours just landed on me. There was a lot of excitement in what I did. The fact that I did a good job operating the bulldozer, the soldiers who came to me, after it was all over, and said: 'thank you'. This was enough for me. I miss them. I've invited all of them for Kubeh at my place. Their commander, Kobi, the one I worked with throughout the 75 hours, was amazed by the invitation.
'Do you want the entire company to come over to your house?'
I told him: 'As far as I am concerned, bring the whole battalion.'
I phoned my mother, from the D-9, and told her that the whole battalion was coming. She said: 'no sweat'. I am waiting for them".
Politics
"I know many people will think that my attitude stems from me being a 'Beitar' and 'Likud' member(6). It is true. I am heavily on the right. But this has nothing to do with what I have done in Jenin. I have many Arab friends. And I say, if a man has done nothing - don't touch him. A man who has done something - hang him, as far as I am concerned. Even a pregnant woman - shoot her without mercy, if she has a terrorist behind her. This is the way I thought in Jenin. I answered to no one. Didn't give a damn. The main thing was to help our soldiers. If I had been given three weeks, I would have had more fun. That is, If they would let me tear the whole camp down. I have no mercy.
"All the human rights organizations and the UN that messed with Jenin, and turned what we have done there into such an issue, are just bullshitting, lying. Lots of the walls in those houses just exploded by themselves, at our slightest touch. It is true, though, that during the last days we smashed the camp. And yes, it was justified. They mowed our soldiers down. They had a chance to surrender.
"No one expressed any reservations against doing it. Not only me. Who would dare speak? If anyone would as much as open his mouth, I would have buried him under the D-9. This is the reason I didn't mind seeing the hundred by hundred (7)we've flattened. As far as I am concerned, I left them with a football stadium, so they can play. This was our gift to the camp. Better than killing them. They will sit quietly. Jenin will not return to what it use to be."
Epilog
Two days after getting out of Jenin, 'Kurdi Bear' was admitted into hospital, suffering from pneumonia. As it turned out, the 75 straight hours in the D-9 took their toll. Some days after he had returned home, a phone call woke him up in the middle of the night.
"I got home one night, and for some reason, I couldn't sleep. I was uncomfortable.
Till 4 AM I just wandered about, suddenly the phone rings: 'Are you Nati's father?'
I sked what happened. 'Get over here, to the hospital.' 'Tell me the truth' I told her.
'I must know'. She said that: 'Things are not good. Come'. I speeded to Tel Hashomer hospital. A nurse and a social worker waited for me there. They wanted to tell me that my son had died. That he came in, dead already. Finished. Serious brain damage. They had planned to ask me to donate his organs.
"Suddenly she ran to the surgery, came back and said that they drained blood from his brain, and that she hopes he will survive. We will know within 72 hours. We hurried to get an amulet from Rabbi Caduri. It helped with the Beitar team, when we almost dropped to a lower league. On Friday, they called us back to the hospital. They were in shock: The kid just tore the respiration tubes off. He woke up."
20 year old Nati Nissim is lying on a bed, in the fifth floor of the Beit Levinstein hospital, draped from head to toe in the black-yellow uniform of the Beitar football team. "Daddy," he says suddenly "Don't forget. I need to get to the semi finals." Kurdi Bear, with a bristly chin and red eyes, freezes for a second, and tries to get his son back into reality. "Nati", he says softly, "I've already told you, Beitar has lost."
Nati laughs. "No way! I am going to the match!" he says and tries to get up. The father suppresses his frustration, gives up the struggle. The accident has caused the son to lose his short-term memory. Just like in the movie "Momento", he can recall, with astonishing precision, any Beitar goal going ten years back or even more, but forgets within minutes who he is talking with. "Why am I here?" he asks his parents again and again, and bows his head with embarrassment when an acquaintance reminds him of a conversation they had just the day before.
Kurdi sits in the ward and tries to look as optimistic as possible. The doctors are talking about a lengthy recovery process. They say that there is no telling if and when Nati's memory will return to normal. The financial situation is not brieither. He and his wife, Ronit, can hardly buy gas for his battered Subaru that tries to make the journey from the Castel neighborhood to the hospital. Kurdi wants to build himself a tent in front of the hospital. For the time being, he sleeps in the car.
"Jenin has strengthened me," he says. "It helped me forget my troubles. I had hoped it would be some turning point, until this hit me. But what happened to Nati taught me what really is important. I am living now for my son. The rest is really not important."
The friends from his reserves unit are helping him.
"He stood up when it really counted. He was there, in the most trying moment", says Haim Tamam, a soldier serving with him. "No one has functioned like he has. And I don't know if any of us could go through the nightmare he went through without putting a bullet through his head. We are all amazed by him."
Yeffet Damti, his bulldozer partner from Jenin, says that one thing is certain: "On the next mission, I am only going with Kurdi".
Kurdi, for his part, thanks his commanders that gave him the chance.
For the time being, they are wrapping him with attention and sympathy. They came here, to the hospital, just to be with him. Just so he won't be lonely. They are talking about raising funds to help him. When they meet him next to his son's bed, back come the memories from those 75 hours.
The chats around the son's bed continue till the management of the hospital called and begged them to stop bragging about destroying Jenin. There are Arab therapists who might be hurt, and one of the Arab patients has already complained.
Notes:
1."Bear" is the army code for the D-9 bulldozers. Kurdi means a person of Kurdish origin.
2. In Israel, men are recruited at the age of 18 for 3 years of obligatory military service. After being released, at the age of 21, they enter the reserve corps. The reserve duty usually demands 30 days of service each year, till the age of 45.
3. In January 2001, a building in Jerusalem collapsed during a wedding in a hall named Versailles. Some 25 people were killed.
4. The D-9 actually weighs 48.7 tons, without Armor. The armor brings the weight closer to 60 tons.
5. The operator is referring to the day in which 13 Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian fighters in an ambush in Jenin.
6. Two right-wing movements. Beitar, the youth movement, is more nationalistic. Likud is the major right-wing party.
7. This is the size, in meters, of the part of the camp that was totally demolished.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Says It Seized Americans Tied to Al Qaeda
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/asia/13STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 12 - Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani officials said today.
The Pakistani officials said most of the men had been picked up along with other suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members in joint American-Pakistani raids in the country's remote tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.
They said they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside Al Qaeda, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.
One man is believed by Pakistani officials to be an associate of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man detained last month on the suspicion that he was trying to build a radiation dispersal bomb intended for detonation in an American city.
He goes by the name Ahmed Muhammad, which Pakistani officials say they believe is a false name, as well as Benjamin. It was unclear whether Benjamin was used as a first or a last name.
Pakistani officials said several of those detained, including Mr. Muhammad, claimed to be American citizens. But the officials refused to verify the nationalities of any of the detainees for fear of what one called the "legal implications" that could impede the interrogations.
Mr. Muhammad, a Pakistani official said, was in Pakistani custody and being interrogated by the F.B.I.
Senior government officials in Washington said they had not yet confirmed that the men being held in Pakistan are American citizens. They also said they had not yet independently determined whether the men are connected to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. The American officials also said they had not established a connection between Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Padilla.
Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.
They said some of those detained appear to be Westerners who have been drawn to militant Islam. Pakistani officials said today that they believed that an American citizen who had converted to Islam had been killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir in 1998.
They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.
John Walker Lindh, the American charged with fighting alongside the Taliban, is believed to have attended Mr. Iltimas's religious school, and Pakistani officials say Richard C. Reid, a British subject and suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in December for trying to blow up a passenger jet with a bomb in his shoe, may also have attended the school.
Mr. Iltimas was taken into custody last month during an American-Pakistani operation in the area, and was released the next day.
Taken together, the arrests of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Lindh, Mr. Reid and others appears to offer a glimpse into a world of alienated Western men who apparently dropped out of society and tried to find fulfillment by converting to Islam and fighting for its more radical causes.
One Pakistani official said some of the detained men believed to be Americans may have converted to Islam while serving time in prison in the United States.
Mr. Padilla, who was raised a Roman Catholic and who had a criminal record, converted to Islam when he married a Muslim woman of Middle Eastern descent. Mr. Reid converted to Islam while serving time in prison.
A Pakistani official said his government was looking into the possibility that Mr. Reid and Mr. Padilla were associates during the time officials say they were in Al Qaeda.
Pakistani officials said five other men believed to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern origin were detained in France today on suspicion of being linked to Mr. Reid.
The officials also said today that they had detained five more people here who are believed to be Pakistani citizens and associates of Mr. Padilla. At least some of those detained are believed to have knowledge of Mr. Padilla's activities in recent months.
The Pakistani officials said they were also searching for a group of women and children who are believed to have stayed in the same Al Qaeda hideout used by Mr. Padilla and Abu Zubaydeh, the senior Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan on March 27. American law enforcement officials say Mr. Zubaydeh formed a close association with Mr. Padilla. The women and children are believed to be family members of a senior Qaeda member, possibly but not necessarily those of Mr. Zubaydeh.
The Qaeda hideout where Mr. Padilla and Mr. Zubaydeh were alleged to have spent time together is in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province near the Afghan border. It was some time after that association began that Mr. Zubaydeh was arrested and Mr. Padilla allegedly traveled to Karachi, Switzerland and then the United States with his plans to develop the radiation bomb.
To date, Americans have been detained on suspicion of fighting with the Taliban and with Al Qaeda as part of the Afghan conflict. Today, Pakistani officials said they had confirmed that an American convert to Islam was killed while fighting alongside Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir. The officials said they confirmed the man's death after seeing a story about him in a magazine called "Blow of the Believer," published by the Army of Muhammad, a Pakistan-based group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The story did not identify the man by name.
The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Pakistani officials said that after the story appeared, they contacted members of the guerrilla group and were satisfied that the account was accurate. The Pakistani officials said the American man was killed during an operation with Lashkar-e-Taiba, another guerrilla group battling Indian rule in Kashmir. The group has been outlawed in Pakistan.
The article is entitled "The story of an American Shaheed," using the Arabic word to describe someone who dies in the act of defending Islam against nonbelievers. The magazine said the man, whose Muslim name was Abu Adam Jibreel al Amrikeeas, joined the Kashmiri movement as a 19-year-old in 1997 and was killed in the fall of 1998 during an attack on an Indian Army base.
The article said Mr. Adam was "born into a considerably wealthy family," and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended the Ebeneezer Baptist Church as a child. Much like Mr. Lindh, who has been described as a precocious young man who explored different religious faiths, Mr. Adam is said to have read deeply about various religions, including Judaism and Buddhism, before finally deciding on Islam.
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Pakistan Denies Al Qaeda Link to Kashmir
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia-alqaeda.html
ISLAMABAD - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld played down reports on Thursday that al Qaeda militants might be operating in Kashmir, while Pakistan's government and militant leaders dismissed the allegations.
Rumsfeld, visiting South Asia in a bid to avert war between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, had suggested in New Delhi on Wednesday al Qaeda might be operating in Kashmir, but in Pakistan on Thursday he stressed there was no evidence to support the claim.
Pakistan has already dismissed the allegation as Indian propaganda aimed at discrediting Muslim militants fighting its rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
``The facts are I do not have evidence and the United States does not have evidence of al Qaeda in Kashmir,'' Rumsfeld told a news conference after meeting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad.
``We do have a good deal of scraps of intelligence that come in from people who say they believe al Qaeda are in Kashmir, or are in various locations,'' he said. ``It tends to be speculative, it is not actionable, it is not verifiable.''
``The cooperation between the United States and Pakistan is so close, and so intimate and so cooperative on the subject of al Qaeda, that if there happened to be any actionable intelligence as to al Qaeda anywhere in the country, there isn't a doubt in my mind Pakistan would go find them and deal with them.''
India has alleged that fighters from Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group, forced out of Afghanistan by the U.S.-led war on terrorism, have moved to Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
New Delhi portrays the Muslim militants fighting its rule in Kashmir as terrorists, while Pakistan calls them freedom fighters waging a legitimate war against India's harsh rule in Kashmir.
Human rights groups criticize both sides for exploiting the suffering of Kashmiri civilians for their own ends.
They accuse India of massive human rights abuses in its portion of Kashmir, but say what began as a domestic insurgency against Indian-rule has been corrupted by Islamic radicals sent from Pakistan and other countries.
FLEEING TO KASHMIR?
A special envoy of Musharraf on the Malaysian leg of a regional tour, told Reuters al Qaeda members might have fled toward Pakistani-held ``Azad (Free) Kashmir'' after September 11 but were not fighting with militant groups there.
``That some may have gone into Azad Kashmir is possible but the connotation of the earlier reports or the conclusions that people drew would be erroneous,'' former foreign secretary Najmuddin Shaikh said. ``I think the connotation was that they are the people infiltrating across to Indian-held Kashmir.''
Pakistan, which has armed and trained Kashmiri militants in the past, has pledged to stop militants crossing into Indian-held Kashmir in a bid to avert war with India.
A leading Kashmiri militant leader also dismissed the allegation his movement had any links with al Qaeda.
``The independence movement in Kashmir is purely indigenous and no foreign element is involved,'' said Syed Salahuddin, head of the United Jihad Council, an umbrella organization for several guerrilla outfits fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
``Kashmiri mujahideen had neither any link with al Qaeda in the past, nor have now, nor is any Arab fighter playing any role in Kashmir freedom movement,'' he said in a statement.
``The struggle of the people of Kashmir for independence will continue with full force and the entire (Kashmiri) nation will unitedly face every conspiracy,'' he said. ``The day is not far when... Kashmir will be freed.''
--------
Pakistan Says It Alerted U.S. Over 'Dirty Bomb' Man
June 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-pakistan.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani intelligence agencies tipped off their U.S. counterparts about the ``dirty bomb'' suspect later arrested in the United States, a senior Pakistan army official said Thursday.
The official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters that Pakistan was also holding a British national and associate of American suspect Jose Padilla, also known as Abdullah al Muhajir, for interrogation for possible links with al Qaeda.
U.S. officials said last week they had arrested Padilla last month when he returned from Pakistan. They accused him of plotting a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' attack on the United States as a member of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The Pakistani official said Islamabad had alerted American authorities about the suspicious activities of Padilla and his British companion, Ahmed Mohammad, but had no information about a ``dirty bomb'' plan.
``We had no information that they were involved in the dirty bomb nor did we provide any such information to the United States,'' he said.
He said Pakistani authorities were interrogating Ahmed Mohammad but would not give any details.
A U.S. official has said information provided by a suspected top al Qaeda aide in U.S. custody, Abu Zubaydah, helped in Padilla's arrest.
But the Pakistani official said Islamabad's security agencies had been shadowing Padilla and Ahmed Mohammad and provided photocopies of ``doubtful'' travel documents of the two men to British and U.S. embassies for verification.
He said security agents at the U.S. Embassy immediately alerted FBI officials in Pakistan and in the United States but Padilla left Pakistan before he could be arrested there.
U.S. authorities say they became curious when Padilla applied in March for the replacement of his U.S. passport in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.
The Pakistani official said Padilla and Ahmed Mohammad had visited some Central Asian states in the past but was unsure about the purpose of their journeys.
A U.S. official said Tuesday Padilla met top al Qaeda leaders after Sept. 11 to discuss a range of attack options, including blowing up hotels and gas stations.
Washington blames al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.
The U.S. officials said Padilla traveled to Afghanistan several times after Sept. 11 to meet Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March and later moved to the United States.
-------- us
Gulf buildup: U.S. has doubled troops in Kuwait this year
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, June 13, 2002
http://216.26.163.62/2002/ss_military_06_13.html
The Defense Department has provided the first report on the U.S. military buildup in Kuwait.
A Defense Department release said about 8,000 U.S. military personnel now serve in the sheikdom - twice as many as reported late last year. About 2,000 of them serve in Camp Doha near the Iraqi border.
Last year, Gulf defense sources reported no more than 4,000 U.S. troops in Kuwait, Middle East Newsline reported.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on tour of the Persian Gulf and South Asia, refused to disclose how many U.S. troops are deployed throughout the region.
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But he stressed that the U.S. military presence has grown over the last six months.
"We don't discuss the size of military presence around the world for good reasons," Rumsfeld said in a news conference in Doha on Tuesday. "It changes every day; we have ships coming, ships going, people coming, people going, and needless to say the presence is larger than it was before the Afghan activity began, but we don't give numbers."
During his current tour of the Persian Gulf and South Asia, Rumsfeld visited Camp Doha, the forward military base against Kuwait. The base, operated by U.S. Army Central Command, contains M1A1 main battle tanks, PAC-2 anti-missile batteries, self-propelled artillery and AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters.
Rumsfeld told 1,000 soldiers at Camp Doha that they should be prepared for combat. "The global war on terrorism began in Afghanistan, to be sure, but it will not end there," he said. "I'm certainly not in a position to tell you when, why or where."
At a nearby Kuwait air base, the United States has deployed F-15E and F-16 fighter-jets to patrol southern Iraq. Rumsfeld did not rule out the deployment of additional air and ground assets in Kuwait.
U.S. officials said the military presence in Kuwait is being bolstered by additional troops. These include soldiers based in Fort Bragg, N.C., who will perform support duties.
----
US military personnel killed in terror war
June 13, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/13062002-102304-2025r.htm
WASHINGTON, June 13 (UPI) -- List of U.S. military personnel killed in Operation Enduring Freedom (as of June 13):
Andrews, Evander Earl; Air Force master sergeant; 36; Solon, Maine; Oct. 10, 2001; heavy equipment accident.
Edmunds, John J; Army specialist; 20; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Oct. 21, 2001; helicopter crash.
Stonesifer, Kristofor T.; Army private first class; 28; Missoula, Mont.; Oct. 21, 2001; helicopter crash.
Davis, Bryant L.; Navy fireman apprentice; 20; Chicago; Nov. 7, 2001; fell overboard USS Kitty Hawk.
Maria, Giovanny; Army private; 19; New York; Nov. 29, 2001; gunshot wound, shooting under investigation.
Jakes, Michael J. Jr.; Navy electricians mate fireman; 20; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Dec. 4, 2001; on-board ship accident.
Davis, Jefferson Donald; Army Special Forces master sergeant; 39; Watauga, Tenn.; 39; Dec. 5, 2001; friendly fire incident.
Petithory, Daniel Henry; Army Special Forces sergeant first class; 32; Cheshire, Mass.; 32; Dec. 5, 2001; friendly fire incident.
Prosser, Brian Cody; Army Special Forces staff sergeant; 28; Frazier Park, Calif.; 28; Dec. 5, 2001; friendly fire incident.
Chapman, Nathan Ross; Army Special Forces sergeant 1st class; 31; San Antonio; Jan. 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Bancroft, Matthew W.; Marine captain; 29; Shasta, Calif.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Bertrand, Bryan P.; Marine lance corporal; 23; Coos, Ore.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Bryson, Stephen L; Marine gunnery sergeant; 35; Montgomery, Ala.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Germosen, Scott N.; Marine staff sergeant; 37; Queens, N.Y.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Hays, Nathan P.; Marine sergeant; 21; Lincoln, Wash.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
McCollum, Daniel G.; Marine captain; 29; Richland, S.C.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Winters, Jeannette L.; Marine sergeant; 25; De Page, Ill.; Jan. 9, 2002; plane crash.
Cohee, Walker F III; Marine staff sergeant; 26; Wicomico, Md.; Jan. 20, 2002; helicopter crash.
Morgan, Dwight J.; Marine sergeant; 24; Mendocino, Calif.; Jan. 20, 2002; helicopter crash.
Disney, Jason A.; Army specialist; 21; Fallon, Nev.; Feb. 13, 2002; equipment accident.
Allison, Thomas F.; Army specialist; 22; Tacoma, Wash.; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Dorrity, James P.; Army staff sergeant; 37; Goldsboro, N.C.; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Egnor, Jody L.; Army chief warrant officer 2nd class; 32; Liberty Township, Ohio; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Forshee, Jeremy D.; Army sergeant; 25; Alabama; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Frith, Kerry W.; Army staff sergeant; 37; Jamesville, Nev.; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Feistner, Curtis D.; Army major; 34; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
McDaniel, William L.; Air Force master sergeant; 36; Fort Jefferson, Ohio; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Owens, Bartt D.; Army captain; 30; Franklin, Ohio; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Ridout, Juan M.; Air Force staff sergeant; Maple Tree, Wash.; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Rushforth, Bruce A. Jr.; Army staff sergeant; 35; New Bedford, Mass.; Feb. 21, 2002; Philippines helicopter crash.
Harriman, Stanley L.; Army chief warrant officer; 35; Wade, N.C.; March 2, 2002; enemy fire.
Anderson, Marc A.; Army specialist; 30; Brandon, Fla.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Chapman, John A.; Air Force technical sergeant; 36; Waco, Texas; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Commons, Matthew A.; Army private first class; 21; Boulder City, Nev.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Crose, Bradley S.; Army sergeant; 27; Orange Park, Fla.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Cunningham, Jason, D.; Air Force senior airman; 26; Camarillo, Calif.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Roberts, Neil C.; Navy aviation boatswain's mate-handling petty officer first class; 32; Woodland, Calif.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Svitak, Philip J.; Army sergeant; 31; Joplin, Mo.; March 4, 2002; enemy fire.
Bourgeois, Matthew J.; Navy chief petty officer; 35; Tallahassee, Fla.; March 28, 2002; stepped on land mine.
Craig, Brian T.; Army staff sergeant; 27; Houston; April 15, 2002; explosives clearing operation accident.
Galewski, Justin J.; Army staff sergeant; 28; Olathe, Kan.; April 15, 2002; explosives clearing operation accident.
Maugans, Jamie O.; Army sergeant; 27; Wichita, Kan.; April 15, 2002; explosives clearing operation accident.
Romero, Daniel A.; Army sergeant 1st class; 30; Longmont, Colo.; April 15, 2002; explosives clearing operation accident.
Vance, Gene Arden; Army sergeant; 38; Morgantown, W.Va.; May 19, 2002, enemy fire.
Corlew, Sean M.; Air Force technical sergeant; 37; Thousand Oaks, Calif.; June 12, 2002; plane crash.
Shero, Anissa A.; Air Force staff sergeant; 31; Grafton, W.Va.; June 12, 2002; plane crash.
Tycz; Peter P. II; Army sergeant 1st class; 32; Tonawanda, N.Y.; June 12, 2002; plane crash.
-------- propaganda wars
Defusing the hype surrounding 'dirty bomb'
By Mark Jurkowitz,
Boston Globe
6/13/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/164/living/Defusing_the_hype_surrounding_dirty_bomb_%2B.shtml
Within 24 hours of the dramatic news of a thwarted plot to detonate a radioactive device in the United States, the media began wondering whether a ''dirty nuke'' bombshell was something of a dud.
Attorney General John Ashcroft's announcement Monday of the arrest a month ago of Abdullah al-Muhajir triggered front-page headlines and scenarios about the consequences of a radioactive explosion. The three network newscasts devoted a total of nearly 20 minutes to the story on Monday night, and CNN's ''Crossfire'' asked: ''Could a potential dirty bomb be rolling through your neighborhood?'' Seeing an irresistible news hook, the Center for Strategic and International Studies briefed reporters Monday on the results of a simulated radiological blast scenario in Washington.
But by yesterday, coverage had turned considerably warier. USA Today led its front page by citing concerns that ''Attorney General John Ashcroft overstated the potential threat posed by the `dirty bomb' suspect Abdullah al-Muhajir.'' The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd - a barometer of skepticism, if not cynicism - said: ''Both the bad guys and good guys are playing with our heads and ratcheting up the fear factor.'' The Globe quoted a former CIA official as saying, ''The facts of the story don't merit the hype given to it.'' Associated Press stories asked ''whether the threat ... posed was initially exaggerated to deflect attention from questions about terrorism-related intelligence failures.''
''It's hard for both the media and the government. We're truly in a new environment now,'' said Marvin Kalb, director of the Washington office of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Kalb said news organizations initially responded appropriately to Ashcroft's announcement. ''I don't think the press went overboard,'' he said. ''The government went overboard, and the press went along for the ride.''
For the media, the dirty-bomb story recalled a series of terror threats cited by top administration officials last month.
And a dilemma remains: How do news outlets report on potentially serious threats without desensitizing the public and without being exploited by either the good guys or the bad guys?
Citing ''the weekly drumbeats of new threats,'' Hurst Hannum, a professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said, ''The media is open to manipulation by two sources - terrorist sources and the administration ... We are not suddenly under siege from everyone.''
Larry Sabato, a media analyst and a University of Virginia professor, said: ''There have been so many warnings about so many things that most people are not taking any of it seriously anymore. If it's not the subway, it's the bridges. If it's not the bridges, it's the airports. If it's not the airports, it's a dirty bomb.''
A number of observers acknowledged that at this point in the post-Sept. 11 world, news outlets have little choice but to relay - on Page 1 and at the top of newscasts - new terror warnings and developments from government officials. The key, they say, is to burrow deeper.
''After you report the facts as they've been delivered, you also need to report on what we don't know,'' Sabato said. Hannum added: ''The media has overall done a good job, but I think they could use a bit more investigation and less merely reporting White House press statements.''
Hodding Carter III, president of the Knight Foundation which focuses on journalism, said he is pleased by the follow-up stories, which took a harder look at the dirty-bomb plot.
''The government itself often operates with half-information and first-time assumptions, but there's no need to be cowed,'' he said. ''I think the recovery has been exactly what you would have hoped, saying, `Wait a minute, wait a minute.'''
--------
Stink Bomb
The dirty bomb plot turns into an attack on the Constitution.
REASON,
By Mike Lynch,
June 13, 2002
http://reason.com/ml/ml061302.shtml
"The concern we'd like to pursue is what's the substance of this," a congressional source told the Los Angeles Times after emerging Tuesday from an administration briefing on Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al Muhajir, the alleged dirty bomber. "We're all for sticking bad guys in the hole, but you've got to have evidence."
But these days, the executive branch is making a neat end run around that tired old principle of "evidence for crimes." If it lacks such evidence -- or insists on keeping it secret -- the president can simply call a person an "enemy combatant" and ship him off to the custody of the armed forces, leaving the suspect with no counsel and no constitutional protections.
The United States has always prided itself on being governed by a written rule of law, not the arbitrary dictates of its momentary leaders. But the imperatives of the War on Terror are eroding that principle.
The dirty bomb story smelled bad from the outset. The FBI and CIA are under fire for lack of information-sharing, among other things. The president promised "pre-emptive action" during a speech at West Point on June 1. Worried talk of dirty bombs has filled the air for months. Presto, Attorney General John Ashcroft is live from Moscow announcing Padilla's custody shift from Justice to the Defense Department, and praising the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies for their "close cooperation."
Still, elements of the press remained skeptical. Articles appeared questioning the suspicious timing. Democrats and civil libertarians frustrated with the highly selective release of information accused the administration of news-cycle management. But the truth turns out to be even worse: The administration's hand was forced because it was scheduled to have to justify itself before the courts.
If the administration had its way, we'd never have heard of Padilla and his alleged plans to construct a dirty bomb. It was only when it was threatened with having to present evidence of such a plan in court that the government squeezed those lemons into lemonade, took credit for thwarting, in Ashcroft's words, a "terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive 'dirty bomb,'" and pushed Padilla into the never-neverland of military custody.
This is where the rule of law comes in. Padilla is a U.S. citizen. The military tribunal system, at Bush's insistence, is for non-citizens. The administration points back to a 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision under which U.S. citizens who were also German saboteurs were tried by a military court and executed two months after their capture. But the government is not interested in trying Padilla for a crime; it just wants to hold on to him indefinitely. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told CBS's Early Show, "He's an enemy combatant and as in earlier wars, you can hold an enemy combatant until the end of the conflict." His two bosses -- Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush -- have made the same point. "Our interest, really, in this case, is not law enforcement," said Rumsfeld. "It is not punishment." Declared Bush, "This Padilla's a bad guy and he is where he needs to be -- detained."
Some congressional leaders support the administration. "If you aid and abet the enemy, whether you are a citizen or not, you're not entitled to the rights of due process," says New York's senior Senator Charles Schumer (D). But how do we know he aided and abetted the enemy? It's due process -- the very thing the administration is denying Padilla -- that would determine this. This rights-denial is justified by our undeclared war on terrorism -- which is a declared war on anyone the government says is a terrorist.
The Padilla case is part of a pattern of government abuse of power. The government has detained hundreds of individuals in the aftermath of 9/11, holding some on violations of federal law, including immigration law, and others as material witnesses. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get such basic information as the detainees' names and names of their counsel. A New Jersey state court ruled against the government's policy of secret arrest and detainment. Some of the cases are deeply troubling. Nabil Almarabh, a former Boston cab driver and terrorist suspect, was kept in solitary confinement without access to either a lawyer or a judge for eight months. If the Bush administration gets its way, Padilla could find himself in the same position for much, much longer.
Mike Lynch is Reason's national correspondent.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Lawyer for suspect in 'dirty bomb' plot calls case weak
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020613-12484240.htm
An attorney for al Qaeda terror suspect Abdullah al Muhajir, a U.S. citizen captured last month by the FBI reportedly in a plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," told a federal judge yesterday the case against her client was weak and he should be released.
Donna Newman argued before U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mukasey in New York there was insufficient evidence to indict al Muhajir, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native previously known as Jose Padilla, and his continued confinement by the U.S. military was unconstitutional.
"Based on recent information, there no longer exists probable cause to detain Padilla for any reason," Ms. Newman said in a writ of habeas corpus. "The evidence linking Padilla to the alleged 'dirty bomb' plot is weak at best. There is insufficient evidence for the government to obtain an indictment against Padilla."
The court-appointed attorney, during an afternoon hearing, said al Muhajir had not been charged with a crime and a federal grand jury had not been presented any evidence of her client's involvement in a conspiracy to construct and detonate a radiological dispersion device, or dirty bomb.
However, traveling yesterday in Switzerland, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "It is clear that he was trained in explosive devices after time in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that he had done research in radiological and explosive devices and contamination," although Mr. Ashcroft declined to elaborate.
Judge Mukasey gave the government until June 21 to file a motion to dismiss the writ or transfer it to another jurisdiction.
Al Muhajir, 31, was detained May 8 after his arrival at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said the conspiracy had not extended past the planning stages, although al Muhajir reportedly was carrying plans for an attack and $10,000 in cash when he was taken into custody.
Authorities said al Muhajir had returned to the United States to begin reconnaissance for a bombing site and seek a source for the radioactive material for a dirty bomb. They said he had been under surveillance by the FBI as he traveled among Pakistan, Egypt and Switzerland. He was arrested in Chicago after a flight from Zurich and Karachi, Pakistan.
Mr. Ashcroft said in announcing the arrest that authorities had determined from "multiple, independent and corroborating sources" that al Muhajir was closely associated with al Qaeda and that, as an operative for Osama bin Laden's terrorist group, he "was involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States."
Al Muhajir and an unidentified associate are believed to have researched the construction and detonation of dirty bombs in Lahore, Pakistan, authorities said. They said that in addition to the nation's capital as a potential site, the scheme had targeted hotels and gas stations.
The unnamed associate reportedly is being held in a foreign country, where he is being questioned. His name and nationality had not been made public, and officials at the Justice Department were unavailable last night for comment.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, a senior Pakistani official confirmed media reports, first made by Fox News on Monday, that a man identified as Benjamin Ahmed Mohammed was being held and questioned by FBI agents for his connection to al Muhajir. The official did not know Mr. Mohammed's nationality.
Al Muhajir, who was not at yesterday's court hearing, was transferred to Defense Department custody Sunday after he was ruled "an enemy combatant." He is being held at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C.
He had been held by the Justice Department as a material witness since his May 8 detention and had been subpoenaed as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation into the terrorist attacks of September 11. The department later withdrew the subpoena and al Mahajir's material witness status when he was transferred to military custody.
During yesterday's hearing, Ms. Newman argued that her client had been designated an "enemy combatant" even though Congress had not declared war. She said existing guidelines for military tribunals did not apply to U.S. citizens and that al Muhajir had not been charged by a military court with a crime.
She also told the court she had not been allowed to speak with her client since his transfer Sunday to South Carolina.
Law enforcement authorities said al Muhajir met frequently with top al Qaeda leaders in the weeks after September 11 to discuss further U.S. attacks. They said he traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan several times after the suicide strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, meeting with Abu Zubaydah, a top lieutenant to bin Laden.
Those meetings, they said, began in December 2001 and continued through March.
----
Names of terror detainees can stay secret, court rules
June 13, 2002
AP
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020613-32530450.htm
NEWARK, N.J. - The federal government can keep secret the names of post-September 11 detainees held in New Jersey, a state appeals court said yesterday in ruling that the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service has broad powers to prevent release of the information.
The ruling was a setback to immigration and civil rights advocates, who have been seeking the names of detainees held in New Jersey county jails since last fall in an attempt to monitor their treatment and ensure they have adequate representation.
The U.S. Justice Department argues that releasing the detainees' names could help terrorist organizations by letting them know which of their operatives are - or aren't - in custody.
According to the most recent Justice Department figures, 104 detainees remain in custody nationwide, the majority in New Jersey county jails.
The three-judge panel ruled that INS Commissioner James Ziglar has the right to administer immigration matters and that some detainees might not want their names to be made public. The panel ruled that releasing the information could jeopardize the safety of the detainees and their families and might also hurt criminal investigations.
INS spokesman Russ Bergeron referred inquiries to the Justice Department, whose spokesman, Dan Nelson, did not immediately return a call seeking comment yesterday.
The New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued Passaic and Hudson counties in January, saying the names of people arrested in New Jersey are public information under the state's right-to-know law.
A series of court rulings has supported that stance, rejecting claims that the release of the names could hurt national security.
The plaintiffs plan to appeal to the state Supreme Court.
"It's very inconsistent with other decisions concerning government secrecy since September 11 which have courageously recognized that open government is essential to the success of democracy," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the Newark chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU also is suing the federal government in federal court, challenging the practice of routinely closing immigration court hearings involving detainees.
A federal judge ruled earlier this month that closing the hearings was unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge John Bissell refused to limit his order to INS hearings held in New Jersey, extending it to all post-attack detainees.
----
Holbrooke won't testify in open court
From combined dispatches
June 13, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020613-1351716.htm
The United States is refusing to permit Richard C. Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, to testify in open court before an international tribunal prosecuting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a State Department official said yesterday.
The official said Washington was demanding Mr. Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton peace accords that ended Yugoslavia's wars of secession, and other former U.S. officials testify in a closed session before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or not at all.
"They either won't testify or they will have to testify under these rules," the State Department official told Agence France-Presse on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the U.S. condition has been set to protect intelligence assets.
The Financial Times said the U.S. position also was based on fears that Mr. Holbrooke's appearance in open court would set a precedent for senior officials testifying before international courts like the coming International Criminal Court, which Washington ardently opposes.
The State Department official declined to discuss that aspect of the U.S. position. The International Criminal Court officially opens July 1.
The Financial Times also reported that negotiations over the testimony of Mr. Holbrooke and others had grown so difficult that the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, was considering not even calling him to the stand.
In The Hague, Mrs. Del Ponte's spokeswoman Florence Hartmann declined to comment on the report. "These are confidential matters," she said.
The official said secret negotiations over the testimony had been going on for some time under a so-called "silence procedure" - a way to keep discussions private under a temporary gag rule.
The silence procedure expired on Tuesday, the official said.
If the prosecutors fail to call Mr. Holbrooke as a witness, Mr. Milosevic himself could call him as a defense witness - meaning his testimony would be shaped far more by the accused, who is defending himself.
Meanwhile at the war crimes trial yesterday, Mr. Milosevic challenged the testimony of an American ambassador, reaching back to the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s in an attempt to discredit the U.S. envoy.
Mr. Milosevic cross-examined William Walker, the former U.S. head of a Kosovo peacekeeping mission, about his testimony that he saw piles of bodies at Racak, a massacre that focused world attention on atrocities by Serbian forces.
As head of the mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the late 1990s, Mr. Walker was charged with monitoring human rights abuses.
Before joining the OSCE, Mr. Walker dealt with Central American issues at the State Department from 1985 to 1988 and later served as ambassador to El Salvador from 1988 to 1992.
----
Now showing on satellite TV: secret American spy photos
Security lapse allows viewers to see sensitive operations
Duncan Campbell
Thursday June 13, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4432640,00.html
European satellite TV viewers can watch live broadcasts of peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations being conducted by US spyplanes over the Balkans.
Normally secret video links from the American spies-in-the-sky have a serious security problem - a problem that make it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of US intelligence activity than to get Disney cartoons or new-release movies.
For more than six months live pictures from manned spy aircraft and drones have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The satellite, Telstar 11, is a commercial TV relay. The US spyplane broadcasts are not encrypted, meaning that anyone in the region with a normal satellite TV receiver can watch surveillance operations as they happen.
The satellite feeds have also been connected to the internet, potentially allowing the missions to be watched from around the globe.
Viewers who tuned in to the unintended attraction on Tuesday could watch a sudden security alert around the US army's Kosovan headquarters, Camp Bondsteel in Urosevac. The camp was visited last summer by President Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
A week earlier the spyplane had provided airborne cover for a heavily protected patrol of the Macedonian-Kosovan border, near Skopje. A group of apparently high-ranking visitors were accompanied by six armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter gunship.
Nato officials, whose forces in former Yugoslavia depend on the US missions for intelligence, at first expressed disbelief at the reports. After inquiring, a Nato spokesman confirmed: "We're aware that this imagery is put on a communications satellite. The distribution of this material is handled by the United States and we're content that they're following appropriate levels of security."
This lapse in US security was discovered last year by a British engineer and satellite enthusiast, John Locker, who specialises in tracking commercial satellite services. Early in November 2001 he routinely logged the new channels.
"I thought that the US had made a deadly error," he said. "My first thought was that they were sending their spyplane pictures through the wrong satellite by mistake, and broadcasting secret information across Europe."
He tried repeatedly to warn British, Nato and US officials about the leak. But his warnings were set aside. One officer wrote back to tell him that the problem was a "known hardware limitation".
The flights, conducted by US army and navy units and AirScan Inc, a Florida-based private military company, are used to monitor terrorists and smugglers trying to cross borders, to track down arms caches, and to keep watch on suspect premises. The aircraft are equipped to watch at night, using infrared.
"We seem to be transmitting this information potentially straight to our enemies," said one US military intelligence official who was alerted to the leak, adding: "I would be worried that using this information, the people we are tracking will see what we are looking at and, much more worryingly, what we are not looking at.
"This could let people see where our forces are and what they're doing. That's putting our boys at risk."
Former SAS officer Adrian Weale, who served in Northern Ireland, told BBC Newsnight last night: "I think I'd be extremely irritated to find that the planning and hard work that had gone into mounting an operation against, for instance, a war crime suspect or gun runner was being compromised by the release of this information in the form that it's going out in."
· Duncan Campbell is a freelance investigative journalist and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and not the Guardian correspondent of the same name
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F.B.I. Talked of Following Bomb Suspect Before Arrest
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/national/13INQU.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 - F.B.I. officials seized Jose Padilla, the man accused of plotting to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States, only after discussing whether it was better to pick him up as he arrived in this country or to follow him in the hope that he might lead the authorities to possible accomplices, officials said today.
After long deliberations, which included consultations with Director Robert S. Mueller III of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, investigators decided to pick up Mr. Padilla in Chicago immediately after his arrival on a flight from Zurich on May 8. Officials justified that approach today, saying they could not be certain that Mr. Padilla had not already acquired a radiological weapon or might try another terrorist action.
"They couldn't take a chance," so they decided as one official put it, "to pop him right as he got off the plane."
Several officials said the arrest was important in demonstrating how the F.B.I. and Central Intelligence Agency could undertake a successful prevention operation. They said that the Justice Department was eager to showcase the Padilla case after weeks in which the F.B.I. had been battered in Congress for missing potential warning signals of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Counterterrorism investigators have begun to compile a detailed account of Mr. Padilla's movements, searching for clues to possible confederates and any indication that he tried to acquire nuclear material, senior government officials said.
The officials said investigators had not identified any associates of Mr. Padilla in the United States connected to the bomb plot nor had they found any sign that he had tried to obtain material needed for a radioactive bomb. Such a "dirty bomb" is not a true nuclear device but would use conventional explosives packed with nuclear material to spread radiation across a wide area.
Mr. Padilla, who has not been charged with a crime, is being held in a military prison in South Carolina. Officials have justified his detention by saying he is considered to be an enemy combatant. He has refused to cooperate with the authorities who have questioned him.
Mr. Padilla was arrested in Chicago on a field material witness warrant and subsequently transferred to New York. On Sunday, he was transferred to military custody at a naval station in Charleston, S.C.
Officials said that the bomb plot was interrupted in its earliest phase and that Mr. Padilla, a low-level gang member with a criminal record, was an unlikely terrorist with no technical knowledge of nuclear materials who was arrested long before he represented a significant terrorist threat.
But officials said Mr. Padilla was useful to Al Qaeda. He was an American, held a valid passport and knew his way around the United States. The officials added that it was unlikely that Al Qaeda would have ever trusted a non-Arab like Mr. Padilla with an important operation.
A federal judge in Manhattan today made public a heavily censored copy of a petition Mr. Padilla's lawyers filed on Monday asking that a judge order the authorities to produce a prisoner in court so the judge can decide the legality of his detention.
The uncensored parts of the petition, for a writ of habeas corpus, show that Mr. Padilla's lawyers have asserted that in holding him in military custody, the government has violated his Constitutional rights, including his right to due process, his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, his right to counsel and his right to appear before a grand jury.
"In short, the government's latest maneuver, similar to the government's detention here, is an attempt to detain Padilla indefinitely," the petition says.
The petition asks Chief Judge Michael B. Mukasey of Federal District Court to order that Mr. Padilla be returned to New York and released, or at least be allowed to meet or speak by phone with a lawyer. The petition, signed by one of Mr. Padilla's lawyers, Donna R. Newman, says Mr. Padilla "is now foreclosed from meeting with his attorney."
The petition also charges that "the evidence linking Mr. Padilla to the alleged `dirty bomb plot' is weak at best" and not enough for prosecutors to obtain a criminal indictment against him. The petition also argues that although Mr. Padilla has been detained as an "enemy combatant," Congress has not yet declared war.
Judge Mukasey gave the government until June 21 to file a motion seeking to dismiss or transfer the petition out of New York.
In a news conference yesterday, James B. Comey, the United States attorney in Manhattan, declined to say what the government's response would be. "There's a lot of folks who need to be heard inside the government on what we'll say about that," Mr. Comey said.
Today, White House aides defended Mr. Padilla's arrest and the disclosure of the case by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who interrupted a trip to Moscow with a live television broadcast to announce it. White House aides said the arrest was based on intelligence about the training Mr. Padilla had received at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and other unspecified evidence.
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, dismissed as "outlandish" suggestions that administration officials had disclosed the capture of Mr. Padilla to help President Bush's domestic security plan or to deflect Congressional criticism of the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
"These very few people who want to make such an outlandish political accusation represent the most cynical among the most partisan, and they're not to be taken seriously," Mr. Fleischer said.
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Echo of F.B.I. Abuses in Queries on New Role
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/national/13CIVI.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 - Consider the following set of circumstances: Using the new guidelines for fighting terrorism, an F.B.I. agent visits a mosque and hears an imam declare that United States policies are starving children in Iraq or killing children in Palestine and that people need to "do something" about this situation.
Is this constitutionally protected speech or something that could become part of a domestic intelligence dossier that remains in the files forever?
Some lawmakers and civil libertarians are voicing concerns that the Bush administration's new guidelines on investigating terrorism create the potential for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to repeat some of the abuses of the past.
At the heart of the discussion is the new authority for investigators to monitor domestic political groups, religious meetings and the World Wide Web, without any demonstrated suspicion of any criminal activity.
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican usually supportive of the administration and law enforcement, said in an interview that he had grave doubts.
"The question I have is, given the fact that the F.B.I. is stretched to the limit, why should they be investigating matters when there is no criminal activity suggested?" asked Mr. Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "I don't have an adequate answer to that."
Administration officials like Attorney General John Ashcroft have said that the new guidelines are a needed response to the efforts of terrorists and also provide investigators with modern tools like the Internet.
In the case of the imam's speech about United States policy, the comments could be the kind of political speech protected by the Constitution from government interference. But the complaints about American policy are similar to what terrorists use as a justification, and along with his exhortation to "do something," could qualify as enough of a lead to warrant further investigation.
Does the agent go back and try to learn more, and keep records of what is heard? What happens to those records? Do they become part of a dossier on the mosque and its followers? How does the agent decide when there is no purpose in continuing to check the mosque?
The guidelines appear to address those questions glancingly, if at all.
The new powers given the bureau recall for many the two previous periods of abuse by the F.B.I: the collection of domestic political intelligence under J. Edgar Hoover up until 1974 and the surveillance of a political committee in the mid-1980's based on the spurious information that its members were involved in terrorism in Central America.
Viet D. Dinh, the assistant attorney general in charge of drafting the new guidelines, said they included sufficient protections against abuse.
"We intend for these guidelines to be operational road maps for agents, clear in authority and clear on the limitations of the activities that are permitted," Mr. Dinh said in an interview. "When questions arise, the F.B.I. agents can consult with their supervisors and field counsel and headquarters counsel as necessary to adhere to these guidelines."
James X. Dempsey, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group in Washington, said field agents were likely to be uncertain about the limits on their authority.
"We've been down this road before," Mr. Dempsey said, recalling the two-year investigation of the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador, known as Cispes. The investigation of Cispes began in 1983 after an informer said the Dallas chapter of the group was planning violence in El Salvador. Although the informer turned out to be unreliable, the investigation bloomed into the collection of information on dozens of groups like Oxfam America and Amnesty International.
Mr. Dempsey said that records of the investigation released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that many field agents were greatly confused about what could be monitored. The San Francisco field office sent a report on a local ballot initiative supported by Cispes and added that the mayor, the archbishop and "all local congress people" also voiced support for the initiative.
Other memorandums from agents reported on a Washington demonstration, saying where the buses would leave from in various cities and who had signed up. The Cincinnati field office reported on contacts by the local Cispes chapter with some nuns, and asked for advice.
In 1984, bureau headquarters sent a message to all investigators saying that several field offices had sent information about protected political activity. Political activities, the memorandum said, "are not, repeat not, targets of this investigation."
Nonetheless, all of the information was retained by headquarters.
After a lawsuit, the bureau agreed to delete the Cispes material from its files but discovered that much of the information could not be purged because it had been cross-filed in other dossiers.
Mr. Dinh said that in cases like the visit to a mosque in which no criminal leads were discovered, no records would be kept. The regulations say, "For the purpose of detecting or preventing terrorist activities, the F.B.I. is authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public. . . . No information obtained from such visits shall be retained unless it relates to potential criminal or terrorist activity."
Mr. Sensenbrenner said, however, that he thought the regulations were unclear and left open "the question of what happens when the F.B.I. goes into a mosque and nothing happens."
"Does the agent write down what was heard, does he come back next week?" the congressman asked.
Mr. Hoover used domestic intelligence files collected under the Cointelpro program to discredit political enemies.
Prof. David J. Garrow, the author of "The F.B.I. and Martin Luther King Jr.," a book about the bureau's covert collection of personal information about Dr. King, said that one way Mr. Hoover used the information was to intimidate members of Congress and cement their loyalty to the bureau.
"Typically, he would send someone up to a congressman's office who would say that, `We are telling you that we came across this information and we want you to know that we are your friend and we're looking out for your best interest,' " Professor Garrow said. "It was subtle but unmistakable."
The information could be about some transgression or embarrassing fact about a family member.
At the beginning of the Reagan administration, Congress debated putting into law the administrative guidelines developed in 1974 by Attorney General Edward H. Levi to avoid a repetition of the Cointelpro program. But Mr. Reagan's first attorney general, William French Smith, said the administration would not support the law, and the effort died.
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Support for a New Agency but Concern About the Details
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/politics/13RIDG.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 - After meeting today with more than 200 members of the House, Tom Ridge, the homeland security adviser, said he found broad support for the administration's goal of a single new security agency.
But when it comes to the details of the proposal, as Mr. Ridge acknowledged, many in Congress have sharp questions and long lists of local concerns.
The meeting in the House chamber, which was closed to the public, was the administration's first effort to sell the plan directly to Congress; Mr. Ridge will meet with senators on Thursday.
Several members raised questions about how the reorganization would affect weapons plants or national laboratories in their districts, those present said, while others raised doubts about whether the new agency could operate independently of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.
Members of both parties said the meeting was generally free of partisan rancor, but several raised the kind of questions about elements of the new agency that could produce sheaves of amendments and weeks of deliberative delay.
Conversations with House members after the meeting tended to follow a similar pattern: lavish praise for Mr. Ridge, modest praise for the single-agency idea, and then a question about a specific issue of particular interest to a member.
"The appreciation on both sides of the aisle for the job Governor Ridge has done was unanimous, even among Democrats," said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee. "I can feel it in the air that both parties will come together on this and hammer this out. But I've got a weapons plant in my district, at Oak Ridge, and I've got some concerns about how it will be affected, so I don't want us to rush things and make mistakes."
Representative William M. Thornberry, a Texas Republican who is sponsoring a security reorganization bill, said Mr. Ridge had done a good job of explaining the proposal. But Mr. Thornberry said members raised questions on various details, like why the administration did not include in the new agency the State Department's consular division, which issues visas.
Other members said questions were raised on whether the agency would adequately focus on cyberterrorism, and what would happen to the adviser's job now held by Mr. Ridge. Even the administration's allies in Congress said such questions, and the lengthy process to follow, were necessary.
"I don't think if you offer an amendment that means you're disagreeing with a popular president or being unpatriotic," said Representative J. C. Watts Jr., an Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of his party's House conference. "It needs a very thoughtful process as we go through this thing."
Democrats - several of whom supported a single security agency long before the Bush Administration - said they were strongly behind the concept, but had their own issues.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee, said she wanted more details on who would analyze the intelligence on terrorist threats collected by the F.B.I. or the C.I.A.
A dissenting voice was Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Obey said the organization of domestic security was less important than the amount spent on it, which he contended was currently inadequate.
"You don't kill terrorists just by moving boxes on an organization chart," Mr. Obey said. "You also need to back up whatever changes you make with adequate resources."
On the floor today, he forced a vote that would increase spending for security and prevent members from adding unnecessary items to the agency. It was defeated by the Republican-controlled House, 235 to 181.
Mr. Ridge seemed ready for a lengthy discussion, suggesting that the administration was prepared to be flexible on the precise structure of the new agency.
He said President Bush "understands, as a former governor would, that when you send a proposal to a legislature it's a work in progress."
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the minority leader, met today to determine how to speed the reorganization bills through the fractious House. Their aides said the leaders were all but certain to limit the time given to existing committees to work on the bills. Under that plan, a new special committee would be appointed to sidestep the usual procedures and decide which elements of the bills would go the House floor for a vote.
Earlier today President Bush signed legislation that allocated $4.3 billion to protect American food supplies and water from biological warfare. The legislation was passed after the still-unsolved anthrax attacks, but Mr. Bush made only a passing reference to that.
The legislation would pay for stockpiling vaccines and other drugs, and improving security around municipal water supplies and private food producers. But before the money could be spent, Congress would have to appropriate it.
"We're under attack," Mr. Bush said later at the largely ceremonial first meeting of his Homeland Security Advisory Council. "That's just the way it is. You're going to help us leave a legacy, so that future presidents, future administrations and future Congresses can deal more effectively with how to do the most important job any elected official has, which is to protect innocent life."
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Outdated Systems Balk Terrorism Investigations
FBI, for Example, Couldn't Track Flight School Data
By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 13, 2002; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41486-2002Jun12?language=printer
When a Phoenix FBI agent became suspicious of Middle Eastern men training at an Arizona flight school last summer, he wrote a now well-known memo suggesting a canvass of all U.S. aviation schools. FBI headquarters staff rejected the idea; the bureau didn't have the personnel to do it.
But agent Kenneth Williams and his FBI colleagues might have been able to do some of the research on their own -- if their computers had been able to tap into FBI databases for references to flight schools. The FBI's 56 field offices don't have such technology.
"It would have been very nice if . . . you put into our computer system a request for anything relating to flight schools, for instance, and have every report in the last 10 years that . . . mentions flight schools or flight training and the like kicked out," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said.
"We do not have that capability now. We have to have that capability."
The FBI, notorious for its antiquated computer system, isn't the only federal agency facing that problem. Most federal law enforcement databases cannot communicate well with each other. Local and state databases can't share information in a comprehensive way with federal agencies. Police agencies across the nation have their individual computer systems, which, for the most part, aren't linked.
The process of sifting crucial information from countless databases is called "data mining," a practice used every day by some private-sector companies but woefully lacking among government agencies. Fixing that problem is a cornerstone of President Bush's proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security that he said "will review intelligence and law enforcement information from all agencies of government and produce a single daily picture of threats against our homeland."
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said that getting the databases to communicate with one another and then analyzing the results is as crucial as reforming the FBI and beefing up border protection -- and perhaps as a big a task.
Getting the right details into the right hands is "at the heart of everything we do," Ridge said in an interview. "It's not a matter of getting more information. Right now we're not doing a good enough job of processing the information that we have."
Designing or obtaining the right technology likely will prove a much easier task than overcoming other barriers, such as cost, privacy concerns, legal restrictions, access questions and summarizing classified information in a way that protects secrets and sources, according to government officials and outside specialists.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has convened hearings on the issue, said the problem represents "as serious a threat as a biological or chemical agent."
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Schumer and others lamented the inadequate technology that plagues the FBI in particular. "Before 9/11, the FBI's computers were less sophisticated than the one I bought for my son for $1,400," Schumer told Mueller.
Mueller has vowed to overhaul technology, but cautioned that it could be a multiyear effort. "We've got something like 35 separate investigative database applications that we use," Mueller said in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters last week. "For us to be able to do the predictive, analytical work we need to do, we have to integrate the information in a way that we have not in the past."
The FBI director spoke recently with Lawrence J. Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., about improving computer links within law enforcement.
Congressional investigators are attempting to determine whether better technology might have enabled FBI agents in Minneapolis who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui last August to have learned of the July memo written by Phoenix FBI agent Williams. Moussaoui, who aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school, has been charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, but agents investigating him before the terror assault were unaware of other clues, a point made repeatedly during Thursday's Senate hearing.
All told, the federal government has more than a dozen terrorist watch lists, run by the FBI, the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other agencies. At least 55 databases contain watch-list information, some of it classified, officials said.
Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were on a CIA watch list, but commercial airlines had no access to the government databases that would have alerted them to the two men. Now, however, the FBI and CIA provide airlines with "no-fly" lists of suspects.
Protecting the borders presents similar technological challenges involving numerous players. Separate databases are maintained by the INS, the Customs Service, the State Department and other government agencies. Ridge said that one benefit of creating a new homeland security department that includes those operations will be the chance to ensure that all government systems are compatible.
Civil liberties groups are closely watching developments, concerned that the government eventually will seek to routinely tap into private databases containing credit data, health information, travel records and other sensitive material, along with video from private security surveillance systems. Those concerns have been magnified by recent changes in FBI guidelines that loosen restrictions on using commercial databases to search for anti-terror leads.
"You have to know precisely what they're proposing to share, and how they're proposing to share it," said Barry S. Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, adding that the ACLU and other groups want to ensure that the government does not attempt to create dossiers on ordinary citizens.
"It creates a specter of Big Brother government," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group.
Numerous companies are promoting technological solutions to the problems and hoping to tap a potentially lucrative market. The White House is seeking $722 million in the 2003 budget for anti-terror technology, just the start of a long-term funding effort.
Matt Malden, vice president and general manager of homeland security programs at Siebel Systems Inc., a leader in the technology industry, said the best systems will enable the government to track, prevent and address terrorist activities.
Credit card companies and others in the financial industry have used integrated databases for years, becoming extremely proficient in data-mining techniques. Their software can assess credit risks, monitor spending habits and market products. Siebel Systems, for example, contends that its software could have helped authorities spot patterns in the movements of the Sept. 11 hijackers by tracking their residences, credit card purchases and communications.
A key difference for private industry, however, is that customers agree to give up some privacy to financial institutions when they sign up for credit cards.
The government would not have blanket access to such a volume of personal spending information. But the same kind of technology could be used to build and mine government databases, said Steven R. Perkins, a senior vice president of Oracle Corp., a major federal contractor and the world's largest database technology company.
"This is not [President John F.] Kennedy's challenge of putting a man on the moon, where the technology doesn't exist to solve the problem," Perkins said. "Is it complex? Absolutely. Is it expensive? Absolutely. But it can be done."
Federal officials agree that the technology exists to create new databases or tie existing ones together in ways that can be mindful of privacy and constitutional concerns. But they haven't yet decided exactly what information should be tagged for homeland security, or who would get access to it.
Steven I. Cooper, Ridge's technology expert, has spent the past two months identifying databases from dozens of federal departments and agencies to determinewhich have information pertaining to areas such as border control, bioterrorism prevention and emergency response, a starting point in a comprehensive look at revamping systems.
"You're culling across a jillion-piece jigsaw puzzle," said Gary W. Strong, a technology program director for the National Science Foundation, which is funding research on ways to retrieve and analyze information. "The knowledge [comes from] going piece by piece to see if it fits together."
-------- terrorism
U.S. Faulted on Chemical Plants' Security
Government Inaction Leaves Industry Vulnerable Target to Terrorists, Critics Say
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 13, 2002; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41700-2002Jun12?language=printer
Despite repeated warnings that terrorists could turn hazardous materials in chemical plants into weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration and Congress have yet to agree on ways to reduce industry vulnerabilities nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Although government officials and lawmakers moved swiftly after the attacks on New York and Washington to address security lapses at airports, municipal water facilities and nuclear power plants, the government has done little to shore up security at thousands of chemical plants and has left it up to industry leaders to make changes as they see fit. Efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency and a homeland security interagency task force to devise security ground rules for the chemical industry have been frustrated by divisions within the administration and strong opposition from the industry, according to administration sources and environmental activists.
Moreover, congressional Democrats and the Natural Resources Defense Council say the Justice Department is far behind schedule in preparing a detailed assessment of vulnerabilities in the operation of chemical plants and the transportation of hazardous chemicals. Justice officials sent Congress a sketchy, top-secret interim report last week affirming widespread security problems, according to sources, but the department won't be able to meet an August deadline set by Congress for the final report.
"I find it very worrisome that the administration will not meet the August deadline," Rep. John D. Dingell (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said this week. Administration officials said that, despite delays, they were confident the government would act this year. "This is a matter of concern and we expect to address it in a timely and appropriate fashion," a senior EPA official said.
Experts and lawmakers say there is little doubt that the chemical industry remains a large target of opportunity for terrorists.
At least 123 plants keep amounts of toxic chemicals that, if released through explosions or other mishaps, could form deadly vapor clouds that would put more than 1 million people in danger, an EPA analysis found. More than 700 plants could put at least 100,000 people at risk.
The chemical industry has beefed up security -- mostly building new fences, hiring more guards and eliminating stockpiles of deadly chlorine gas and other hazardous materials. Recently, industry officials adopted guidelines for assessing and correcting vulnerabilities at about 1,000 plants, a fraction of the facilities with potential security problems. Yet there is no federal counterterrorism security standard for chemical plants or refineries, and there is no way to assure citizens that chemical and oil companies are taking adequate precautions, according to environmental and community groups. "We need a vigorous federal program to reduce chemical hazards and improve site security," said Paul Orum, director of the Working Group on Community Right to Know.
Chris VandenHeuvel, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, an Arlington-based trade group that represents firms such as Dow Chemical Co. and ExxonMobil Corp., said new legislation or government mandates would merely "slow down our efforts."
Initially, the administration was inclined to leave security matters to the chemical industry, but subsequently an interagency group chaired by the Office of Homeland Security and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman began developing a set of security principles.
The principles are similar to those mapped out by industry officials, but they would cover a much larger universe -- the 15,000 chemical, water and waste-treatment plants that handle large quantities of dangerous chemicals. The plants would be required to conduct vulnerability assessments and then develop and implement steps for tightening security and reducing hazards, all subject to EPA certification. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge was so pleased with the proposals that two weeks ago he suggested an immediate media "rollout," saying the industry should support them because "we're not asking them to do anything they're not already claiming to do," according to an administration source. But the announcement was temporarily delayed in the face of resistance from the Justice Department and the chemical industry.
So far, the only measure the Justice Department has been willing to support is a bill drafted by Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) that would strictly curtail future public access to detailed information about the risks posed to people living near chemical plants. Bond, an industry ally, contends that the community-right-to-know law, requiring chemical plants to disclose their worst-case scenarios for accidents, would enable terrorists to obtain "a virtual blueprint for their attacks."
But environmentalists say Bond hasexaggerated the sensitivity of information now made public. They also say Bond and Justice Department officials are working together to kill Corzine's bill, which would mandate vulnerability assessments and industry action.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Shell to use ethanol in California by year-end
Thursday, June 13, 2002
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/06/06132002/reu_47538.asp
NEW YORK - Shell Oil Co. on Wednesday became the latest oil firm to say it would switch by the end of the year to ethanol in California to make cleaner-burning gasoline, raising concerns on whether increased ethanol use could result in higher gasoline prices.
Shell, a unit of Royal Dutch/Shell Group, said on Wednesday it would switch from methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a suspected animal carcinogen that has polluted groundwater, to ethanol.
Federal clean air laws require the use of an oxygen-enhancing chemical such as MTBE or ethanol to make the cleaner-burning fuel required in one-third of the nation's pumps.
Shell's decision follows BP Plc's move last month to switch to ethanol at its California refineries by the end of the year. If the companies make the switch, it would come a year before California's official phaseout of MTBE.
Citing ethanol supply concerns, California Gov. Gray Davis in March postponed by a year the state's phase-out of MTBE to Dec. 31, 2003. Davis delayed the phase-out after consulting group Stillwater Associates recommended that he postpone the ban by three years in order to prevent higher gasoline prices.
But ethanol opponents argue there would not be enough infrastructure to supply California with its needs should all energy companies there switch. Ethanol, made mostly from corn in the Midwest, has a tendency to absorb water, making it difficult to send via pipeline, its opponents argue.
Over the last year, Phillips Petroleum Co. has already reduced its MTBE use 80 percent and replaced it with ethanol, a spokesman said on Wednesday. Experts say Phillips' MTBE reduction combined with BP's and Shell's switch could be enough to force the others - ChevronTexaco Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., and independent refinery Valero Energy Corp. - to catch up.
But a Shell spokesman said the company could get enough ethanol to continue providing quality products.
"This switch to ethanol is the embodiment of our earlier commitment to move away from MTBE in our products as soon as it was feasible," said Rob Routs, president of Shell Oil Products U.S. "We feel certain that the necessary supply of ethanol is available and are working diligently with permitting authorities, as well as our industry partners, to ensure the necessary infrastructure systems are in place by the end of 2002."
Shell uses 15,000 barrels per day of MTBE at its three refineries in California: the 165,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) Martinez plant near San Francisco, the 100,000 bpd Wilmington refinery near Los Angeles, and the 70,000 bpd Bakersfield refinery.
-------- energy
Bush advisers split over energy policy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20020613-24005500.htm
While President Bush frequently has touted the benefits of ethanol, the president's economic advisers are arguing strongly against legislation that would triple production of the corn-based additive, according to an internal White House document.
The document also reveals substantial disagreement within the administration over whether to support a ban on the gasoline additive MTBE, certain tax breaks for the oil industry and clean coal technology, and incentives for building an Alaska natural gas pipeline.
All of these measures are in separate energy bills already approved by the House and Senate, in many cases with administration support.
Administration officials dismissed the internal document, summarizing various agency positions on key parts of the energy legislation, as a working paper that does not reflect the administration's eventual position as lawmakers work out a final energy package.
"It's a very preliminary work-in-progress document that is simply a collection of various views across the government," said Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, which drafted the paper.
But the arguments presented in the document, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press, reflect significant - and sometimes surprising - disagreements within the administration over key areas of energy policy.
On the matter of ethanol, an issue that has broad political overtones, Mr. Bush has made clear - as he did again last week during a trip to Iowa - that he wants to spur increased production of the gasoline additive to help reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
The ethanol mandate, tripling the amount refiners would have to use in gasoline, passed the Senate with strong White House and Energy Department support. It is a priority of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, and other farm state lawmakers, including House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, whose state is the country's largest producer of ethanol.
Nevertheless, the president's Council of Economic Advisers characterizes the mandate as "costly to both consumers and the government" and said it will "provide little environmental benefit," according to the internal White House paper.
The economic advisers also raised concerns about the provision in the Senate-passed bill that bans MTBE, a petroleum-based additive that has been blamed for fouling drinking water in many states.
The MTBE ban could "cost consumers billions of dollars" while the MTBE water contamination problem "can be addressed by a more targeted, cost effective approach," the economic advisers continued.
Despite these concerns, administration officials emphasized Tuesday the president's support of ethanol has not wavered.
Both the ethanol mandate and MTBE ban are part of a politically fragile compromise reached in the Senate with White House support. That compromise is not in the House-passed bill.
There also has emerged a debate within the administration over tax breaks for oil and gas development and finding ways to make coal less polluting. Mr. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney frequently have called for measures to spur fossil-fuel development and boost clean coal technology.
But according to the OMB document, the president's economic advisers are arguing that $2 billion in tax breaks for clean-coal technology "would provide no environmental benefits" while the oil and gas tax incentives in the energy package "will have a negligible impact on production" and merely offset oil that would be drilled otherwise.
-------- imf / world bank /wto
W.T.O. Loophole Allows a Surge in Protectionism
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/business/worldbusiness/13TRAD.html
GENEVA, June 12 - The "safeguard" exception was supposed to be a small, minor loophole in global trade rules, allowing a country to head off a sudden wave of imports without having to wait for the slow, cumbersome trade dispute resolution process to do its work.
Then the Bush administration invoked it in March to justify selective tariffs on imported steel, and the European Union in turn invoked it to justify countermeasures. The dispute highlighted what experts say is a developing stampede to stretch and exploit the loophole for protectionist ends, putting at risk decades of progress in liberalizing world trade.
In 1995, the first year that the safeguard agreement was in effect, the provision was used in two cases. Last year, there were 53, according to Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, a Chicago-based law firm specializing in trade matters, and the trend is upward again this year.
But this surge comes despite the fact that the World Trade Organization, the global arbiter of trade disputes, has yet to bless a single safeguard measure that has been challenged before it. Many experts say the Bush steel measures will not pass muster either.
"There's a view right across the globe now that there is a place for protective trade measures," said Cliff Stevenson, an economist with Mayer, Brown's London office. "And that's a change in attitude."
All 144 members of the trade organization pledged to keep their markets open when they joined the group. But nearly all of them also look for ways to run interference for domestic industries struggling to adjust to liberalized trade.
"The W.T.O. is not a free trade steamroller," explained David Woods, a former W.T.O. employee who runs the Geneva-based consulting firm, World Trade Agenda, defending safeguard provisions. "It gives you an escape door," he said.
More than one, in fact. Besides safeguard measures, there are also antidumping measures, which countries can impose to ward off foreign products sold in their markets below cost, and there are countervailing duties to protect against subsidized goods. Mayer, Brown found that two dozen countries initiated a total of 348 antidumping actions last year involving nearly 140 products.
But widespread use of safeguard measures is a newer and more worrisome phenomenon, free trade advocates say, because the vague wording of the agreement is being stretched to justify protective tariffs in almost any circumstances.
The United States has been by far the most active of the 21 countries that have invoked the safeguard agreement so far; from 1995 to 2001 it did so 42 times. But Chile and India have also been frequent users, Mayer, Brown found.
Nations like India, with limited resources and few trade experts, are turning to safeguards as an easier and cheaper alternative to other measures. Pursuing an antidumping case, for example, requires sending officials abroad to investigate the true cost of manufacturing the goods in question; data to support a safeguard action is mainly concerned with injury to domestic industry and can be gathered at home.
"You have to go through burdensome procedural hoops in antidumping cases compared to safeguards," said Scott D. Andersen, a lawyer in Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood's Geneva trade law practice.
Safeguard measures usually apply across the board to all exporters of a given product, though the Bush administration has exempted many countries from the steel tariffs, to the European Union's intense irritation. The rules permit nations to claim compensation for their injured industries rather than have to retaliate against imports, which many smaller countries lack the market power to do effectively.
"Their beauty is that you can give a lot more protection to your industry," Mr. Stevenson said of safeguard actions, adding that he expects them to keep proliferating. But he noted that so far, the trade organization panels that hear challenges to safeguard actions have found "all of them to be W.T.O.-inconsistent" - meaning impermissible under global trade rules.
The safeguard agreement - part of the package of accords that created the trade organization in 1995 - set no specific criteria, leaving the precise circumstances under which safeguards could be applied open to interpretation.
Since then, dozens of the measures have been challenged, and 11 cases have been heard and decided, according to the trade group's statistics. Five of those were brought against the United States, challenging restrictions on imports of wheat gluten, lamb, cotton yarn, underwear and steel piping. All were thrown out.
Other nations have had no better luck. South Korea failed to persuade a W.T.O. panel that its dairy products safeguards were justified; Argentina lost on shoes.
The accumulating case law is doing what the diplomats who drafted the agreement did not, setting specific limits on when safegaurds can be applied - and narrowing them with nearly every new decision. In the Argentine footwear case, for example, a December 1999 ruling said an import surge "must have been recent enough, sudden enough, sharp enough and significant enough, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to cause or threaten to cause serious injury" before safegaurds were warranted.
The Bush steel tariffs probably fail that test, trade lawyers said. Steel imports to the United States actually fell by about 30 million tons last year, undercutting the claim of an immediate threat to domestic steel producers.
"To win," Mr. Andersen said, "countries need a real emergency, not just complaints from industry that they're being hurt."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Critic of Corruption in Rural China Is Arrested
New York Times
June 13, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/asia/13CHIN.html
BEIJING, June 12 - Li Lan, a villager in southern China who has crusaded against corruption and lawlessness in the countryside, was arrested Sunday night on the charge of malicious slander of local officials, relatives said today.
Ms. Li, 47, a rice farmer in Lanshan County, Hunan, became a vocal critic of the authorities in 1999 after her daughter was killed by a stray cannonball, fired in a battle between warring villages that the police made no effort to prevent.
Ms. Li soon joined with dozens of other aggrieved residents who charge that senior police and party officials in the county have ties to criminal gangs and have been implicated in heroin sales, counterfeiting and the cover-up of murders and robberies.
Ms. Li's story and picture were featured in an article on rural lawlessness in The New York Times on May 29. Now, county police are seeking to arrest anyone who met with the "foreign journalists," according to a local official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Local officials were further angered on June 5 when The Public Welfare Times, a small-circulation Beijing newspaper that is published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, carried an article on the Lanshan group's petition and the evidence of police misconduct.
Last week, Lanshan protesters obtained thousands of copies of that Beijing newspaper and began distributing them in the county. The police have been scrambling to confiscate the papers and, in addition to arresting Ms. Li on what appear to be more serious charges, they briefly detained two other residents for passing out those newspapers, residents said.
The timing of Ms. Li's arrest appears to be linked to her unyielding agitation as well as the sudden, unwelcome publicity the county officials have received, a relative said.
Ms. Li and other residents have repeatedly traveled to Beijing in fruitless requests for intervention by national officials. In a sign of widespread disaffection in Lanshan County, they have been able to collect the signatures of 12,000 residents on a petition that calls for investigation of several named officials.
"The people of Lanshan yearn to see a clear sky," the petition reads, using a metaphor for clean government.
Last fall, Ms. Li was detained for a week for "disturbing public order." In May she was one of 17 Lanshan residents who traveled as a group to Beijing, where they were again rebuffed by national agencies.
In an interview last month, Ms. Li said she was aware of her risk but said she felt a duty to protest.
"If we don't keep on fighting, we'll have nowhere left to stand," she said. "The corrupt officials and the crime gangs will do whatever they want with us."
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