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NUCLEAR
Small water leak found at Japan nuclear reactor
India Says Develops Nuclear Shelters for Troops
Gorbachev warns against new U.S.-led arms race
U.S., Russians Call for Cooperation
Nevada vows to fight on against Yucca nuclear dump
Utilities to press for Utah nuclear waste dump
Lawmakers Question Nuke Cleanup Plan
Out of Sight . . .
House Committee Works on New Homeland Security Dept.
MILITARY
Warlords Could Seize Control in Afghanistan - UN
Argentina Charges Ex-Dictator and Others in 'Dirty War' Deaths
China Condemns U.S. Arms Sales
A world awash with guns
When will UK bite the bullet on gun traffic?
British Detonate World War II Bomb
Boeing Moves to Get More Federal Work
Army to Speed Up Weapons Destruction
China Condemns U.S. Arms Sales
U.S. Law Imperils Colombia Coca Spraying
Britain to Stop Arresting Most Private Users of Marijuana
Seeking to Link Iraq to Poison Gas and bin Laden
Pentagon Opposes Iraq Talks on Pilot
Mideast Strife Loudly Echoed in Academia
Envoy relates Israelis to Nazis
Palestinians Use Internet to Beat Israeli Siege
Military Secrets Stolen in Hawaii
Art, Espionage and Cover Ups
U.S. Drops Demand for War Court Immunity
U.S. Backs Off Immunity Fight Involving Court
U.S. asks for 1 year of court immunity
A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front
Attorney in Spy Case Seeks Probe of News Leak on Iraq
Military Shows Off Latest Robot Plane
POLICE / PRISONERS
Lessons From '92 Keep an Angry City Calm
Reviving a de facto national ID
Colo. to Let Juries to Decide Death
5,000 in U.S. suspected of ties to al Qaeda
U.S. Senator: Al Qaeda Crippled but 'Still Has Life'
FBI Searching for Sleeper Cells
ENERGY AND OTHER
Moon a great power source
Panel Recommends a Moratorium on Cloning Research
By 2010, AIDS May Leave 20 Million African Orphans
IMF, World Bank to Hold Shortened Meetings in Sept.
ACTIVISTS
Women protesters take over ChevronTexaco facility in Nigeria
Wen Ho Lee Supporters Seek Pardon
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Small water leak found at Japan nuclear reactor
REUTERS JAPAN:
July 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16791/newsDate/11-Jul-2002/story.htm
TOKYO - Radioactive water was found leaking last week at a Japanese nuclear plant where two reactors have already been shut down after several similar leaks, an official for Chubu Electric Power Co Inc said this week.
The latest leak was found last Wednesday in the No. 3 reactor of Chubu Electric's nuclear power station in Hamaoka, some 150 km (95 miles) west of Tokyo, said Makoto Fujimori, a public affairs official for Chubu Electric.
The No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at Hamaoka, which has four nuclear power reactors, have been shut down after several water leaks were reported earlier this year and last year.
The No. 3 reactor was still in operation. The leak was found on a valve related to the water feed pump in the reactor, Fujimori said.
"The leak was found by a worker conducting an inspection... There was some seepage of water and a drop of water was seen falling once every 10 seconds," he said.
When asked whether any radiation had affected the environment or if any workers had been exposed, Fujimori said: "The leak was not of such a magnitude at all. No workers were exposed to radiation."
Chubu Electric reported the water leak to local municipalities when it was found last Wednesday, he said.
But since the leak was considered to be light, it did not publicise the incident until it updated a weekly status report on the Hamaoka nuclear power station on the station's website this week, Fujimori said.
Japan, reliant on nuclear energy for one-third of its power needs, has seen a number of accidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for its nuclear programme.
The worst took place in 1999 at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in which two workers were killed.
-------- india / pakistan
India Says Develops Nuclear Shelters for Troops
July 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-india.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India, locked in a military face-off with Pakistan, has developed nuclear shelters and a mobile decontamination system to protect troops from a nuclear, biological or chemical attack, scientists said on Thursday.
Defense scientists said they were not aware of any plans to build similar nuclear shelters for the country's billion-plus population, despite fears a conflict between India and Pakistan could lead to a nuclear catastrophe.
Fears of a fourth conflict between India and Pakistan, who carried out nuclear explosions in 1998, grew recently after a bloody attack on an Indian army camp in May in the disputed region of Kashmir.
The United States and other Western nations urged tens of thousands of their citizens to leave India and Pakistan in what also appeared to be a concerted effort to impress upon the two nations the perils of war that could lead to a nuclear conflict.
The integrated field shelters, built a meter below the ground, can hold 30 people for up to three days after a nuclear strike, R.V. Swamy, chief controller of the state-run Defense Research and Development Organization, said.
``It is a collective protection system, any ingress of nuclear, biological or chemical agents can be completely stopped,'' he said.
``Of course on ground zero nothing will survive, these shelters will have to be at the periphery,'' he said. He refused to say whether the army had put them in place along the border with Pakistan.
NEIGHBORING NATIONS SHOW INTEREST
Close to a million troops are dug in on both sides of the border in a crisis which eased only after Pakistan promised to stop Islamic militants from crossing into Indian Kashmir, which lies at the heart of more than a half a century of troubled ties.
Swamy said the military had asked for some 26 items to be developed to cope with a nuclear, biological or chemical strike in 1993. These included sensors to detect radiation and a vehicle to decontaminate an area struck by chemical weapons.
``These have been developed from the military point of view, they asked for it,'' he said. ``Ours is a vast country, if the home ministry ministry or civil defense wants it (shelters), it can be considered.''
Swamy said some neighboring nations had shown interest in acquiring the nuclear shelters, but he did not identify them or give any details.
He said the DRDO had also developed protective body suits and overboots for soldiers to operate in the event of a chemical or biological attack. ``These are mainly for a chemical environment, there is no protection possible for nuclear gamma radiation,'' he said.
The composition, size and chain of command of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weaponry is unclear, deepening concerns of a miscalculation or an accident that could escalate into the world's first nuclear exchange.
-------- russia
Gorbachev warns against new U.S.-led arms race
REUTERS UK:
July 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16792/newsDate/11-Jul-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned the West yesterday to guard against a new arms race fuelled by United States' determination to defend itself after the September 11 attacks.
"We should understand that...the President of the United States is responsible for the security of the nation," Gorbachev, still a leading figure on the international stage, said in a lecture held in a parliament committee room.
"But at the same time we, as the friends, allies and partners of the United States, should be in a position to say to them that while doing that, don't re-launch a new arms race," he said, speaking through a translator.
Two months ago, President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed a pact to cut their arsenal of deployed nuclear warheads.
But Putin has faced criticism at home for giving in to Washington's insistence that decommissioned warheads may be kept in storage instead of being destroyed.
He has also been forced to accept Bush's determination to scrap the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty - long seen in Russia as a cornerstone of nuclear stability.
Gorbachev, whose reforms in the late 1980s helped pave the way for an end to the Cold War, is lobbying for funds to help tackle the environmental consequences of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons left by the Soviet empire.
He said there were some 200 submarines, now out of use, that still held nuclear reactors that had to be disposed of.
"We are still dealing with the consequences of the old arms race, without starting a new one," he said.
-------- terrorism
U.S., Russians Call for Cooperation
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Iran.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia and the United States must improve cooperation and increase intelligence sharing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, U.S. and Russian experts said Thursday.
U.S. experts also said Russia needs more resources and better enforcement of export controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technology that could help Iran develop weapons of mass destruction.
Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran has been a major subject of contention between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their most recent summits. The United States opposes Moscow's role in completing a civilian nuclear power plant at Bushehr in southwestern Iran.
Senior U.S. and Russian experts met in Moscow on Thursday to discuss ways to improve cooperation between the two countries regarding Iran. Russians at the meeting agreed better cooperation was needed, but many defended the Bushehr project.
Russia is the only major nuclear power now assisting Iran in developing atomic energy, said Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former official on proliferation issues in the Clinton administration.
The United States believes Russia's $800 million deal to build the 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactor in Bushehr could help Iran develop nuclear weapons.
Samore said the U.S. approach to pressuring the Russians to restrict its nuclear cooperation with Iran has had ``mixed'' results. He said intelligence sharing remains difficult, and hostility leftover from the Cold War still hindered closer cooperation between intelligence services.
Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the CSIS International Security Program who also served in the Clinton administration, said there was a ``standoff'' over the Iran issue, with both sides unwilling to share information.
He said Putin needed to make a ``strong and unequivocal'' commitment to better enforcement to prevent the illegal seepage of nuclear technology to Iran.
Einhorn said Russia must agree to limit its cooperation with Iran to completing the Bushehr project and to ensure that it had a secure agreement on controlling the fuel that would be used to run the plant.
Russian participants in the forum expressed appreciation for the American point of view, but some argued Russia was only fulfilling its agreement for supplying civilian nuclear technology.
And, the Russians argued, they are doing no more than the United States, which has an agreement to supply North Korea with civilian nuclear technology.
Vladimir Orlov, a specialist at the PIR think tank that organized the conference, called for a joint evaluation of the threat from Iran before any new measures are adopted to restrict alleged proliferation.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Nevada vows to fight on against Yucca nuclear dump
Story by Cathy Scott
REUTERS USA:
July 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16790/newsDate/11-Jul-2002/story.htm
LAS VEGAS - Nevada officials vowed this week to fight on against government plans to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, saying the program will dump thousands of tonnes of deadly, radioactive material within a dice's throw of the state's glittering casinos and fast-growing suburbs.
The Bush administration plan received final congressional approval this week, opening the way for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project.
It is scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 77,000 tons (70,000 metric tonnes) of radioactive material that the Environmental Protection Agency says must be isolated for 10,000 years.
But Nevada officials said they would continue the court fight against the project - which could mean more delays for a nuclear waste proposal which is backed by both President George W. Bush and the nuclear industry.
"The U.S. Senate vote today is the beginning of Nevada's legal and regulatory fight to stop the Yucca Mountain project," said Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who vetoed the original proposal, in a statement.
"Now, the process moves to the federal courts, where the playing field is level and Nevada's factual and scientific arguments will be heard by impartial judges."
Nevada has already filed suits in federal court to try to stop the dump from being built at Yucca Mountain, and will now argue to the NRC that the mountain is an unsafe site for nuclear waste, despite administration claims to the contrary.
In Las Vegas, just 95 miles (150 km) from the proposed facility, officials said the federal government was ignoring the safety concerns of the region's 1.4 million people.
"The fight won't be over today, even if there is a vote in favor of it," said Elaine Sanchez, a spokeswoman for Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who was in Washingtthis week for last-ditch lobbying against the project.
"We will have our day in court," Sanchez said. "It's only a matter of time before there's an accident transporting nuclear waste. It'll be a moving target for terrorists. The world has changed and these things need to be considered."
Opinion polls have shown that most Nevadans are not willing to gamble on nuclear safety so close to home.
A poll earlier this year conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C. for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, shows that 83 percent of Nevadans oppose the Yucca Mountain site, although 68 percent said they believed it was inevitable that the program would be approved.
One Nevadan who did not oppose the project was former Nevada Gov. Bob List, who represents the Nuclear Energy Institute.
List said that Nevada would have to learn to live with the prospect of a huge nuclear dump in its backyard. "We really need to start accepting the reality of the situation and figure out ways to turn this to Nevada's economic advantage - and there will be economic advantages for Las Vegas," he told KLAS television over the weekend.
TRUCKS, TRAINS AND NUCLEAR WASTE
The U.S. Department of Energy's plan is to entomb 77 thousand tonnes of nuclear waste beneath the volcanic ridge northwest of Las Vegas, where it will remain for 10,000 years.
The highly radioactive material will be shipped from the nation's nuclear power plants, by rail or truck, to Yucca Mountain. The proposed routes cross 43 states and potentially pass some 109 cities with populations of at least 100,000 people.
Las Vegas Mayor Goodman, who has vocally opposed the Yucca Mountain dump, said transportation was a major concern following the Sept. 11 attacks. "Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes a terrorist attack on America's nuclear power plants are a real threat," he said this week.
Jack Fetters, a conductor for Union Pacific Railroad and a representative of the United Transportation Union, told Reuters that conductors and engineers are nervous about moving the waste by rail.
"Workers aren't looking forward to it," Fetters said. "As far as science goes, I know nothing about that. What I do know is you've got conductor and engineer fatigue, and maintenance of the cars and rails issues. I mean, you don't just put it on a train and start sending it from Maine to Nevada."
On Sunday, about 60 people protested peacefully against the dump in front of a county building in downtown Las Vegas.
-------- utah
Utilities to press for Utah nuclear waste dump
Thursday, July 11, 2002
By Leonard Anderson,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/07/07112002/reu_47810.asp
SAN FRANCISCO - A plan to ship 40,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste to an Indian reservation in Utah will go forward despite the U.S. Senate's vote Tuesday approving an underground nuclear dump next door in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the project sponsor said Wednesday.
Private Fuel Storage, a group of eight electric utilities, is pushing to store the deadly waste in outdoor canisters on the Utah Indian land until Yucca Mountain opens as the nation's first permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel.
"Our aim is to continue moving forward, and we are hopeful that the licensing process can be completed by the end of this year or early next year," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for the $3.1 billion Utah project.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board held month-long hearings on the plan in Salt Lake City in April and is expected to make a recommendation to the NRC by the end of the year.
The Utah project, led by utility holding company Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, would store the waste fuel for up to 20 years, with a 20-year extension, on 820 leased acres of reservation land belonging to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians. The reservation is about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Unlike Yucca Mountain, where the waste would be interred deep inside a mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, used fuel rods in the Utah project would be packed in 175-ton steel and concrete canisters called dry casks and stored outside. The containers would be shipped by rail to Utah to sit on thick, above-ground concrete pads until Yucca Mountain is ready.
10,000-YEAR STORAGE
The Senate vote yesterday effectively clears the way for the U.S. Department of Energy to apply to the NRC to license the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project. The facility, which still faces legal challenges, is scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 70,000 tons of waste fuel that the Environmental Protection Agency says must be isolated for 10,000 years.
Nuclear power plant operators, which generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity, face shrinking waste storage space at their reactors. About 44,000 tons of used fuel rods now are stored in fuel pools and casks in the United States - enough to cover a football field 15 feet deep - and the nation's 103 reactors produce another 2,000 tons each year.
Xcel Energy is leading the Utah project because it will run out of storage room at its twin-reactor Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota by 2007, said Scott Wilensky, director of state government affairs for the utility. Other Utah project members are American Electric Power, Edison International the Southern Nuclear unit of Southern Co., FirstEnergy, Entergy, FPL Group's Florida Power & Light, and privately held Genoa Fuel Tech.
Utah opponents, led by Gov. Mike Leavitt, argue that the 1982 federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act bars private waste storage away from nuclear plants.
-------- us nuc waste
Lawmakers Question Nuke Cleanup Plan
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Cleanup.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators and several state officials said Thursday they fear an Energy Department attempt to speed the cleanup of waste from decades of nuclear weapons production may leave the sites still contaminated.
The Bush administration, in an attempt to accelerate and cut the cost of such cleanups, announced earlier this year it would give preference in distributing money to locations that agree to commit to a quicker cleanup.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wants to use $800 million of the $6.7 billion annual cleanup budget as incentive for these accelerated programs. Critics have voiced concern that while some facilities will get more money, others will see money syphoned away.
But at a Senate hearing Thursday, state officials from Washington, New Mexico and Idaho expressed another worry: That the incentive to push for faster cleanup may leave some sites less clean in violation of long-standing agreements with state and local authorities.
``It's not cleanup to leave waste behind,'' Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Energy Department officials at a hearing by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the plan.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the panel's chairman, said the administration approach ``could be viewed as an incentive to encourage state regulators to relax site cleanup standards.''
Jesse Roberson, the DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, testified that the new approach is an effort to give priority to the most high-risk environmental problems and deal with them faster and at less cost.
``It's not our intent to avoid compliance with any of our regulatory agreements,'' said Roberson.
Nowhere is the waste problem more challenging than the Energy Department's Hanford reservation in central Washington state, where there are 177 underground tanks -- some of them with an unknown mix of radioactive material and leaking -- threatening to contaminate the nearby Columbia River.
About half of the special $800 million fund has been earmarked for Hanford.
But Christine Gregoire, Washington state's attorney general, told the committee she is concerned that along with a speedier cleanup, the Energy Department will renege on past promises to remove from the site at least 99 percent of the tank waste.
``We want it all out,'' she said.
Despite DOE assurances, Gregoire said there have been ominous signs that under the accelerated cleanup plan the department will reclassify some of the tank waste as something less than ``high level'' waste, meaning they will not have to remove it.
She said the DOE also has decided to build only one, instead of two, plants to solidify the waste in glass, suggesting the department may now be planning to remove less waste.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., tried to press Roberson on the issue, asking that she give assurances that 99 percent of the waste in the Hanford tanks be removed and that wastes not be reclassified.
``We have a commitment to move as much waste as feasible,'' said Roberson, refusing to be pinned down on a percentage.
Kathleen Trever of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, also expressed concern about whether the program will mean more pollution being left behind at the DOE's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
Peter Maggiore, head of New Mexico's environment department, said the program will mean more money for cleanup at the Sandia and Los Alamos weapons research labs. While he said he doesn't think it will mean less cleanup at those two sites, Maggiore acknowledged some uncertainty.
``It is imperative that accelerated cleanup not be interpreted to mean less cleanup,'' he testified.
An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, is arguing before a federal court in Idaho that the Energy Department plans to reclassify waste now held in tanks not only at Hanford, but at the Idaho facility and at the Savannah River complex in South Carolina.
Geoff Fettus, an NRDC attorney, said the suit charges that such a reclassification would violate federal law because this waste comes from nuclear reprocessing in past weapons production and therefore must be treated as high level waste. Under the law, any high level waste must be put into a deep geological repository, presumably the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada that has yet to be built.
-------- us politics
Out of Sight . . .
By Mary McGrory
Thursday, July 11, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52715-2002Jul10.html
Harry Reid stood in the first row of the Senate with bowed head and hands loosely clasped before him as the ayes for the Yucca Mountain repository rained down on him. The Democratic whip can count, and he had known for days that he was being beaten -- by White House pressure, the power of the nuclear industry and ingratitude. The humble, natty man who rescued his party from stewing in the shadows -- he gave his gavel as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee to Jim Jeffords and made the Senate Democratic -- had done everything he could, but it was not enough. A last-minute caucus plea to his colleagues to help another state's cause -- as he had so often done -- changed no minds. And Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," which he read just before the roll call, couldn't stem the tide.
Fifteen Democrats, understandably attracted to the notion of shipping their states' nuclear waste to another state, deserted him. The vote was 60 to 39.
Reid and his Nevada colleague, John Ensign, one of only three Republicans to say no, met senators singly and in groups, arguing that a solution was not at hand: Yucca's storage capacity of 70,000 metric tons of waste will be oversubscribed even before it opens for business in 2010. Right now, the waste from 103 nuclear plants amounts to 50,000 metric tons, and with 7,000 metric tons of military waste, no space will be left. Ensign finally got an admission from his opponents that they were not really solving anything. But they contended that even if only half of the waste is stored in the Nevada dumpster, while more is being produced, it's better than leaving it all on site, where voters can see it and worry.
Senators didn't spend much time worrying about the fact that they were giving the green light to the nuclear power industry, which wants 20 more nuclear plants operating as soon as possible. The Republican caucus lunch did not take up the subject. They had already had a showdown on doomsday a few weeks ago and had moved on.
Democratic minds were plainly more on Wall Street. They had listened to George Bush's reproachful speech to tycoons and found it wanting. They talked about a sterner bill written by Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland. Harry Reid didn't get a chance to launch his impassioned appeal until almost 2 o'clock, when senators had begun drifting away.
Democrats have been turned on by President Bush's electrifying announcement on Monday that he had discovered the color gray. The anti-terrorism crusader, who sees the world in black and white -- in Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East, you're either with us or against us -- has lost his moral clarity, which can happen to a president's son who files an SEC report eight months late. His own experience with corporate responsibility had left him with the thought that "in the corporate world, some things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures."
Democrats think that, for the first time, Bush has been singed by an issue that is made for them and the November election. The Bush closeness to CEOs who played fast and loose with people's pension money has raised the hope that the November campaign could turn not on military operations but on operators who have been fleecing the two-thirds of Americans who invest in the stock market. Wall Street gave the speech a thumbs down. The moguls thought he was doing too much; the man in the street thought he was not doing enough. The Dow Jones slid 178 points.
Harry Reid thought for a while that Americans would snap to on the subject of Yucca when they realized that radioactive trucks would be roaring through their neighborhoods. He had a big lift from the enviros, who set up a Web site that showed the exact distance from your home and your children's school that the waste would travel. God threw in an earthquake at a nearby mountain, and two Democratic freshmen women senators declared their intention to vote against Yucca. Jean Carnahan, widow of Missouri's late governor, was reminded of her husband's problems with truckers transporting medical waste and arriving in Kansas City during rush hour. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan got off the Yucca bus when she was told by the Department of Energy that it was considering sending waste from Michigan plants across Lake Michigan, the state's crown jewel, on barges.
But Trent Lott says the discussion has gone on long enough, George Bush has scored another legislative triumph and the Senate has said it has found the solution. The rest of us have to hope it won't blow up in our faces.
----
House Committee Works on New Homeland Security Dept.
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Homeland-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A powerhouse contingent from the administration led off the first hearing Thursday of a special House committee overseeing creation of a Cabinet department that President Bush says is vital to protecting the nation from future terrorism.
``The president has asked no less of us than to embark on the most significant transformation of government in half a century,'' said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, head of the new panel.
Armey said his panel would work out the final details of the House vision of the Homeland Security Department after about a dozen House committees this week complete action on their pieces of the legislative puzzle.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were appearing Thursday before Armey's committee.
On Wednesday, five House committees approved portions of the bill affecting agencies under their jurisdictions. Most endorsed the outline Bush set down June 6, although there was some tinkering.
The Judiciary Committee voted to keep most of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an independent disaster response agency and to move the Secret Service from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department rather than into the new Homeland Security Department.
That panel also decided to move the enforcement arm of the Immigration and Naturalization Service into the security agency but leave other immigration services with Justice.
On Thursday, four more committees will vote on the proposal, with one focus being how the Transportation Committee handles the Coast Guard. The president would incorporate the Coast Guard in the new department, but some lawmakers say that could diminish its non-security functions such as search-and-rescue missions.
Five former Coast Guard commandants sent a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Wednesday supporting the president's plan and saying the Coast Guard must remain intact if it is to continue to fulfill its traditional missions.
The Select Committee on Homeland Security, which hosts Powell and the other administration officials at its first hearing Thursday, is responsible for putting together the different parts and sending a bill to the House floor this month.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who heads that committee, has said he would respect the votes of the different committees but his committee would make the final decisions on the bill to be submitted for floor debate.
The Senate is expected to act on its version this month as well, with the goal of sending the president a bill in September.
``It is crucial we take this historic step,'' White House homeland security adviser Tom Ridge told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday. The new department is to handle security functions now spread among more than 100 agencies with budgets totaling $37 billion. Bush wants the new department running by Jan. 1.
One big issue Wednesday was what agency should handle the 10 million visa applications every year that come in now. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., tried to move all visa operations from the State Department to the new agency, saying State ``has repeatedly proven that it is the wrong agency to exercise power to grant visas.''
But in an 18-15 vote, the committee accepted a proposal by House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., that is in line with the president's plan: It would leave consular activities at State but give the new department power to train consular officials and review visa applications with security questions.
Ridge, a potential candidate to head the new department, was also quizzed by Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on plans to move FEMA to the new department. Jeffords noted that most of FEMA's time is spent responding to natural disasters unrelated to terrorism.
Committee member Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pushed for changes in language that he said could cramp whistle-blowers in the new agency and make it more difficult to obtain documents under the Freedom of Information Act. ``If the public is kept in the dark,'' Wyden said, ``that's going to make it tougher to tackle terrorists.''
Bush told about 3,700 federal workers whose jobs will likely become part of the new agency that ``there is an overriding and urgent mission here in America today, and that's to protect our homeland.''
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Warlords Could Seize Control in Afghanistan - UN
July 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-un-talks.html
GENEVA (Reuters) - Afghanistan could slide back under the control of warlords if it fails to receive the aid it urgently needs, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.
Kenzo Oshima, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said $777 million was needed to the end of this year to pay for food and shelter for returning refugees as well as costs such as police and army salaries.
He was speaking to a meeting in Geneva of U.N. officials and representatives from 15 donor countries less than a week after Vice-President Haji Abdul Qadir, a warlord businessman, was shot dead after his first morning's work as public works minister.
Nigel Fisher, deputy to the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, said: ``Afghanistan is at a critical juncture in its transition and it is important that we continue to help it meet ongoing humanitarian needs and its efforts toward recovery.''
``Afghans do not deserve to slip back into the control of warlords,'' Fisher told the one-day meeting of donor countries, including the United States, in a text obtained by Reuters.
Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan finance minister who took part in the talks, noted Qadir's death followed that of tourism minister Dr. Abdul Rehman, gunned down at Kabul Airport in February.
``Many of us are likely to loose our lives in this process -- these two are not going to be the only people -- we are facing an environment of risk,'' Ghani told a news conference.
``We should recall that a scant seven months ago, Afghanistan was under occupation of a terrorist regime. We have enemies,'' he added.
Ghani said there was ``near universal consensus'' among Afghans on extending and expanding the Turkish-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond the capital. But this was up to the U.N. Security Council, he said.
Ambassador David Johnson, U.S. coordinator for Afghanistan, reiterated U.S. opposition to extending ISAF and said the focus should be on training Afghan police and troops.
``We're trying to work with the Afghans, with those who have power in the regions, to seek to address the security challenges which are there, which are real,'' he told a separate briefing.
``Addressing humanitarian needs and reconstruction requirements, helping build institutions of central authority -- especially those associated with security such as an army and police force -- are part and parcel of creating a secure environment where you won't have this kind of destabilization.''
The Bush administration has donated $450 million in aid to Afghanistan since September 11 and hopes Congress will approve its request for $250 million in extra funding before its summer recess, according to Johnson.
Ghani said his country was still in the midst of a severe humanitarian crisis.
``More than one million refugees have returned, drought conditions prevail, there is food deprivation in parts of the country and people are exhausted,'' he said.
The U.N. asked in February for $1.6 billion for Afghanistan, emerging from decades of war compounded by several years of drought. The crisis has left almost one-third of the population dependent on emergency aid.
-------- argentina
Argentina Charges Ex-Dictator and Others in 'Dirty War' Deaths
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/international/americas/11ARGE.html
BUENOS AIRES, July 10 - An investigative judge today ordered the arrest of Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentina's former military dictator, and more than 30 other military officers on charges that they abused human rights during the "dirty war" against leftists here more than 20 years ago.
The officers, most of them retired, are accused of ordering or taking part in the kidnapping, torture and execution of more than 20 members of the left-wing Montonero guerrillas.
The remains of the victims, like many of the estimated 30,000 others who disappeared during seven years of brutal military rule, were never recovered.
In addition to General Galtieri, two other especially prominent former military leaders were ordered jailed. They are Gen. Carlos Guillermo Suárez Masón, who as military commander of the Buenos Aires region during the worst years of the conflict has been blamed for the abduction and murder of an estimated 5,000 people, and Gen. Cristino Nicolaides, a former commander of the Argentine Army. Many of the others charged today served in Battalion 601, an army intelligence unit with a particularly fearsome reputation for ruthlessness.
According to human rights groups, people taken into custody by such intelligence units were often drugged and then thrown into the sea from airplanes after the last bit of useful information had been coerced from them through torture.
With Argentina facing the worst economic crisis in its modern history, the arrest order issued by Judge Claudio Bonadío was overshadowed by speculation about who will run in the coming presidential election. But his action was hailed by Estela de Carlotto, leader of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and other human rights figures as a belated but "welcome step toward justice."
General Galtieri was the country's de facto and highly unpopular ruler 20 years ago when he gambled that he could send troops to seize the Falkland Islands, the British colony also claimed by Argentina, and that Britain would not respond.
Argentina's humiliating defeat in the three-month war that resulted led within a year to the collapse of the military dictatorship, the restoration of democracy and the start of a still unresolved debate over how to punish those guilty of the widespread and systematic human rights abuses that characterized the period.
At first many officers and soldiers were arrested. But during the 1980's two separate sweeping amnesty laws, widely criticized by human rights groups and relatives of the disappeared, were passed. One exempted from punishment members of the military who asserted that they were only following orders issued by senior officers.
As a result, most of the arrests that have taken place for more than a decade are due to loopholes in the laws. For instance, Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera, two members of the junta that ruled Argentina in the late 1970's, are under house arrest and facing charges that they authorized the theft of children born to women in detention, a crime not covered by the amnesty laws.
But last year, Judge Bonadío and a colleague ruled separately that the amnesty measures were in themselves unconstitutional.
That laid the legal groundwork for today's arrest order, and human rights groups expressed hope that other human rights violators, some of whom are also sought in Europe, may be detained soon.
-------- arms sales
China Condemns U.S. Arms Sales
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 11, 2002; 7:56 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53999-2002Jul11?language=printer
BEIJING -- The Foreign Ministry condemned American arms sales to Taiwan on Thursday, saying they endanger regional stability and frustrate China's ambitions of recovering the island it claims as Chinese territory.
Asked about a report that Washington was considering giving Taiwan access to advanced air-to-air missiles, spokesman Liu Jianchao called military sales to Taiwan a gross violation of China's internal affairs.
"There is only one China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of it. Taiwan is not a U.S. protectorate," Liu said at a regularly scheduled news conference. "We urge the United States to clearly see the seriousness of the arms sales to Taiwan."
U.S. officials have told The Associated Press they are considering giving Taiwan access to 200 AIM-120 missiles purchased by the island but stored at a U.S. base. Taiwan has been unable to take possession of the missiles, prevented by a policy that bars the transfer of new missile capabilities to the region.
The debate arose after China test-fired a a Russian-made AA-12 Adder air-to-air missile similar to the AIM-120 last month.
China and Taiwan were separated during a civil war in 1949. Beijing has threatened to retake the island by force if peaceful methods to persuade it to reunify fail.
China's maintains sales violate U.S. commitments to China not to have official contact with Taiwan and to gradually scale down arms sales.
Washington says sales are necessary to prevent a conflict and accuses China of upping its military threat against Taiwan with increased deployments of missiles and other sophisticated weapons.
--------
A world awash with guns
Wednesday July 11, 2001
UK Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,10674,520113,00.html
• The five permanent members of the UN security council, including Britain, are responsible for 85% of the world trade in small arms.
• The US is home to more than half the world's small arms companies.
• The US sold $463m (£330m) worth of light weapons to 124 countries in 1998; in five of those, the weapons were used to fire on US or UN soldiers
• Less than half the exporting countries publish information on their small arms exports
• Illicit trade in small arms is worth about $1bn (£700m) annually - that's 10% to 20% of the total trade in small arms
• Weapons up to 20 years old can be as effective as new models
• Afghanistan is the leading centre of unaccounted weapons, with at least 10m in circulation. From 1979 to 1989, the CIA channelled $2bn in weapons aid to the mojahedin there
• Britain has a higher proportion of small arms in official hands than any other country. Even here, only 28% are held by the military and the police; those in civilian hands are mostly shotguns
Sources: Small Arms Survey 2001; Arms Control Today; Scientific American
----
When will UK bite the bullet on gun traffic?
Britain is a key hub for small arms traffickers but, as the concluding part of our series shows, pressure is mounting for much tighter controls
Special report: the arms trade http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday July 11, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,10674,519949,00.html
Britain's role as one of the world's largest weapons exporters places a special responsibility on the government to take the lead in pressing for tough controls on trade in small arms, campaigners say. Britain is particularly well placed to take on the task, they argue, since it is now a relatively insignificant producer of small arms yet home to many dealers and traffickers.
Total arms exports account for less than 1.2% of Britain's overseas earnings and less than 0.3% of total employment. The figure for small arms is even less significant - and will be reduced even more when Royal Ordnance, now a subsidiary of BAE Systems, closes its largest plant, in Nottingham, shortly.
Nevertheless, the government encourages the trade. It has granted export licences for small arms and ammunition to Pakistan, Israel, Malaysia, Morocco, Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Exports to Turkey have included handgun silencers which, critics say, are for use against Kurds. Heckler and Koch, a subsidiary of Royal Ordnance, has signed a production licensing deal with Turkey allowing it to sell submachine guns to Indonesia, thus bypassing British export controls.
These licences were approved despite the government's undertaking, in the context of an "ethical dimension to foreign policy", to ban such exports when there was a clear risk that they would be used for internal repression.
Britain is an important base for brokers and traffickers of small arms. It is a notoriously secretive trade which, as the independently produced 2001 Small Arms Survey points out, with the end of the cold war has created a flourishing buyers' market.
In 1994, a British-based company, Miltec, brokered small arms from Albania and Israel to Rwanda. Four years later, a private military company, Sandline, helped to organise the transfer of arms from Bulgaria to Sierra Leone, with the knowledge of some officials in the Foreign Office.
Sky Air Cargo, a British-based company, which was hired by Sandline and has been implicated in running guns to both sides of the conflict in Sierra Leone, is alleged to have shipped arms to Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Monday, the trade secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said the arms export control bill would crack down on the "dark and unacceptable side" of the arms trade. Arms brokers in Britain would in future have to inform the government of all arms deals.
Oxfam, Amnesty, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Saferworld welcome the measure as a significant step in the right direction.
However, it is far from clear how Britons who bypass national controls by organising weapons shipments from third countries will be caught by the legislation which is vague about monitoring end-user certificates and silent on the issue of overseas production licences.
The bill sets out broad human rights criteria that would cover the granting of export licences, but contains no provision for prior parliamentary approval along the lines adopted by Sweden and the US. Non-governmental agencies want a legally-binding international convention prohibiting the transfer of arms where they pose a reasonable risk of being used to violate human rights, fuel aggression against another country, or when they are excessive to legitimate defence needs and waste resources destined for development.
The convention, they say, must also regulate arms brokers and shipping agents ("gun runners") to prevent them bypassing controls. They are unlikely to succeed.
Watered down
Britain has lowered its sights to what it calls politically binding, rather than legally binding, agreements - in other words, appeals and resolutions, not a new UN convention. These would cover the transfer, marking, and tracing of small arms. Developing countries which agreed to destroy stockpiles of small arms would benefit from special aid and loans.
The US may insist on watering down even these proposals. It argues, rightly, that it has among the toughest national controls on arms exports. But it is firmly against the binding agreements needed if controls on the small arms trade are to be effective.
"If [the UN conference under way this week] drifts off into areas that are more properly the subject of national-level decision-making then I think there will be difficulties," the US under secretary of state, John Bolton, said on Monday. He added that the US would reject any measures that would "constrain legal trade and legal manufacture of small arms and light weapons".
British-based companies involved in the small arms trade include HeavyLift Volga-Dnepr, based at Stansted airport, and Air Foyle, a company linked to Victor Bout, a former KGB officer and owner of Air Cess, who has been named in the Commons for gun running to Africa.
Air Foyle has been contracted by a Gibraltar-based company, Chartered Engineering and Technical, to ship small arms to Burkina Faso, the west African state which has transported arms to rebels in Sierra Leone.
Advocates of strong restrictions on the trade insist there must be tough international controls even on legal transactions. In this trade, weapons may start out being sold legally, but they end up in illicit hands.
Useful links
www.un.org/Depts/dda/CAB/ small arms conference site http://files.fco.gov.uk/info/ briefs/smallarms.pdf Foreign office briefing on the conference
-------- britain
British Detonate World War II Bomb
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 11, 2002; 6:10 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53692-2002Jul11?language=printer
LONDON -- Workmen on Thursday detonated a 1,000-pound World War II bomb retrieved from the Scottish naval base that serves Britain's nuclear submarines.
Police said it took 14 hours to move the device 30 miles from the Clyde Naval Base to Kilbrannan Sound, an area of deep water where the bomb was exploded.
Divers using ropes and a large bag retrieved the bomb Wednesday from its position, embedded in silt and less than 80 feet from a submarine jetty. All submarines were berthed well away from the area during the operation.
French divers found the British-made bomb during a training exercise earlier this month.
The area around the River Clyde was used as a base for ships during World War II and experts believe the bomb - designed to be dropped from an aircraft - fell into the river as it was being transported.
-------- business
Boeing Moves to Get More Federal Work
Satellite, Military Aircraft Units Merging
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 11, 2002; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52122-2002Jul10.html
Boeing Co., attempting to better align itself for the next generation of network-based military contracts, said yesterday that it will merge its satellite and military aircraft businesses, creating a unit with $23 billion in annual revenue.
The reorganization reflects a shift in priorities by the military away from buying a single airplane or tank to a "system of systems" approach that links troops to airplanes, ships and satellite-based data transmissions through an Internet-style network, Boeing officials said.
"Integrated military, air, land, sea and space-based platforms is the direction modern defense systems are moving," said Philip M. Condit, chairman and chief executive.
Chicago-based Boeing said the unit, Integrated Defense Systems, will be based in St. Louis with 76,000 employees and be led by Jim Albaugh, 52, who now heads the space and communications unit. Jerry Daniels, president and chief executive of the company's military aircraft and missile systems unit, will retire after the transition. There will be no layoffs in the merged unit, Boeing officials said.
Boeing has about 1,300 employees in the Washington area.
The reorganization should be completed by the end of the year, Condit said.
The move could give Boeing a competitive advantage if it is better able to address the military's needs, analysts said. "Major peer competitors have systems integration and defense technology skills spread across multiple sectors," said Byron Callan, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. "The move better aligns company defense operations with DOD spending trends."
It also is expected to help Boeing improve customer relations. Defense officials occasionally have complained that several Boeing officials from different divisions approached them on the same project, industry officials said. Housing all military operations in one unit would eliminate that problem, they said.
Yesterday's announcement came as Boeing's largest business, commercial airplanes, struggles with the continuing slump in the airline market. It expects jet deliveries to fall to about 380 this year, from 527 in 2001, and plans to lay off up to 30,000 workers. The company's space and communications business also has faced a slump in the commercial satellite market. Earlier this year, the company said it would lay off about 1,000 people in that unit.
As a result, Boeing has focused on its defense business. The military aircraft and missile systems reported a 22 percent increase in revenue in the first quarter of this year.
The reorganization was formulated during the past 2 1/2 weeks, but the idea was planted as Boeing sought to get the contract for the Army's ground combat system, Condit said. The project, which Boeing won, would replace tanks and other armored vehicles and include unmanned aircraft and robotic land cruisers, all linked by advanced intelligence sensors and data networks.
"This continues a migration of Boeing's business base away from commercial airlines and in the direction of government business," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant at the conservative Lexington Institute. And that makes sense because government business typically has higher profit margins than commercial airline work, he said.
Basing the unit in St. Louis also is expected to enhance the company's support in Congress. "The Missouri delegation has been very supportive of Boeing in the past, and this will enhance that," Thompson said.
Boeing's stock yesterday fell $2.42 a share, or 5.6 percent, to $40.80 on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- chemical weapons
Army to Speed Up Weapons Destruction
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Incinerator.html
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- The Army plans to destroy Cold War chemicals at an unprecidented pace at its new Alabama incinerator starting in October, an Army spokesman said Thursday.
The Anniston Army Depot incinerator could destroy the chopped-up rockets containing hardened sarin gas at a rate up to 34 per hour, said incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams. The weapons had been destroyed at a rate of up to one per hour at Anniston's predecessor facility in Tooele, Utah.
The Army set a tentative date to begin the incineration of rockets held in storage in Anniston for Oct. 11, Abrams said. State regulators have already approved the plan, but also will consider public comment before giving the Army the final go-ahead.
Critics said the process is dangerous enough without pushing the incinerator to untested limits.
``This incinerator will have accidents, it will have agent releases. History shows us that,'' said Brenda Lindell, a founding member of Families Concerned About Nerve Gas Incineration. ``You don't know what they're putting on the people. This is ludicrous.''
Abrams said the Army would not try to destroy the rockets unless it had proof the process was safe from tests using industrial cleaning chemicals that are harder to destroy than nerve agents.
Just because no incinerator has destroyed chemical weapons at this speed doesn't mean it can't be done, he said.
``The speedometer on your car may only go up to 60 miles an hour. But your car is capable of doing more than we give it credit for,'' Abrams said.
He also said the Army would burn the rockets at only a few per hour initially, building up speed if tests show the process is safe.
An estimated 12,000 to 13,000 M55 rockets contain hardened sarin gas, also called GB gas.
In these rockets, the liquid nerve agent has gelled into rock-hard crystal, which is impossible to drain, Abrams said. Those rockets would be chopped up with the gelled sarin gas inside and burned in a furnace that was not designed to destroy rockets in such a manner.
In all, there are about 661,000 rockets, land mines, artillery shells and bulk containers at the base.
Incinerator opponents include Gov. Don Siegelman, who has sued to stop the incinerator from coming online until the government guarantees residents' safety. He has asked for safety precautions that include giving protective hoods to residents.
-------- china
China Condemns U.S. Arms Sales
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US.html
BEIJING (AP) -- The Foreign Ministry condemned American arms sales to Taiwan on Thursday, saying they endanger regional stability and frustrate China's ambitions of recovering the island it claims as Chinese territory.
Asked about a report that Washington was considering giving Taiwan access to advanced air-to-air missiles, spokesman Liu Jianchao called military sales to Taiwan a gross violation of China's internal affairs.
``There is only one China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of it. Taiwan is not a U.S. protectorate,'' Liu said at a regularly scheduled news conference. ``We urge the United States to clearly see the seriousness of the arms sales to Taiwan.''
U.S. officials have told The Associated Press they are considering giving Taiwan access to 200 AIM-120 missiles purchased by the island but stored at a U.S. base. Taiwan has been unable to take possession of the missiles, prevented by a policy that bars the transfer of new missile capabilities to the region.
The debate arose after China test-fired a a Russian-made AA-12 Adder air-to-air missile similar to the AIM-120 last month.
China and Taiwan were separated during a civil war in 1949. Beijing has threatened to retake the island by force if peaceful methods to persuade it to reunify fail.
China's maintains sales violate U.S. commitments to China not to have official contact with Taiwan and to gradually scale down arms sales.
Washington says sales are necessary to prevent a conflict and accuses China of upping its military threat against Taiwan with increased deployments of missiles and other sophisticated weapons.
-------- colombia
U.S. Law Imperils Colombia Coca Spraying
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/international/americas/11COLO.html
WASHINGTON, July 10 - Even as the Bush administration is trying to increase the aerial spraying of drug crops in Colombia with herbicides, an American law enacted in January threatens to disrupt the strategy and possibly even halt it.
A little-noticed provision in the $15.4 billion spending measure for government operations abroad requires that the American-backed program to eradicate coca crops in Colombia must meet the same health and safety standards that would apply if the herbicides were being sprayed in the United States.
"Colombia is far away, but we are making decisions that can directly affect the health of thousands of people there," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, who sponsored the new law. "The American public and our own health agencies would not allow use of a toxic chemical like this on this kind of scale."
The provision requires that before the program in Colombia can proceed, the Environmental Protection Agency must certify that the spraying of a herbicide mixture containing glyphosate from low-flying planes does "not pose unreasonable risks or adverse effects to humans or the environment."
The glyphosate mixture is a variety of the weed killer known by the trade name Roundup. Although most types of Roundup used in the United States have been found to be only mildly toxic when used according to instructions, the compound used in Colombia has more restrictive handling instructions, indicating a higher toxicity, and has not been widely used in this country. It was approved for use here only in November.
An unfavorable finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could jeopardize one of the main United States efforts to reduce the production of cocaine, for which the coca plant is the raw material, at its source.
Experts say that assessing the impact of the spraying will be complicated without an epidemiological study, which would be costly and difficult given the remote and sparsely populated areas where coca is grown.
Advocates for Colombians exposed to the fumigant have charged that it caused a variety of ill effects. They assert, moreover, that an additive intended for use in Colombia, to make it stick to the coca plants, makes it even more dangerous.
Congressional supporters of the spraying program said they had been compelled to support Senator Leahy's provision or face losing the overall spending measure, which also finances programs like aid to Israel and Egypt, security for international embassies and AIDS prevention around the world.
Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican, denounced the Leahy provision as "one more roadblock that the bleeding hearts tried to throw in front of our program." The herbicides used in Colombia are no more toxic "than what most people use in their backyards," said Mr. Mica, who is co-chairman of the House task force on counternarcotics.
But critics of the spraying say that is not true. The mixture used in Colombia carries handling instructions that correspond to the highest Environmental Protection Agency toxicity rating, Class 1, while most Roundup products used in the United States fall into the more benign Class 3 or Class 2. Even if the product were safe, the critics say, there is no way to ensure that it is applied according to E.P.A. standards.
"It's not the same as what you're finding on the shelf at the Home Depot," said Anna Cederstav, a staff scientist at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm.
When the Environmental Protection Agency reapproved the glyphosate for use in this country in 1993, the agency said it had "relatively low" acute toxicity when sprayed on the skin or ingested. But, noting that it caused high numbers of injuries to agricultural workers in California, it required a standard precaution that workers generally not be allowed to enter areas that have been sprayed for 12 hours.
A restriction like that would be impossible to enforce in the areas that would be sprayed in Colombia.
Environmental Protection Agency officials, who have been studying the matter since last spring, missed a deadline last week to present their conclusions to the State Department, which is preparing a report on the program's safety for Congress.
The review will not be complete for "a handful of weeks," said David Deegan, an E.P.A. spokesman, adding, "It's pretty difficult for us to evaluate a program in Colombia."
Lino Gutierrez, an assistant secretary of state, said the goal this year was to fumigate 370,000 acres of coca, compared with 207,000 acres last year. The program involves about 14 crop-dusters operated by American and Colombian pilots or foreign contractors.
Colombia's incoming president, Álvaro Uribe, has embraced the spraying. But so far it has had mixed results. Despite widespread spraying last year, the amount of coca under cultivation rose by nearly 25 percent, the State Department has reported.
State Department officials say the herbicide being used is not toxic, even when people are directly sprayed. One official who defended the program said he had been inadvertently sprayed with the herbicide in Colombia on 15 occasions and had suffered no adverse effects.
Still, in a statement to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, advocates for Colombians who were exposed to the fumigants said the spraying caused "gastrointestinal disorders (e.g., severe bleeding, nausea and vomiting), testicular inflammation, high fevers, dizziness, respiratory ailments, skin rashes and severe eye irritation."
Last year, four Colombian governors from zones with heavy coca cultivation traveled to the United States to ask for a halt in spraying. The fumigation program "doesn't really take into account the human being," said Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, their spokesman. "All it cares about are satellite pictures."
The administration has also fueled suspicion about the herbicide mixture used in Colombia by refusing to disclose its precise ingredients or discuss how the final product is prepared. Officials say they do not want to divulge corporate trade secrets.
But spraying opponents accuse the administration of trying to conceal other components, known as surfactants, added for use in Colombia to help the glyphosate to stick to the coca leaves. "We don't know what those surfactants are," said Dr. Cederstav of Earthjustice.
-------- drug war
Britain to Stop Arresting Most Private Users of Marijuana
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/international/europe/11BRIT.html
LONDON, July 10 - Britain, which has one of the highest rates of cannabis use in Europe, said today that it was relaxing its laws on marijuana smoking, keeping the practice theoretically illegal but making private use in discreet amounts no longer subject to arrest.
The decision, announced by Home Secretary David Blunkett in the House of Commons, stirred criticism from the Conservative opposition and some Labor politicians and prompted the country's former antidrug chief to resign as a government adviser because, he said, Britain is "moving further toward decriminalization than any other country in the world."
Mr. Blunkett tempered his announcement, which takes effect next July and puts cannabis on a par with antidepressants and steroids, by saying he would also raise the punishment for marijuana dealing and step up drug education and treatment for abusers.
An estimated five million people in Britain regularly use marijuana, and government data show that its use has risen sharply in the last 20 years.
A study published last year on drug habits in the European Union showed that 20 to 25 percent of adults in Britain used marijuana - about the same rate as shown for Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain.
The government action followed recommendations of a parliamentary committee in May, which said a new attitude of tolerance would give drug policy greater credibility among young people and help the police direct resources toward heroin and cocaine. Britain has the most drug-related deaths of any country in the European Union, with heroin cited as the principal cause.
The parliamentary committee also suggested reclassifying the drug Ecstasy, but Mr. Blunkett said he had rejected that advice.
Several other European countries have already relaxed their drug laws. The Netherlands has legalized marijuana, while Luxembourg has ended jail sentences for marijuana possession. Spain and Italy do not jail people caught with drugs meant for personal use. Last year Portugal eliminated jail time for possession of small amounts of any illegal drug.
Under the British reform, possession of marijuana would no longer be considered an arrestable offense. Though that will not take effect for a year, from now on any police action will be limited to issuing a warning and seizing the drug.
Mr. Blunkett countered suggestions that Britain was going "soft on drugs" by saying the police would retain the right to arrest users in cases like smoking outside schools or in the presence of children. The Home Office emphasized that any marijuana cafes where the drug was sold and used openly remained illegal and would be closed.
"It is critical that police can maintain public order," Mr. Blunkett said. "Where cannabis possession is linked to aggravated behavior that threatens public order, the police will retain the power of arrest."
Scotland Yard said it welcomed the reclassification of the drug combined with maintaining a discretionary police power to intervene. The drug spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, Andy Hayman, said, "The retention of police power of arrest will enable the police to have greater flexibility in dealing with incidents on the street."
Mr. Blunkett insisted that today's move did not constitute legalizing marijuana. "All controlled drugs are harmful and will remain illegal," he said. "We must concentrate our efforts on the drugs that cause the most harm, while sending a credible message to young people."
But Keith Hellawell, Prime Minister Tony Blair's onetime antidrug chief, said the new policy "would virtually be decriminalization of cannabis, and this is, quite frankly, giving out the wrong message."
He coupled the announcement of his resignation from a government advisory post with a strong attack on the policy, saying it would damage communities and lead to more, not less, drug use.
"It's actually a technical adjustment which in the reality of the law doesn't make a great deal of difference," Mr. Hellawell said, "but it's being bandied about by people as a softening of the law."
He said that there had been an increase in marijuana smoking among young people and that more people were seeking treatment for its effects. "Why on earth, when there are these problems, we change our message and give a softer message, I don't know," he said.
Mr. Hellawell, the former chief constable of West Yorkshire, was named the government's first antidrug coordinator by Mr. Blair in 1997, but last year he was sidelined by Mr. Blunkett from the $160,000-a-year post and made a part-time adviser on the international drug trade.
The new police tolerance has been in effect on an experimental basis in two London neighborhoods, Lambeth and Brixton. The Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, visited the Brixton project on Tuesday and told the Commons today that residents had told him it had led to rampant dealing on their streets. He said Mr. Blunkett's plan amounted to "handing over drugs policy to criminals on the street."
Oliver Letwin, the Conservatives' spokesman on law enforcement, complained that "the middle ground of calling it illegal, leaving it in the hands of dealers rather than in legitimate tobacconists or whatever, then turning a blind eye to it, is the worst of all worlds."
Kate Hoey, a Labor member of Parliament who represents one of the affected London areas, said the government could live to regret today's decision because of the increasing strength of marijuana being peddled on the street.
"It is a very strong type of cannabis, it's genetically modified, it is not perhaps like people tried 20 years ago," she said, "and we have no idea of the long-term effects of constant hard smoking that some kids are doing now."
-------- iraq
Seeking to Link Iraq to Poison Gas and bin Laden
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By CARYN JAMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/arts/television/11JAME.html
Many people were collapsing around us and dying," says a Kurdish man who survived a poison gas attack. "The gas smelled of garlic and rotten apples." As he recalls that day, we see videotape shot immediately after the attack. The gas - a combination including the nerve gas sarin and cyanide - caused paralysis and death so fast that the stonelike corpses littering the ground look flash-frozen, fists clenched, one child's arm still lifted in the air.
The attack, launched by Saddam Hussein in 1988 in his own country, hit the town of Halabja and was meant to punish the Kurds for their resistance to his control. That story is only one part of tonight's extraordinary documentary "Saddam's Ultimate Solution," the timeliest possible beginning to "Wide Angle," a 10-week PBS series on varied international issues. Only last week Iraq once again refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors into the country, and much front-page news has focused on the Bush administration's possible plans to topple Mr. Hussein and on the role the Kurds might play in such a move.
In this hourlong film, its reporter and producer, Gwynne Roberts, travels to Iraqi Kurdistan searching for links between Mr. Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He is accompanied by a doctor studying the long-term effects of poison gas on the towns and villages (more than 200 of them) attacked by Mr. Hussein in the late 1980's. The Hussein-Bin Laden connection is the more explosive subject. The claims are chilling if true, but while the evidence is convincing it remains unproved here. The effects of the poison gas, however, are viscerally, undeniably horrifying. On both counts the narrative and the images in "Saddam's Ultimate Solution" are as gripping as any drama.
The documentary includes black-and-white videotape taken immediately after Mr. Hussein's first known chemical attack in April 1987 on a village called Scheich Wassan. Taken by a Kurdish mercenary working with the Iraqis, the tape shows a huge cloud hanging in the air, people helplessly throwing buckets of water on the smoking ground, villagers wailing. Color video from 1991 shows skulls and remnants of clothing being unearthed from a mass grave for victims of that attack. Today the film shows shells from the missiles lying in a school playground, a residue of poison gas still on them.
In Halabja the film captures an old woman's wizened face and body. Mr. Roberts then tells us she is 16 years old; she was 3 when the poison gas hit. A man who was a healthy 9-year-old at the time now has curvature of the spine. There is an increase in babies born with cleft palates, Down syndrome and other disorders. A sign over a large burial ground reads, in imperfect English, "The Graveyard for Halabja Chemical Martyr."
While in Kurdistan, Mr. Roberts's investigation of the Hussein-Bin Laden tie focuses on Al Ansar al Islam, a militant Islamic group (the Iraqi counterpart to the Taliban in Afghanistan) with widely reported links to Mr. bin Laden's Queda. Only one source faces the camera: Barham Salih, the prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government, who survived an assassination attempt. One of the captured suspects claims to be a member of al Ansar and says he was recruited by Al Queda agents in Jordan.
Two other men are filmed with their backs to the camera or lurking in shadows. A man who is now a prisoner of the Kurds claims he was an Iraqi intelligence agent and says that Aymar al Zawahiri, Mr. bin Laden's second in command, met with Mr. Hussein in Iraq in 1992.
Even more alarming claims come from an Iraqi whom Mr. Roberts tracks down in Turkey, his identity disguised by a jittery camera in a hotel room that shows his hands, his feet, never his face. He says he worked in a chemical weapons factory near Baghdad and that he actually saw Mr. bin Laden visit a terrorist training camp in Iraq in 1998, when Al Queda members were about to "graduate" from its program. "Saddam's Ultimate Solution" carefully couches all this information in phrases like "if these claims are true," but it has a cumulative credibility when added to similar stories from many other sources.
The trappings of the series are less successful. After each film either James Rubin, a former spokesman for former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, or Daljit Dhaliwal, the former anchor of "World News for Public Television," will interview an expert on the documentary's subject. Mr. Rubin's guest on tonight's program is Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. Mr. Perle offers an argument rather than analysis when he says an American operation in Iraq will be "quicker and easier than many people think," a matter of weeks not months. Mr. Rubin questions what he calls this "optimistic scenario," but because it's not his role to take a position, the Perle interview is the lopsided half of a debate. Still, in a television landscape where network news is dominated by tiny sound bites and cable by shouting heads, "Wide Angle" has a distinct and valuable place.
WIDE ANGLE Saddam's Ultimate Solution
On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings)
Gwynne Roberts, producer and reporter; Andy Halper, senior producer; Stephen Segaller, executive producer; Pamela Hogan, series producer; James P. Rubin, host. Produced by 13/WNET New York.
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Pentagon Opposes Iraq Talks on Pilot
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gulf-War-Pilot.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is recommending against accepting Iraq's offer to send a U.S. delegation to Baghdad to discuss the fate of missing Gulf War pilot Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher, officials said Thursday.
Instead, the Pentagon wants the State Department to send a diplomatic note to Baghdad through the International Committee of the Red Cross asking whether the Iraqi government has any new information about Speicher, who was shot down in his Navy F-18 on the opening night of the Gulf War.
A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Lapan, said that if Iraq indicated in response to the U.S. inquiry that it has additional information to share, then the United States might propose meeting with Iraqi officials in Geneva, along with representatives of the Red Cross.
The purpose of the U.S. diplomatic note would be to ``confirm Iraq's intention to provide new information,'' Lapan said.
In March, Iraq offered to meet with U.S. officials in Baghdad to discuss the case. The offer was in a letter sent via the Red Cross.
Speicher is listed as missing in action. Some believe Speicher is being held prisoner in Iraq, although there is no publicly available information to confirm that. Others believe that the Iraqi government at least has information about his fate, even if he died after the crash.
Iraq has said Speicher was killed in the crash and has ridiculed assertions that he may be held captive.
Iraq's March 19 letter said: ``Concerned authorities are ready to receive a U.S. team to visit Iraq and investigate the question (of Speicher's fate) in the company of both a U.S. media team for coverage and documentation purposes, under supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and with participation of Mr. Scott Ritter.''
Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer and U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq who has been a critic of U.S. policy toward the country.
Speicher, then 33, of Jacksonville, Fla., was shot down when his fighter jet was struck by a missile on Jan. 17, 1991 as a U.S.-led coalition began the war to drive Iraq's occupation army out of Kuwait.
One U.S. team already has gone to Iraq -- an excavation team that visited the crash site in 1995, finding aircraft debris but no human remains. U.S. officials have said the site was tampered with because reconnaissance photos showed part of the plane removed, then returned, before the excavation team arrived.
``We're not going to send a team over there to go out in the desert to see what we've already seen,'' Lapan said. But if the Iraqis indicated they have new information to share, then the Defense Department would like to hold the Geneva talks, he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Mideast Strife Loudly Echoed in Academia
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/international/middleeast/11SCHO.html
For most of the decade they have known each other, Mona Baker and Miriam Shlesinger have parked their political differences at scholarship's door. Professor Baker, an Egyptian-born professor in Manchester, England, believes Israel is a scar on the map of the Arab world. Professor Shlesinger, an Israeli who teaches at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, has fought for Palestinian rights but believes in her country's right to exist.
But last week Professor Baker, who publishes two academic journals, opened the door to those differences, firing Professor Shlesinger and another highly regarded scholar, Gideon Toury, from the journals' boards because they are Israeli.
The resulting academic outcry has focused new attention on two petitions signed by hundreds of European scholars, one calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions and the other calling on the European Union to deny grants to Israeli universities and scientific institutions.
Professor Baker, who signed both documents, did not respond to repeated attempts to reach her yesterday. But she has told the British press that she considered the dismissal of her colleagues as the logical consequence of her signing the petitions.
"I deplore the Israeli state," Dr. Baker told The Sunday Telegraph in a statement widely quoted elsewhere. "Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation."
She said many Europeans had signed their names to the boycott because Israel "has gone beyond just war crimes."
"It is horrific what is going on there," she added, particularly angering former friends in Israel by asserting, "Many of us would like to talk about it as some kind of Holocaust, which the world will eventually wake up to, much too late, of course, as they did with the last one."
Reactions to the dismissals have been fierce. Stephen Greenblatt, the Shakespeare scholar who is president of the Modern Language Association, wrote an open letter of outrage, saying the removal of Israelis on the basis of their nationality "violates the essential spirit of scholarly freedom and the pursuit of truth."
A rival petition criticizing the boycott petition for its "unjustly righteous tone, which distorts the complexity of the situation," garnered more signatures than the two original petitions urging boycotts.
And several of the better-known European scholars who signed a pro-boycott petition said they wished they never had.
"This is not a question of Middle Eastern politics, but of scholarly life," Professor Greenblatt said. "It's a refusal to deal with the whole country, with anyone who carries the Israeli passport, and this is totally repellent to me."
Coming after a string of attacks against European Jews and synagogues, particularly in France and Germany, the call for a boycott of Israel's cultural and scientific institutions is raising uncomfortable associations in the minds of many scholars. It has also underscored differences between the European scholars who led the boycott drive and their American counterparts who - despite a divestiture movement pushed by Arab-American student groups at some universities - drew up the petition opposing the boycott.
Ian Haworth, a spokesman for the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where Professor Baker teaches, said the university planned an inquiry to determine whether she had violated any university rules, though he stressed that the journals she publishes are independent.
"We're quite horrified that this has happened," Mr. Haworth said. "We're totally opposed to Israeli professors being dismissed from journals. People must make a stand and say that this is wrong. Even when it's an employee of our university, we have to make it clear that this isn't acceptable."
In going further than the petition demanded, Dr. Baker has cast doubt on the value of the boycott among some of its former supporters, by illustrating the ethical quicksand such an act can lead to.
"I do slightly recoil when an individual is singled out for victimization like that," said the Oxford geneticist Richard Dawkins, who withdrew his support for the petition even before the incident. Britain's national union of students branded it "racist."
Patrick Bateson, provost of King's College, Cambridge, said he had signed the call for a European Union boycott because he considered it an effective way to pressure the Israeli government to improve conditions for Palestinians. He rejected criticism, voiced in an editorial in the journal Science and elsewhere, that boycotts are antithetical to science's function as a magnet drawing minds across political and national boundaries.
"Always," he said, "science is set in social contexts." As an example he cited Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor who tortured Jewish children in experiments.
"Supposing we had the possibility of collaborating with a Mengele," Professor Bateson said. "That would be a case where everybody would say politics would definitely come into science, and say we could not let that happen."
Professor Toury, dismissed from the international advisory board of Translation Studies Abstracts, was momentarily speechless upon learning of Professor Bateson's remark. "It's painful even to hear this," he said. "I think I could make a comparison of my own. What they've started doing is taking Israeli academics as hostages, and threatening to kill one every day until they pressure the government to give in. That's precisely what the Nazis did. Me and Miriam Shlesinger, we are the first two. And there will be more."
Professor Shlesinger, who has lost a relative in a terrorist ambush, is a former president of the Amnesty International chapter in Israel. She said she had considered Professor Baker a close friend and colleague, someone "who has helped me a lot," but considered her calling upon the Holocaust to justify her actions "obscene."
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Envoy relates Israelis to Nazis
July 11, 2002
By Andy Olsen
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020711-11875379.htm
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, who earlier wrote a poem praising Palestinian suicide bombers, now calls the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza "far more severe than anything the Germans did."
The London Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that Ambassador Ghazi Algosaibi made the statement this week in a speech and that the British Foreign Office described the remarks as "wrong and insensitive."
The newspaper, which quoted the ambassador in a commentary article, gave no other details, but it was an apparent reference to a speech Mr. Algosaibi gave to academics at the University of Westminster in London.
The Jordan Times, on its Web site, quoted Mr. Algosaibi as saying: "This is a war of occupation, far more severe than anything the Germans did when they occupied Europe in World War II."
Mr. Algosaibi called Palestinian suicide bombers "martyrs" in a poem published on the front page of the pan-Arab daily newspaper, al-Hayat, on April 13. In the poem, Mr. Algosaibi singled out for praise an 18-year-old Palestinian girl, who blew herself up outside a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two Israelis: "She kisses death, laughing happily, while from death the leaders flee."
Mr. Algosaibi's defense of Palestinian suicide bombers comes at a time when some moderate Arab governments are trying to distance themselves from acts of terrorism.
A poet as well as a diplomat, Mr. Algosaibi praised the suicide attacks in interviews with Saudi media, recalling his own desire to be a martyr when he was younger. "I do not fear death - on the contrary, I long to die as a martyr," he told the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, "although I am at an age that does not allow me to carry out a martyrdom operation."
The ambassador has written other poems. He wrote an elegy for Britain's Princess Diana after her death in 1997, which was seen as a departure from his diplomatic duties and conservative Islamic background.
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Palestinians Use Internet to Beat Israeli Siege
Thursday, July 11 2002
The Jerusalem Times, via Middle East News Online and Palestine Chronicle
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20020711190815197
GAZA STRIP: The Israeli checkpoints dividing the land and preventing most students from reaching universities in the Gaza Strip prompted some students to move from Rafah, Khan Younis and other districts in the south and center of Gaza. Others, meanwhile, could not make the move and were prevented from studying altogether.
Amongst these were many female students who, governed by tradition and culture, are not allowed to live on their own. So what was the answer?
Hazem Sakeek, president of the Physics Department at Al-Azhar University, pioneered the idea of utilizing web sites to reach the students. Sakeek said that the idea came as a means to defeat the Israeli siege that has prevented many students in the southern and central districts of the Gaza Strip from reaching the university campus. He began by creating a web site and supplying his students with the address, enabling them to access valuable information. The web site contains tens of questions and problems and lists student grades according to student number.
The students favored the idea and the site was expanded to include diagrams, pictures, and more elaborate lectures, which enabled them to follow complete lectures online. In fact, student demand was the main reason behind the decision to create an additional web site solely for questions.
Sakeek explained that the material is offered in Arabic, adding that the pictures and diagrams help simplify things for the students, as do the technological advancements in terms of sound and sight that have helped spare the students lengthy and sometimes boring lectures. The site contains ample explanations, questions and problems and offers links to books and additional lectures. For this reason, amongst several others, even non-academics can benefit from taking a look.
Sakeek mentioned that when he proposed his idea at the university in several workshops, many professors approved. He also mentioned that other sites dealing with other subjects might soon be constructed. He added that he insists on continually updating and improving his own site, driven by the response and eagerness of the students, despite the time and effort required of him.
Professor Sakeek was born in Gaza. He received his PhD from the UAE University in 1987, an MA in Electronics from the Royal University in Belfast in 1988 and a PhD in Physics from the same university in 1991. He is currently the president of the Physics Department and the director of the computer lab at Al-Azhar.
The web site, hazemsakeek.8m.com, was launched on 21 July 2001.
-------- spy agencies
Military Secrets Stolen in Hawaii
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Missing-Secrets.html
HONOLULU (AP) -- Federal agents and police are investigating the theft of classified military files from the car of a military officer, officials confirmed Thursday.
The files on computer compact disks were among items taken June 14 from the trunk of the car parked at a beach on Oahu's North Shore, according to Honolulu television station KHON. The report said the files were classified ``top secret'' and are still missing.
Sgt. Robert Olmos at the Wahiawa police station told The Associated Press that police identified for federal investigators a number of individuals who have been suspects in past break-ins at the beach.
``All we were told is that it was some highly classified information that involved national security,'' he said. ``I don't know if they have picked anyone up yet.''
Lt. Col. Chip Krokoski, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, referred inquires to the FBI in Honolulu where a spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call.
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Art, Espionage and Cover Ups
by Alan Simpson
Spies Magazine,
July 11, 2002
http://www.comlinks.com/mag/120spies.htm
120 Israeli Spies have been deported quietly from the USA, and with them a disturbing secret. The all powerful Israeli lobby insists that they were not deported for spying, as none were ever charged, merely for overstaying their student visas, and not doing their Art homework. Many of these mature "Art Students" were known intelligence officers, experts in bomb disposal, intelligence and many other disciplines, not associated with the Art world.
Many within US government agencies, are disgusted at the political interference and clamping down on ongoing investigations, with far reaching implications. As information comes out an even more disturbing pattern emerges.
These mature "Art Students" were widely dispersed around key military, and manufacturing facilities, and were stealing every secret they could find. That in itself is normal, and the Israelis have been blatantly doing that for years, that's how you grow a nation. Of more serious concern is the fact, as sources report, when you compare the FBI list of wanted terrorists, and the leaked list of 120 Israeli mature "Art Students" the addresses are yards apart. This raises the devastating conclusion that the Israelis were shadowing the terrorists who carried out the attack on the World Trade Center, and had advance information, which according to sources close to the White House, was not shared with the United States.
From the original investigative report breaking the story: "According to the FBI list, the Arab terrorist and suspect cells lived in the same neighborhoods as the Israeli cells in Irving, Texas and Hollywood and Miami, Florida from Dec. 2000 to April 2001. In the case of Irving, the Israeli cell used a rental mailbox in a shopping center just one block away from an Arab suspect's apartment. In Hollywood, the terrorists, including lead hijacker Mohammad Atta, the Egyptian who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, used a rental mailbox drop two blocks from an apartment rented by an Israeli "art student" team leader."
The original report goes on to say, "It is not the only case where the Israelis were found to be in the same location as the Saudi cells. According to the DEA Report, another Israeli team operating out of Hollywood, Florida, led by team leader Hanan Serfaty lived at 4220 Sheridan St., #303, Hollywood, Florida 33021 (Emerald Greens Apartments) while the Saudi hijackers Khalid Al Midhar, Abdulaziz al Omari, Walid Al Shehri, and UAE national Marwan al Shehri, operated from a mail drop at Mailbox Rentals, 3389 Sheridan St. #256, Hollywood, Florida 33021-3608. Another Serfaty residence at 701 S. 21st Ave., Hollywood was located near the homes of Atta and Al Shehri, including a residence on Jackson Street, just a few blocks away, and the Bimini Motel Apartments, Apartment 8, at 1600 North Ocean Drive. On September 7, just days before their terrorist attack, Atta and Al Shehri spent several hours at Shuckums Oyster Bar and Grill at 1814 Harrison St., just blocks away from Serfaty's 21st Ave. residence. A Miami-based Israeli unit, led by Legum Yochai, operated from 13753 SW 90th Ave., Miami while hijacker Al Shehri lived nearby at Horizons Apartments, 8025 SW 107th Ave"
The Air Force issued an alert, from Tinker Air Force Base, in Oklahoma City, on April 30th, 2001, warning of intelligence collection by Israeli art students. Other law enforcement offices had similar alerts. This highly organized, and efficient network were ringing alarm bells throughout the counter intelligence community. Some of the "students" were experts in wiretaps, and electronic interception, and indications are that they benefited from Israeli telecommunications and software contracts, with sensitive US companies.
These incidents were in the months leading up to September 11th. During that same time we were receiving frantic calls from sources in the Middle East, that the CIA were ignoring their calls for increased vigilance, and that all indications were for a terrorist attack, involving one or more passenger planes, on the East Coast. Unlike the FBI, and CIA we had no knowledge of the huge Israeli espionage operation.
It appears from all information, from multiple sources, that whilst the FBI were conducting wholesale arrests, and imprisonment without trial, or indictment, of Muslims, and their supporters, the remaining Israelis were allowed to quietly slip back to Israel. It also appears that the questions that should have been asked of these "Art Students", under interrogation, were blocked by political pressure from Washington. It also appears that the remains of the net, those having many of the answers to the questions that Congress and the media should have been asking, were whisked to the safety of Israel, hours after the attack on September 11th.
The issue here is not that Israel mounted a well prepared, and executed intelligence gathering operation, but either the US leadership, US law enforcement, or the US intelligence community, were asleep at the switch, incompetent, or deliberately withheld information that would have saved 2600 lives, and the heart of a nation, for political purposes. We have been driven down the road like sheep, looking for bin Laden, and it is now time to ask about airport security on 9/11, as well as what was known, by whom, and when.
Or taking the lead from "Casablanca" we could go out and imprison a few hundred more Muslims and Arabs, and beat out of them what Israel knew, and did not tell........ Or did they tell and we chose to ignore the warnings for a greater political goal. A New World Order?
-------- un
U.S. Drops Demand for War Court Immunity
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post
Thursday, July 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47823-2002Jul10?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, July 10 -- The Bush administration agreed today to drop its demand that the U.N. Security Council grant Americans serving in U.N. peacekeeping missions permanent immunity from the international war crimes tribunal.
U.S. officials said they are seeking a temporary exemption from prosecution that would buy the United States time to negotiate bilateral accords and military agreements barring individual governments from surrendering U.S. nationals to the International Criminal Court.
Even so, the reversal represented a significant diplomatic retreat by the United States, which had twice threatened to shut down the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and to reconsider its support for 14 other U.N. peacekeeping operations if American peacekeepers were not placed beyond the jurisdiction of the new war crimes court.
U.N. diplomats said the turnaround reflected Washington's failure to calculate the intensity of international support for the court, particularly from European governments, and its reluctance to jeopardize U.N.-approved missions that serve U.S. interests.
"The Europeans dug in their heels and said you are undermining something that is fundamental to us," a council diplomat said. "The Americans blinked."
The U.S. compromise, backed by China and Russia, centers on a provision of the international court's charter that allows the Security Council to defer a criminal investigation or prosecution of an individual for 12 months.
A U.S. resolution, presented today to the 15-nation council, would go much further, providing a blanket deferral from prosecution for one year to all nationals from countries that have not ratified the International Criminal Court. The resolution also calls on the council to express its intention to renew the deferral each year.
The proposal failed to satisfy the court's strongest advocates, who maintained that any exemption not explicitly sanctioned by the tribunal would undermine its integrity. Canada's U.N. ambassador, Paul Heinbecker, said any exemption for American nationals would "send an unacceptable message that some people -- peacekeepers -- are above the law."
Several council delegates, including France's ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, argued that the provision in the treaty was intended to allow the council to defer court investigations only on a case-by-case basis, and only in the rare event that it would interfere with the council's efforts to negotiate a peace agreement. It was never designed to provide sweeping immunity from prosecution.
"The Security Council would thus be running the risk of undermining its own authority and credibility," said Germany's U.N. ambassador, Hans Heinrich Schumacher.
In addition to the United States, China and Russia are among the countries that have not ratified the treaty.
U.S. officials said they are confident the resolution will garner the nine votes required for passage in the council. If the resolution is passed, the United States will then vote to extend the U.N. mission in Bosnia before its mandate expires at midnight Monday.
Britain's U.N. ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, said the U.S. proposal provided a "very fair basis" for negotiations. U.S. officials said Britain has pledged to help Washington broker agreement on the proposal in the council. American diplomats also vowed to pressure Colombia, Mexico, Singapore, Bulgaria and other nonpermanent members of the council to accept the initiative.
The criminal court, which was established by treaty at a 1998 Rome conference, has been signed by 138 countries and ratified by 76. The tribunal has jurisdiction over the most serious crimes committed after July 1, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Clinton administration signed the treaty in December 2000, but the Bush administration renounced it in May, citing concerns that it might conduct frivolous investigations and trials against American officials and troops deployed overseas.
The United States last month vetoed a Security Council resolution authorizing a six-month extension of the Bosnia mission to underscore its commitment to obtaining immunity for Americans from the court's jurisdiction. But it subsequently voted twice to postpone the closure of the mission.
"Our veto of the . . . resolution did not reflect rejection of peacekeeping in Bosnia," said John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "But it did reflect our frustration at our inability to convince our colleagues on the Security Council to take seriously our concerns about the legal exposure of our peacekeepers under the Rome statute."
----
U.S. Backs Off Immunity Fight Involving Court
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/international/americas/11NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 10 - Under severe criticism from some of its closest allies for demanding immunity for American peacekeepers from the new International Criminal Court, the United States offered a compromise today that would safeguard its troops and officials from prosecution for one year.
The proposal offered the first tangible prospect for the resolution of a dispute that has generated unusually fierce and united international criticism of the Bush administration. Among the sharpest critics in today's debate were the two immediate neighbors of the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The new American proposal marked a considerable retreat from the letter and spirit of earlier American drafts, which brusquely demanded blanket immunity for United Nations peacekeepers.
The new document makes no mention of immunity. It proposes that the new court not investigate or prosecute officials or personnel of United Nations missions for a year, after which the Security Council would vote to renew the arrangement.
The British ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said the resolution was "a very fair basis for discussions," which will continue Thursday morning.
But several member nations reportedly continued to question the propriety of allowing the Security Council to tamper with the treaty that established the court, and it remained far from certain whether the United States would find the nine votes needed for passage in the 15-member Security Council.
The immediate issue was Washington's demand that peacekeeping forces in Bosnia be exempt from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which came into existence on July 1. The court is held in disdain by American conservatives as an infringement on national sovereignty, and Washington refused to renew the United Nations mandate for the forces in Bosnia unless it included the exemption.
The demand, however, touched a nerve among Europeans and others who saw it as another attempt by the United States to set itself above the rest of the world. As passions grew, the Council approved two brief extensions of the Bosnia mission, which now expires Monday.
"At stake today are entirely different issues that raise questions whether all people are equal and accountable before the law," said Paul Heinbecker, the ambassador of Canada, who had requested today's public session of the Security Council to allow countries that are not members of the Council to air their views.
"We have just emerged from a century that witnessed the evils of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin, and the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia," Mr. Heinbecker said. "Surely we have all learned the fundamental lesson of this bloodiest of centuries, which is that impunity from prosecution for grievous crimes must end."
The Canadian speech was among the most critical at the session, but it reflected sentiments many travelers outside the United States have reported. Mexico's ambassador, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, said that "anyone who tried to interpret the statute according to their own purposes undermined the fundamental principles and integrity of the court."
Like the American proposal, the speech by the United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, was a considerable retreat from the aggressive stance he had taken in earlier sessions. He spoke at length of American support for international justice and peacekeeping, and he argued that deferring action by the international court against peacekeepers would not undermine its ability "to go after the gross violators at whom it is truly aimed."
The court was established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and heinous violations of human rights, but only if responsible countries failed to take action. The Rome Statute establishing the court was signed by 139 countries, and 76 have ratified it. President Clinton signed it shortly before leaving office, but the Bush administration renounced the action in May.
The administration has said it worries that the new court could be driven by politically motivated prosecutors and that American military personnel would not be given their constitutional rights, specifically the right to be tried by a jury of peers. But European diplomats and Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, have argued that the court includes safeguards to ensure fair trials and avoid biased prosecutions.
After the initial American demands for blanket immunity were roundly rejected, the political maneuvering has focused on an article in the Rome Statute allowing the Security Council to delay an investigation. The article was designed to hold off on prosecutions if they conflict with critical negotiations. The United States now proposes to use the article to give an advance exemption to United Nations peacekeepers for a year at a time.
Several Security Council members have argued that the provision was intended only for case-by-case exemptions, not for a blanket one. But supporters of the American proposal noted that the draft does not demand immunity for peacekeepers, but only exemption from prosecution for one year. In theory, diplomats said, an errant peacekeeper could be eventually investigated for any crime committed since July 1 if the Security Council voted against extending the arrangement.
The United States has not been without support in the debate. Of the current members, China, Russia, India and Bulgaria have all been sympathetic to the American requests, and Britain has taken the lead in seeking a resolution of the standoff.
Of the countries that could veto, France has been the most critical, but it has made clear it would not use a veto against the United States. So the question is whether the United States can find the votes it needs for a straight approval.
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U.S. asks for 1 year of court immunity
July 11, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020711-29663484.htm
NEW YORK - The United States last night softened its demand for immunity for U.N. peacekeepers from the new international war crimes tribunal, prompting a quick rebuke from key members of the U.S. Senate.
The proposal was circulated as a draft Security Council resolution that would exempt U.S. soldiers from the court's jurisdiction for one year, instead of the open-ended immunity sought earlier by the Bush administration.
Some nations of the Security Council welcomed the latest U.S. offer. But the proposal threatened to provoke a split between the administration and a group of prominent U.S. senators.
In a letter sent last night to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Republican Sens. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and John W. Warner and George Allen of Virginia, and Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia argued that nothing less than a permanent exemption was satisfactory.
A participant said the letter was prompted by a report yesterday in The Washington Times that the administration expected to reach an agreement with other council members by Monday, ending the threat that a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina would be shut down.
The treaty that created the International Criminal Court, which came into force July 1, already permits the Security Council to defer any investigation for 12 months.
The Bush administration had been seeking language in a resolution that would make such deferrals automatic for U.N. peacekeepers, including automatic renewals every year. Under the compromise announced yesterday, a new vote would be required each year to renew the deferral.
The new U.S. draft also was proposed as a stand-alone resolution rather than an insertion into a resolution renewing the mission in Bosnia, which expires Monday. This would avoid having a crisis over each of the 15 peacekeeping missions as they come up for renewal.
But the senators objected even to the tougher language being proposed earlier by the administration.
"For the sake of our service members and officials, now and in the future, the [Bosnia] mandate renewal must completely and permanently immunize American peacekeeping personnel from the ICC jurisdiction," they wrote.
"In our view, such a solution would not only fail to provide the comprehensive, permanent solution needed to ensure immunity of Americans involved in all U.N. peacekeeping activities, but would constitute an improper acknowledgement of the court's jurisdiction over American persons."
Mr. Helms is the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Mr. Warner holds the same position at the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Allen serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Mr. Miller is on Veterans Affairs.
The new U.S. draft, like the previous language, seeks to exempt from investigation soldiers, civilians and officials from countries that have not chosen to join the court. The deferral would apply to all participants in military actions established or authorized by the council.
The new language says "that the ICC for a 12-month period shall not commence or proceed with any investigations or prosecutions involving current or former officials or personnel for acts or omissions relating to U.N. established or authorized operations."
More difficult for other council members to accept, the draft also "expresses the intention to renew the request each July 1 for further 12-month periods for as long as may be necessary" and prohibits U.N. member states from taking "inconsistent" action.
European diplomats last night praised the 11th-hour effort but stopped short of endorsing it before their governments had a chance to review the language.
British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock called it "a very fair basis for discussions." French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said it was "a step in the right direction, but for us, more steps are needed."
U.S. diplomats have dropped an earlier demand that governments retain the exclusive right to prosecute their own citizens on charges of human rights abuses.
Nations backing the court argued earlier yesterday during an acrimonious public debate that the proposed compromise gave up too much to the United States.
"No one in this room believes the U.S. government and the highly reputable American legal system would turn a blind eye to allegations of such grievous crimes," said Canadian Ambassador Paul Heinbecker, who warned the council against overstepping its mandate by trying to rewrite international treaties.
The International Criminal Court entered into force on July 1 and has been joined by 136 nations. However, many American officials object to the prospect of a foreign court trying U.S. soldiers for genocide, crimes against humanity and other gross human rights abuses.
They see the ICC as unconstitutional and an erosion of U.S. sovereignty.
Speaking at the open council meeting yesterday, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte repeated that the United States does not support the ICC and does not intend to become a party to it. He also implied that unless Washington wins explicit immunities, all 15 existing peacekeeping missions will be jeopardized.
"It certainly will affect our ability to contribute peacekeepers," he said.
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A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front
New York Times
July 11, 2002
By NOAH SHACHTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/technology/circuits/11NEXT.html
SINCE the United States military campaign began in Afghanistan, the unmanned spy plane has gone from a bit player to a starring role in Pentagon planning. Rather than the handful of "autonomous vehicles," or A.V.'s, that snooped on Al Qaeda hideouts, commanders are envisioning wars involving vast robotic fleets on the ground, in the air and on the seas - swarms of drones that will not just find their foes, but fight them, too.
But such forces would need an entirely new kind of network in which to function, a wireless Internet in the sky that would let thousands of drones communicate quickly while zooming around a battle zone at speeds of up to 300 miles an hour. Such a network would have to be able to deal instantaneously with the unpredictable conditions of war and cope with big losses.
Designing this network is a monumental task. Consider how poor much cellphone coverage is in some areas. Now imagine how much worse it would be with no base towers to direct signals, and with hostile forces trying to jam calls and blow up phones.
An association of nearly 300 scientists and engineers spread across 45 project teams and coordinated by the Office of Naval Research is about a year and a half into a five-year, $11 million effort to determine what it will take to build such a system.
The project is called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman (not to be confused with the nuclear missiles). While the program is not about to produce anything like the droid army from the Star Wars movies anytime soon, it has already delivered some important theoretical breakthroughs.
The most important is the network's structure, developed by Mario Gerla, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Los Angeles. The network will deploy the highest-flying of the A.V.'s, a drone called the Global Hawk, as a kind of cellphone tower in the sky, said Lt. Col. Douglas Boone, deputy chief of the Air Force's airborne reconnaissance division.
Soaring above the battlefield at 50,000 feet or higher, the Global Hawks will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.
Despite this basic hierarchy, the network is designed so that any robot in any of the three levels can become the one to relay information to its peers.
"Besides serving as routers, the drones also have to do reconnaissance and carry weapons," Dr. Gerla said. "There is no central control - as soon as you do that you are vulnerable." As a graduate student nearly 30 years ago, Dr. Gerla did work for the federal government on the Arpanet, the military precursor to the Internet.
This flexible "network of networks" structure not only allows communications to stay up when individual drones go down but also enables the network to reconfigure itself to maximize bandwidth and to meet goals on the battlefield. Robot planes would constantly shift position to communicate with one another.
This continuous reconfiguration is part of an attempt by Allen Moshfegh, director of the Minuteman project, to mimic one of the most elegant of systems for transferring information: the human brain. In the brain, groups of neurons quickly form around a particular goal like reaching for a newspaper, then recombine for the next task, like turning the page.
"A.V.'s will reconfigure in much the same way neurons reconfigure when doing goal-oriented tasks," said Jeffrey P. Sutton, director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, which is contributing to the Minuteman project.
The drones will shift the way in which they talk. With "multi-in, multi-out" radios, they will sometimes communicate over several frequencies at once and at other times use a single frequency and lower power. With new methods for the dynamic compression of video under the MPEG-4 standard, the A.V.'s will send images ranging from high-resolution color video to black-and-white still photographs.
The goal is to keep communications flowing, no matter what. Current wireless commercial systems simply drop a connection if congestion builds up or quality deteriorates. That is not a good option in wartime.
Military and technical experts say they are impressed with what Dr. Moshfegh's Minuteman team has come up with so far.
"It's an extremely elegant network, and it's feasible," said Ken Dulaney, a vice president for mobile computing with the Gartner Group in San Jose, Calif. "But it's a dream. There are a lot of challenges."
So far, Minuteman's field tests have seemed more like a hobbyists' convention than a military operation, with model helicopters hovering above toy jeeps with laptops taped to their sides.
Dr. Moshfegh and others behind Minuteman are still unsure of how they will make the jump from motley squads to the tens of thousands of drones that they foresee.
A big part of the problem, Dr. Moshfegh said, is that the routers at the heart of the network are not yet intelligent enough to figure out the right path and speed for sending the nearly limitless amounts of data that would be collected by the drones.
But he is optimistic about overcoming such hurdles.
"If we have enough sources for funding, we could resolve all of these issues in six to eight years," he said, adding, "It's not that complex."
Clark Murdock, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said he was not so sure. On whether Minuteman will be available in several decades or within Dr. Moshfegh's time frame, he said, "My guess is the former."
If and when it arrives, Mr. Dulaney of the Gartner Group sees benefits beyond the battlefield.
"This could be one of those situations where the military figures it out for survivability reasons, and then it goes private," he said of the technology. "By turning receivers into transmitters, it could make wireless networks more robust, more resilient than they are now. It could follow the same kind of path as the Internet."
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Attorney in Spy Case Seeks Probe of News Leak on Iraq
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 11, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52742-2002Jul10.html
When defense lawyer Jonathan Shapiro saw detailed descriptions of a proposed U.S. invasion of Iraq on the front page of the New York Times last week, he asked: Why is it a crime for his client, former Air Force Sgt. Brian Regan, to try to disclose a portion of that information to Iraq but not a crime for the government to leak it to the media?
Shapiro posed the question in a letter to federal prosecutors last week. Yesterday, he filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Alexandria asking a judge to require the government to investigate and disclose the source of the news leak. Shapiro said he may seek to subpoena Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to explain why Regan is facing the death penalty for espionage but no one is being investigated for disclosing information to the media.
Regan, 39, was arrested at Dulles International Airport last August before boarding a flight to Zurich, where authorities believe he was going to try to sell classified U.S. information on the defense systems of China and Iraq to those countries. Regan was an analyst in the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, first as an Air Force sergeant and then as a civilian contractor.
The Justice Department announced in April that it would seek the death penalty for Regan, the first time the United States has sought execution for espionage since capital punishment was restored by the Supreme Court.
The July 5 article in the Times said that U.S. military planners had written a document proposing to attack Iraq from three sides and try to topple President Saddam Hussein, "according to a person familiar with the document." The article added, "The document describes in precise detail specific Iraqi bases, surface-to-air missile sites, air defense consultant networks and fiber-optics communications to be attacked."
Shapiro believes the planning document was probably leaked intentionally and contained far more damaging information than Regan is accused of trying to sell. "The government's trying to kill Regan," Shapiro said. "We think it's hypocritical, at least, for the government to seek his death and leak, if they did leak, information. . . . And the jury ought to know that in weighing the argument whether he should die."
Shapiro said he sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy I. Bellows the day the article appeared, seeking an explanation and an investigation of the leak. He said prosecutors did not see the leak or story as relevant to Regan's trial. In his motion filed yesterday, Shapiro contended that "leaking war plans to The New York Times is tantamount to delivering them to Iraq."
Bellows declined to comment late yesterday.
Shapiro wants U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee to order prosecutors to investigate and provide information on how the document got to a news reporter. "If the leak was authorized," Shapiro wrote, "the very party which seeks Regan's death has at the same time committed the very same act."
Even if the leak wasn't authorized, Shapiro argued, "we demanded that the government inform the defense of what steps it had taken to investigate the leak. If the United States has taken no steps, that, too, is a fact useful to the defense because it is another measure of the way the United States truly feels about the leak."
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Military Shows Off Latest Robot Plane
July 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Robot-Fighters.html
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- Military officials on Thursday showed off a futuristic robot plane designed to survive the rigors of combat, unlike other pilotless drones plagued by crashes on the front lines of the war on terrorism.
Since the fall, at least eight robot planes used by the U.S. military have crashed in and around Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. The latest crash, of a Global Hawk reconnaissance plane, came Wednesday in Pakistan.
Despite the crashes, military officials remain bulli