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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Scientist, 70, a Folk Hero, Is Elected India's President
Fijian leader says nuclear waste transports must be opposed
Al-Qaeda might get nuclear arms: Pentagon
Russian nuclear theft alarms US
Home: One Agency Should Protect Energy Facilities
Report: Plan May Leave More Waste
House Leadership Bows to President on Security Dept.
Terror-fighting tip from North Korea
MILITARY
U.S. penalizes 8 Chinese firms
US Slaps China Firms, Indian for Iran - Iraq Arms
Traditional rights to go in judicial shake-up
Reservists called up in build-up for Iraq
The crucial battle for Colombia
Iranians Demonstrate Against U.S.
Wolfowitz trip hints at date of Iraq campaign
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraq Facility
Israeli soldiers accused of selling arms to Palestinians
Shock at Charges Palestinians Were Sold Israeli Munitions
Jordan prince touted to succeed Saddam
CIA Cements New Rules on Informants
Gov't: Suspect Has No Review Right
Annan Warns Israel on 'Collective Punishment'
Coming to an Army Near You
Russian Experts Pan 'K-19' Movie
POLICE / PRISONERS
Security bill loses ID card, TIPS
Illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings decline
Judge asks Moussaoui to rethink guilty plea
Senate committee approves bill on death-row DNA tests
ENERGY AND OTHER
Canadian firm says set to slash solar-power costs
Dung-fired British power plant rumbles into life
Northwest Researchers Focus on Bio-Energy
Bush Administration Opposes Renewables Requirement
Japan govt, car,energy firms in fuel cell projects
Drought Parches One Third of the Nation
Study links abnormal stem-cell activity to brain tumors
Britain Rejects Asylum Applications
U.S. Plan Addresses Homelessness
ACTIVISTS
Cheers drown out jeers at Bush Michigan speech
Anti-US rallies in Iran
Tear Gas Breaks Up Kenyan Protest
Hunger Strike Targets Dow Chemical
Alert! Stop the Energy Bill!
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear Scientist, 70, a Folk Hero, Is Elected India's President
New York Times
July 19, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/19/international/asia/19INDI.html
NEW DELHI, July 18 - An exuberant and eccentric 70-year-old scientist who is considered the father of India's nuclear missile program was overwhelmingly elected president today by legislators.
The vote for the largely ceremonial office reflected both the growing disdain of the country for professional politicians and its ambition to be taken seriously on the world stage.
The scientist, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a boatman's son who rose to become a nuclear folk hero in India, emerged as the surprise candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling Hindu nationalist party, only a month ago. He won nearly 90 percent of the votes cast by legislators.
A best-selling author, he functions as a kind of nationalist self-help guru who vows to use science, technology and nuclear and space research to allow India to develop, assert itself and achieve greatness.
He has emerged as a cult figure since he helped oversee India's successful nuclear tests in 1998. His latest book, "Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India," blares his can-do, nationalist message.
"India has to be transformed into a developed nation," Dr. Kalam said after being elected today, "a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system."
Dr. Kalam, an ethnic Tamil, will be the third Muslim to serve as president of Hindu-dominated India. Nominating him allowed the ruling party to bolster its secular credentials after being condemned for allowing Hindu extremists to kill hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat earlier this year.
But critics question Dr. Kalam's scientific credentials, say he has never truly fought for Muslim causes and call him a political novice unprepared for Indian political combat. Leftists accuse him of nuclear jingoism and challenge his support for vast high-technology projects, like an unmanned Indian mission to the moon, which they contend will waste millions.
"His scientific ideology is more of society being at the disposal of science," said Sita Ram Yechury, a spokesman for the leftist parties opposing Dr. Kalam, "rather than science being at the disposal of society."
But such criticism is faint in a country where Dr. Kalam has become a mythic figure. A bachelor, vegetarian and amateur musician and poet, Dr. Kalam brings an unorthodox style to the 340-room presidential palace. Until now, he has professed to live the life of an ascetic, reading poetry and strumming the vina, a traditional guitarlike instrument, in his spare time. His trademark is the long mop of gray hair that flops down each side of his face.
Dr. Kalam's best-selling autobiography, "Wings of Fire," and a children's book, "Eternal Quest," recount his life and times.
Born on Oct. 15, 1931, in Rameswaram, a spit of land that juts out between Madras and Sri Lanka, he excelled in school while selling newspapers to support his father.
The idyllic account of his life that follows features inspirational verse from the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, T. S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Kalam himself and others.
It describes Muslims and Hindus growing up in harmony, and teachers and family members helping him get into boarding school and college. Dr. Kalam went on to study aeronautical engineering at the prestigious Madras Institute of Technology. He never received a Ph.D., but he is always referred to as "doctor" in India, having received 30 honorary doctorates and the country's three highest civilian honors.
His only visit to the United States came in 1963, when he spent about five months touring NASA rocket centers.
Throughout his career, Dr. Kalam, who declined a request for an interview, worked tirelessly to ensure that Indian technology could succeed, according to Dr. K. Kasturirangan, now the head of India's space program and a colleague of Dr. Kalam's for 35 years.
"He is a humble, he lives a spartan life," Dr. Kasturirangan said, listing the qualities that attract an Indian public weary of political corruption. "He is deeply committed to any cause he undertakes in life."
After working on the team that developed India's first satellite vehicle in the 1970's, Dr. Kalam ran a program that developed five missiles to counter Chinese and Pakistani systems in the 1980's. When the Bharatiya Janata Party took office in 1998, he served as scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defense and lobbied for nuclear tests.
Indian tests that year set off an international outcry and an arms race with Pakistan. But Dr. Kalam argues that nuclear weapons are a deterrent that helped prevent another war between India and Pakistan this spring.
Dr. Kalam, who takes office July 25, will have limited power under India's parliamentary system. Expected to serve as an evenhanded arbiter, the president breaks ties in Parliament, can call elections and can decide which party can form a government.
Dr. Kalam will also have the bully pulpit to argue for development projects that he says will eliminate poverty in India by 2020. Groups he helped establish have developed prosthetic limbs from lightweight materials from the missile programs. Another distributes information on weather, crops and genetically altered farm animals to farmers.
Opponents may continue to attack him as a yes man for Hindu nationalists, a proponent of militarism and creator of an Indian military-industrial complex. But his upbeat message is likely to continue to drown them out.
"Nations consist of people," his new book begins. "And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want."
-------- pacific
Fijian leader says nuclear waste transports through Pacific must be opposed
Friday, July 19, 2002
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/07/07192002/ap_47909.asp
NADI, Fiji - Fiji called on a group including most of the world's poorest and smallest states to join it in opposing shipments of radioactive nuclear fuel traveling through the Pacific Ocean between Japan and Britain.
"We will be asking you to join with us in expressing our outrage and opposition to those who are so willing to put the Pacific and our peoples at risk," Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said Thursday in a speech to a summit of the 78-nation African, Caribbean, and Pacific group meeting in this Fijian resort town.
His call came as the environmental group Greenpeace accused two ships carrying the fuel from Japan to Britain of breaching the 320 kilometer (200 mile) sea zones of four small Pacific states.
The British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. ships, carrying 255 kilograms (560 pounds) of a rejected mixture of plutonium and uranium known as MOX, had disregarded the wishes of Pacific states to avoid their exclusive sea zones, said Greenpeace Pacific nuclear campaigner Ange Heffernan.
The shipment has been heavily opposed by environmentalists who fear a leak of radioactive material, accident, or terrorist attack.
Qarase said the Pacific Ocean had defined the region's peoples, shaped their cultures, created their myths and traditions, and fed them. "This relationship with the ocean will make it easy for you to understand why we are so adamantly opposed to any actions which expose it to threats of pollution, hazardous waste, and the destructive effects of nuclear and missile tests," he said.
The two ships are expected to pass through the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand this weekend, where an antinuclear flotilla of a dozen yachts is waiting for them.
The armed cargo vessels set off from Japan on July 4 for the two-month journey to take the rejected radioactive material back to its maker in Britain.
Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co. imported the fuel in 1999 for an experimental nuclear power program. But British Nuclear Fuels, the fuel's maker, later admitted it had falsified quality records and agreed to ship the fuel back to Britain.
-------- terrorism
Al-Qaeda might get nuclear arms: Pentagon
Friday July 19, 2002
Jang Group of Newspapers
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2002-daily/19-07-2002/world/w1.htm
WASHINGTON: Although US troops in Afghanistan turned up no evidence that Al-Queda had nuclear weapons, the Pentagon still worries the terrorist network could get them from sources in other countries, a senior official said. Stephen Younger, director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said extensive searches in Afghanistan showed Al-Queda was interested in nuclear technologies, as well as biological and chemical weapons. He said they had made little progress toward building their own bombs before US forces intervened last fall, drove the Taliban regime from power and sent surviving Al-Queda leaders into hiding.
"Al-Queda has been trying to get a weapons of mass destruction capability,'' he told a group of reporters Wednesday. "I think they had a limited infrastructure in Afghanistan to produce it indigenously. "However, that doesn't mean that they don't have a different capability elsewhere,'' he added.
Later he said this meant that Al-Queda leaders may have connections in other countries that already have the technological base for building nuclear weapons. They have the money to make such links, he said, and they have ``access to people in countries with advanced technological capability.'' Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld has publicly raised the possibility that Iraq could be such a supplier for Al-Queda or other international terrorist groups.
Al-Queda's interest in biological weapons seemed to be focused mainly on anthrax, Younger said. In light of the Sept. 11 attacks and concerns within the Bush administration that international terrorists might link up with Iraq to obtain weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon is exploring new ways to neutralize or destroy biological and chemical weapons that might be stored underground.
Younger said one possibility is a warhead that would encapsulate a biological or chemical weapons facility with a hard or sticky foam rather than blow it up with conventional bombs. Another possibility is a nonexploding warhead that spreads flammable materials to incinerate biological agents. Both approaches are still on the drawing board.
They would be alternatives to conventional high-explosive warheads, which might allow contaminants to escape, threatening civilians or US troops. "It's not as simple as blowing it up,'' Younger said. Younger said that although the United States does not know what kinds of weapons Iraq may have developed since UN inspections ended in 1998, it is a "reasonable assumption'' based on Saddam Hussein's track record that the Iraqi president either has or is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Iraq claims it has no weapons of mass destruction.
The Pentagon is contemplating other unpleasant scenarios that could emerge in Iraq or elsewhere, Younger said. One possibility: a US satellite detects a Scud ballistic missile, possibly armed with biological agents, being readied for launch. What could the United States do to stop it if there were no US strike aircraft nearby and ready?
In the future, an answer might be to strike with a non-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile, which has the advantage of very high speed. For now, all the United States' ICBMs on land and at sea are armed with nuclear warheads. To switch some to non-nuclear roles would create political issues; launching one in a crisis would raise fears in Moscow and elsewhere that a nuclear war was under way.
Younger's agency also is working on other kinds of advanced non-nuclear weapons. He said experiments have been done on arming a Hellfire air-to-ground missile with a thermobaric warhead, which ignites an explosive mist that sends a powerful shock wave through a cave or tunnel, annihilating everything and everyone inside. Such a weapon is likely to be ready for use "in fairly short order,'' Younger said without being more specific.
----
Russian nuclear theft alarms US
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Friday July 19, 2002
The Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/chechnya/Story/0,2763,757800,00.html
Chechen rebels have stolen radioactive metals, possibly including plutonium, from a Russian nuclear power station in the southern region of Rostov, according to US nuclear officials.
The theft, which took place within the last 12 months at the new Volgodonskaya nuclear power station near the city of Rostov-on-Don, has heightened US fears that weapons-grade plutonium may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or countries such as Iraq or Libya.
The precise details of the security breach remain unclear, but one US official said there was the "possibility that a significant amount of plutonium was removed", together with other radioactive metals. These included caesium, strontium and low-enriched uranium, which pose a threat to human health if detonated with conventional explosives to create a "dirty bomb".
The US source said Chechen rebels were believed to be responsible for the theft. "Chechen groups have relationships with countries we do not find exceptionally desirable. The possibility that these metals may have been given to another party is very troubling," he said.
The nuclear plant - one of the newest atomic facilities in Russia - went online last December, after a nine-month trial period. The US official said the theft was reported by Russian officials to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), which informed the US department of energy about the incident.
The department has begun a massive operation in Russia to improve the security of nuclear facilities. The G8 group of nations pledged $20bn last month to help Russia protect its ageing weapons arsenals.
Russia has an estimated 400 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium considered by western experts to be "at risk" from theft because of poor security. US government experts are negotiating with Russian officials to speed through urgently needed safety upgrades.
Southern Russia, bordering sensitive nations in central Asia and the Caucasus, is considered a flashpoint in non-proliferation. The US source said there had been a "number of occasions" in which Iranian agents tried to buy weapons-grade plutonium from facilities in southern Russia.
"They seem to have been scammed a few times," he said.
The IAEA, the Russian civilian nuclear ministry, Minatom, and the Rostov nuclear power station, deny the Rostov theft took place. An IAEA spokeswoman said their code of conduct would not oblige them to treat such an incident in confidence.
But the US official said: "This incident is tied to a broader issue. There are a couple of other occasions when the Chechens may have acquired nuclear or radioactive sources. Russia is rightly very concerned about that. We should not just blame Russia. The US does not protect its materials better than anyone else."
Matthew Bunn, senior research assistant at the Managing the Atom project at Harvard University, said: "It would not be too surprising if nuclear fuel had been stolen from a power plant. This has happened before in the former Soviet Union."
In 1996 Chechen rebels left a substantial quantity of caesium-137 wrapped in conventional explosive, in Izmailovo park in Moscow. The device was not detonated.
--------
Home: One Agency Should Protect Energy Facilities
July 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-attacks.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To protect U.S. pipelines, nuclear power plants and electric transmission lines from sabotage like terror attacks, a single government agency should be responsible for overseeing security of the nation's energy infrastructure, an industry report recommended on Friday.
Energy facilities, especially nuclear power plants, have been strengthening security following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Friday's report, from a coalition of energy trade groups, comes as the Bush administration tries to win approval from Congress to consolidate security responsibilities of many government agencies under a new cabinet-level Homeland Security Department.
``Major energy facilities -- such as petroleum refineries and power plants -- must be considered prime targets for attacks on populations through the energy infrastructure,'' the report warned.
For example, the cooling towers present in most power plants could be used to disperse chemical or biological agents, according to the study.
U.S. pipelines, power plants and electricity lines are currently under the jurisdiction of several agencies, including the Transportation Department, Energy Department, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The report was released by the U.S. Energy Association, a group that represents trade groups and some government organizations. Members include the American Gas Association, American Petroleum Institute, Edison Electric Institute, National Mining Association and the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The group also recommended that the federal security agency in charge should decide whether the government or private sector is primarily responsible for defending specific facilities and energy systems.
Utilities with nuclear power plants have fought efforts in the past to ``federalize'' its security personnel, arguing that they are already well trained to protect nuclear power plants.
The industry said, however, the government would have a role in guarding its plants from terror attacks
The report also urged the government to fill the nation's emergency oil stockpile to counter any major disruption in crude supplies.
The Bush administration is already in the process of boosting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its capacity of 700 million barrels. The reserve, created by Congress in the mid-1970s after the Arab oil embargo, currently holds 578 million barrels.
The United States should also encourage other industrialized countries to boost their emergency oil holdings as well, the report said.
To ensure the U.S. military is not caught off guard, the report said a military fuel reserve should be created that is not dependent on imported petroleum products. The military uses millions of barrels of fuel each year to run its aircraft, ships, tanks and other vehicles.
The report also calls for easing of government regulations and tax laws to encourage more energy production and relaxed access to federal lands for drilling and siting of energy facilities.
Consumers should also be better educated on how to conserve energy, the groups said. However, their report did not endorse a boosting of U.S. vehicle fuel standards, which would reduce oil consumption and most likely crude imports.
Environmentalists point out that gasoline demand accounts for more than 40 percent of total U.S. petroleum product use.
The energy groups argued, however, that more energy-efficient vehicles would not force older cars off the road, and that consumers would drive more if the operating costs of their vehicles went down.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Report: Plan May Leave More Waste
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33995-2002Jul19?language=printer or
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration's plan to accelerate the cleanup of former nuclear weapons facilities may leave more waste at the sites than had been expected, said a report released Friday at a House hearing.
The Energy Department announced early this year its strategy to speed cleanup efforts and refocus attention on eliminating waste that poses the biggest threats to the environment. The agency also hopes to reduce cleanup costs by improving efficiency.
To meet the goals, Energy is considering relaxed requirements on transporting some of its waste offsite, the General Accounting Office report said. Specifically, it said this was under consideration at the Hanford reservation in Washington state.
Additionally, the report said the agency is considering reclassification as low-level waste of some high-level waste at its facilities, which would allow more flexibility in deciding how to get rid of it. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, is suing the agency over the plan.
``There is not an overt attempt to leave waste in place,'' Jesse Roberson, the assistant secretary for environmental management, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Friday. ``The goal is to do a risk-based cleanup that is protective of human health and the environment in every case.''
After the hearing, Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., said he wasn't completely satisfied with that.
``It raised enough questions in my mind that I just want to explore it more than I was able to today,'' Whitfield said.
The agency plans to spend $1.1 billion on the accelerated cleanup program next year, in addition to roughly $6 billion it plans to spend on overall cleanup efforts. Sites will be eligible for the additional money only if regulators from their states enter into agreements with the Energy Department.
``As a result, sites that do not participate could receive less funding than in past years,'' the GAO report stated.
So far, six states have entered into such agreements, but several others have shown a reluctance to do so.
Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Fla., said state regulators were wary because the Energy Department did not seek their input in creating the accelerated program. ``One of the tenets of good management is that you consult with your stake holders before making changes,'' Deutsch said.
States have until Aug. 1 to decide whether to enter into accelerated agreements.
Whitfield, who represents the area around a uranium plant in Paducah, Ky., said he was uneasy that Kentucky has not signed up for accelerated cleanup and could miss out on the extra money.
A sticking point in negotiations with Kentucky concerns a disagreement over what would be eligible for disposal in an onsite landfill, Roberson said.
Officials from Tennessee, Washington and Idaho also testified Friday.
Those states have entered into accelerated cleanup agreements with the Energy Department, and the officials who testified said signing on had not required ceding too much authority to Washington. They said the plan would not void previous commitments the Energy Department had made to their states.
On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov/
-------- us politics
House Leadership Bows to President on Security Dept.
By DAVID FIRESTONE and ELIZABETH BECKER
July 19, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/19/politics/19SECU.html?ei=1&en=c2917ba21535ec2c&ex=1028091645&pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON, July 18 - The Republican leaders of the House said today that they planned to give the Bush administration almost all of what it wanted in a new Department of Homeland Security, proposing to restore to the department most of the agencies that committees had voted to remove.
Republican leaders had said all along that they intended to short-circuit the expected opposition from committee chairmen and rank-and-file members who were trying to maintain jurisdiction over agencies they have long overseen. A draft of a bill agreed to today closely hews to the changes the White House had said it would accept.
If approved by a special committee on homeland security this week and the full House next week, the bill would represent a significant victory for the administration, although it would clash with legislation being prepared in the Senate.
The ultimate shape of the department will not be clear until it is negotiated in a conference between the two chambers, probably in September. With the outcome still in flux, the Bush administration today exposed problems at its Transportation Security Administration by forcing its director out of his job.
The unexpected firing of John W. Magaw, only six months after the agency was established to protect travelers following the Sept. 11 attacks, came after weeks of skepticism from many in Congress that the agency was moving aggressively enough to take over passenger screening at the nation's airports and searching checked bags for bombs.
Today's agreement on a draft of the bill came at the same time as a joint conference committee agreed on an emergency $28.9 billion spending bill for the war in Afghanistan, new domestic security needs and assistance for New York City. The bill had been delayed for months because of partisan infighting and differences with the administration on the total amount, which Congress wanted to raise. Half of the money would go to the Defense Department. The bill includes $5.5 billion for New York and $205 million to keep Amtrak running through the fall.
In the draft of the homeland security bill, Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, and other leaders decided to include in the new department the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency - all of which Republican-led committees had earlier voted to keep out of the department. The Republican leaders also plan to reduce some civil service protections for many of the 170,000 employees in the department, allowing easier dismissals for poor performance, and to limit some public access to information about domestic security, as the White House had requested.
The White House, however, did not get everything it wanted. Only the enforcement and border protection functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service would move to the new department, while services for immigrants would remain at the Justice Department. That is a victory for advocates for immigrants, who argued that dealing with an antiterrorism agency would become a stigma.
The House leaders also do not agree with an administration proposal for a nationalized driver's license, which could become a national identification card. Conservative and liberal privacy advocates alike opposed this idea.
The proposal would take back some of the financial flexibility the administration requested for spending without Congressional approval - but would also allow unusual freedom to shift money in the first years of the department. Several powerful House and Senate members have said the administration was trying to undermine the power of the purse granted to Congress by the Constitution. They remain unhappy with today's compromise.
The draft bill includes several unexpected and tangential items supported by Republicans that are sure to draw opposition. It would extend the Dec. 31 deadline for screening all airport baggage and would limit lawsuits in federal court over the use of antiterrorism technology.
Nonetheless, by accepting the basic structure President Bush proposed last month for reorganizing the federal government, the House leaders ensured that there would be several significant battles in the weeks to come.
Democrats and unions are already organizing against the administration's plan to make it easier for employees of the new department to be fired. Some Republican committee chairmen may still wage floor fights to preserve the status quo for the agencies they oversee, fearing that the agencies' nonsecurity missions will otherwise be diluted.
Several leading senators oppose moving the Coast Guard, FEMA and other agencies and want a stronger role for the department in supervising the gathering of intelligence.
The leaders of many federal departments and agencies have been scrambling to figure out what the changes could mean for them and how they can influence the outcome without appearing disloyal. Some have worked behind the scenes to preserve some of their turf, and in some cases are using surrogates to make the arguments that they cannot utter without seeming to defy the White House.
At the Department of Agriculture, for example, officials tried to prevent the transfer of the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. But the House leadership draft would move the service to the new department.
From the beginning of the debate over the new department, Tom Ridge, the White House's domestic security adviser, has promised to work with Congress. But so far, he has rejected most efforts to change the plan, accusing Republican critics of merely trying to protect their turf.
"Where members proposed changes based on sound policy, we've worked with them," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Mr. Ridge, said. "But in other areas where there is nothing but a turf battle, we reject those recommendations."
It was clear from the moment of President Bush's announcement last month that a reorganization of this magnitude would upset the order of jurisdiction on Capitol Hill, where committee chairmen are accustomed to a kind of benevolent dictatorship over their favorite agencies. Working closely with the White House, the special committee was set up precisely to filter out those kinds of objections, Mr. Armey said.
"Bless their hearts, the chairman of a committee has a first responsibility to his committee," he said this week. "That's precisely why the speaker wanted a select committee that did not have these committee obligations."
The Republican draft included several administration proposals bitterly opposed by many Democrats, including one that would limit public availability of information on national vulnerabilities submitted by private companies.
"It's clear that the leaders put in only those changes that Tom Ridge said were acceptable," said Representative Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat on the select homeland security panel. "For the most part this is the president's legislation, and although it moves things along a little bit, we still have significant disagreements."
Democrats and many Republicans are hoping to submit amendments when the bill reaches the House floor next week. But whatever the House decides is certain to differ from the legislation being prepared by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is managing the bill in the Senate.
Mr. Lieberman said today that his version would probably differ from the House bill in the areas of civil service protection, freedom of information and immigration services, which he wants included in the new department. Most significantly, his bill will allow the department to be far more aggressive in demanding intelligence about terrorism from the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and to issue orders to law enforcement agencies.
"We may have a battle on that one," Mr. Lieberman said, "but if we don't create a very strong coordinator and analyzer of intelligence, we have not completed our work."
--------
Terror-fighting tip from North Korea
July 19, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020719-48720865.htm
Here's one of the best TIPS of a rough week for the White House: Sometimes the best-laid plans of a bureaucracy demonstrate only that bureaucrats have too much time on their hands.
TIPS is the acronym for something to be called the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. It could be called the Government Office of Omnipresent Futility, or GOOF. It's a bonehead idea, modeled on a system that once worked very well in the old Soviet Union and still works in North Korea, to recruit a nation of snoops.
The idea - as Dave Barry might say, we're not making this up - is to recruit a million truckers, mail carriers, utility workers, chambermaids and others whose jobs make them privy to the intimate secrets of Americans, to collect gossip and other trivia and turn it in to Washington. This gossip will go into a central database at the Justice Department, which in turn will make it available to your friendly neighborhood cops, to use as they see fit.
Who knows? Some of the "information" might lead to a terrorist, or at least to a good domestic scrap, with lots of flying lamps, broken dishes and even the occasional black eye and smashed nose. This will be a bonanza for suspicious wives and jealous husbands. No wonder Congress is trying to drive a stake through the the notion.
Organized snoophood will open vast new vistas of neighborhood strife. If your neighbor's dog is always digging up the pansies despite your most earnest representations to the neighbor, here's your big chance for revenge. Just call your local TIPS office and tell them that you think you saw a copy of the Koran on his coffee table. Of course it might have been the Saturday Evening Post, a Martha Stewart cookbook or even a Gideon Bible, you can't be sure. But by the time it all gets sorted out, the dog will be dead of old age.
Not every tipster - the government hopes eventually to recruit 4 percent of the population, or 11 million such domestic spies - will be qualified to know what to look for. That's all right. The government's security agencies are accustomed to dealing with raw data, and a good thing, because they're going to get a lot of it. But sometimes even the trained government security agent isn't necessarily Dick Tracy, or even Feerless Fosdick. I was once interviewed by agents conducting a background check on a young man of my acquaintance who had been hired by a Senate committee entrusted with national secrets.
"We've learned that he once lived outside the United States for four consecutive years," the agent told me. He checked something in his notebook. "That would have been 1952 through 1956."
Yes, I replied. That sounds about right. Those were approximately the years when his father was the ambassador of the United States in that country.
"But why would he have spent four consecutive years abroad? Do you have any idea what he was doing there?"
Well, those would have been the years when he was between 2 and 6 years old. His parents, being old-fashioned folk, probably insisted that he live with them.
"I see," the agent replied, and made more notes.
Naturally, the government means well. It always does. In Ronald Reagan's famous formulation, the most dreaded words a citizen is likely ever to hear are these: "We're from the government, and we're here to help."
Tom Ridge, the chief of homeland security, told a radio reporter this week: "The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans. That's just not what this president is all about." A spokeswoman for the Justice Department insists: "None of the Operations TIPS material [makes] reference to entry or access to the homes of individuals, nor has it ever been the intention of the Department of Justice, or any other agency, to set up such a program. Our interest in establishing the Operation TIPS program is to allow American workers to share information they receive in the regular course of their jobs in public places and areas."
This is argle-bargle. If the administration doesn't want Americans spying on Americans, and if this is not what this president is about, it shouldn't establish programs to enable Americans to spy on Americans, and if, as the Justice Department spokesman insists, it's not the intent of TIPS to deal in information gleaned from "entry or access" to American homes, then why establish a program to do exactly that?
The Postal Service, which can't deliver the mail, has already told the government to include it out. Utility companies are likely to say no thanks, too. Participation in such a program is an engraved invitation to lawsuits. You can bet that dozens of trial lawyers are drooling at their prospects. Doesn't that say enough already?
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
U.S. penalizes 8 Chinese firms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020719-6619352.htm
The United States is imposing economic sanctions on eight Chinese companies for selling destabilizing arms and germ-weapons materials to Iran, The Washington Times has learned.
The administration for the fourth time since September has singled out Beijing's state-run companies for violating U.S. laws aimed at curbing transfers of weapons and arms-related goods to rogue states.
The sanctions will be formally announced in the next few days and involve three cases of sales of advanced conventional arms and chemical- and biological-weapons components to Iran, said State Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Evidence of the sales was compelling, they said. "These are all pretty serious cases, and there's a lot of intelligence to support them," one official said.
The sales occurred between September 2000 and October 2001 and violated the Iran-Iraq Nonproliferation Act of 1992. The act mandates sanctions against companies or governments that make sales that "could materially contribute to either country's acquiring chemical, biological, nuclear, or destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons."
The State Department notified the Chinese government of the sanctions yesterday.
The sanctions bar the eight companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prohibit the latter from issuing export licenses to U.S. companies that seek to sell goods to the sanctioned firms.
The measures will be in place for two years.
Officials declined to identify the companies, but they will be named when the formal announcement of the sanctions is made in the Federal Register.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment. China's government has denounced earlier U.S. sanctions as being based on "groundless" accusations.
The spate of sanctions against China since September is aimed at reversing the policy of the Clinton administration that ignored the country's arms sales or waived sanctions against China and its companies for dangerous arms-related transfers, officials said.
"When the law is violated, we have to take action," an official said.
President Bush has identified Iran as one of three "axis of evil" states, along with Iraq and North Korea.
"This administration has been pretty aggressive in implementing sanctions laws, unlike the past administration," another official said.
The Clinton administration declined to exercise the 1992 law to impose sanctions on China in 1996 for sales of advanced C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran, contending that the missiles were not destabilizing. The U.S. Navy, however, has said the C-802s give Iran a new and more lethal capability to threaten U.S. ships.
The Clinton administration also declined to sanction China for sales of chemical-weapons goods to Iran the same year, in violation of the 1992 law.
Mr. Bush said in January that he hopes all nations will follow the United States' lead in working to "eliminate the terrorist parasites."
"Many nations are acting forcefully," Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union speech. "But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will."
For decades, China has been a major supplier of arms and weapons technology to terrorism-sponsoring states, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea. However, senior Bush administration officials rarely criticize Beijing for backing such states.
According to the officials, one Chinese company triggered the latest order of sanctions by selling Iran advanced conventional weapons. Other companies transferred goods to Iran that were related to biological-weapons control and elimination.
Some of the sanctioned companies were previously hit by the State Department for other weapons-related sales to rogue states, an indication that the Chinese are ignoring U.S. government efforts to try to halt the arms transfers.
Last year, U.S. intelligence officials said technicians from Chinese companies were working in Iran on a new advanced air-defense system near the border with Afghanistan. It could not be learned whether the radar system triggered the latest sanctions.
Under the tougher Bush administration policy, economic sanctions were imposed on Chinese companies in September, January and May for sales of military equipment.
In May, the State Department ordered sanctions on several Chinese, Armenian and Moldovan companies for selling cruise missiles and chemical-weapons goods to Iran.
The sales involved transfers of missile parts and components, as well as glass-lined equipment used in making chemical weapons.
The sanctions in January were imposed under the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 for sales of chemical and biological-weapons goods.
In September, sanctions were imposed on a major Chinese arms producer for selling missile technology to Pakistan in violation of an agreement by Beijing not to transfer nuclear-missile-related goods.
Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said the sanctions were a good step but that the U.S. government should do more.
"The restraints are not much punishment," he said. "It's an important gesture, but it doesn't have any practical consequences, because these companies don't do business with the United States."
Mr. Milhollin said that rather than impose symbolic economic sanctions, the U.S. government should deny all trade privileges to the sanctioned firms and also target their parent companies.
In the past, sanctioned Chinese companies have circumvented U.S. economic curbs by using subsidiary firms, he said.
"We need to put some teeth in the worn-out gums of these sanctions," Mr. Milhollin said. "If the administration is serious about sanctions, they need to be expanded so they really have an effect, which they don't have now."
Another tougher penalty would be to bar Chinese employees of sanctioned companies from traveling to the United States, he said.
--------
US Slaps China Firms, Indian for Iran - Iraq Arms
July 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-sanctions.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions are being slapped on nine Chinese firms or people and an Indian man accused of helping ``rogue states'' Iran or Iraq amass weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. official said Friday.
President Bush in January branded Iran and Iraq part of an ``axis of evil'' with North Korea, saying they backed terrorism and sought deadly weapons with evil intent.
The move seemed to reaffirm U.S. fears that increasingly powerful China could hurt America's interests in the Middle East, where Iran and Iraq are accused of helping violent opponents of the peace process.
The United States has strong relations with India that are complicated by Washington's friendship with New Delhi's neighbor and nuclear rival, Pakistan, which is flourishing due to President Pervez Musharraf's support for war on terrorism.
The sanctions on the Chinese involved three cases of sales of advanced conventional arms and chemical and biological weapons components to Iran between September 2000 and October 2001, The Washington Times reported on Friday.
This would be the fourth time since September that the United States had penalized Chinese companies for transferring arms-related material or technology to Iran, it added.
``It's nine Chinese entities and one Indian individual,'' the official said. ``It's the nature of this kind of sanction that they re-sanction for newly determined activity.''
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher announced at a news briefing that sanctions were being imposed but declined to disclose the nationalities involved and offered few details.
Those sanctioned are barred from doing business with the U.S. government or U.S. companies.
It was unclear what impact the new sanctions would have beyond lengthening the punishment, as many of those targeted are already under similar sanctions under other laws.
The U.S. official declined to name the firms and business people, saying Congress still had to be notified.
But he said the Indian man was a corporate officer in an Indian firm and the Chinese list included a man who has been sanctioned in the past, an apparent reference to Chinese businessman Q.C. Chen.
Chen was on a sanctions list that China protested in May when the United States punished eight Chinese entities to stop transfers of controlled equipment or technology to Iran.
BAD BEHAVIOR
The new sanctions come under two laws -- the Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act of 1992 and the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Boucher said eight of those listed made transfers to Iran under the 1992 law and ``knowingly and materially'' contributed to Iran's chemical weapons program under the other.
Two of the entities suffered the two-year punishment meted out under that 1992 law for transfers to Iran or Iraq ``of goods or technology that contribute to their efforts to acquire chemical weapons or destabilizing numbers and types of advanced conventional weapons,'' Boucher told a news briefing.
The chemical weapons law bars imports to the United States for at least one year by those targeted while the Iran-Iraq one bars its victims from lucrative U.S. export licenses.
The official said that while several of the names had been sanctioned in the past for such activities, the new move was an indication of a pattern of repeat bad behavior.
He said the move likely did not mean arms were sold. ``It's usually precursor material, basic building blocks or equipment that are commonly used items for production of chemical and biological weapons, often a dual use sort of thing,'' he said.
``They need to be scrutinized and looked at and probably should not be exported anywhere, and certainly not to a country like Iran or Iraq.''
-------- britain
Traditional rights to go in judicial shake-up
July 19 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/18/1026898889358.html
Britain has unveiled sweeping changes in its criminal justice system, scrapping the ban on "double jeopardy", the 800-year-old legal principle that forbids trying a suspect twice for the same crime.
Other changes include making hearsay evidence admissible in court and letting jurors know of suspects' previous crimes.
The plan also introduces trial without jury in serious fraud cases where there is a risk of jury intimidation, allows the police to lock up dangerous sexual or violent offenders indefinitely, and adjusts sentencing guidelines to tailor the punishment to the criminal, not just the crime.
An explosion in violent crime - government statistics said street crime rose by 28per cent in the year to April 2002 - has put the ruling Labour Party under pressure to take tough measures to get criminals off the streets.
The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, said on Wednesday that the time had come to "rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim and bring justice to all".
He added: "Rebalancing the system will not mean the defendant's rights to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence are compromised. But it will allow the rights of victims and witnesses to be given greater weight.
"We must stop thinking of victims as bit players in our system; they are central."
Mr Blunkett said new technology had created new forms of evidence, such as DNA testing, that made it easier to prove guilt.
When such evidence appeared, police should be allowed to reopen cases against murder and rape suspects, even if they had previously been found not guilty.
The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has famously promised to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", is determined that voters should see his Government as effective against criminals. But many people worry that age-old safeguards are being hastily dismantled.
Helena Kennedy, a Labour member of the House of Lords, has described the plan as a "wholesale assault on civil liberties".
John Wadham, director of the civil liberties group Liberty, said: "None of these measures will reduce crime levels. They're about government ministers being seen to talk tough."
Unlike many other countries, Britain has no written bill of rights, and many rights offered to criminal defendants exist only because of legal traditions dating back through the ages.
The double jeopardy ban is one such protection. But several highly publicised British murder cases have raised public outcry against the rule.
Among them is the murder in 1993 of a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in which prosecutors dropped their case against five white youths despite evidence pointing to their guilt, and could not reopen the prosecutions.
Mr Blunkett's measure would be retroactive, so trials could now take place in such existing cases.
A damning report last month by the Government's financial watchdog said the criminal justice system wasted huge sums because of police errors, delays and poor computer records.
Of 5.2million crimes reported in 2001/2002, only 326,000 led to convictions.
----
Reservists called up in build-up for Iraq
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
19/07/2002
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/07/19/nirq19.xml
The Ministry of Defence is planning a mass mobilisation of key reservists beginning in September, heightening expectation that the United States and Britain are stepping up preparations for an attack on Iraq.
British troops have also been pulled out of Nato's ACE Mobile Force rapid reaction corps and British involvement in a large number of exercises has been cancelled or scaled down to leave troops ready for the attack on Iraq.
The Prime Minister has strongly backed the idea of a pre-emptive strike on Iraq and refused to commit the Government to a vote in the House of Commons on the deployment of British forces.
British military planners are working on the basis that Britain will provide a very large force, including an armoured division, a naval task force and substantial numbers of combat aircraft.
The decision to pull out of the Nato rapid reaction force was taken at the same time as it was announced that the bulk of British forces were being withdrawn from Afghanistan and Bosnia.
It means that the 1,500 British troops previously earmarked for the force will not now be taking part in two major exercises this autumn, in Germany and Ukraine.
In another move to free forces for an attack on Iraq, 3,000 members of Britain's main fighting force, 1 (UK) Armoured Division, have been withdrawn from a tank exercise in Poland. The MoD insisted that no decision had been made on Iraq but did not deny that planning was under way. "Any government department has contingency plans," a spokesman said.
Defence sources said the reservists who would be called up would cover key shortages such as pilots, medical staff, special forces, intelligence and signals.
-------- colombia
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
The crucial battle for Colombia
Otto J. Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs,
July 19, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020719-27574418.htm
No public issue has held our attention as firmly as national security since September 11, and rightly so. The attacks on that day were brutal reminders of the danger that evil men pose to open and democratic societies, the value of our way of life, and the necessity of our leadership in the world. Our first war of the 21st century is peculiar to our time.
Our enemy is not a powerful rival state but a lethal combination of transnational criminal networks and terror organizations aimed at overthrowing governments and the international order, possessing the means and will to inflict terrible destruction. Unfortunately, this combination is not unique. Today, many challenges to our values and our interests arise from such combinations, even here in our own hemisphere.
Narcotics traffickers and terrorists are waging a vicious campaign of political violence in Colombia that kills 3,000 people every year.
The three terror groups in Colombia - FARC, ELN and AUC - are not popular movements. They do not represent forces for social progress. They are after power, control over territory and the dollars of drug trade that comes with it. Their tactics - assassination, bombing, kidnapping and murder - betray their true motives. The people and the democratically elected government of Colombia are their targets.
This is a critical moment in the history of Colombia and the Western Hemisphere. Colombia is an embattled country in a part of the world where democratic republics are struggling to overcome the legacy of poverty, statism and authoritarianism. Twenty years ago, only about a quarter of the people in Latin America enjoyed democratic rule. Today, all of Latin America has democratic government except Cuba.
The ideas of freedom and equality have begun to be put into the practice of democracy and markets throughout our hemisphere. This is a welcome development that holds great promise for us all, but the end of this historic evolution is not a foregone conclusion. In some countries, the transition to democracy is troubled by lingering conflicts and opposition to progress. In Colombia, the opposition is deadly. The 40 million people of Colombia deserve freedom from terror and an opportunity to participate fully in the new democratic community of American states. It is in our self-interest to see that they get it.
Colombia's troubles radiate outward, reaching even our own shores. Colombia is the third most populous nation in Latin America. Its economy is integral to the region, and the prosperity of the region is important to our own.
The U.S. sells more to Latin America and the Caribbean than to the European Union. We sell more to the Southern Cone common market (MERCOSUR) than to China. Latin America and the Caribbean comprise our fastest-growing export market. Equally important, we require strong partners in the hemisphere to suppress illegal migration, drug trafficking and terrorism. Only prosperous and stable democratic governments can provide the cooperation we need.
FARC's deliberate frustration of the peace process and renewed terror campaign, featuring the assassination of rural mayors and bombings in the capital, have prompted the government of Colombia to request expanded assistance from the United States. Recognizing that our interests in the success of Colombian democracy are broad, President Bush has asked the Congress to allow us to provide military and intelligence assistance to the Colombian government in its war against terror.
Colombia can defeat the terrorists, but it needs help from its friends to do it.
Despite violence and intimidation aimed at keeping the Colombian people away from the polls, the incoming president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, won an unprecedented first-round election victory campaigning on a platform to end corruption, uphold human rights, create jobs, spur growth and fight the terrorists. Mr. Uribe understands the necessity of having a social, economic and military strategy to win this war. Colombia does not want or need U.S. troops, but it does need training, arms, equipment and intelligence to implement a successful military strategy.
Our leadership is critical to the success and prosperity of the democratic republics in our region. We cannot allow criminals and terrorists to threaten our friends and neighbors. If the 800 million people of the Americas are going to fulfill the promise and potential of this vast and plentiful hemisphere, the United States must work with its partners and allies to extend and strengthen democracy in the American community. Our values, our security and the future of our hemisphere are tied to Colombia's victory in its war against terror.
• Otto J. Reich is assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
-------- iran
Iranians Demonstrate Against U.S.
July 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of the capital Tehran on Friday, chanting ``Death to America'' in a furious backlash against President Bush's overtures to Iranian reformists.
While the turnout was not unusual for an anti-U.S. rally, the protest was significant in that the participants included those who are seeking to change the Islamic regime, notably Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.
In his statements last week, Bush denounced Iran's government for its ``uncompromising, destructive policies'' but expressed support for those Iranians who spoke out on behalf of a reformist cleric who resigned as a mosque preacher early this month to protest the influence of hard-liners in government.
``As we have witnessed over the past few days, the people of Iran want the same freedoms, human rights and opportunities as people around the world,'' Bush said. ``Their government should listen to their hopes.''
As the people of Iran struggle to build a modern state that is prosperous and free as well as Islamic, ``They will have no better friend than the United States,'' Bush said.
Many reformers fear that statements of support from the United States could hurt their cause. There is such hostility toward America that reformists who promote closer ties with Washington risk being branded as stooges of the great Satan, as the United States is known.
Iranians also resent Bush's past comments branding their country part of an ``axis of evil.'' The United States says Iran has a program to produce weapons of mass destruction and has expanded its role in supporting regional terrorist groups.
The demonstrators, many of them families, marched under a scorching sun in front of downtown Tehran University. They chanted ``Death to America'' and ``Death to Bush'' and burned the effigies of Uncle Sam and the U.S. president.
``America cannot do a damn thing against Iran,'' read one of the banners. ``The great Satan is not able to harm Iranians,'' read another, in reference to the United States.
Among those taking part in Friday's protest were former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref; the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi; and the foreign minister, Kharrazi.
``I think that today's massive rally is the best response to Mr. Bush to make him understand that interfering in Iran's domestic affairs will bring about a strong reaction from the people,'' Kharrazi said.
The march ended with a sermon at Tehran University, in which Rafsanjani told worshippers that U.S. satellites ``should take pictures of today's rally'' to judge the loyalty of the Iranian people.
The rally organizers, the state-run Islamic Propagation and Coordination Council, issued a statement asserting the ``full combat readiness of Iran to resist possible aggression by the enemy (and) suppress the intruders,'' the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Some in the reform movement have advocated rebuilding ties with the United States -- cut since the 1979 hostage crisis. But hard-liners, who control the main levers of power, have ruled out any such move. They have also tried to prevent political and social changes in the Islamic government demanded by reformers.
Last week, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri stepped down as mosque preacher in the southern city of Isfahan, denouncing hard-liners for stifling change. Reform leaders immediately announced their support for him, and more than 140 Iranians were reportedly arrested for leading a march in his support, despite a ban on demonstrations.
America cut diplomatic relations with Iran after militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. There have been no public contacts between the governments since, but relations showed signs of improvement following the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami in 1997.
-------- iraq
Wolfowitz trip hints at date of Iraq campaign
July 19, 2002
Lebanon Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/19_07_02_c.htm
Paul Wolfowitz arrived in Istanbul earlier this week, leaving for Kabul the same night. But the US deputy secretary of defense did return to Ankara on Tuesday for a two-day visit, where he met with Turkey's weakened, ailing prime minister, Bulent Ecevit. Wolfowitz also met key Turkish figures, including the new Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel, and several of the country's top generals before heading back to Washington but he skipped another scheduled stop in Istanbul.
Wolfowitz wrapped up his trip and returned to the United States to brief President George W. Bush on his trip's focus a potential US strike against Iraq.
Described as one of the Pentagon's "leading hawks" who is obsessed with toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Wolfowitz left many unanswered questions.
I can take the liberty of answering one still hanging in the air: That is, an American military operation against Iraq is not imminent. Yes not imminent, for the time being at least.
This, I can argue after a conversation with Wolfowitz when he visited Istanbul, before flying to Afghanistan.
However, this does not mean Washington has not decided to carry out an operation against the Iraqi leader. On the contrary, one such decision does exist, and Americans are more than ever committed to undertaking the operation.
Two factors are pending: the date of such an operation and its type and the scope.
The Bush administration is working on several military scenarios. Wolfowitz gave the impression that a decision on which scenario would be made after consultations with Iraq's neighbors, first and foremost, Turkey.
Of course, any such move would still require consensus within the American administration; thus the intense inter-agency debate raging in Washington.
The impression Wolfowitz's left is that the timing will likely be in January or February 2003, following US congressional elections. One clue is that Turkey's crumbling government coalition partners Ecevit, and Deputy Prime Ministers Devlet Bahcheli and Mesut Yilmaz decided to hold early elections by November. Their meeting followed the Ecevit-Wolfowitz meeting that had taken place only an hour earlier.
Ecevit had no intention of holding elections at that date and his rejection of which had been announced once again only a few hours before his meeting with Wolfowitz and Yilmaz. The Turkish position toward the United States was listed under four main headings to Wolfowitz:
First, meet our economic losses from such an operation; second, any new Iraqi regime should be accepted by the Iraqi people; third, Turkey opposes any independent Kurdish entity in northern Iraq; fourth, the rights of Turcomans should be guaranteed, and Kirkuk and Mosul cannot be left to the hands of the Kurds. Wolfowitz had earlier predicted Turkish officials to make these demands, clearly disclosing the aim of his visit to Turkey and trying to demonstrate to the Turks the incentives of removing Saddam regime in Baghdad.
"During my meetings with Turkish officials, I look forward to hearing what they have to say concerning the future of Iraq. We value Turkey's views highly, and my colleagues in Washington will be interested in what I have to report," he said.
"Turkey has large and legitimate interests in Iraq, and it has suffered economically from Iraq's international isolation since the Gulf War. "Turkey is interested in the fate of Iraq's Turkoman minority which, like the rest of the Iraqi population, has suffered under tyrannical rule.
"And Turkey wants assurances that events in Iraq won't have a negative impact on its own unity.
"President Bush has made clear how dangerous Saddam is to the United States and that he presents a danger we cannot live with indefinitely. But we also understand that Turkey has a vital national interest in the kind of regime that rules in Baghdad. Natural patterns of trade and investment should prevail, not those that Baghdad manipulates today.
"It is vital to Turkey that Iraqis govern themselves democratically, with full respect for minorities, including the Turkomans, and to maintain the territorial integrity of Iraq.
"A separate Kurdish state in the north would be destabilizing to Turkey and unacceptable to the United States. Fortunately, the Kurds of north Iraq increasingly seem to understand this fact and understand the importance of thinking themselves as Iraqis who will participate fully in the political life of a future democratic Iraq.
"A democratic Iraq will stimulate economic growth with neighbors like Turkey and will stabilize the region," he said. This same message was carried by Wolfowitz to Turkish officials in Ankara. Notably, he described Kemal Darwish, the state minister, as Turkey's "economy czar."
Darwish said Turkey's economy may be hurt by an operation against Iraq and he suggested ways to compensate Turkey's losses. Wolfowitz now knows, how to satisfy Turks economically. Moreover, the military details of his visit remain known to only those taking part in discussions held with military officials in Ankara.
In that meeting Wolfowitz was joined by US Air Force Commander General Joseph Ralston, the No. 1 commander of NATO. Ralston commands 65,000 troops from 39 countries and his mission includes Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Wolfowitz, accompanied by Ralston and the State Department's undersecretary of state, Marc Grossman a former American ambassador to Turkey examined operational plans and various battle scenarios.
The Turkish side sought payments for military units, stationed in Afghanistan and the negation of Greek objections to Turkey's role in Europe's security and defense policies a formula that Turkey, the United States and Britain agreed in 2001. Wolfowitz now knows what is needed to persuade the Turks. He also knows Turkish conditions for aiding or joining an American campaign against Iraq.
Although it seems he went back to Washington leaving behind some unanswered questions, Wolfowitz has a better understanding of what must be done to garner support for an operation against Saddam. As he told me personally, his will not be the final visit of an American official on the eve of an operation against Iraq. But the main fact-finding mission is over and one could speculate that such an operation can take place not earlier than October 2002 and probably not much later than January-February 2003.
Cengiz Candar, a Turkish journalist, wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
----
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraq Facility
July 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. and British warplanes destroyed a military communications facility in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said Friday. Iraq said the missile strike killed five people, including a couple and their children.
The Iraqi claim could not be independently verified.
The planes, patrolling the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, used precision-guided weapons to destroy the military site Thursday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The strikes came in response to continued Iraqi hostile actions toward coalition airplanes, it said.
Air Force Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr. said Monday that Iraq had increased its challenges to coalition aircraft in the northern and southern no-fly zones. The two zones were created after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds and minority Shiite Muslims from Iraqi military forces.
The Iraqi military said the coalition planes bombed ``civilian and service installations'' in Qadissiya province, 155 miles south of Baghdad, on Thursday night.
The attack hit two nearby homes, destroying one and damaging the other, killing five people and injuring 17 others, the military said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency.
Among the dead were a husband, wife and their two children, the agency said. A 60-year-old man who was also killed was thought to be a relative.
U.S. military officials say they take great care to avoid civilians when making retaliatory strikes in Iraq.
Funerals for the air raid victims were held Friday in Diwaniya, the capital of Qadissiya province, the agency said. Government officials and members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party attended. Mourners shouted ``Down with Bush'' and ``Down with America,'' while others demanded Saddam extract revenge.
Iraq has never recognized the no-fly zones and frequently tries to shoot down planes patrolling them.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli soldiers accused of selling arms to Palestinians
By Ross Dunn,
Herald Correspondent in Jerusalem
July 19 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/18/1026898888613.html
Israel has been rocked by the revelation that some of its soldiers may have been smuggling arms to the Palestinians, knowing that they could be turned on their own people.
Several Israelis, including a reserve major, have been arrested and military officials said they may be only "the tip of the iceberg".
The news followed Wednesday's double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv which killed an Israeli and two foreign workers, as well as the bombers.
The reserve officer allegedly sold thousands of bullets to four soldiers who then passed them on to Palestinian merchants.
Four Israelis living in two West Bank settlements were also arrested and interrogated over the alleged smuggling of weapons to Palestinians in the Hebron area over the past four years.
Police suspect that they also wore their uniforms to smuggle Palestinians into Israel in return for money.
"Their acts were not acts done in innocence," said an Israeli detective, Ari Ben Lulu. "They knew exactly what the target of each bullet was. They exploited the trust the army put in them and I would call this treason."
He added: "Who knows if the bullets they sold are not the bullets with which civilians and children from Adora [a Jewish settlement] were killed and dozens of others."
Some police believe that they will eventually uncover a wider smuggling network that has enabled Palestinians to buy advanced weapons such as anti-tank missiles.
One officer blamed the smuggling on a "decline in moral norms in Israeli society". Another reason was the country's severe recession, which had motivated some soldiers to pick up the "easy money to be had by selling arms to the Palestinians".
The twin suicide bombing in south Tel Aviv dashed hopes once again that the international community might be able to calm the region and restart peace talks.
The United States President, George Bush, deplored the attack, which followed the ambush of a bus the previous day which killed eight Israelis.
"These terrorist acts are also attacks on our efforts to restore hope to the Palestinian people," Mr Bush said. Peace could not be built on a "platform of violence against innocents", and the hopes of the many should not be held hostage to the acts of extremists.
Israel immediately cancelled plans to ease restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank, where many have been living under curfews since troops moved into the cities last month after suicide bombings.
As well, the Israeli Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, ruled out any early withdrawal of soldiers from Palestinian areas.
The Transport Minister, Ephraim Sneh, said that while the army had not prevented all attacks, it had limited the ability of militants to carry out many more acts of terrorism.
----
Shock at Charges Palestinians Were Sold Israeli Munitions
New York Times
July 19, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/19/international/middleeast/19SETT.html
JERUSALEM, July 18 - Israelis buried more victims of a Palestinian attack today as the nation grappled with police accusations that Jewish settlers had stolen army ammunition and sold it to Palestinians.
Five settlers, four of whom are soldiers, and a reserve army officer were arrested this week and are suspected of stealing and selling thousands of rounds of ammunition, the police said. The six men have denied that they intended to help Palestinian militants.
The arrests have caused concern in the army over rising weapons theft, and the case has stunned neighbors of some of the suspects in the West Bank settlement of Adora, near Hebron, where four people were killed in an attack by Palestinian gunmen less than three months ago.
As details about the case reverberated today, funerals were held for those killed in the ambush of an Israeli bus on Tuesday in the West Bank and for an officer killed in an ensuing firefight with the attackers. A woman wounded in the ambush died today, bringing the death toll in the attack to nine.
Another Israeli and two foreign workers were killed in a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night. The violence came after lull of nearly a month in attacks by Palestinians.
Israeli security officials said today that they thought the bombers had slipped out of the West Bank city of Nablus, which along with six other Palestinian cities has been under curfew imposed by the Israeli Army.
A previously unknown group, Al Nathir, or The Warning, claimed responsibility today for the Tel Aviv bombing, identified the attackers, and said they had come from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. The group said it was linked to Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement and that it had carried out the bombing "because Israel is still killing Palestinian civilians and occupying all of the West Bank." Islamic Jihad had previously claimed responsibility for the Wednesday bombing.
The Palestinian Authority has condemned the attacks this week.
An Israeli police spokesman said today that the arrests in the ammunition case were made after months of an undercover investigation conducted along with the military police.
The prime suspects are the four soldiers: two pairs of brothers from the settlements of Adora and Telem, east of Hebron. Another resident of Adora has also been arrested, along with a major in the army reserves from the southern coastal city of Ashdod.
A Palestinian from Tarkumiya, near Hebron, was taken into custody on suspicion that he bought the ammunition and served as the conduit for its transfer to Palestinian militants.
According to police accounts, the detained soldiers have admitted to stealing about 60,000 rifle rounds from the army, and they are also suspected of selling thousands of them to Palestinians in the Hebron area.
An army spokesman, confirming the arrests today, said that if the accusations against the soldiers were proven true, the army would view their actions as "very grave."
A police representative called the ammunition sales treason in a court hearing on Wednesday.
"They knew exactly what the target of each bullet was," the representative told the Jerusalem Magistrates Court. "I would define it as a betrayal of state security."
Speaking on Israel Radio today, Moshe Negbi, a prominent legal commentator, said that supplying arms to the enemy is treason under Israeli law, an offense that if committed in wartime can bring the death penalty or life imprisonment.
As the conflict with the Palestinians has intensified over the past 21 months, there have been increased reports of theft of weapons from army bases, raising suspicion that some of the arms were ending up in Palestinian hands. According to newspaper reports in Israel, the settlers arrested this week are suspected of selling the stolen ammunition over a period of three years.
At Adora, where Palestinian attackers killed four people, including a 5-year-old girl, in an assault on April 27, residents were shaken by the arrests.
"This is a blow. We know the families, and we can't understand why this was done and for what purpose," said Yitzhak Swita, the settlement secretary.
Anat Harari, who was wounded in the attack, said today that she was haunted by the thought that the bullets fired at her might have been supplied by her neighbors.
"I saw the terrorist shooting, I saw him pull the trigger, now I also know who put the bullet in the gun barrel," she told Israeli television. "It's horrifying."
-------- mideast
Jordan prince touted to succeed Saddam
Brian Whitaker
Friday July 19, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,757760,00.html
As US officials and Iraqi opposition groups squabble over possible successors to Saddam Hussein, Prince Hassan of neighbouring Jordan is emerging as a surprise contender.
The idea, which has support in the Pentagon and among conservative thinkers in the US, envisages the prince rising above Iraqi factionalism as a compromise figurehead, or even as king.
Some argue that his involvement could also ease tensions in Washington, where the state department and CIA have been at loggerheads with Congress and the Pentagon over Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella opposition group funded by US taxpayers.
"Prince Hassan is someone who has not been poisoned by the past 40 years of chaos in Iraq and is perhaps the only person who can transcend the ethnic and political complexities," said Michael Rubin of the Washington thinktank the American Enterprise Institute.
Hassan, 55, was crown prince of Jordan for many years and effectively ruled the country during the terminal illness of his eldest brother, the late King Hussein.
But a few weeks before his death in 1999, King Hussein removed him from the succession and nominated his own son, now King Abdullah.
On April 8 this year, Prince Hassan had talks at the Pentagon with Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence. The subject was never disclosed but since then he has begun to assume a higher political profile.
This culminated in his dramatic "coming out" last week when - surrounded by TV cameras - he arrived unexpectedly at a conference of exiled Iraqi officers in London. It was the first time that a high-ranking Arab had publicly associated himself with the Iraqi opposition. His move appears to have been well received.
Speculation has been heightened by the fact that the Jordanian royal family is related to the Iraqi royal family, whose last king, Faisal II, was deposed and assassinated in 1958.
-------- spies
CIA Cements New Rules on Informants
July 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Informants.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA has formalized new rules that allow its field officers to recruit informants with violent backgrounds without first getting approval from headquarters, a U.S. intelligence official said Friday.
The rules, transmitted to field officers Thursday, institutionalized a CIA policy change put in place last October in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Since 1995, field officers had had to seek approval from CIA headquarters before using a person with a background of human rights abuses.
While no officer's request was turned down under those 1995 guidelines, some in the agency worried that it would chill field officers' efforts to work with sources with unsavory backgrounds -- even if those sources could provide useful information, intelligence officials said.
The 1995 rules were enacted largely because of public and congressional concerns about the CIA's past ties to human rights abusers.
Thursday's action also appears to be an attempt to allay congressional concerns. This time, however, the concerns were that CIA wasn't doing enough to recruit sources. On Tuesday, a House Intelligence subcommittee released a report criticizing the agency for not formally rescinding the 1995 policy.
----
Gov't: Suspect Has No Review Right
The Associated Press
Friday, July 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34270-2002Jul19?language=printer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A spy suspect whom the government wants to execute has no legal basis to ask a judge to compare his case to other espionage cases in which the death penalty was not sought, prosecutors argued Friday.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said in court papers that the request from Brian Patrick Regan already has been foreclosed by Supreme Court rulings and would infringe improperly on the government's sole discretion to decide when to seek the death penalty.
Regan, 39, was indicted in February on charges that he tried to spy for Iraq, Libya and China. He is accused him of offering secrets to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a form letter for $13 million in Swiss currency. The government found a copy of the letter on Regan's home computer, court documents said.
Prosecutors announced in April they would seek the death penalty. They said Regan placed U.S. and allied pilots over the flight-interdiction zones in Iraq at "grave risk of death" by offering to give Saddam information about U.S. satellites hunting anti-aircraft missiles.
Regan's lawyers described the offer to Saddam as "the alleged rantings of a retired Air Force master sergeant prepared in what appears to be an effort to scam a foreign government out of $13 million."
No U.S. citizen has been executed in an espionage case since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the 1950s on conviction of conspiring to steal atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. Prosecutors have not sought the death penalty in an espionage case since the federal death penalty law was re-enacted in 1994.
Regan's lawyers argued last month that the government's decision to seek the death penalty in this case was "arbitrary and irrational." They noted that none of the 11 people indicted for espionage since 1994 faced the death penalty, including Robert Hanssen of the FBI, who pleaded guilty to spying that led to the deaths of three foreign agents.
Regan, who worked in the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va., has pleaded innocent to three counts of attempted espionage and one additional count of illegal gathering of national security information.
On the Net: National Reconnaissance Office: http://www.nro.gov/
-------- un
Annan Warns Israel on 'Collective Punishment'
July 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Israel on Friday that destroying Palestinian homes and deporting relatives of suicide bombers amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
While Annan ``has repeatedly condemned suicide bombings and upheld Israel's right to defend itself, the secretary-general wishes to make clear that self defense cannot justify measures that amount to collective punishments,'' spokeswoman Hua Jiang said.
Israeli security sources said Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein had set terms for the possible deportation of relatives of Palestinian militants to the Gaza Strip from the West Bank if they were found to have links to plans for attacks.
The discussion of deportation followed Israel's demolition of the family homes of two Palestinian militants accused of planning attacks which killed 11 people in Israel and near a West Bank Jewish settlement this week.
``The secretary-general is disturbed by reports that the Israeli government has again destroyed the homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and are considering the forcible transfer of relatives of suicide bombers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip,'' Jiang said in a statement.
-------- propaganda wars
Coming to an Army Near You
In Marina del Rey, the low-profile Institute for Creative Technology asks Hollywood types to concoct battle scenes to help the military train.
COLUMN ONE By DANA CALVO
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
July 19 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-institute19jul19012049.story
Three big-name Hollywood talents huddle around a conference table and let the ideas fly.
"Apocalypse Now" co-writer John Milius sketches a soldier of the future with a Transformer-like weapon that doubles as a vehicle part.
David Ayer, who wrote "Training Day," suggests building sensors that link every weapon system in the country. Ron Cobb, the creature designer for "Star Wars," describes a personnel carrier with four independent steering wheels that could "whip around and is buffered with lots of shields."
This Hollywood brainstorming session will never produce something for the neighborhood megaplex. That's because it took place not on a studio lot but inside a nondescript Army think tank on a quiet street in Marina del Rey.
The Institute for Creative Technology is the country's only organization that draws on entertainment industry know-how to sharpen military training through futuristic games and simulation. The institute's Hollywood consultants also write story lines for virtual-reality military training videos--plots with swirling suspense and drama that aim to make a soldier's training more compelling.
Since it was founded in 1999, the institute has popped in and out of public view, vacillating between the military's need-to-know tradition of secrecy and Hollywood's need-to-dish culture. Most recently, it drew national notice when it asked screenwriters, producers and directors to generate terrorist scenarios in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Their ideas have been kept under wraps; one Army spokeswoman cited national security in declining to release them.
From the outside, the office building looks as forgettable as a 1970s bank. Inside is another story. The interiors were created by Paramount's Herman Zimmerman, who was in charge of production design for several "Star Trek" movies and TV series. The blond wood walls pitch toward the ceiling, a la the Starship Enterprise, and automatic pocket doors pull apart down the middle and close back up again with that unmistakable shush.
While the institute has Hollywood and military consultants on retainer, there are 45 full-time scientists, researchers and administrators who work in offices equipped with bunk beds.
"They bring in people with diverse backgrounds: artificial intelligence, video game people, social research people," Ayer said. "It's like the most amazing dinner party."
This "party" costs the Army $45 million in a five-year contract, and millions more come from other military branches. Hollywood consultants are paid anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a day, although most work only a few days a month.
"It's decent pay," Ayer said, "but it's not Hollywood scriptwriting pay."
In all, Ayer and his fellow out-of-the-box thinkers pull about $1 million a year from ICT's budget. But the money moves both ways between the Pentagon and Hollywood. Paramount pledged $600,000 for a virtual-reality theater called ALTSim (Advanced Leadership Training Simulation); the studio can repackage elements of the technology into commercial games. And the institute already has received most of the $3.3 million promised for a game project by game developer Pandemic Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of the leading digital labs in the country.
Ties to USC and Hollywood
The institute is affiliated with USC, which has provided up to $2 million in graphics technology and dozens of student interns during the summer. The Army's other futuristic university-affiliated research center is the Institute for Advanced Technology, founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 1994 with a five-year contract to study lethality and weaponry. While the Texas institution relies on medical, science and arms experts, much of ICT's expertise comes straight from Hollywood.
"It says a lot about our military that they don't feel sufficiently comfortable thinking out of the box and they have to go outside of themselves for that advice," said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst at the Center for Defense Initiatives, a nonprofit, independent think tank in Washington, D.C. "They need someone without that baggage to think almost whimsically about their structure."
The premise for this type of collaboration is not new; the military and Hollywood have long helped each other, most recently with extensive technical support from the Pentagon on military-themed movies like "Black Hawk Down," "Behind Enemy Lines" and "The Sum of All Fears." And just last week, the head of research and development at Walt Disney Co. announced he was leaving to head all research at the Pentagon's National Security Agency.
The Army keeps tabs on ICT through daily e-mails with its executive staff and extensive monthly reports. Many of its Hollywood consultants say the institute provides welcome distance from the entertainment industry's relentless emphasis on generating commercial hits.
"I don't find the film entertainment world that liberating. It's pretty formulaic," said onetime Hollywood producer and writer Jim Korris, who serves as ICT's creative director. "Entertainment companies don't reward innovation."
Some view the institute with suspicion, envisioning something out of the 1997 movie comedy "Wag the Dog," in which the White House recruited Hollywood's best spin doctors and a few technical wizards to stage a phony war to squelch news of the president's mistress.
"There is a power elite, and it's Hollywood-Washington-Pentagon," said James Der Derian, author of "Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network" (2001). "They created this ICT to create scenarios for the future of war, but what Hollywood gets out of it, of course, is whiz-bang technologies."
A. Michael Andrews II, the Army's chief scientist and the institute's founder, said one of its finest hours came after last fall's terrorist attacks.
"Since we had such a very unusual action against the United States, I thought it might be worthwhile to look outside our normal way of thinking about the problem," Andrews said. He asked ICT to corral entertainment industry volunteers who could dream up terrorist plot lines in hopes they might expose a weakness in the real-life anti-terrorism network.
This panel of about 30 Hollywood volunteers, some of whom were already institute consultants, met during two evenings in October, creating terrorist "characters" and then following the story lines through. They wanted to know what tools were available to the soldiers who would be exploring unlit caves. They also wanted to know what was being done to deter the hypothetical terrorist characters.
"It was ad hoc; a number of people asked to participate for a limited period of time," said David Engelbach, a former writer for the "MacGyver" TV series. Engelbach, like several other writers contacted for this story, declined to discuss his contributions, saying he had been asked by the Pentagon to keep his ideas confidential.
Cobb, the conceptual set designer for sci-fi movies such as "Star Wars" and "Aliens," said the sessions proved Hollywood's dreamers could collaborate with the Pentagon's heavyweights. "I think we impressed the military, who probably thought we were all flakes."
Military Training as Entertainment
ICT began, as most Hollywood projects do, with a "meeting on the lot." It was 1999, and the lot was Paramount.
Andrews, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering, arrived with a picture of a bridge arching between the Pentagon and the Hollywood sign. To Korris, accustomed to high-tech gadgets and slick presentations, it looked both clumsy and endearing.
Andrews held up his paper-and-glue visual aid and explained that he wanted to immerse soldiers in training that would be as convincing as silver-screen entertainment. He wanted the soldier to feel, smell and react in real time to the scenario.
"The military had very accurate, big training exercises, but it wasn't entertaining," Korris said. "That's a problem for the young recruits. Andrews wanted to come up with training technologies that might be more interesting."
At its opening ceremony at the Marina del Rey offices on Sept. 26, 2000, the audience was packed with top military brass as well as Hollywood's chief lobbyist, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Within a few months, ICT had attracted an array of consultants who don't fit neatly into Hollywood's left-leaning image.
Ayer spent two years in the Navy as a sonar man aboard a nuclear submarine. Cobb fought in the Vietnam War. And Milius is a proud hawk.
"They haven't sent me to Afghanistan," Milius said, "but I'm waiting."
Other Hollywood consultants at ICT include Paul De Meo, co-writer of "The Rocketeer," and veteran director Randal Kleiser, whose credits stretch back to "Grease" and "The Blue Lagoon."
They are overseen by Executive Director Richard Lindheim, the former executive vice president of Paramount Television Group. Korris, the creative director, is a former producer at Ron Howard's production company, Imagine, and a longtime writer for episodic television shows such as "Murder, She Wrote," "Simon & Simon" and "Miami Vice."
But David Williams, vice president of policy for the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, is not impressed with the Tinseltown resumes.
Williams wonders how the Pentagon could justify spending a million dollars a year on Hollywood consultants.
"Aren't there a few out-of-work writers who could do it for cheaper? A million dollars in the scheme of the federal budget isn't much, but a million dollars is still a million dollars," he said. "A few years ago, the Pentagon was working on caffeinated gum, and I put this in the same category."
----
Russian Experts Pan 'K-19' Movie
The Associated Press
Friday, July 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30591-2002Jul19?language=printer
MOSCOW -- The new Harrison Ford submarine thriller "K-19: The Widowmaker" hasn't yet hit Russian cinemas, but it's already getting panned by experts here who advised the film that opens nationwide Friday in the United States.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and co-starring Liam Neeson, the movie is based on a 1961 accident on board a Russian nuclear submarine that came close to a Chernobyl-style meltdown in the North Atlantic.
"This film isn't about Russians, but about how Americans want to see Russians," Igor Kurdin, who leads a St. Petersburg-based group of retired submariners, told Izvestia newspaper in an interview printed Friday.
Veterans' groups have said they would sue the filmmakers, Izvestia reported, over alleged inaccuracies such as the heavy drinking habits of the submariners in the film and what they view as an incorrect portrayal of the conflict in leadership between the submarine's two top officers, played by Ford and Neeson.
The film's Russian premiere is scheduled for October in St. Petersburg. Russian distributors have pledged 1 percent of the proceeds for families of victims of the K-19 accident.
The topic of a submarine accident is especially sensitive in Russia after the Kursk tragedy in August 2000, when one of the country's most advanced submarines exploded and sank, killing all 118 men aboard.
Discontent over "K-19" follows similar displeasure in Russia about foreign film portrayals of its military, such as "Enemy at the Gates," a 2001 film about the battle of Stalingrad during World War II.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Security bill loses ID card, TIPS
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020719-90562710.htm
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, in his markup of legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, yesterday rejected a national identification card and scrapped a program that would use volunteers in domestic surveillance.
Mr. Armey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, included language in his markup of the legislation to prohibit the Justice Department from initiating the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, also called Operation TIPS.
Mr. Armey's bill also would create a "privacy officer" in the Homeland Security Department, which he said was the first ever established by law in a Cabinet agency. Mr. Armey said this person would "ensure technology research and new regulations from the department respect the civil liberties our citizens enjoy."
The TIPS program would have allowed volunteers, including letter carriers and utility workers whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize suspect activities, to report suspect behavior to the Justice Department. It was scheduled to begin next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants initially participating in the program.
"Mr. Armey believes there are other and better ways to involve citizens in the protection of the homeland," said Richard Diamond, the congressman's press secretary. "There are traditional ways of pitching in, helping out, like becoming a volunteer firefighter."
The 216-page bill, sponsored by Mr. Armey, Texas Republican, also bars the creation of national identification cards, despite President Bush's support for them. "Authority to design and issue these cards shall remain with the states," Mr. Armey said.
In addition, the bill would indefinitely postpone a Dec. 31 deadline for airports to screen checked bags for explosives and would give immunity from lawsuits to some technology companies involved in national security.
Since the announcement earlier this week of its creation, Operation TIPS has attracted criticism from across the political spectrum.
Supporters argued that the program is aimed at encouraging people with certain jobs - those that take them into neighborhoods - to watch for suspect activity.
Attorney General John Ashcroft's spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock, said the agency had no intention for people to enter or have access to people's homes. The idea is to organize information from people whose jobs take them through neighborhoods, Ms. Comstock said.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge also defended the program. "The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans," he said. "That's just not what the president is all about, and not what the TIPS program is all about."
But civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Rutherford Institute, said Operation TIPS could turn ordinary citizens into "government-sanctioned peeping Toms." The U.S. Postal Service also said this week that it would not allow letter carriers to be involved with the program.
Yesterday, the groups praised Mr. Armey's decision. "Majority Leader Armey has taken a courageous step in insisting that we protect our privacy in the fight against terror," said Rachel King, an ACLU legislative counsel. "There is no place in America for either an internal passport or for utility workers and cable technicians to become government-sanctioned peeping Toms."
Democrats also applauded the move. "I think they did a good job on the privacy issues," said House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi of California, who also is a member of the select committee.
The House Select Committee on Homeland Security is likely to alter the measure when it is considered today, as is the full House when it reaches the floor next week. Overall, the bill would give Mr. Bush much of the huge new Cabinet agency he requested to safeguard Americans from terrorism at home.
The Senate has finished hearings on the new department but is not expected to take up the issue for a few weeks.
The proposal to delay indefinitely the Dec. 31 deadline for all checked airline bags to be screened for explosives drew immediate fire from Rep. James L. Oberstar, Minnesota Democrat and ranking member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In a letter to colleagues, Mr. Oberstar said the new Transportation Security Administration, which would become part of the Homeland Security Department under Mr. Armey's bill, repeatedly has assured Congress that it can meet the deadline.
"Although this deadline is demanding, it is not impossible," Mr. Oberstar wrote, noting that the law allows each airport to set a new, unlimited deadline if the Dec. 31 date cannot be met.
Republican leaders and Democrats also continued to negotiate whether to give Mr. Bush flexibility in making personnel decisions, which the president said he needs to respond quickly to terrorist threats. Opponents say it could wreck civil service workers' protections and undermine unions collective bargaining.
Key lawmakers also reached an agreement with the White House to give Mr. Bush some authority to transfer up to 2 percent of the money in the Homeland Security Department budget for two years, with some strings attached, instead of the 5 percent discretionary power he had sought.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
Illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings decline
By Andy Olsen
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020719-86360098.htm
Immigration officials say that tighter border security since September 11 has caused a continuing decline in the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, but others are not so sure why all is quieter on the southwestern front.
For the eighth month in a row, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reported a sharp drop in the number of immigrants detained entering from Mexico, viewed as the best gauge of how many are crossing the border illegally.
"It's going down at an average of about 300,000 a year," said Border Patrol spokesman Mario Villarreal. "That's pretty good."
Analysts and some patrollers, however, are cautious about jumping to conclusions. A report released yesterday by the Public Policy Institute of California said that, despite the short-term drop in apprehensions, illegal immigration has continued to rise for the past nine years.
From Oct. 1 to May 31, the Border Patrol caught 639,218 persons trying to cross along the 2,000-mile border that runs from California to Texas, according to INS statistics. That number is down 32 percent from the same period last year, continuing the biggest decline since 1994.
But the California study, based on census figures and community surveys, counters that illegal immigration nearly tripled during the past decade despite a major border crackdown in 1993 and a tripling of the annual border re-enforcement budget to $2.5 million.
Border apprehensions have fallen since 2000, when they reached an all-time high of more than 1.6 million.
Immigration officials credit tougher post-September 11 border security and a less promising U.S. job market for the decrease in border apprehensions. Apprehensions plunged in October and November after the attacks and have been creeping back up since then.
"The economy almost certainly [has] an impact," said Steven Camarata, director of research for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies. But "it's very difficult to know what's going on here."
The Border Patrol office in Del Rio, Texas, responsible for policing a 60-mile stretch in the southern part of the state, watched its apprehension levels fall 40 percent from last year. Just two years ago, it was the second-busiest post in the nation.
Not all offices are reporting such high declines. A California station in El Centro caught 16 percent fewer border crossers. As it gets harder to cross, officials say, immigrants move to new entry points that quickly become hot spots. That can create misleading results.
"There's no such thing as a trend on the border," said Dennis Smith, a spokesman at the Del Rio Border Patrol Office. "The fact that we're down now doesn't mean we're going to stay that way."
Still, Mr. Smith said, the patrol has tightened the border. At border crossing points, pedestrians must show photo identification and are checked against a national criminal database. Unarmed National Guard troops have helped boost security around stations and checkpoints.
Analysts and INS officials agree that while the drop in apprehensions may not be permanent, it probably has not bottomed out.
"If you look at the numbers - and we're coming into the slow part of the year for apprehensions - I think we're going to come in well below that 1.26 [million apprehensions last year]," Mr. Villarreal said.
----
Judge asks Moussaoui to rethink guilty plea
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20027191617.htm
Zacarias Moussaoui, representing himself in court yesterday, tried to enter a guilty plea, but the judge refused to accept it, giving the September 11 conspiracy suspect a week to ensure that he understands the consequences of his plea.
"I want to plead guilty. I know who done it which group, who participated. It would save my life," Moussaoui told U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema. "I am member of al Qaeda."
During his courtroom appearance, Moussaoui made these spontaneous assertions about 20 minutes after being rearraigned under the terms of a new indictment.
Prosecutors filed the indictment Tuesday with new facts that they believe will be critical to the effort to persuade a jury to give Moussaoui the death penalty.
During the rearraignment, Judge Brinkema had entered a "not guilty" plea on Moussaoui's behalf because the Moroccan-born French citizen had tried to enter what he called a "pure plea." Moussaoui said such a plea would be the only way to clarify before a jury the extent of his years-long involvement with al Qaeda.
A federal grand jury in Alexandria's U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Moussaoui in December on six counts of conspiracy.
He is accused of plotting the September 11 attacks with Osama bin Laden and members of al Qaeda. Prosecutors say he took similar actions, including enrolling in a flight school, to those taken by the 19 suicide hijackers involved in the attacks.
Prosecutors have said Moussaoui would have been the "20th hijacker" had he not been in custody for immigration violations at the time of the attacks.
Moussaoui, 34, said he wanted to plead guilty in hopes of pre-empting any government effort to have him executed. But there was no indication that he had negotiated any plea deal with prosecutors.
Judge Brinkema warned Moussaoui that it would be premature to enter a guilty plea without making such a deal, as he might be able to use his personal knowledge of the terror attacks as currency to bargain for a sentence lighter than execution.
"It is normal in a criminal case that a defendant plea-bargain with the government," she told him, adding that if she accepted his guilty plea, it could not be reversed.
It was not clear whether Moussaoui, who speaks fluent English and is reported to have a master's degree from a British university, understood the judge's logic. He responded by saying, "I don't need. I've been thinking for months."
"I am guilty," he said, "and the question is to what extent."
Judge Brinkema, in an unusual bench ruling, insisted that Moussaoui take a week to think over his decision. She warned him that pleading guilty meant that a judge, rather than a jury, would decide whether he would get the death sentence. She then scheduled a hearing for Thursday to see whether he would still plead guilty.
"Bet on me, I will," Moussaoui said. Moussaoui successfully won the right last month to represent himself, but Judge Brinkema has instructed a public defender to stand by him in court. The suspect also has accused the defender of conspiring with the government to have him executed.
"I don't have to consult with people who want to undermine my defense," he said of his lawyer at proceedings yesterday.
During the proceedings, Moussaoui, a short man with a full black beard, repeatedly squabbled with Judge Brinkema, frequently interrupting her and on one occasion saying: "I would like you to stop this nonsense game here. This is a farce of justice."
Judge Brinkema, who had difficulty getting Moussaoui to stop talking, at one point threatened to order federal marshals to remove him from the courtroom.
When she suggested that Moussaoui was confused about the nature of the rearraignment, the defendant responded, "I'm not confused, thank you."
Observing the scene from the courtroom audience were members of the New Black Panther Party. Party Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz appeared outside the courtroom afterwards, telling reporters that Moussaoui's attempt at pleading guilty was "unwise" and a clear example of the man's lack of understanding of the U.S. legal system.
Mr. Shabazz, a lawyer, said Moussaoui "has some serious information about September 11" that needs to be used as a plea-bargaining tool.
Although he declined to say whether he was trying to become Moussaoui's lawyer, Mr. Shabazz said he was interested in helping the suspect's defense and, if necessary, plea-bargaining efforts.
Mr. Shabazz cited the "successful" plea bargaining conducted by John Walker Lindh's attorneys, which guaranteed the 21-year-old so-called "American Taliban" no more than a 20-year sentence.
Moussaoui has been in custody since August, when the FBI detained him on visa violations. Workers at a flight school reported him to agents as a suspect foreigner, who reportedly told teachers that he only needed to learn how to steer an airplane and wanted to skip takeoff and landing lessons.
Judge Brinkema has dismissed several of Moussaoui's more than 70 handwritten pretrial motions. Moussaoui has suggested in court proceedings that the FBI had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks and "cynically allow[ed] September 11 in order to destroy Afghanistan."
-------- death penalty
Senate committee approves bill on death-row DNA tests
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020719-4399.htm
The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved a bill to provide DNA testing to federal death-row inmates, despite opposition from most of the panel's Republicans.
The Innocence Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, the panel's chairman - was approved in a 12-7 vote, with Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Sam Brownback of Kansas breaking with their fellow Republicans and supporting the bill.
Mr. Specter helped craft the bill and Mr. Brownback said he supported it because death-row inmates should have all defense tools available, including DNA testing.
In the House, a nearly identical bill has garnered 239 co-sponsors, and supporters are trying to persuade Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Democrat, to act on it. A hearing has been held and committee spokesman Jeff Lungren said the bill is "under review" but noted the committee is busy with many other issues.
The Senate bill seeks to ensure that death-row inmates have access to sophisticated DNA tests that could prove their innocence and to competent legal counsel.
The effort has gained attention as states have begun to examine what some say are serious flaws in the death penalty system. In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, ordered a halt to executions after DNA testing and investigations by journalism students proved the innocence of 13 inmates on death row.
In addition to establishing federal DNA testing guidelines, the bill would require states to follow similar guidelines and make DNA testing available to inmates as a condition for receiving federal money for DNA-related programs.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and ranking member of the Judiciary panel, said the measure goes too far and is unnecessary, because 25 of the 38 states that have capital punishment already have DNA-testing programs. Mr. Hatch has introduced a narrower bill that he says will accomplish the same goals, "with proper regard for traditional state functions and without burdening states with unfunded mandates."
But the strongest opposition from Republicans came over the Leahy bill's effort to ensure competent legal counsel for defendants in capital cases by awarding money to private, so-called capital defender organizations. Republicans said this was a veiled attempt to provide direct funds to advocacy groups fighting to abolish the death penalty.
"I oppose funding an advocacy group," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, adding that Democrats would never allow this for anti-abortion groups. "I don't think it can be passed with that language in it. And I don't think anyone would want to hold onto that language and have the bill die."
The bill would give money to states to improve or establish systems for providing competent attorneys to indigents in capital cases. States that apply for such grants would have to set up independent agencies to handle the issue, and people could sue the state if they feel it is not doing a good job in this area.
If a state chooses not to apply for this money, the money could go instead to private advocacy groups for training death-penalty lawyers and helping provide legal counsel in such cases.
Mr. Hatch said this sounds eerily similar to the situation when Congress defunded groups in the mid-1990s after a series of abuses and irregularities.
Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, said there is a "built-in conflict of interest" in awarding money to "groups who have as their goal the [abolition] of the death penalty."
Mr. Leahy narrowed the bill to address some Republican concerns. Among other things, the bill would stipulate that advocacy groups receiving the funding cannot use it for political activities and would list certain factors the government must consider before awarding money to such groups.
But Mr. Sessions said he would fight the bill until the advocacy-group language is removed.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Canadian firm says set to slash solar-power costs
Story by Rajiv Sekhri
REUTERS CANADA:
July 19, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16934/story.htm
TORONTO - A Canadian company said it has developed solar cells that will slash the cost of solar power, holding out the possibility of a revolution in the generation of clean, renewable energy.
ATS Automation Tooling Systems , which makes testing systems for machines, said it plans to start production of the new solar cells in 2003 and make enough within a year to supply electricity for the equivalent of 6,000 homes - a tiny fraction of the billions of people living without power.
"What we have here is a new revolutionary product that cuts the barriers of cost," ATS Chief Executive Klaus Woerner told Reuters. "Our technology can stand on its own in the marketplace, as a viable energy alternative."
ATS stock rose in response to the news, ending up C$1.75, or 10 percent, at C$19.25 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Energy experts said the technology could make huge strides in lighting up parts of the developing world where there is no electricity and also help the developed world, which is seeking environmentally friendly ways to generate power. But they also warned that mass market application could take decades.
"It is technology that is not even out in the market yet. Solar technology is a niche technology and because of weather conditions there are some geographical regions where it is less applicable," said an analyst, who requested anonymity.
Using the sun to make electricity could eventually help power firms meet demand during peak summer periods, when customers crank up air conditioning to stay cool.
"These cells could have a substantial impact if this new technology is cheaper than other ones," said Andrew Pape-Salmon, Vancouver-based director of sustainable energy for environmental think tank Pembina Institute.
Demand for solar energy is growing by more than 30 percent a year, he said.
ATS, based in Cambridge, Ontario, said its photovoltaic technology, called Spheral Solar Technology, will use tiny silicon beads bonded in an aluminum foil.
The cells will use a fraction of the silicon in current solar cells, more than halving the cost of power generation.
A CELL IN A ROOFING TILE
Woerner said the cells will be lightweight and pliable and can be used in homes, cars and industry.
"(These cells) can be put into roofing tiles, roofing shingle systems, incorporated into factory walls, cars, as they are seamless with structures," Woerner said.
Canada's government said it was providing ATS with C$29.5 million ($19 million) in investment to help fund production.
"Projects like this one in the field of solar energy represent steps towards decreasing harmful emissions and providing cleaner air for all," Karen Redman, parliamentary secretary to Environment Minister David Anderson, said.
ATS said it had already started design work on a 120,000-square-foot automated production pilot facility, and it will need nearly C$40 million to get production under way.
It said it expects to spend between C$80 million and C$85 million over the next three years and will sell the cells through a new subsidiary called Spheral Power Inc.
"We generally look for returns between 13 percent to 15 percent on capital. Here, the return will be substantially higher," Chief Financial Officer Ron Jutras said.
"There are two billion people around the world without electricity and that is just the beginning."
Jutras gave no details, but he said sales of solar cells could one day surpass ATS' existing sales. ATS revenues were C$549.5 million in the year to March 2002, down 23 percent from fiscal 2001.
The analyst said Jutras' figures were "a bit bullish."
"Their sales from this one facility are going to be C$60 million and the cost to open it is C$80 million. That just does not make sense. They'll have to bring costs down."
Siemens , BP plc , Royal Dutch/Shell and AstroPower , the world's largest independent maker of solar electric power, are some of the big names developing solar cell technologies or selling them.
Woerner said he is in talks with firms around the world, from roofmakers to energy companies, to market the cells.
ATS is no fledgling in the solar industry, having bought France-based Photowatt International SA in 1997, which it says is the seventh-largest solar manufacturer in the world and one of the few profitable solar energy companies globally.
The basis for the technology used in ATS cells was laid several years ago at Texas Instruments . ATS bought the technology a few years ago and improved it and has more than 40 patents protecting it.
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Dung-fired British power plant rumbles into life
Friday, July 19, 2002
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/07/07192002/reu_47898.asp
LONDON - Britain's first ever dung-fired power station started operating Thursday, taking the excrement of nearly 5,000 cows and lighting up homes around the north coast of Devon.
There was no fanfare, nor any celebrity opening for the Holsworthy Biogas plant, which will take dung from 28 local dairy farms, using it to generate electricity and heat water for local schools, hospitals, and even a swimming pool.
"One of our two gas generators was fired up last night, and we're hoping to get the other started today," said Charles Clarke of Holsworthy Biogas.
The project, a 50-50 joint venture between Farmatic of Germany and a firm to be owned by local farmers, will feed enough electricity into the National Grid to light about 900 homes.
Clarke said the local community's early worries about smell had given way to support for the pioneering eco-venture. "We've been bringing slurry in for six weeks now, and there's been no problem," he said.
Slurry is fermented for about 20 days, generating methane for the gas-fired generators. Having been treated to remove deadly spores such as tuberculosis and foot-and-mouth, the waste sludge is then returned to local farms as fertilizer.
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Northwest Researchers Focus on Bio-Energy
July 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2002/2002-07-19-09.asp#anchor7
RICHLAND, Washington, Four Northwest research organizations are joining forces to explore ways to turn agricultural wastes into energy.
The partnership will bring together industry, processors, growers, universities and federal laboratories to develop new methods for converting agricultural and food processing residue and wastes into bio-based energy and industrial products.
Members of the new Northwest Bioproducts Research Institute include the Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington; the DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Idaho. Each institution will bring its own unique capabilities, staff and facilities to the institute.
"The institute will make the Northwest a leader in bio-based technology but the technology created and demonstrated in this institute will go beyond regional interest," said PNNL director Lura Powell. "It will contribute to the nation's desire to increase markets for agriculture and help reduce its dependence on imported petroleum."
Under terms of the agreement, signed last week, the participating universities and federal research laboratories will collaborate to form a multi-disciplinary research and development program. They will examine and develop methods for converting agricultural