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NUCLEAR
Group: Iran's Nuke Program Growing
N. Korea Threatens to Break Nuclear Deal
MILITARY
Security Fears Grow in Kandahar
Ex-Governor of East Timor Gets 3 Years in Army Killings
Israel Ponders Smallpox Inoculations
European Union Urges Aspirants to Rebuff U.S. on World Court
Iranian President Says U.S. Leaders 'Misused' Sept. 11
Rumsfeld Denounces Iraq for Rejecting Further Arms Inspections
Iraqi germ plant active
Opposition opens its land for U.S. attack
Iraq Said to Move Materials at Site
Militants Reject Policy on Attacks in Israel
Palestinian Leader Indicted on Terror Charges
Pakistan President Promises Security
Musharraf Vows to Crush Militancy and Dismisses Kashmir Vote
Some question motives behind leaks about Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS
Legal 'gladiator' wants Justice swift and sure
U-Md. Says Grants Exceeded Requests Anti-Crime Agency Urged Extra Hires
Butting in
Judge Skewers U.S. Curbs on Detainee
ABA Opposes Secret Custody In 9/11 Probe
A Public Coup for the Secret Service
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Dirty Bomb Suspect Said 'Small Fish'
ENERGY AND OTHER
G.M. Version of Fuel-Cell Car
Australia sets sights on first Solar Tower
Report Voices Suspicions on Energy Crisis
E.P.A. May Fine 2 Companies Over Tests of Engineered Corn
Lawyers' lobby opposes ban on medical-cloning research
ACTIVISTS
Reparations backers to rally
British Band Joins Campaign Against Iraq Attack
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
Group: Iran's Nuke Program Growing
August 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Members of an Iranian rebel group alleged Wednesday that Iran's government is building at least two secret sites to support its nuclear weapons program.
Citing sources inside the Iranian government, officials with the National Council of Resistance of Iran said the sites are a nuclear fuel production plant and research lab at Natanz and a heavy water production plant at Arak. Both sites are in central Iran south of the capital of Tehran.
``These two nuclear sites have been kept secret until now,'' said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the representative of the organization in the United States, at a press conference.
Both sites are close to completion, Jafarzadeh said. Heavy water from at the Arak plant could be used to support reactors capable of producing material for nuclear weapons, he said.
U.S. officials familiar with the rebels' charges declined to comment on the specifics of their claims. However, the officials acknowledged that Iran is moving forward with its clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Earlier this year, CIA Director George J. Tenet said U.S. intelligence is worried countries like Iran may make ``sudden leaps'' in their nuclear programs.
``Tehran may be able to indigenously produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by late this decade,'' Tenet told a congressional committee in March.
Much of the public attention given to Iran's nuclear effort focuses on a power reactor at Bushehr, which is being built with Russian assistance. But the design of the reactor, as well as international agreements for oversight of its operation, are expected to prevent it from being used to make material that can be used in nuclear weapons.
Instead, the primary concern about the reactor is that it will lead to more expertise in nuclear matters in Iran, benefiting its weapons program, U.S. officials say.
Jafarzadeh's group, based in Paris, is a government-in-exile that advocates violent overthrow of the religious government that rules Iran. Officials say they want to install a democratic government in Iran that protects human rights.
The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, but this didn't prevent it from holding a press conference in a posh Washington hotel two blocks from the White House on Wednesday.
The State Department accuses the group of being the same as the ``People's Mujahideen'' or Mujahedin-e Khalq, which it alleges has Marxist sympathies and killed several Americans in Iran in the 1970s.
The groups deny any communist leanings, and some experts attribute the killings to a splinter faction that the main organization did not control. National Council officials also say the Mujahedin-e-Khalq is not the same organization but a member of its coalition of groups.
A significant number within the U.S. Congress have supported removing the group's terrorist designation because it opposes the Iranian government. Jafarzadeh said the U.S. government first put his group on the list in 1997 to appease moderate elements within the Iranian government.
It also receives support from the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, an enemy of the government of Iran, according to the State Department, which also says both Iraq and Iran are supporters of terrorism.
``It's a terrorist organization. It's listed as such, designated as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law,'' State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said Wednesday. He referred questions about the group's U.S. operations to the Justice Department, which had no immediate comment on Wednesday.
-------- korea
N. Korea Threatens to Break Nuclear Deal
U.S. Blamed for Reactor Project Delay; Talks With South Proceed on Other Issues
By Paul Shin
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 14, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14652-2002Aug13.html
SEOUL, Aug. 13 -- The two Koreas held productive talks on key projects today, but North Korea threatened to withdraw from an agreement with the United States to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for two reactors.
Pyongyang threatened to pull out of the 1994 accord because it said the delay in building the two promised light-water reactors was hurting its economy.
A U.S.-led international consortium hoped to build the first reactor by 2003, but political tensions and funding problems have delayed the $4.6 billion project by several years.
To preserve the agreement, the United States must compensate North Korea for the "grave difficulties in [the North's] economy" stemming from a power shortage caused by the delay, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said today.
U.S. officials suspect that North Korea might have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before it froze its program. North Korea denies doing so.
Representatives from both Koreas said productive talks were held today on projects such as the reunion of family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. As they met, dozens of protesters burned a North Korean flag near the site of the talks.
"It's going well," said Kim Ryong Song, the chief North Korean delegate, after a morning meeting that lasted an hour and 20 minutes. It was unclear whether he knew about the demonstration.
Rhee Bong Jo, a spokesman for the South Korean delegation, said the meeting took place "in a good atmosphere as both sides engaged in substantive discussions, rather than arguments."
Rhee said the two sides had working contacts in the afternoon to "narrow differences" while their chief delegates visited a park outside Seoul with replicas of traditional farmhouses.
Outside the compound of the hotel where negotiators met, about 100 Korean War veterans and supporters burned a large North Korean flag. Critics argue that the South Korean government has been too generous in seeking to engage the North.
The talks, which opened Monday after a nine-month hiatus, marked a resumption of a reconciliation process that thrived after a historic summit in 2000 but stalled as U.S.-North Korea tensions rose last year.
South Korean officials said the agenda included sports exchanges, the completion of a cross-border railway and another round of reunions for separated family members.
Kim Hong Je, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, said that contacts today would focus on setting details for these and other projects previously agreed upon.
The two sides were to issue a joint statement outlining their discussions before concluding the three-day talks on Wednesday, he said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Security Fears Grow in Kandahar
August 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Security-Fears.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Rockets, land mines and gunfire knock out the city's only power line -- leaving nearly a half million people without electricity for days. A grenade is lobbed into a U.N. agency compound by two men on a motorcycle.
The recent attacks have caused no casualties but are chipping away at the veneer of relative calm and stability in Afghanistan's second largest city and former Taliban stronghold.
``I can say these are a kind of terrorist act,'' said Kandahar Police Chief Gen. Mohammed Akram. ``They create problems for our government but it's the people who suffer. These terrorists are not supported by the normal people, so in the near future, they will die out.''
Akram said he believes either Taliban fighters in hiding or the fundamentalist Muslim group Hezb-e-Islami, led by former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, may have been responsible for the attacks. However, no arrests have been made.
At the heart of the Pashtun-dominated south, Kandahar has remained largely free of the factional fighting between ethnic groups which has erupted from time to time in the north and east of Afghanistan, although traditional rivalries between local warlords have resulted in violence.
However, the attacks, most of which have occurred in the past few weeks, underscore emerging security concerns in southern Kandahar, where the U.S. military maintains one of its two major garrisons in Afghanistan.
Two weeks ago, a grenade was tossed into the compound of the U.N's Food and Agriculture Organization, shattering all the windows. No one was injured. The staff was meeting in a back room at the time. The assailants escaped after crashing their motorcycle into a truck.
As a precaution, police Chief Akram said, he has bolstered day and night patrols around the offices and homes of foreign workers.
Still, the attacks have shaken up international aid agencies working in town.
``I think we are more alert because of it,'' said Wil Newman of the British aid agency Oxfam. Her offices have been reinforced with a nearly six-foot-high wall of sandbags.
Targeting foreign aid groups in an attempt to destabilize a country that depends on international assistance is ``not a new tactic here,'' said Robert Goodwin, director of programs and operations for Mercy Corps.
His group, one of the largest working in southern Afghanistan and one of the first to arrive 15 years ago, has perhaps the tightest security of any non-governmental organization with 24-hour armed guards and its own security officer.
``When you're working in a conflict zone, you're always in danger of becoming a target,'' Goodwin said, adding that a small rocket had landed 50 to 100 yards from the agency's perimeter walls more than a month ago.
The uneasiness has spread to the local community as well. In the past few months, power lines, fed by Kajaki Dam in neighboring Helmand Province, have gone down four times -- deliberately attacked in at least two of those instances.
Three months ago, authorities found small rockets fired into an electrical substation about 60 miles from the city. Land mines were discovered nearby.
``Some notes were sent threatening us not to repair the lines or else,'' said Fazal Ahmed, director of Kandahar province's electric energy department, who attributes the attacks to ``political problems.''
Meanwhile, unknown assailants fired assault rifles at power lines several times over the past three weeks, cutting electricity for several days. The outages have forced residents in the dusty, scorching city to retreat to the shade to escape temperatures between 115 to 118 degrees. Though air conditioning is not widespread, many residents have fans.
The city of Kandahar, with more than 450,000 people, now must rely on only one transmission line and one generating station, Ahmed said. A few lucky residents have small generators but even those were being overtaxed by the heat.
``We are very vulnerable. For everything -- cooking, factories, water supply -- electrical energy is used,'' he said. ``If you want to make the city suffer, it's very easy.''
-------- asia
Ex-Governor of East Timor Gets 3 Years in Army Killings
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/14CND-INDO.html
NUNUKAN, Indonesia, Aug. 14 - An Indonesian court found the former governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares, guilty today of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to three years in jail for failing to stop the rampage by an army-backed militia after the territory voted for independence in 1999.
The conviction in the Jakarta court was the first verdict in a series of human rights trials being conducted by the Indonesian government in connection with East Timor.
It carried special weight because the Bush administration has been pressing behind the scenes for convictions that would hold the military accountable for the bloodbath in what was then a territory. More than 1,000 civilians are estimated to have died during the killing spree after the results of a United Nations-sponsored referendum went against the wishes of the Indonesian military.
Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell announced a limited renewal of military relations with Indonesia earlier this month. He said more robust aid would depend on reform in the military, a strong hint that the human rights trials needed to show results that would satisfy Washington.
Today's verdict, uncertain until the judge pronounced it after a more than six-hour summation, did not in itself meet expectations in Washington. But the Bush administration said it welcomed the outcome as a start toward accountability for what happened in East Timor. The verdicts in two more cases, due to be announced on Thursday, will reveal a more telling pattern of whether the Indonesian government was serious, American officials said.
But even as Washington was looking for convictions, American officials have conceded that the conduct of the trials has far from met standards of international law. The prosecution's case against Mr. Soares was so weak, for example, that Western diplomats said it would have beeen hard to bring a conviction against him in a Western court. One diplomat called the prosecution's work shoddy.
The prosecution requested a sentence of 12 years for Mr. Soares; the maximum penalty was the death sentence.
After the verdict, the governor described himself as a victim and a scapegoat. Nattily dressed in a dark suit, he was given moral support in the court today by a group of supporters, including the head of one of the militia groups, As a civilian governor, he said, he did not have the means to stop the militia.
In the lengthy summation from the bench, the judge appeared to absolve Mr. Soares of much of the responsibility, instead blaming the United Nations Mission in East Timor for hiring pro-independence staff and election monitors. He said the United Nations officials lacked the required neutrality. Moreover, he said, the police in East Timor were given responsibility for the security of East Timor leading up to the referendum.
But in the end, the judge said that the governor had failed to stop the violence in several places. "The fact there were attacks in several towns proves the defendant could not manage his subordinates effectively," the judge said.
A human rights specialist, Sidney Jones, the director of the International Crisis Group in Indonesia, said that "virtually no evidence was presented that suggested the governor was at fault." Indeed, six of the witnesses for the prosecution are also on trial for crimes against humanity in East Timor, she said.
A member of the National Commission on Human Rights in Indonesia, Albert Hasibuan, called the sentence too light.
The court is scheduled to hand down verdicts on two other defendants in the trial, Timbul Silaen, former head of the police in East Timor, and Mayor Herman Soebiono. In all, 18 army officers and civilians have been put on trial, but most senior generals from the East Timor period remain untouched.
East Timor became an independent nation in May.
In a somewhat bizarre note to today's proceedings, the new president of East Timor, José Alexandre Gusmão, who struggled for more than 20 years against the Indonesians, wrote a note to the judge saying that Mr. Soares should not be blamed for what happened after the referendum vote.
-------- biological weapons
Israel Ponders Smallpox Inoculations
August 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Iraq.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's Health Ministry recommends inoculating emergency and health workers against smallpox, a spokesman said Wednesday, amid concerns Israel could be drawn into a possible U.S.-Iraq war.
Israel Radio said up to 150,000 people could be inoculated.
In another protective step, pills offering a limited shield against radiation fallout will be issued to all Israelis. That move is being taken because of the possibility of a nuclear accident, not a threat from Iraq, said Amos Yaron, director general of the Defense Ministry.
Yaron told Israel Radio that though Israel had no concrete information Iraq would attack with smallpox or another biological weapon, ``we need to have the immunizations ready and those who first have to treat the population have to be immunized.''
The Health Ministry smallpox immunization recommendation has been sent to the Cabinet, which will discuss it next week, said ministry spokesman Iddo Hadari. He said no details on the recommendation would be released until a Cabinet decision was made.
Hadari added a few hundred Health Ministry workers were already being inoculated.
Arieh Eldad, the head of a team advising the Health Ministry on epidemiological control, told Israel Army Radio on Wednesday that he resigned after the ministry rejected his team's recommendation that the entire population by inoculated against smallpox.
Health Ministry officials were quoted as telling the daily Haaretz that Eldad's opinion was a minority one.
Yaron said the radiation pills would ``in the near future'' be included in the protection kits issued to Israelis since the 1991 Gulf War. But Yaron said the threat was a nuclear accident, not Iraq.
Potassium iodide pills, the only medication for internal radiation exposure, can prevent thyroid cancer by shielding the thyroid from radioactive iodine. It blocks no other type of radiation, and protects no other body part.
In the United States since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been offering states enough potassium iodide to treat every resident within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant, because radioactive iodine is likely to be released during an attack on a reactor or a serious reactor accident.
Terrorists could build a ``dirty bomb'' out of radioactive iodine, but they also could use other radioactive substances against which potassium iodide would be no help.
The United States has said it wants to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but has not confirmed it will go to war to do so. In the event of a U.S. attack on Iraq, it is widely believed Iraq would attack Israel.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles -- all armed with conventional warheads -- at Israel in an attempt to rally Arab support. Most of the missiles struck the area around Tel Aviv.
Last week, the Israeli military confirmed it was deploying a second battery of Arrow anti-missile missiles in the center of the country. The military made no reference to Iraq, saying only the Arrow battery is being deployed as part of a multiyear test program.
-------- europe
European Union Urges Aspirants to Rebuff U.S. on World Court
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/europe/14COUR.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - The European Union this week warned the 13 nations hoping to join the organization that they should resist signing any agreement, as requested by Washington, that would protect Americans from the reach of the new International Criminal Court.
That brought strong reactions from Washington today; a senior State Department official accused the European Union of using undue pressure to prevent countries from signing.
"We're not applying any pressure on countries to sign these agreements, and we don't think it is appropriate for the European Union to prevent other countries from signing them," John R. Bolton, under secretary for arms control and international security, said in an interview.
A senior European Union official, Romano Prodi, advised the aspirants for membership - including Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Cyprus - to wait until the union reached a common policy on the issue, a European Union spokesman said today. The first meetings to discuss the American request for bilateral side agreements will be held later this month and in early September, but indications from Europe do not present an optimistic picture for Washington.
The Bush administration vigorously opposes cooperation with the court, fearing Americans will be unfairly singled out. Under an agreement reached with the United Nations in the spring, personnel of United Nations missions, including American peacekeepers, are exempted from court jurisdiction for a year. The administration is campaigning to persuade most countries to sign agreements not to extradite Americans to the court.
So far only Israel and Romania have signed. Today Switzerland said it would not sign, the first nation to formally reject an agreement. The Swiss foreign minister, Joseph Deiss, said his country refused to sign out of fear that "too extensive a use of exceptions may weaken the ability of the court to function effectively."
European Union nations and other close allies have said they refuse to be pushed into an immediate agreement. "We're not raising the profile on this issue; it is the United States," a European Union spokesman said here today, confirming that potential members had been approached. "We must study the legal implications."
The European warning to the candidate states was first reported today in The Washington Times.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appealed today to foreign governments to agree to those waivers and played down complaints from countries about the United States warning that it would withhold military aid to nations that refused. "We are not bludgeoning or threatening any of our friends," he said.
International human rights experts said the Europeans were stalling. "This is a smart move by the E.U. because there is greater safety in numbers should they decide not to accede to American wishes," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
To Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale and an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, this diplomatic sparring has come at an inopportune time in the effort against terrorism. "The first priority should be maintaining a coalition," he said. "Instead, the administration is creating a huge political issue with our closest political allies over a small legal problem."
A senior administration official said he believed that the European allies would eventually give Americans the waivers they request. "The reaction in Congress if they don't agree will not be good," he said.
-------- iran
Iranian President Says U.S. Leaders 'Misused' Sept. 11
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/middleeast/14AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 13 - President Mohammad Khatami of Iran struck out at President Bush and other senior American officials at a news conference here today, saying they had "misused" the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States "to create an atmosphere of violence and war" across the world that could sow the seeds for still more destruction.
Mr. Khatami's visit to Afghanistan, Iran's eastern neighbor, was the first in 40 years by an Iranian head of state. He warned that American leaders, in widening their campaign against terrorism, could unleash a chain reaction that would engulf countries other than the intended targets in a new round of violence. He implied, without saying so explicitly, that the United States itself could be among the victims.
"The events of Sept. 11 were horrific, but the American leaders misused them, too," Mr. Khatami told reporters gathered in the old royal palace here in the Afghan capital after talks with President Hamid Karzai. The attackers "did it because they wanted to create an atmosphere of violence and war in the world, but we know with certainty that in today's world all our fates are linked."
"Those who plan to launch this war shouldn't think that the effects will be felt only where they attack," he continued. "To believe that you can make people submit by force is wrong. We know that this approach only brings anger and destruction."
Although Mr. Khatami mentioned no country as a possible target of an American attack, he appeared to be referring to Mr. Bush's vow to overthrow President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Although Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980's that cost the two nations at least a million casualties, Iran opposes an American war in Iraq.
The Iranian leader's remarks had the effect of turning a visit intended to focus on Iran's backing for Mr. Karzai's new government into a forum for airing Iran's bitter differences with the the United States, the Karzai government's indispensable ally. Mr. Karzai, seated beside Mr. Khatami at the news conference, remained studiously neutral, saying Afghanistan sought good relations with both Iran and the United States.
American relations with Iran had seemed to be thawing slightly over the last several years with the hope that the moderate Mr. Khatami would prevail over old guard conservatives. But Mr. Bush's inclusion of Iran in an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address in January has seemed to buoy the conservatives, and has brought bitter responses from Mr. Khatami as well.
With his visit today, Mr. Khatami appeared eager, though, to throw Iran's weight behind the Karzai government, and to counter allegations by American officials that Iran has been compounding Afghanistan's instability with narrowly targeted policies aimed at promoting Iran's regional interests.
In particular, officials in Washington have suggested that Iran has sought to carve out an area of influence on Afghanistan's western border by favoring a western warlord, Ismail Khan, over the Kabul government, and by giving sanctuary to members of Al Qaeda who fled to Iran after the collapse of the Taliban.
Mr. Khatami today cited Iran's recent action in handing over 16 Qaeda suspects to Saudi Arabia. Far from giving sanctuary to Qaeda fugitives, he said, Iran had followed a consistent policy of denying the use of its territory to terrorist groups of all kinds.
"We have huge borders, but if we have any suspicions that people crossing them might belong to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, we immediately send them to their countries of origin," he said.
But in Washington today, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about Mr. Khatami's visit, said: "They are permitting Al Qaeda to be present in their country today, and it may very well be that they, for whatever reason, have turned over some people to other countries. But they've not turned any to us."
The political crosscurrents in Kabul today were particularly striking for the fact that American Special Forces soldiers cradling automatic rifles, with American flags stitched to their baseball caps and shirt-sleeves, controlled security throughout a day of engagements for Mr. Khatami.
When he berated the United States in what was once the Afghan king's audience chamber, Mr. Khatami was only about 20 feet away from a stone-faced American bodyguard, with at least a dozen more outside. But the Americans appeared to be trying to remain just far enough away to deny news photographers a shot of Iran's leader under the protection of heavily armed Americans.
To the chagrin of many Afghans who considered the move an affront to national dignity, the American bodyguards assumed responsibility for Mr. Karzai's protection last month after the assassination of one of his closest political allies, Hajji Abdul Qadir. Almost six weeks later, Afghan investigators say they still have no clues as to the identity or motive of the two gunmen.
Afghans have two main theories - that Mr. Qadir was a victim of local feuds in Jalalabad, his eastern political base, where competing warlords have become entangled in rivalries over the area's rich traffic in opium and heroin; or that he was the target of a conspiracy hatched within the Karzai government itself. Deep divisions between Tajiks and Pashtuns, the country's two main ethnic groups, have seriously undermined the new government.
By taking over Mr. Karzai's security, the United States showed how crucial it considers his survival is to hopes that the government will strengthen its shaky credibility and extend its authority into hinterland areas controlled by recalcitrant warlords. As a Pashtun, like Mr. Qadir, Mr. Karzai is outweighed politically in the government by Tajiks. They became America's main allies in the fight against the Taliban after Sept. 11.
Mr. Karzai saw to it today that Mr. Khan, who controls the region around the city of Herat, was a prominent member of his entourage for the talks, a move intended to signal a new loyalty by Mr. Kahn to the Kabul government. Mr. Khatami referred repeatedly at the news conference to Iran's firm backing for "the central government" and noted that a $550 million Iranian aid package would be managed through the Kabul government - and not, as some in the Karzai government had feared, as a local arrangement with Mr. Khan.
Western diplomats monitoring the visit said Iran's commitment to back the Karzai government, together with Pakistan's similar pledge, was a major plus for the new administration as it wrestles with internal challenges to its authority. With support from these countries that flank Afghanistan to the east and west, as well as from the former Soviet Central Asian republics to the north, the diplomats said, the Kabul government has been relieved, at least for now, of the strains that regional power politics placed on past Afghan governments, including the Taliban.
Despite his warnings to the United States, Mr. Khatami seemed eager to emphasize that Iran and the United States had found a common interest in Afghanistan, both in the overthrow of the Taliban and in the effort to help the new government onto its feet. The Taliban and Al Qaeda, he said, had posed major problems for Iran, not least in their "completely different" views of Islam.
After Sept. 11, he said, Iran had offered its full support to the American-led military campaign, including some steps known only to Iranian and American officials that had made the end of Taliban rule "much easier" than it might otherwise have been.
But the Iranian leader's remarks were spiked throughout with a strong sense of resentment against the Bush administration. He made a pointed reference to conciliatory steps by President Clinton's administration, which American officials said at the time were aimed at strengthening Mr. Khatami's hand in the internal power struggle.
This "way of dealing with matters was more logical, and closer to the world's interest," he said, than the hostility toward Iran that emerged as Washington defined its policy after Sept. 11.
Under the Bush administration, Mr. Khatami said, an "arrogance" about American power had taken over that clouded Washington's judgment about its own interests. But Iran remained hopeful, he said, that "America will put aside this arrogance, and see the realities as they are."
"We still hope to see changes in the policies of the United States," he added, "that will serve the interests of its own people, and of the world."
-------- iraq
Rumsfeld Denounces Iraq for Rejecting Further Arms Inspections
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/middleeast/14MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today dismissed an official Iraqi statement that weapons inspectors had completed their work, and said Baghdad's comments were "a broken record" of repeated acceptances followed by repeated rejections of United Nations monitors.
"They agreed to have inspectors," Mr. Rumseld said. "They threw the inspectors out. The inspectors are still out, now for a period of years. And they're still not allowed back in. What else can one say? They're in violation of the U.N. resolutions."
The Iraqi information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahaf, accused President Bush on Monday of lying about the country's weapons programs to stoke support for war against President Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Sahaf indicated that international arms inspectors would not be allowed to return. "They claim something remains," he said. "This talk can be responded to and disproved. Inspections have finished in Iraq."
At a Pentagon news briefing, Mr. Rumsfeld repeated his doubts that Mr. Hussein would ever allow an inspection program so thorough that it would lead to the destruction of all of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
"It is a big country," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "They've had years to do what they want to do. They have done a great deal of underground tunneling. They have things that are mobile. It makes it very difficult for inspectors under the best of circumstances to find things."
Iraqi leaders, he said, "haven't agreed to any inspectors on any basis, let alone on a basis that would be sufficiently intrusive that reasonable people could expect to learn what they might need to learn."
The Pentagon also said today that it planned to hire two transport ships to haul weapons to the region, although officials said the cargo was not part of a shadow deployment ahead of an offensive to topple President Hussein.
Pentagon officials said one shipment of military vehicles was for a planned exercise in the area and another was a routine rotation of hardware positioned in allied Persian Gulf states after the 1991 war with Iraq.
Even so, military officials said the process of hiring private sealift companies as contractors was not being conducted on the usual public Web sites, but via e-mail with a large number of cargo companies.
Those officials said it would be incorrect to connect the shipments to any planning for war with Iraq. But they said the unusual method of requesting bids from contractors reflected heightened security concerns since the Sept. 11 attacks and because of public debate about whether to move against Mr. Hussein.
Officials said one ship would haul Humvees and infantry fighting vehicles to the region to join other military equipment already stored there, and another ship would carry similar vehicles, as well as helicopters and ammunition, for a future military exercise.
The Pentagon declined to identify either destination.
--------
Iraqi germ plant active
August 14, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020814-70344777.htm
U.S. intelligence agencies spotted activity at an Iraqi factory last week that is increasing fears that Saddam Hussein is advancing his germ-weapons program, The Washington Times has learned.
A convoy of about 60 trucks was photographed by a U.S. spy satellite at a known biological weapons facility near Taji last week, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The trucks were seen at a site identified as a biological weapons facility once called the Taji Single Cell Protein Plant, located about six miles northwest of Baghdad. The plant, which was converted by the Iraqis into a biological-weapons production facility, was bombed during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
"They're moving stuff in or out," said an official familiar with the report. Intelligence information about Iraq's weapons program is limited, the official said.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
U.S. intelligence agencies also warned Bush administration policy-makers in an intelligence report last week that Saddam is prepared to use weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear - against U.S. and coalition military forces in the event of an attack on Iraq and an incursion into Baghdad, the capital.
Senior Bush administration officials have said Iraq's efforts to build the weapons pose a threat to the United States. President Bush said last week that Iraq is "an enemy until proven otherwise."
Iraq is seeking unconventional weapons, and "we owe it to our children and our children's children to free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom," Mr. Bush said.
This assessment was included in classified reports last week.
The Bush administration has said it will not stand by and allow Iraq to develop such weapons.
The latest intelligence report comes amid other recent reports indicating that Iraq is working on biological weapons, including mobile biological-weapons vans.
Other reports indicate that Baghdad is developing rail cars that could be used to develop or transport biological weapons agents, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
After the Gulf war, the Taji plant was found to have produced hundreds of liters of Botulinum toxin during the late 1980s. The facility had a spore drier capable of producing up to a kilogram of weaponized dried spores a day.
It also was suspected of producing anthrax spores.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disclosed last month that Iraq has deployed mobile laboratories that could be used to make biological weapons.
"They're buying dual-use capability," Mr. Rumsfeld said during a visit to a military base in Suffolk, Va. "A biological laboratory can be on wheels in a trailer and make a lot of bad stuff, and it's movable, and it looks like most any other trailer."
Asked later whether Iraq is using mobile biological weapons laboratories in trailers, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I think that that's a reasonable conclusion."
Taji is the location of at least one unit of Iraq's Republican Guard tank divisions, elite troops that are viewed as a pillar of Saddam's authoritarian regime.
Taji also was the site where U.N. weapons inspectors uncovered evidence that Iraq had filled Scud-missile warheads with deadly VX nerve agent. It is so powerful that a small amount can kill a person on contact.
The Taji area also includes a major missile development and production facility. The missile factories there produced frames and engines.
Weapons inspectors from the United Nations destroyed many long-range missiles at Taji during the 1990s, before all inspection teams were forced out in 1998, after U.S. bombing raids during Operation Desert Fox. Taji also is associated with Iraq's covert nuclear-weapons program. It was the planned location for a centrifuge uranium-enrichment program.
The program was believed to have been halted after 1991, but intelligence reports indicate that Iraq is continuing to seek equipment for centrifuge enrichment, which produces the fuel for nuclear weapons.
Procurement agents for the Iraqi government were identified attempting to purchase special stainless steel tubing used in centrifuges, intelligence officials said last month.
The truck activity near Taji followed a news report earlier this month that U.S. intelligence was looking for a suspected Iraqi biological weapons laboratory north of Baghdad.
The laboratory reportedly is known as Tahhaddy, or "Challenge," and is said to have 85 employees. The plant may be producing a weaponized version of the deadly Ebola virus, an extremely lethal hemorrhagic disease, according to U.S. government officials quoted by The Washington Post.
Kelly Motz, a specialist on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, said it would be unusual to spot a column of trucks involved in biological-arms programs. "Most of what Iraq is doing in the biological-weapons area is either underground or in small mobile vehicles," she said. "They could be moving equipment into a site that was renovated."
Iraq is a self-sufficient producer of a variety of deadly germ weapons, Miss Motz noted, that include aflatoxin, anthrax, botulinum and other agents. It also has worked on deadly viruses, possibly a virus similar to smallpox. A CIA report made public in January stated that Iraq was converting L-29 trainer aircraft into pilotless vehicles "for delivery of chemical or, more likely, biological warfare agents."
"With the absence of a monitoring regime and Iraq's growing industrial self-sufficiency, we remain concerned that Iraq may again be producing biological warfare agents," the report said.
--------
Opposition opens its land for U.S. attack
August 14, 2002
By Eli J. Lake
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020814-65071687.htm
Iraqi opposition leaders in Washington this week offered their territory for an attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and said they did not believe Iran would interfere in the event of such an attack.
Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said in an interview there were 100,000 troops in the Kurdish-controlled north of Iraq willing to fight Saddam with U.S. assistance. This figure also includes forces from the Kurdistan Democratic Party which controls the portion of the north bordering Turkey.
"If America wants to send a mission or representatives to our territory, they are welcome," he said. This message is far cry from concerns expressed by Kurdish leaders in recent months that a U.S. attack may bring retribution from Iraqi forces.
Mr. Talibani, in Washington for consultations with the Bush administration, also predicted that Iran "will not interfere" with any military operation aimed at Baghdad.
"Iran has many friends inside the Iraqi opposition and it wants to maintain influence inside any new regime," he said.
Ahmad Chalabi, co-founder of the U.S.-supported umbrella group of Iraqi rebels known as the Iraqi National Congress, was equally confident.
"The Iranian government will not stand in the way of the United States' efforts to help the Iraqi opposition," said Mr. Chalabi, who has visited Iran twice in the last two months.
Iran supports two of the six Iraqi rebel groups meeting in Washington this week.
Not only does Iran export gasoline and in the past small arms to Mr. Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, but it provides funding, safe harbor and material support for the largest Shi'ite Iraqi opposition group, known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
Mr. Talabani met in March with top Iranian officials, including the influential former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In those meetings, Mr. Talabani said, Iran assured him that the 375-mile border between his territory and Iran would remain open.
These assurances came after President Bush's State of the Union address in which he referred to Iran as a member of the "axis of evil."
Since that speech, U.S. support for dissidents inside Iran has become more pronounced, culminating on July 11 in a short statement from the president expressing American solidarity with anti-government protesters demonstrating in Tabriz and Isfahan earlier that week.
In the last two months Mr. Chalabi met with SCIRI political leader Ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al Hakim. While Mr. Hakim did not travel to Washington, he sent his brother, Said Abdelaziz al Hakim, and his political adviser, Ibrahaim Hamoudi.
SCIRI's participation in meetings Friday, Saturday and Monday with senior Bush administration officials represented the first time since 1993 that the SCIRI leadership from Tehran met with an American administration.
Ambassador Martin Indyk, the former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs under President Clinton, said last week that SCIRI "is based in Iran and has been in the past very reluctant to do anything their Iranian hosts objected to."
Mr. Hamoudi, in an interview Monday, said Iran's national security establishment was divided on U.S. plans to do battle with Saddam Hussein.
"One opinion says that the removal of Saddam would only be good for the United States because the next step will be Iran. But the general position for Iran is not to stand against any help the United States will give to the opposition."
--------
Iraq Said to Move Materials at Site
August 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. intelligence agencies detected signs that Iraq may be moving material or equipment out of a suspected biological weapons facility near Baghdad, officials said Wednesday.
Some intelligence analysts believe the movements indicate an effort by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disperse the items in anticipation of possible American military strikes, the officials said.
The movements were reported first in the Wednesday editions of the Washington Times.
U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said spy satellites spotted trucks at the Taji complex, which includes the suspected biological weapons facility as well as a missile production plant.
The purpose of the truck activity was not entirely clear, the officials said, but it appeared they were moving equipment or materials out of, rather than into, the facility, which is about six miles northwest of Baghdad. The officials cautioned that the intelligence is subject to different interpretations.
Other officials said the presence of trucks at a single weapons site probably means little, and said they have not observed any significant increase in activity at other suspected weapons of mass destruction sites around Iraq.
United Nations weapons inspectors determined several years ago that Iraq had produced botulinum toxin, which causes botulism, at that facility. Iraq admitted to the United Nations that it had made 400 liters of botulinum toxin there, but it now insists it has no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
U.N. inspectors also found 6,000 empty canisters at Taji that were designed to be filled with chemical weapons for use on 122mm rockets. U.N. inspections ended in 1998; in December of that year, U.S. and British air strikes targeted Taji and other military facilities in and around Baghdad.
Taji also was struck by U.S. bombs during the 1991 Gulf War.
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said U.S. intelligence experts believe Iraq rebuilt the missile production facility at Taji after the 1998 attacks.
In stating that Iraq poses a threat to the United States and its allies, President Bush has cited Saddam's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in defiance of its disarmament pledge after the Gulf War. Bush has vowed to achieve ``regime change'' in Iraq, although he says he has not approved a war plan.
Two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters it was ``safe to say'' that Iraq has developed mobile biological weapons laboratories.
``They move around a lot of things to avoid detection or, if not detection, at least to avoid having them attacked,'' he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Militants Reject Policy on Attacks in Israel
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/middleeast/14MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 13 - Islamic militants today rejected an effort by other Palestinian factions to declare a unified policy of ending suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians within Israel.
At the same time, Israel announced plans to try a popular grass-roots Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, for murder.
The opposition from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad movement appeared to torpedo an effort, largely pressed by Yasir Arafat, to issue a formal declaration that was being hammered out in secret meetings in Gaza in recent days. Its language would have suggested that attacks be limited to Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Hamas will not accept any document that does not give it the right of resistance on all Palestinian lands," said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in Gaza. Mr. Abu Shanab, who had taken part in the secret meetings, told Israeli radio that his group would continue to strike inside the 1948 borders of Israel.
Hamas also objected to limiting Palestinian claims to lands lost by Arabs in the 1967 war and to any proposal of negotiations with Israel.
Similarly, an Islamic Jihad official, Muhammad al-Hindi, indicated that his group intended to continue attacks inside Israel, saying, "There is no change in our position in regard to the resistance."
But a leader of the Tanzim, the grass-roots organization of Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction on the West Bank, said it had decided to halt all attacks inside Israel. He said he expected Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades to comply, despite a leaflet that the group, Tanzim's military offshoot, issued on Monday night to the contrary. "It is not part of Fatah's strategy," the official, Hussein al-Sheikh, said, "to harm innocent people and carry out attacks inside Israel. Our strategy is to set up a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
Mr. Sheikh was a crucial leader in an initiative late last month in which grass-roots Fatah leaders from the West Bank, assisted by European diplomats, met with Hamas officials in Gaza to try to work out an agreement for a unilateral cease-fire declaration. Learning of the initiative, senior Palestinian Authority figures from Mr. Arafat's circle tried a parallel initiative, under the direction of Muhammad Dahlan, the former security chief of Gaza.
The Palestinians halted the discussions after July 23, when the Israeli Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb in a Gaza City neighborhood, killing a Hamas military chief as well as 15 other people, including 9 children.
The efforts to curb some attacks on Israel reflect a debate among Palestinian activists over whether the suicide bomb attacks on civilians outside the West Bank and Gaza are helping or hurting their cause.
The Israeli Army's intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, told a Parliament committee today that Tanzim members were debating whether to continue the suicide bombings. But he said the Aksa Martyrs Brigades were siding with Hamas.
Israel announced plans to bring a formal indictment on Wednesday against Mr. Barghouti, the leader of the Tanzim on the West Bank and a member of the Palestinian legislature who is a potential successor to Mr. Arafat. Mr. Barghouti, 42, is perhaps the most prominent of a generation of younger Palestinians who are challenging Mr. Arafat and those in his circle who returned from exile in Tunis with the 1993 Oslo accords.
A Justice Ministry statement said the charges against him would include murder, and being "a central participant in decision-making which in the past two years perpetrated dozens of attacks in which dozens of Israeli citizens lost their lives and many hundreds were wounded."
The statement said that evidence showed Mr. Barghouti had "managed, financed and activated" attacks, "providing a clear picture of a murder chieftain whose hands are in dozens of terror acts."
By trying Mr. Barghouti in a civilian court rather than a military court, the Israelis appear to be seeking a public forum to make their case that the top official Palestinian leadership is conspiring in terrorism.
Palestinians said they, too, were preparing to use the trial as a forum.
"This is a golden opportunity," said one of Mr. Barghouti's lawyers, Khader Shkirat, "to try the occupation for all the crimes committed against the Palestinian people and to present the resistance movement as a just movement before the Israeli public and the international community."
From his jail cell, Mr. Barghouti issued an endorsement of the cease-fire initiative started by Mr. Sheikh and other street leaders.
Meanwhile the Israeli Supreme Court granted an appeal that stopped the army from deporting three Palestinian relatives of suspected suicide bomber accomplices. The army now has 15 days to provide evidence that they were complicit in the attacks.
The army also destroyed two homes of families of suspected suicide bombers overnight, raising the number of such demolitions to 19.
Another victim of the Palestinian bomb in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria of Hebrew University, Revital Barashi, 30, died from her wounds today, bringing the death toll in that attack to nine, five of them Americans.
--------
Palestinian Leader Indicted on Terror Charges
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/14CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 14 - Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian leader to be brought before a civil Israeli court, made clear at his indictment on terrorism charges today that he intends to turn his public trial into a political duel with Israel.
Waving his handcuffed hands in his first appearance since his capture on April 15, Mr. Barghouti shouted in Hebrew - a language he learned during previous Israeli incarcerations in Israeli prisons - "I have charges against the Israeli government. I have a charge sheet with 50 clauses against Israel for the bloodshed of both people."
Mr. Barghouti was twice pulled out of the Tel Aviv courtroom by guards in attempts to stop his speeches before the session finally ended with the announcement that the next hearing would be Sept. 5.
But Arab members of the Israeli parliament who were in the court picked up his theme. "This will be a trial of the Israeli occupation and oppression," said one of them, Ahmed Tibi.
The Israeli prosecutor made equally clear that Israel intends to use the trial to substantiate its claim that the entire Palestinian leadership of Yasir Arafat, in which Mr. Barghouti played a prominent role, is nothing more than a band of terrorists and murderers.
Dvora Chen, the prosecutor, said her evidence includes the testimony of Mr. Barghouti's purported associates who are also in Israeli custody; documents seized by the Israeli army during its massive raids into the West Bank last spring - including some purporting to show Mr. Arafat's personal role in approving and financing terror strikes, and statements made by Mr. Barghouti himself during his interrogation.
"The charges are murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and activities in a terrorist organization," Ms. Chen said.
Israel's basic case is that Mr. Barghouti, as the West Bank leader of Fatah, Mr. Arafat's core political movement, was responsible for terror attacks carried out by Fatah's secretive and deadly Al Aqsa Brigades. The charge sheet, which she did not read out in court, specifically cites 37 attacks in which 26 people were killed and scores wounded.
"The accused, a Ramallah resident, heads the West Bank terror organization," the indictment declared. "The accused was subordinate to Yasir Arafat, who heads the terrorist organization."
What the indictment did not note was that Mr. Barghouti, 42, is also the second most popular figure among the Palestinians, after Mr. Arafat, and a man often cited as a potential successor to Mr. Arafat. Charismatic and canny, he is of a generation of Palestinian leaders who came to prominence in the uprisings of the late 1980's, and so are perceived as a home-grown and uncorrupted alternative to the expatriates who arrived with Mr. Arafat after the Oslo agreements of 1993.
Mr. Barghouti was first arrested and deported by the Israelis at 16, but he returned to become president of the student body at Bir Zeit University, a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism. That led to another deportation, from which he returned in 1993 to be elected to the new Palestinian Legislative Council set up under the Oslo agreements. In the council, he was an enthusiastic advocate of peace with Israel - and an occasional critic of Mr. Arafat and his lieutenants.
The latest chapter in Mr. Barghouti's career came with the latest uprising, in which he became increasingly militant. The Israelis argue that Mr. Barghouti led Fatah to adopt ever more violent tactics, and finally to send suicide bombers into Israel - a tactic until then limited to Islamic militants. Mr. Barghouti has denied operational control over the suicide bombings, though he also has not condemned them.
For the Israeli government, therefore, the public trial of Mr. Barghouti is above all an attempt to demonstrate that suicide bombings and other terror tactics are not the work of fanatics, but a policy of the Palestinian leadership. The risk for Israel, which has been noted by many Israeli commentators, is that it is putting on trial a leader who might have become - and might yet become - a promising partner in peace negotiations.
In his shouted comments in the courtroom, in Hebrew, English and Arabic, Mr. Barghouti played heavily on that notion. "Marwan Barghouti is fighting for peace," he declared. "Peace will be achieved by the end of the occupation. No peace, no security, with the occupation. The Israeli people are paying a heavy price for your government's actions. I believe the best solution for the two peoples is two states."
Mr. Barghouti's lawyers said they would argue that Israel had no right to try him, since he was seized on Palestinian territory and is a member of the Legislative Council. At the same time, Khader Shkirat, a member of the defense team, said the defense would use the proceedings to show "the entire Palestinian suffering."
In another development today, Palestinians said Israeli forces killed the local leader of Hamas, the militant Islamic organization, in Jenin. The man, Nasr Jarrar, was said to have lost both legs and an arm while preparing a bomb a year ago, but Israelis said he was still in charge, and was planning an attack when he was killed.
Palestinians said Israeli troops surrounded the house where Mr. Jarrar was staying and used loudspeakers to order people out. Tanks then shelled the house, flattening it and killing Mr. Jarrar.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan President Promises Security
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/14CND-STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 14 - Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf lashed out at Islamic militants in a nationwide address celebrating Pakistan's independence day this morning, calling last week's attacks on a Christian school and hospital "shameful" and "despicable."
"Where is the tolerance, the humanity, the chivalry and the kind heartedness that characterizes true Muslims?" said General Musharraf, who vowed to "break the back" of the groups. "We were never so cowardly as to hide, and to try kill women and children."
But at the same time General Musharraf vowed that Pakistan would not back away from its demand for a United Nations monitored referendum that would allow the people of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir to choose between joining Pakistan, India or becoming independent. India, which controls roughly half of Kashmir, adamantly opposes a referendum. Pakistan and India nearly went to war over the long-running dispute this spring.
"The struggle for self determination of our Kashmiri brothers is a sacred trust for us that can never be compromised," General Musharraf said. He went on to make a not-so-veiled threat to India, saying the Pakistani armed forces were ready "not only to defend every inch of the borderline, but to carry the fight across the border."
General Musharraf delivered his speech as Pakistan celebrated the 55th anniversary of its independence from Great Britan, the colonial power that ruled South Asia for centuries. India celebrates its independence day tomorrow.
Western diplomats said that General Musharraf, who delivered most of his speech in English, was aiming his harsh statement about militants at the United States. The general, who seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup, is one of Washington's most important allies in the effort against terrorism.
Pakistani and Western observers fear that continued terrorist attacks here could drive away foreign investment and further worsen the already anemic Pakistani economy. General Musharraf did his best to play down the importance of militants today, call them "an insignificant minority has held the entire nation hostage to their misconceived views of Islam."
But diplomats said the general's rhetoric, while sharp, did not mark a decisive shift in policy. "It doesn't do anything to reduce tensions with India," one Western diplomat said today of the speech, "and I'm not sure it was a step forward on terrorism."
General Musharraf dismissed elections the Indian government plans to hold in the portion of Kashmir it controls in September as an attempt to legitimize its "illegal occupation" of the area. Indian officials, who accuse Pakistan of sending Islamic militants into Kashmir to disrupt the elections, immediately seized upon the comments as examples of Pakistani belligerence.
"We have taken note of his intention to disrupt peaceful elections in Kashmir," Indian government spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said in a statement, "and to continue his hostile postures towards India."
American and European diplomats are urging separatist groups in Kashmir to participate in the election, which they could be an important first step in resolving the half-century old dispute. But most Kashmiri separatists have vowed to boycott the vote, saying no election can be free and fair while hundreds of thousands of Indian troops are deployed in the area.
General Musharraf also defended his handling of upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for October in Pakistan. He said the his heavily criticized electoral changes and proposed constitutional amendments were designed to promote "democracy in political parties" and prevent "looters, plunderers, criminals, bank defaulters, tax evaders and utility bill defaulters" from holding public office.
The new laws ban the country's two former prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, from running in the elections. Mr. Sharif has been convicted of corruption and lives in exile in Saudi Arabia. Ms. Bhutto, who has corruption charges pending against her, fled to London and lives there in self-imposed exile.
--------
Musharraf Vows to Crush Militancy and Dismisses Kashmir Vote
August 14, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-independence.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India traded insults Wednesday over India's plans to hold elections starting next month in the disputed Kashmir region.
Pakistan's military ruler Pervez Musharraf dismissed the polls in September and October as farcical in an address to the nation during independence day celebrations. The South Asian neighbors came close to war over Kashmir in May.
``The government of India has organized such farcical elections in the past,'' he said.
``These so-called elections have invariably been rigged and have always been boycotted by the Kashmiri people.''
New Delhi reacted by saying Pakistan intended to sabotage the elections it hopes will give its rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir some legitimacy.
Kashmir lies at the heart of tensions between India and Pakistan dating back to their bloody partition in 1947. The countries came to the brink of a fourth war in May after India blamed attacks on its soil on Pakistan-based militants.
Musharraf has pursued a risky strategy of cracking down on groups which have close links with the Kashmir conflict.
He denies aiding the Indian insurgency and says infiltration across a military line which separates the countries in Kashmir has stopped.
``Pakistan cannot accept any responsibility for developments inside Indian-occupied Kashmir, nor can India try to shift the onus of the failure of elections to Pakistan,'' he said.
Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao gave a sharp response:
``Conduct of peaceful elections in Jammu and Kashmir is linked to Pakistan's peaceful conduct, and this responsibility General Musharraf does not seem to want to discharge.''
Indian police said three Indian soldiers were killed and 18 people wounded when a bus carrying troops ran over a land mine 50 km (30 miles) south of Srinagar in Kashmir late Tuesday.
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN AUDIENCES
Musharraf's forceful address highlighted a tumultuous year.
Speaking in English, he was careful to balance less popular policies of stamping out militancy and backing the West in Afghanistan with themes he knew would strike a chord among Pakistan's 140 million people -- most notably Kashmir.
He called the self-determination struggle of ``our Kashmiri brothers'' a ``sacred trust...which can never be compromised,'' drawing applause from government and military leaders at the state convention center in Islamabad.
Hours after his address thousands of people gathered in the eastern city of Lahore to warn him not to abandon the separatist cause in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The meeting was organized by Jamaat-ud-Dawah -- the group that replaced Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant outfit fighting in Indian-ruled Kashmir, that Musharraf banned in December after an attack on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militant organizations.
It triggered a crisis between the nuclear rivals which almost led to war five months later.
``Without Kashmir, Pakistan is incomplete and we are here to support Kashmiri mujahideen fighting Indian forces in Kashmir for their struggle of self-determination,'' a spokesman from Dawah, Yahya Mujahid, said.
Musharraf, dressed in a traditional black civilian cloak, urged India to respect their common border, where a million troops have amassed since tensions began.
CRACKDOWN ON MILITANTS, FAIR ELECTIONS
But while underlining his moral and political support for the separatist movement in Kashmir, Musharraf also called on Pakistanis, particularly religious leaders, to join the struggle against ``cowardly'' fanatics who targeted women and children.
It was a clear reference to two attacks on Christian targets near Islamabad last week in which 11 people died.
``We will...break the back of all these criminals and organizations supporting them,'' he said.
Dozens of people, including 11 French engineers and a U.S. diplomat's wife and daughter, have been killed in a wave of violence in recent months blamed on radical Islamic outfits.
The military ruler stuck to his own plans for elections on October 10 in Pakistan, despite charges that he has manipulated them by excluding popular politicians from power.
``I will take all possible measures to ensure a free, fair and transparent election,'' he said.
Musharraf defended his record since his bloodless coup in October 1999 ousted the last democratically elected prime minister, saying the government had made Pakistan internationally respected and economically viable again.
-------- propaganda wars
Some question motives behind leaks about Iraq
08/12/2002
By John Diamond,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-08-12-iraq_x.htm
WASHINGTON - A newspaper article reports on a war plan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fumes that the source of the story should go to jail. A Web site posts commercial satellite photos of U.S. military planes massing at a Mideast base, and irate e-mails come in demanding, "How much is Saddam paying you?"
As talk of a U.S. invasion aimed at toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein intensifies, some are saying media reporting is compromising classified military plans and putting lives in danger.
Past deployments have received advance coverage, but some administration officials complain that an unprecedented level of detail about the possible assault is giving valuable intelligence to the enemy.
"Anyone who has a position where they touch a war plan has an obligation to not leak it to the press or anybody else because it kills people," Rumsfeld railed after one recent leak. "If people start treating war plans like they're paper airplanes and they can fly them around this building and throw them to anybody who wants them, I think it's outrageous. ... They ought to be in jail."
So far, no one at the Pentagon has been locked up for leaking to reporters, sparking a different kind of speculation: the possibility that the Bush administration is letting slip tantalizing but ultimately harmless bits of military information to confuse the enemy or win over skeptics.
In the Persian Gulf War in 1991, U.S. commanders used news leaks and other means to lead Iraq to believe that Marines would land on the Kuwaiti coast. In 1944, Allied forces used inflatable dummy tanks and false radio traffic to lure Germany into worrying about a non-existent army.
There are many reasons for the volume of information about a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. As a rule, the United States doesn't do Pearl Harbor-style sneak attacks. Especially since the collapse of public support for the Vietnam War, lawmakers have argued that the United States cannot embark on a major military commitment without the backing of the public. That requires a public debate and some detail about the military commitment to come.
Virtually everyone who leaks to the press has an agenda. Sometimes an official wants a plan scrutinized in the hopes the exposure will kill it. Sometimes trial balloons are floated to test reaction.
Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver says leaks have actually helped President Bush advance his Iraq agenda by getting Congress, allies and the public used to a controversial idea.
"Bush administration officials understandably complain about the leaks, but on balance, the leaks have helped rather than hurt," says Feaver, who worked on President Clinton's National Security Council staff. "The leaks have shifted the debate from 'should we go?' to 'how should we go?' "
After more than a month of intensive coverage, several Iraq scenarios have been aired. They range from small, swift attacks involving elite commandos swooping in on Saddam's Baghdad redoubts to a full-scale invasion involving nearly 300,000 troops.
"The cacophony is its own form of deception," says Kenneth Allard, who teaches national security courses at Georgetown University. He says some of the leaks may be deliberate disinformation drawing on Winston Churchill's assertion that in wartime, the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by "a bodyguard of lies."
The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon disagrees. He says a report last month in The New York Times contained information that would help Saddam prepare for a U.S. attack. "This was actually a very serious leak," he says. "It was a big mistake."
Senior administration officials make no secret of their hope that Iraqi military officers may hear the war drums beating in Washington and be encouraged to topple Saddam on their own.
Even the prodigious volume of debate on a possible Iraq attack does not give away the exact time, place and method of the actual operation. Germany knew the Allies were coming in the spring of 1944, but they didn't know it would be Normandy on June 6.
John Pike, whose GlobalSecurity.org Web site published the satellite pictures that drew angry e-mail, says superior force and execution, not surprise, are the keys to success. The options for attacking Iraq, he says, are well known.
"Anyone who watches the History Channel can game this one," Pike says. "There's only a short list of military options available to the United States, and anyone who knows which end the bullet comes out of is going to figure out those options pretty quickly."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Legal 'gladiator' wants Justice swift and sure
08/14/2002
By Toni Locy and Kevin Johnson,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-13-chertoff_x.htm
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Michael Chertoff was on the edge of his seat as terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui struggled through a court hearing last month.
When Moussaoui, who is acting as his own attorney, asked for a recess, Chertoff, the No. 3 official in the Justice Department, shot from his front-row seat in the federal courtroom's spectator section.
Leaning over the railing, Chertoff fired off instructions to the three prosecutors in what so far is the signature case of the Sept. 11 investigation. When U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty joined the huddle, he stood - and listened. It was a show of respect for Chertoff, the driving force behind the Justice Department's most controversial initiatives in the war on terrorism.
The Moussaoui case reflects the hands-on approach Chertoff has taken in orchestrating an unprecedented shift in Justice policies that critics say has dealt a historic setback to civil liberties.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, 60, is the Justice Department's public face, the former politician who relishes the spotlight. Next in line is Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. But Chertoff, 48, a former U.S. attorney and defense lawyer who oversees the department's Criminal Division, is the legal strategist who has quietly played a key role in decisions to:
Increase FBI agents' authority to conduct domestic surveillance, changing a decades-old approach that limited investigations of political and religious groups. Use immigration regulations and "material witness" warrants to secretly lock up hundreds of Middle Easterners. Before Sept. 11, such warrants were used largely to ensure that witnesses would appear in court.
Interview thousands of Middle Eastern men who entered the USA before and after the attacks. Arab-American groups say the strategy amounted to a roundup of new immigrants singled out because of their ethnicity.
Launch the case against Moussaoui despite the FBI's concern that agents hadn't found a direct link between him and any of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. In court, Moussaoui has acknowledged being a member of the al-Qaeda terrorist network but has said he was not involved in the attacks.
Prosecute Moussaoui and American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh here, in a pro-government court district near Washington, rather than in New York, where the nation's biggest terrorism trials had been held. Chertoff was a key player in talks with Lindh's attorneys last month when Lindh pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and agreed to serve 20 years in prison.
Ashcroft has been a frequent target of civil libertarians who say the Bush administration is using the war on terrorism to stifle individual rights. But Chertoff's role hasn't gone unnoticed.
"Chertoff has bought into a very simplistic rationale for an egregious assault on civil liberties," says Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national office in Washington, D.C. "He's not as flashy or prone to hyperbole as Ashcroft, but he still embraces a very scary 'damn the Bill of Rights' attitude."
Chertoff doesn't dispute that he is the most aggressive chief of "crim," as his division is known, in years. But he says these are extraordinary times. "Sept. 11 was the worst thing that will happen in my lifetime," he says. Working at Justice during the war on terrorism is "a great privilege and an opportunity."
A wiry man with a wispy beard, Chertoff talks and thinks fast. The son of a prominent rabbi in Elizabeth, N.J., Chertoff can eviscerate legal foes with laser precision, often working from a single sheet of paper with a few questions jotted on it. "He truly has a gladiator's mentality," says Newark lawyer Robert Mintz, a longtime friend. "He revels in the fight."
Sept. 11 provided Chertoff with a larger role and greater authority.
As Ashcroft tried to get back to Washington that day from a visit to a Milwaukee school, Chertoff ignored the territorial lines between Justice officials and the FBI and established a base for prosecutors at the bureau's crisis command center.
After taking over several rooms in the command center, Chertoff spent the next 20 hours assigning prosecutors to help FBI agents identify the hijackers and reconstruct their movements before Sept. 11. Prosecutors quickly began drafting court applications to conduct wiretaps and other surveillance operations.
His aggressiveness surprised some veteran FBI agents who were accustomed to a less collegial and more formal relationship with the bureau's parent agency. "I think the country is hurt" by rifts between the FBI and Justice, Chertoff says.
Chertoff has a small, loyal group of friends, each of whom describes him as the smartest person he knows. His focus on his duties can make him appear arrogant. He gets in "a zone," friends say, and he doesn't notice people he passes in the hallways. To career Justice employees, Chertoff's style can be intimidating.
Ashcroft is a standing target for Democrats on Capitol Hill, but lawmakers haven't been nearly as willing to take on Chertoff. Asked to assess Chertoff's performance, several lawmakers declined to comment. Others emphasized his value to Ashcroft as an experienced prosecutor.
Chertoff's influence has shaken a Justice Department that was known for its deliberate decision-making process under former attorney general Janet Reno. The Criminal Division now moves more quickly and exerts more control over the 93 U.S. attorneys. "Washington needs to be involved," Chertoff says. "You can't have everybody doing their own thing."
Especially in terrorism cases. "He can go nose to nose with my (assistants) on details in the high-profile cases," McNulty says, laughing. "Maybe a little too much."
Chertoff says his love for the minutiae of cases probably will lead him to prosecute one himself before he leaves the Justice Department. To many Justice Department observers, he's doing it already.
Chertoff was a key player in the plea bargain that prosecutors made with David Duncan, an executive with Arthur Andersen, Enron's accounting firm. Duncan agreed to testify against Andersen.
Some legal analysts questioned whether Chertoff had pushed the Andersen case into court too quickly.
"He's not one to ponder things," says James Kallstrom, former special agent in charge of the FBI's New York office.
In the Andersen case, Chertoff's strategy worked. In June, a federal jury found the accounting firm guilty of obstructing justice by, among other things, allowing the shredding of documents.
"The biggest problem I saw when I was a prosecutor," Chertoff says, "was the temptation of many prosecutors to keep investigating because they are waiting for the smoking gun to fall out of the sky. When a case is ready, we ought not wait."
A 1978 graduate of Harvard Law School, Chertoff began his career with a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. In 1983, Chertoff became an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Two years later, U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani tapped him to assist in the "Mafia Commission" case against New York's five mob bosses. Giuliani bowed out to handle another case and left Chertoff in charge. All five defendants were convicted.
In 1990, Chertoff became U.S. attorney in New Jersey and revamped what had been considered a mediocre office. It's not unusual for a U.S. attorney to try a high-profile case, but Chertoff personally handled several. He prosecuted former Jersey City mayor Gerald McCann, who was convicted on corruption charges and sent to prison, and Eddie Antar, founder of the Crazy Eddie electronics chain, who was convicted of bilking investors out of $146 million.
In 1994, Chertoff became a corporate defense lawyer and helped several executives avoid fraud charges. But Chertoff "wanted to establish himself as a Republican," says John Fahy, a friend.
Chertoff became counsel to then-New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato's probe of President Clinton's Whitewater land deal. That move in 1995 gave Chertoff the connections with conservatives needed to get his current job, Fahy says.
Five years later, Chertoff was counsel to a New Jersey Senate committee's probe of racial profiling by state police. He impressed panel members while grilling officials about race-based traffic stops.
Not everyone is so enamored.
McCann says Chertoff inflamed the jury in his case by playing up McCann's purchases of fur coats and jewelry. "If you want a conviction," McCann says, "he'll get you a conviction."
Chertoff makes no apologies for his "swift and sure" approach: "We clearly want to be thorough. We don't want to be leisurely, and we don't want to go on a snipe hunt."
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U-Md. Says Grants Exceeded Requests Anti-Crime Agency Urged Extra Hires
By Craig Whitlock and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 14, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14838-2002Aug13.html
University of Maryland officials said yesterday that a state anti-crime office gave them millions of dollars in federal grant money they never requested -- and then instructed them to use it to pay the salaries of at least three dozen employees working for the state agency.
An assistant dean said university researchers applied for grants and then received far greater sums from the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, an agency overseen by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D). A federal grand jury is scrutinizing the arrangement as part of a broad investigation into the agency.
"The governor's office came to us and basically instructed us to add these people to our payroll," said Cynthia Hale, an assistant dean in the university's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. "We didn't seek any of it. [They] called and said, 'Hire these people.' "
School officials acknowledged that the arrangement was "not normal," but Hale said they agreed to it because they had a long-standing relationship with the crime-control office.
The crime-control office defended the practice yesterday, calling it a perfectly legitimate way to staff the agency. U.S. Justice Department officials who sponsored the grants declined to comment on whether the hires were proper, saying they needed to review the details.
Townsend has consistently dismissed the investigation as "political garbage" motivated by her Republican foes. U.S. Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., her likely GOP opponent in this year's governor's race, sponsored the appointment of Maryland's federal prosecutor, Thomas M. DiBiagio.
Professors and deans at the College Park campus, which has received more than $15.5 million in grants from the state agency since January 2000, said they had little idea what the extra employees did each day, other than that they worked directly for the crime-control office instead of the university.
"We knew they were real people and that they were not ghost employees," Hale said. "But they were not under our direct supervision." She said the school has decided to review the practice and may discontinue it.
The state agency's practice of using grant money to bolster its workforce is being scrutinized by a federal grand jury that also is examining whether it doled out research grants for political purposes.
The grand jury has subpoenaed the personnel records of 31 people who worked directly for the crime-control office but were paid by the university with federal grants.
Federal authorities also are examining whether any of those workers were paid to do political work for Townsend -- a practice that would be illegal. One former employee for the agency has said publicly that she was assigned to conduct research to benefit Townsend's campaign for governor.
Stephen Amos, executive director of the crime-control office, denied that any of his employees have done political research or were assigned to Townsend's campaign.
Amos also disputed the university's contention that it was directed to add people to its payroll, calling the school "a willing partner" in the arrangement.
He said the federal agencies that sponsored the grants were aware of the details of his office's relationship with the school. "It makes sense to outsource these functions," he said.
The university yesterday disclosed thousands of pages of documents, which showed that the school submitted several grant applications to the crime-control office, then watched as those awards ballooned to provide more staff and technical assistance for the state agency.
For example, in June 2000, the university's Center for Substance Abuse and Research (CESAR) submitted an application to the crime-control office requesting $600,000 from a Justice Department program to track drug abuse trends and conduct crime analysis for the state's Hot Spots program. Hot Spots, one of Townsend's signature crime-fighting plans, provides money to police and community groups in high-crime areas across the state.
In September 2000, the crime-control office approved the application and awarded CESAR $600,000. But over the next few months, university records show, the award nearly doubled -- to $1.18 million -- as the crime-control office tacked on money for a variety of purposes.
The additions included $106,182 to hire a contractor to analyze grants and "study processes" at the crime-control agency and to "measure grantee perceptions about service delivery."
Also included was $38,000 to hire a Web site developer to "maintain the Lt. Governor's presence" on the crime-control agency's Internet site and to "provide complete and up-to-date information on all of the Lt. Governor's signature initiatives," according to a September 2000 memo.
Eric Wish, the director of CESAR, said he didn't ask many questions about the tacked-on funds because he assumed the arrangement was legitimate. "It was the governor's office for crying out loud, not some fly-by-night outfit," he said. "We did it in good faith that these people were doing the job that they were supposed to be doing."
One former crime-control employee said she was paid with federal grant money to conduct political research for Townsend's campaign.
Margaret T. Burns said she was assigned to the $68,000-a-year job last year by Alan H. Fleischmann, who was then Townsend's chief of staff and now is her campaign chairman. Burns said her tasks included reviewing news releases to determine whether Townsend had made good on specific public promises.
"He said, 'We have a special project for you,' " Burns recalled. "As we begin to campaign around the state, we need to know what Kathleen's record is. We need to know what's out there and where we might take a political hit."
Burns said that the job was considered a promotion but that she quit in December because she was uncomfortable with its political nature. She now works as a spokeswoman for the Baltimore state's attorney.
Fleischmann said Burns never was asked to do anything "related to the campaign or politics."
"I think we're dealing with a disgruntled former employee," Fleischmann said. "She didn't come to me because she was uncomfortable with anything her supervisor asked her to do. She came to me because she was angry that her bosses had demoted her and she asked me to intervene. I guess she's mad that I didn't. I guess she has an ax to grind. It's absolutely not true and it's offensive."
Amos, who was Burns's boss at the crime-control agency, called her allegations "absolutely amazing" and said he would have fired her if she had been doing political research.
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Butting in
EDITORIAL •
August 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020814-364085.htm
In the 1600s, witches were burned for the glory of God. Today, we're ticketed, fined and prosecuted "for our own good." The jihad - and that's the right word - against smokers is a case in point. Onerous "sin" taxes are not enough for anti-smoking zealots who have annointed themselves protectors of other people's health, whether those other people are interested in being saved or not. Now, the focus is on banning cigarette smoking in all public places, and New York City is taking the lead.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has seen to it that the cost of a pack of cigarettes now costs more than $7 - courtesy of targeted sin taxes - and he's pushing for a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars as the next step. "You really have to be out of your mind to smoke," he said. "What we are trying to do is provide a smoke-free environment for people."
It all sounds very noble, but the precedent being set by this type of behaviorial policing is going to be something we will one day regret. That smoking is unhealthful is entirely beside the point. Fast-food hamburgers are also bad for you. So is too much sun. Life is full of choices that are no one's business but our own - unless we want to erect a nanny state in which any self-appointed do-gooder can use the machinery of government to enforce lifestyle and habit codes. Are we going to put sin taxes on cheeseburgers, or issue tickets to sunbathers if they fail to wear the right amount of lotion? Will push-ups become mandatory every morning? The principle is the same, and therein lies the danger of "for your own good" legislation that targets such things as cigarette smoking. A free country is one in which people are left to their own devices until and unless they violate the rights of others. A non-free country is one in which the state regiments every aspect of each person's life, and enforces conformity with the officially endorsed right way of doing things. Whether it's for the benefit of the proletariat, or "for your own good," the end result is the same: less freedom for the individual, more power for the state.
Restaurants and bars may be open to the public, but they're not owned by the public. It is fair enough that authentic public spaces, such as government offices, be made amenable to the people who are footing the bill. But restaurants and bars are supported by their patrons - people who voluntarily choose to enter the premises - and who do so because they want what's inside, whether it's the food or the ambiance. Some people actually go to bars to smoke, have a drink and be among friends. Why is that any business of the state's?
Mr. Bloomberg and others who object to smoking are free to patronize other establishments, and he and those who share his belief should not insist upon enforcing their preferences upon everyone else. They should live and let live.
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Judge Skewers U.S. Curbs on Detainee
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 14, 2002; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14862-2002Aug13.html
NORFOLK, Aug. 13 -- Line by line, a federal judge today dissected the government's reasoning for holding Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig here and indicated that he didn't think prosecutors provided enough facts for him to decide whether Hamdi should have access to a lawyer.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said he would soon rule on a request by Hamdi's father to allow a federal public defender to visit Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan with Taliban forces in November, taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other prisoners, then moved here when he told authorities that he was born in the United States. The government has declared Hamdi an "unlawful enemy combatant," entitled to neither constitutional protections nor international prisoner-of-war status.
Doumar sparred repeatedly with the government's lawyer over why Hamdi was an enemy combatant and what exactly that meant, saying the government appeared to be trying to place unprecedented restrictions on a prisoner's rights.
"I tried valiantly to find a case of any kind, in any court, where a lawyer couldn't meet" with a client, Doumar said. "This case sets the most interesting precedent in relation to that which has ever existed in Anglo-American jurisprudence since the days of the Star Chamber," a reference to English kings' secret court from the 1400s to the 1600s.
Doumar twice has granted requests to visit Hamdi, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond has twice intervened and prevented the visits. Last month, the appeals court instructed Doumar to revisit the case with greater consideration to national security and the executive branch's constitutional right to wage war.
The government then filed a two-page declaration of facts, by Michael H. Mobbs, a special adviser in the Defense Department, explaining how Hamdi was determined to be an enemy combatant. When Doumar asked the government for additional information, prosecutors declined. The 4th Circuit told Doumar last week to consider first whether the Mobbs declaration was sufficient to decide whether the government had good reason to label Hamdi an enemy combatant.
Doumar began the hearing by saying he would focus exclusively on the Mobbs declaration. But he added, "If I rely on this, then I must pick it apart. And if you gave me the information, then all of this could have been avoided."
For the next hour, he proceeded to pepper Assistant Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre with questions both momentous and minimal: Who is Mobbs? And what qualified him to be a "special adviser"?
Garre said Mobbs was an undersecretary of defense, substantially involved with detainee issues.
"My secretary's familiar with the Hamdi case," the judge said. "Should she decide? She's a special adviser."
Doumar noted that the declaration doesn't say how long Hamdi would need to be detained and for what purpose: "How long does it take to question a man?" the judge asked. "A year? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime?"
Garre said he couldn't answer that now "any better than we could 11 months after Pearl Harbor."
Garre declined to take the judge's bait, frequently referring Doumar to the government's pleadings or the 4th Circuit's rulings. "I tell you, it's hard to get an answer out of you," the judge told Garre at one point.
In a typical exchange, Doumar asked, "Can the military do anything they want with him, without a tribunal?"
"The present detention is lawful," Garre said.
Doumar asked again, "What restraints are there?" Garre said Hamdi had asked to speak to diplomats from Saudi Arabia, where he was raised.
"Can I beg you to answer my question?" Doumar then said. "If the military sat him in boiling oil, would that be lawful?" Garre said he didn't think anyone had suggested that.
Doumar said it seemed too easy to call someone an unlawful combatant and use it to hold someone indefinitely: "If the man next door to you is an unlawful combatant, maybe Mr. Mobbs could say you're an enemy combatant."
Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. pointed out that Mobbs's declaration doesn't use the words "unlawful enemy combatant."
Garre said that Mobbs was merely providing the factual foundation and that the military had made the decision. "The reason why the courts have a limited role is, under our constitutional system, the executive [branch] is the branch which is in the best position to make the military determination," Garre said.
Doumar confirmed with Garre that the government would provide no more information beyond the Mobbs declaration, which he said had "certain omissions that seem substantial," such as specifics about Hamdi's battle experience and why he was brought to Norfolk. "If that is sufficient standing alone," the judge said, "to put him in a cell without windows for six months or 10 months or four months or whatever it is, then so be it. I have some real doubts about that."
If Doumar determines that the Mobbs declaration isn't enough for him to make a decision, he could again order the government to turn over its interrogators' notes on Hamdi, its records of his movements and his chronology of custody.
"I have no desire to have an enemy combatant get out of any status," Doumar said. "However, I do think that due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?"
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ABA Opposes Secret Custody In 9/11 Probe
Reuters
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14628-2002Aug13.html
The American Bar Association voted yesterday to oppose the Bush administration's secret detention of foreign nationals after the Sept. 11 attacks, urging that their names be disclosed and they be given immediate access to lawyers and family members.
The nation's largest lawyers group joined civil libertarians and others who have criticized the government's policy of secret and prolonged detentions.
Of those taken into custody as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 plane hijackings, the Justice Department has said, more than 750 people were detained on immigration violations.
The vote marked the second time the Bush administration's anti-terrorism tactics have provoked criticism during the association's annual meeting.
An ABA task force said last Friday that American citizens who have been branded "enemy combatants" and who are being held in this country without any charges should at least be given access to judicial review and an attorney.
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A Public Coup for the Secret Service
Agency May Gain Clout After a Move to Planned Homeland Security Department
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 14, 2002; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14617-2002Aug13.html
The prominence of the U.S. Secret Service, a Treasury Department law enforcement agency that enjoys lots of face time with the president -- while protecting his back -- stands to increase under President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security.
The service has quietly expanded its capabilities in recent years to trace international financial crimes and cyberattacks on the nation's financial infrastructure, extending its original mission to fight counterfeiters and protect the nation's leaders. Now, in what some insiders consider a bureaucratic coup, a small agency that is often overshadowed by the FBI or dismissed as a "bodyguard" service would relocate, reporting directly to a secretary of homeland security at the president's request.
A senior White House official said the rationale for moving the Secret Service into the Homeland Security Department is simple: As part of any heightened security plan, "they've got to protect the president and the vice president of the United States."
But the Secret Service is evolving into more than a palace guard. Last year's USA Patriot Act expanded its role in investigating electronic crime, now carried out through 135 U.S. offices and 19 abroad.
Since 1999, the service has deployed new technologies such as chemical and biological weapon sensors, and systems to rapidly detect similar symptoms of illness in large crowds at presidentially designated "National Special Security Events." Such events have included presidential conventions, inaugurations, the 2002 Super Bowl and the Salt Lake City Olympics. The Secret Service is responsible for securing the events and coordinating federal, state and local law enforcement.
Its technicians help develop better-armored limousines, stronger bulletproof glass and hidden body armor. Its National Threat Assessment Center maintains a database on "all 83 persons known to have attacked, or come close to attacking" American leaders since 1950, Secret Service Director Brian L. Stafford has said.
"It makes sense that the Secret Service should be housed where the latest threat information and analysis is located," says a White House briefing document about the Homeland Security Department.
The service's move has spurred little public controversy, but there are quiet doubters. A few government veterans warn that other Treasury Department law enforcement agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms -- already "second-class citizens" in the policy-minded department -- will be more neglected while the Homeland Security Department burns time and energy on reorganizing. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and some financial investigators cautioned that the Secret Service's role in defending the nation's financial systems must not be "compromised or diluted."
"I have yet to see or hear anything from the Treasury Department or administration that's explained the value of it, a better product than we had before," said a former Secret Service executive.
Another former senior federal law enforcement official said reorganizing alone will not improve how the agency does its jobs. "The problems are information flow and collaboration. And you don't need to slide the box on a grid from Treasury to Homeland Security to do that."
In the Senate, which will take up the president's plan in September, the concern is not so much the Secret Service's leaving, but who gets left behind. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) say ATF should also move.
"If ATF is left over at Treasury, is its mission going to be fully supported over there?" said a committee staffer. "The same rationale that makes it comfortable for the Secret Service to move makes it comfortable for ATF to move."
But former Clinton deputy treasury secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat saw no structural problems, and Catherine A. Allen, head of the Financial Services Roundtable's technology group, said she did not expect the Secret Service's work with the industry to change.
The most immediate threat might be that the Secret Service is spread too thin. Attention to its personnel problems, which have burst into embarrassing view lately, could slip during the reorganization, along with accountability.
Since the September 1994 crash of a light plane on the White House South Lawn, sporadic shootings around the White House grounds and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the government has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars over the past four years to combat what Congress has called "staggering overtime levels" and "dramatic attrition."
Since July 1998, the number of special agents has grown by 705, for a total of 2,939 -- a 32 percent increase. The service's budget has exploded since 1999, growing 75 percent to a proposed $1.05 billion next year.
But the agency's Washington-based Uniformed Division -- assigned the less glamorous duty of protecting government buildings and embassies -- has lost 16.9 percent of its officers since January. So far, 148 have left for the new federal Transportation Security Administration, leaving the force at 1,073, compared with its authorized level of 1,200.
Meanwhile, the agency's workload has increased. After Sept. 11, the president increased the number of people provided with Secret Service protection from 17 to a peak of 38. It now guards 22. Average overtime is pushing more than 81 hours a month per agent.
"The Secret Service is an elite organization comprised of highly trained people," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the treasury and general government. "My hope would be as it's brought into the homeland security organization that it does not lose its identity -- that it does not become part of such a large organization that they are not able to deal with their problems."
As the service's activities have grown with the rise of global terrorism and computer threats, so has scrutiny. A two-year-old class action by more than 50 African American current and former agents alleging discriminatory promotion practices is pending before U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. A February 2001 Treasury inspector general's report faulted the Secret Service for resisting accountability, citing its failure to track certain misconduct allegations and its administering discipline inconsistently.
In June, U.S. News & World Report catalogued tawdry and sometimes illegal activities by Secret Service agents over 25 years, involving sex, drugs, theft, brawling, inebriation and corruption. Four agents assigned to Vice President Cheney fought in a San Diego bar, and agents on assignment at the Salt Lake City Olympics came under investigation about a possible sexual assault on a minor in February. Last month, an agent was suspended after he scrawled "Islam is evil, Christ is king" on a Muslim prayer calendar during a search of a Michigan suspect's home.
Paul Irving, assistant director of the service, has said in a statement, "The Secret Service takes any allegations of breaches of professional conduct seriously and has a long history of addressing such issues."
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Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.
By Jonathan Turley professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Los Angeles Times
http://www.democraticfundamentalism.org/globalization/countries/unitedstates/feature2/20020814ashcroftconcentration.htm
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.
The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.
The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.
Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.
This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."
In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights. Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.
Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.
Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.
We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.
For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.
Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.
Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.
His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.
In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.
More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."
Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
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Dirty Bomb Suspect Said 'Small Fish'
August 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Dirty-Bomb.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government media blitz after the arrest an American accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb was almost unprecedented for a terrorist suspect post-Sept. 11.
Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference via satellite while visiting officials in Moscow. Justice Department officials in Washington called him a significant terrorism figure and President Bush weighed in to agree.
But two months later, U.S. law enforcement officials close to the case say Jose Padilla is probably a ``small fish'' with no ties to al-Qaida cell members in the United States.
The FBI's investigation has produced no evidence that Jose Padilla had begun preparations for an attack and little reason to believe he had any support from al-Qaida to direct such a plot, said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Still, some authorities believe Padilla should remain detained.
Padilla, 31, is being held in a military brig in South Carolina as an enemy combatant, a legal designation allowing the government to jail him without formal criminal charges. His attorney has argued in court that he is being held illegally and should be released.
Investigators have said they believe Padilla, a Muslim convert and a former Chicago gang member, ventured overseas in search of clerics connected to the most radical branch of Islamic fundamentalism.
In early June, Ashcroft announced from Moscow via satellite hookup that Padilla was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Ashcroft's deputies also convened a news conference in Washington.
``We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb,'' Ashcroft said, adding that the government's suspicions about Padilla's plans came from ``multiple, independent, corroborating sources.''
Now, two law enforcement officials close to the case say there is no evidence a plot was under way. However, one had been ``thought out as a possibility,'' an official said.
Padilla's attorney, Donna Newman, said the government was avoiding a court case because it has little evidence against him.
``What we could analyze from government statements is that they didn't have sufficient evidence to charge him,'' Newman said. ``All they could do was allege that he was somehow involved in the talking stages of a plan and they didn't even allege his role. And that is supposed to be enough to hold him without trial?''
Justice Department officials declined to comment on the matter Tuesday.
A ``dirty bomb'' does not produce a nuclear explosion; it spreads radioactive material over a large area. Scientists say it is more likely to cause widespread sickness and panic than deaths.
Since Padilla's arrest, the government has been more low-key in announcing arrests of terrorism suspects. No news conference was held when James Ujaama was taken into custody last month in Denver. Instead, law enforcement officials simply confirmed the apprehension when reporters asked.
Ujaama was arrested as a material witness to terrorist activity and flown to Virginia. Federal authorities say they believe he supplied computer equipment to an al-Qaida terrorist camp in Afghanistan.
Most of the information that led to Padilla's arrest came from captured al-Qaida operational chief Abu Zubaydah, officials said. Zubaydah, the highest-ranking terrorist leader taken into U.S. custody since Sept. 11, was captured and wounded in a raid in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in late March.
One U.S. law enforcement official said the information Zubaydah is supplying during interrogations is not always accurate and investigators are treating his comments with increasing skepticism.
For months, Padilla worked out of Lahore, Pakistan, and twice met with senior al-Qaida operatives in Karachi in March, government officials have contended. Padilla and the others are alleged to have discussed a radiological weapon plot, as well as proposals to bomb gas stations and hotel rooms.
Investigators have since decided Padilla may have attended the meetings more as an observer than a participant, one U.S. official said.
Still, other officials suggest Padilla was important to the government's terrorism investigations. A senior law enforcement official said he may have been a scout, chosen for his ability to move around the United States legally with a driver's license and passport.
There are no plans to bring Padilla before a military tribunal and U.S. officials have argued he can be held until the government declares an end to the war on terrorism.
On the Net:
FBI: www.fbi.gov
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
G.M. Version of Fuel-Cell Car
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By DANNY HAKIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/business/14FUEL.html
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Aug. 13 - General Motors released today the first pictures of a prototype car called the Hy-wire, a fusion of technologies that re-imagines how cars look, operate and drive. Hy-wire is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, a technology that was used in the lunar lander and one that every automaker is trying to adapt for cars.
Automakers envision the technology as a potential solution to their skirmishes with environmental groups and are spending billions of dollars collectively on the technology. Though G.M. and other automakers say such vehicles could start appearing by the end of the decade, numerous hurdles remain to making fuel cells viable, including the currently prohibitive cost of building them, insufficient range and trouble in cold climates.
Most of the industry's visions of fuel-cell cars resemble conventional cars and trucks. But in the Hy-wire, G.M. says it has tried to design a vehicle that is more suited to the technology. The car's power system is underfoot, in an 11-inch thick underbody that resembles a skateboard.
The company envisions customers keeping the skateboards for more than a decade, and possibly even using them to power their homes, but changing car bodies much more frequently. Because it has no hood, the windshield extends to the driver's feet.
G.M. plans to demonstrate a working prototype next month.
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Australia sets sights on first Solar Tower
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
August 14, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17283/story.htm
MELBOURNE - Australia is set to become home to the world's first Solar Tower, a one kilometre high structure with the potential to generate enough electricity to supply a city of more than 200,000 people.
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said yesterday the project had been granted "Major Project Facilitation" status, which defines projects of national significance and ensures streamlined decision-making for necessary government approvals.
EnviroMission Ltd has proposed an investment of A$800 million ($431.2 million) in the project, which is due to be operating in south-west New South Wales by 2005/06 and has already received planning permission.
"This project confirms Australia as a world leader in renewable energy production aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. The EnviroMission venture represents the world's first full-scale application of this new solar technology," Macfarlane said.
The 1,000 metre high tower will heat air at its base through the use of a transparent "solar collector" measuring seven kilometres in diameter.
The air under the collector is about 30 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the air at the top of the tower and a resulting convection creates a powerful updraft within the tower, driving turbines which generate the clean green power.
The Australian government's mandated renewable energy target requires electricity retailers to supply 9,500 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year from renewable sources by 2010. The Solar Tower would generate about 650 GWh per annum.
Shares in EnviroMission closed unchanged at A$0.15.
-------- energy
Report Voices Suspicions on Energy Crisis
New York Times
August 14, 2002
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/business/14ENER.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - Federal energy regulators, struggling to get to the bottom of the California energy crisis of 2000-01, said for the first time today that there was evidence that natural gas prices might have been manipulated, helping to drive up power prices.
They also said that they had found evidence of possible manipulation of electricity prices by Enron and two other companies, Avista and El Paso Electric, and began formal investigations to determine whether they broke federal electricity-trading rules.
The preliminary report prepared by the staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission contrasts with the agency's approach at the outset of the California crisis two years ago, when it played down the possibility of manipulation. The report comes closer to endorsing the view of many California officials that the state's energy crisis resulted at least in part from manipulation of the market by energy companies like Enron.
If the commission endorses the findings, it could then increase the size of the refunds it might order energy companies to pay consumers in California for overcharging. That is because, if prices had been manipulated, many energy sellers could no longer use high natural gas costs as an excuse for charging high power prices. The difference could mean more than $1 billion in additional refunds, one official said.
While Enron sought bankruptcy protection in December, many other large companies that sold power to California are still profitable, though some are struggling.
An administrative law judge at the commission is scheduled to begin a hearing soon to determine the refunds owed.
The investigation by the energy commission has also found that the common method for reporting prices for natural gas and electricity trades - surveys published by industry publications - does not use statistically valid procedures and is subject to manipulation by traders who have an incentive to report false data to benefit their own trading positions.
Reaction in California was mixed tonight. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who helped instigate the investigation, said she was "encouraged that FERC finally is taking seriously its responsibility to protect consumers." She said she was particularly gratified by the finding that manipulation might have increased natural gas prices, which she said was among the major factors in the escalation of electricity costs during the energy crisis.
But Gov. Gray Davis of California, a Democrat locked in a battle for re-election against Bill Simon Jr., a Republican, called the actions today a "whitewash, pure and simple." The commission "hasn't sanctioned anybody, it hasn't issued any refunds to us, it's done nothing to stop the manipulation which everyone agrees occurred here in California." Mr. Davis has sharply criticized what he called profiteering and overcharging by energy companies - a stance critics have attacked as ignoring severe flaws in how the state created its deregulated electricity marketplace.
In fact, the report does assign some blame to the state, noting that shortages of electricity and underlying problems with the structure of the marketplace created an environment in which prices could be driven up. And while officials of the energy commission stressed that the inquiry was not complete, the report today did not name many of the largest companies that California officials have accused of driving up prices, including Reliant Energy, Dynegy and Duke Energy.
The report also said that the disclosure of memos outlining trading strategies that Enron used in California - with colorful names like Death Star, Get Shorty and Fat Boy - has "adversely affected" electricity markets far beyond the "dollar impact" of the strategies themselves.
"We've still got further ground to plow, but the agency is doing its job, and we look forward to getting to closure," said Patrick Wood III, the chairman of the energy commission, who was appointed last year. He emphasized that the commission was still investigating whether energy companies had withheld power to drive up prices or had manipulated prices to increase profits on financial derivatives whose value was tied to electricity or natural gas costs.
In the report, Enron came in for severe criticism from the commission, which said its strategies "involved deceit, including the provision of false information" in an attempt to manipulate prices. In addition, the report found that Enron's once-dominant Internet-based exchange, EnronOnline, "was potentially susceptible to manipulation."
The commission said that one strategy used in 2000 - exporting power from California