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NUCLEAR
Too loose nukes
Chiefs sack head of Czech plant leaking deadly gas
Buried Legacy
Harvard Law ends ban on military recruiting
Wellstone accused of hiding voting record
Bush backs Clinton on pardon data
MILITARY
Report of Mass Afghan Graves Won't Be Probed, Envoy Says
U.S. Troops Focus on Border's Caves to Seek bin Laden
A call to new arms
Pentagon to track disease outbreaks
Tokyo Court Confirms Japan Used Germ Warfare in China
Argentine police find some of stolen toxic chemical
Separatist Group In China Added To Terrorist List
Investigation Opened in Case Criticized by Rights Groups
Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran
Powell Aide Disputes Views on Iraq
Iraqi Envoys Courting Support in Syria, China
World Leaders Urge U.S. Restraint in Iraq
Iraq and Poison Gas
Lebanese militants fire at Israeli jets
Saudis oppose attack on Iraq
Bush Moves to Ease Tensions With Saudis
Yemen offers to shield al Qaeda sympathizers
Too much focus on being cops
Legal Experts Draft War Crimes Paper
Army 'pretty sure' deaths not tied to drug
Panel: Spy Plane Too Costly for Ops
POLICE / PRISONERS
U.S. Cities Unprepared For Smallpox Attacks
Justice Dept. Proposes Law To Halt Deported Immigrants
3 Groups, 3 Individuals Taken Off Asset-Freeze List
Padilla's Al Qaeda Ties Confirmed, Prosecutors Say
Hatfill to undergo blood test for FBI
Study Finds Big Increase in Black Men as Inmates Since 1980
SCLC Wants Hoover Name Off FBI HQ
Justices: Re - Examine Teen Executions
Suspected Al Qaeda Supporters Charged
CDC: Better Prepared for Terror
ENERGY AND OTHER
Earth Summit delegates clash over renewable energy
U.S. opposes cuts in energy subsidies
Maker of anti-malaria drug adds suicide-hazard warning
US studies to look at chemicals, Parkinson's
Psychiatric Group Plans Investigation in China
ACTIVISTS
US plans to detonate Sub-critical Nuclear Weapons Test
LETTER FROM JOHANNESBURG
Activists to defy ban with Johannesburg march
BSL-3: The Anthrax is Coming
Activists charged for South Africa nuke protest
-------- NUCLEAR
Too loose nukes
Gordon Prather
August 28, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020828-94740643.htm
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed last year to not only expand existing U.S.-Russian cooperative programs to safeguard nuke-usable materials in the former Soviet Union from theft or diversion, but to undertake - in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - joint operations in and with other countries to safeguard or secure their "nuclear" materials, including highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and radiological sources. Last week the first such joint U.S.-IAEA-Russia operation took place in Belgrade.
With the full cooperation of the Yugoslav parliament and armed forces, 105 lbs. of Soviet- supplied HEU reactor fuel, was removed from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, loaded onto a Russian aircraft, and transported to Russia, to be "blended down" into low-enriched uranium (LEU) reactor fuel - all of it under the watchful eyes of the IAEA. Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative picked up about half the tab.
The pending Yugoslav operation had been kept secret out of fear that terrorists might try to hijack the HEU, in transit. Rumor had it that the105 lbs. of HEU - enriched to 80 percent U-235 - would have been enough for terrorists to make two or three nuclear weapons.
Well, it is a wondrous thing that we have finally secured that HEU at Vinca. It has been there in Belgrade - under Slobodan Milosevic's thumb - throughout all the recent Balkan unpleasantness, including Bill Clinton's bombing of Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and the Chinese Embassy.
But, it's a little late in the day to be worrying about Osama bin Laden making nuclear weapons with that HEU. Just be thankful that Milosevic hadn't already done it.
Second, it's true that Los Alamos National Laboratory could probably modify one of its 1950s-era "implosion-type" nuclear weapons designs to accommodate Vinca's HEU. And 105 lbs. would probably be enough for two - perhaps three - specially modified 1950s-era implosion nuclear weapons. But terrorists probably couldn't design and construct even a 1950s-era implosion nuclear weapon on their own.
However, our nuclear weapons designers reckon that terrorists might construct a simple "gun-type" nuclear weapon, wherein one sub-critical mass of HEU is simply shot down a gun barrel at another sub-critical mass of HEU. The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima - Little Boy - was a gun-type nuclear weapon. We were so sure it would work that we never did a full-scale test. Little Boy contained 140 lbs. of HEU and weighed about 9,000 lbs.
During the 1980s, with Soviet-sponsored Cubans threatening its borders, South Africa developed an indigenous cradle-to-grave nuclear capability. And although the South Africans researched implosion-type nuclear weapons, they focused development on gun-type nuclear devices. They actually produced a half-dozen gun-type nuclear weapons, each requiring 120 lbs. of HEU (90 percent U-235), and weighing about a ton.
Hence, it appears that - with only 105 lbs. of HEU (80 percent U-235) available - even South Africa could not have produced one gun-type nuclear weapon of appreciable yield. How, now, could bin Laden?
Indeed, how - then or now - could Saddam Hussein, who was also engaged during this same period in the 1980s in developing a clandestine nuclear capability?
Saddam couldn't. And perhaps that explains why Saddam's nuclear development program - which was HEU based - focused on implosion-type nuclear weapons. He had an implosion nuclear design, which may - or may not - have been indigenous and might - or might not - have worked. But his uranium-enrichment program never worked properly, and was completely destroyed during the Gulf War and its aftermath. Saddam never produced anything like 105 lbs. of HEU.
But, if Saddam had got his hands on Milosevic's 105 lbs. of HEU could he have made an implosion-type nuclear weapon or two? Perhaps.
Thanks to Messrs. Putin and Bush - and Ted Turner - he never will.
You're probably wondering how Mr. Turner got into the act.
Well, Congress was never happy funding U.S.-Russian cooperative nuclear proliferation prevention programs, especially when Hazel O'Leary was in charge. Furthermore, our scientists and engineers were prohibited from even participating in certain activities involving many of the 17 states - including Yugoslavia - where Messrs. Bush and Putin propose to secure Soviet-supplied nuclear-related materials.
Well, Congress didn't prohibit Mr. Turner from coming to our rescue. So, he did. Perhaps because everyone realizes that what Mr.Turner did, needed to be done, but that our own president was prohibited from doing it, there appears to be broad bipartisan support in Congress for authorizing the president to do other things - for example in Pakistan and India - to prevent nuclear weapons and nuclear materials from getting loose that we should have done ten years ago.
Gordon Prather served as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Henry Bellmon, as a Reagan appointee in the Pentagon, and as a nuclear scientist at Sandia National Laboratory.
-------- accidents and safety
Chiefs sack head of Czech plant leaking deadly gas
Story by Jan Lopatka
REUTERS CZECH REPUBLIC:
August 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/da
PRAGUE - Chiefs of the main Czech chemicals group sacked the head of a flooded factory which leaked the lethal chlorine gas into the air.
The Spolana chemical factory 20 km (12 miles) north of Prague has become the main environmental hazard in the worst flood ever recorded which swept across the central European country in the past two weeks.
Chiefs at Spolana's owners, the leading petrochemical and refinery group Unipetrol , sacked the plant's head Radoslav Vek this week.
Spolana management was sharply criticised by officials including Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla for the way it handled the leaks and informed the public.
"Members of the boards (of Unipetrol companies) reached this decision mainly because it is necessary to change the style of management at Spolana," Unipetrol spokesman Tomas Zikmund said.
He told Reuters Vek was replaced by Miroslav Kuliha, formerly a director at another Unipetrol unit.
Hundreds of kilograms of chlorine, which was used as a weapon in World War One, leaked from the plant twice in the past two weeks, the last time on Friday evening.
There were no human casualties because the concentrations were not so high and the cloud dispersed on both occasions. But farmers and residents living in nearby villages have claimed that the leaked gas damaged their crops.
Police have started an investigation.
Spolana preventively called buses this week to prepare evacuation of citizens from neighbouring towns and villages in case of another leak, which could come while workers pump out the remaining chlorine in the coming days.
"The crisis committee adopted this purely preventative measure to safeguard the maximum safety of inhabitants in the neighbourhood of Spolana," said Zikmund.
Spolana has long been in the spotlight of environmental groups because it used to produce herbicides including dioxins, highly toxic chemicals which pose a serious health threat.
Several buildings at Spolana are still contaminated with the substances. Zikmund said tests showed they had not been washed out of the firm's premises by the floodwater.
DEATH TOLL RISES
Police said this week they had found another victim of the floods, a 46 year-old man, bringing the death toll from the disaster to 16.
The Czechs have been slowly recovering from the catastrophe, with large areas including downtown Prague still without electricity. Many transport links, including about a dozen underground stations, remain shut.
But Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandr Vondra said the disaster would not threaten the November NATO summit, the first one ever to be held in a former Communist country.
"We know of nothing that could imperil the summit. The summit will simply happen. We would gain nothing from calling it off or cancelling it," said Vondra, the government's special envoy in charge of summit organisation, told Reuters.
Up to seven eastern European countries are expected to be invited to join the alliance at the summit of the 19 member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Nearly 50 heads of states are expected to attend.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- pennsylvania
Buried Legacy
Pittsburgh Valley News Dispatch,
August 28, 2002 (with photos and links to full articles)
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/
The Cold War is a fading memory and nuclear weapons production in the Alle-Kiski Valley ended decades ago. But the remnants of that production - involving radioactive plutonium - still lie just beneath the surface of 14 acres in Parks, Armstrong County. The site remains uncontained, on top of an abandoned coal mine and close to the Kiskiminetas River.
The Valley News Dispatch has spent a year reviewing thousands of documents - many newly declassified - concerning the site and talking to the people whose lives have been unalterably changed by the defunct company known as NUMEC.
BURIED LEGACY - DAY FOUR
NUMEC used Apollo, Parks as guinea pigIf you lived near the former NUMEC nuclear fuel plants in Apollo and Parks in the 1960s, you were part of studies to determine how much nuclear fallout was safe for humans. (2002-08-28) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88353.html
Employees seeking special designation
Government officials are taking a special look at NUMEC workers to see if they're eligible for special status to receive $150,000 lump sum and medical benefits, without any hassle. (2002-08-28) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88357.html
NUMEC made significant advancements
Zalman M. Shapiro, 82, of Pittsburgh, founder and president of Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. in Apollo and Parks, is a pioneer in the nuclear industry. (2002-08-28) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88361.html
Activists take on companies and emerge victorious
It took stamina and help from national industry players for a small cluster of housewives and blue-collar workers in Armstrong County to battle the federal government and powerful companies such as ARCO and Babcock & Wilcox. (2002-08-28) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88366.html
Local citizens went to extremes to get answers
Former Apollo councilwoman Cindee Virostek collected thousands of documents and lobbied in Washington, D.C., in the fight for public health and safety during the cleanup of the former NUMEC facility in her town. (2002-08-28) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88367.html
BURIED LEGACY - DAY THREE
NUMEC cited by hundreds as cancer source
At least 400 residents and workers died or have illnesses caused by nuclear fuel processing in Apollo and Parks, according to lawsuits and claims to the federal government. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88312.html
Former employees detail alleged safety violations
It was a different time. That's the answer you'll get when you ask former workers from Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. why they risked exposure to potentially lethal radioactive material for years at the Apollo and Parks plants. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88314.html
Government investigations proved fruitless
Seymour Hersh, in his book, "The Samson Option," claims former CIA Deputy Director Carl Duckett recanted his allegations against NUMEC and its founder, Zalman Shapiro, in 1991. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88316.html
Searching for truth about cancer cause
Eliza Johnson knows what it's like to live with cancer in the family. Her husband, Coley - better known as "Frutie" - had cancer of the stomach, pancreas and liver. He was diagnosed in March 1993. Six months later, the 72-year-old Parks Township man was dead. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88327.html
'Trouble, this is going to be trouble'
Nancy Erwin believes keeping a positive attitude is crucial. She should know. Erwin, 53, of Allegheny Township was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 18, 1985, a day she remembers vividly. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88334.html
Woman warns of living near plant
Donna Soulier warns she might cry during an interview. And then, almost immediately, she does. But listening to her story - her life since being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in the summer of 1990 - you understand why her voice strains, cracks and trembles as she recalls the past 12 years. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88339.html
Local case has ties to Silkwood
The lawsuit over radioactive contamination in Apollo has ties to a previous, more famous radiation case - that of Karen Silkwood. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88344.html
Lawsuit against ARCO, BWXT rolls on
A federal court awarded $36.7 million to eight Apollo-area residents in 1998 who sued Atlantic Richfield Co. and Babcock & Wilcox alleging radioactive releases from their plants caused various cancers. (2002-08-27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_88352.html
BURIED LEGACY - DAY TWO
No one knows what's in nuclear waste burial grounds
The nuclear waste burial grounds along Route 66 in Parks received uranium, beryllium and other contaminated materials from a nuclear fuels facility in Apollo. But no government agency or private company has tested inside the pits to know exactly what's buried there. (2002-08-26) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87957.html
Agency conflict: promoting and regulating nuclear energy
You can't have the inmates running the asylum. But that's just what watchdog groups and even some former government officials say is the case when it comes to the nation's nuclear energy programs. (2002-08-26) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87958.html
Despite doubts, Shapiro maintains innocence
Seventeen days after four Israelis - all with ties to that country's military or intelligence agencies - visited NUMEC, the men also met with NUMEC's president Zalman Shapiro and four others. (2002-08-26) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87959.html
Parks residents still wait for cleanup plan
After more than 15 years trying to develop a cleanup plan for the former NUMEC nuclear burial grounds in Parks, there still is no answer. Site studies and plans for the Parks sites fill a 10-foot-wide shelving unit at the Pittsburgh office of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). (2002-08-26) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87960.html
Evidence of offsite dumping grows
Rumors and allegations that the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. and its successors, Atlantic Richfield and Babcock & Wilcox, dumped radioactive wastes at sites around the Valley have persisted for decades. Tall tales have also circulated for decades that more contaminated material was buried at the NUMEC site than is assumed today. (2002-08-26) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87961.html
BURIED LEGACY - DAY ONE
Kiski Valley's nuclear legacy outlives Cold War
The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union disintegrated. Russia, once the arch enemy of the West, now is an associate member of NATO. And still the people of the Kiski Valley live their lives in the shadow of the Cold War. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87935.html
Murtha lends hand to local activist for federal investigation
A U.S. Congressman is calling for a federal investigation of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for what he calls faulty oversight of a former plutonium processing plant and nuclear burial site in Parks Township. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87939.html
Government agencies investigated missing uranium, NUMEC
The colorful history of the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. is rich with intrigue and mystery and unwinds like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87948.html
Radioactive materials sat undetected for almost four decades In the past year, nuclear contamination was discovered near Route 66, running along the site of the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. plutonium processing plant in Parks Township. It's been there, undetected, for almost four decades without fences or warning signs. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87951.html
Contaminated dirt sat near Parks restaurant
Pasta and plutonium - for decades, both could be found in the vicinity of a popular Italian restaurant next to the former NUMEC nuclear fuels plant in Parks. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87954.html
Pennsylvania ranks fourth with 26 nuclear legacy sites
Enough radioactive and chemically contaminated soil to fill a hole 11 feet deep and the size of football field sits in Parks - as it has for more than 40 years. (2002-08-25) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/buriedlegacy/s_87955.html
-------- us politics
[Bumper sticker: "Under Republicans, man exploits man; under Democrats, it's just the opposite" - author unknown. et]
Harvard Law ends ban on military recruiting
August 28, 2002
AP
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-57543941.htm
BOSTON (AP) - Harvard Law School will allow official on-campus recruiting by the military this year rather than risk costing the university $328 million in federal funds.
For more than a decade, the law school has prohibited recruiters who discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from using its facilities, including its career services office. The military has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning homosexuality, but openly homosexual military personnel can be discharged.
The Air Force demanded that the law school change its policy by July 1 to comply with a 1996 law that was passed after complaints that some military recruiters were being kept off campuses. Otherwise, Harvard University could lose the 16 percent of its annual budget that comes from the government. Student financial aid would not be affected.
The law school was granted a one-month extension to study the issue but told the Air Force on July 29 that it would change the policy.
"I believe that an overwhelming majority of the Law School community opposes any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation," Dean Robert Clark wrote in an e-mail sent to students Friday. "At the same time, most of us reluctantly accept the reality that this University cannot accept the loss of federal funds."
Mr. Clark declined further comment Monday.
Air Force spokeswoman Valerie Burkes said the military had asked other schools to change their policies but refused to discuss individual cases. Miss Burkes said Harvard's decision was "consistent with applicable federal statutes."
Many universities appear to have already made such exceptions to their nondiscrimination policies. Stanford University, for instance, allows military recruiting on campus on the grounds that the military's policy is not explicitly discriminatory, spokesman Jack Hubbard said.
Harvard Law's decision could be seen as further reconciliation between the military and the university, which kicked the ROTC off campus during the Vietnam War and later stripped its university funding because of the policy on homosexuals. In September, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers praised the ROTC, and some alumni have petitioned to return it to campus.
But Adam Teicholz, president of Lambda, the law school's student homosexual male and lesbian rights organization, said it was "cynical of the Bush administration to wield their control of school funds as a political weapon."
----
Wellstone accused of hiding voting record
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-22306937.htm
Republican Norm Coleman accused liberal Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone yesterday of running a campaign of "fear and class warfare" to hide "an extreme left" voting record far outside Minnesota's political mainstream.
Mr. Coleman, the former St. Paul mayor, said, "I do not think he is" dishonest but charged that Mr. Wellstone was "presenting himself to the voters as someone that he isn't. What we're seeing is the repackaging of Paul Wellstone."
"He's toned down his politics. He's running as a person who is working in a bipartisan way to get things done in the Senate," Mr. Coleman said in an interview during a one-day visit to Washington.
But this is not the same man who has been representing Minnesota in the Senate for nearly 12 years and who, despite a pledge to serve only two terms, is seeking a third term in November, his Republican rival said.
"This is an extreme left, ideological liberal who has voted against increased defense spending, fought against welfare reform, voted against the tax cuts, opposed the trade bill and called for a seven-year freeze on defense spending. He's so far out of the mainstream that he cannot get anything done for Minnesota," Mr. Coleman said.
Mr. Wellstone has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. Last year prominent left-leaning and labor union advocacy groups gave him a 100 percent liberal score, including Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Mr. Coleman's campaign has managed to keep the senator on the defensive by attacking his liberal voting record. Polls have shown the race in a dead heat, with Mr. Wellstone holding a slight 3- to 4-point lead throughout most of the summer.
"The struggle is likely to go down to the wire and still represents one of the GOP's best opportunities for a Senate pickup," says the latest analysis by the Cook Political Report.
But heavy TV-ad spending this summer by the Minnesota Democrat's campaign and his allies is portraying Mr. Wellstone as someone who works with other senators to build a consensus to pass legislation. "He gets it done," his ads say.
That's not the way Mr. Coleman sees it. "He's been there 11 years, and what has he got done? He's not a guy who gets things done," he said.
An ad series being run by the Wellstone campaign attacks President Bush's plan to let workers invest some of their Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds. Although the ad does not directly mention Mr. Coleman, it states: "It's a fundamental choice the Senate will make to privatize Social Security or not."
Mr. Coleman said Mr. Wellstone is "playing on the fears of the elderly; he's playing class warfare."
But the Wellstone campaign disputed Mr. Coleman's charges yesterday.
"Norm's big problem is his credibility. Whether you agree or disagree with Paul Wellstone, you always know that he believes what he says and what he does. With Norm it's the opposite. People don't believe him, and it's a major weakness of his," said Jim Farrell, the Wellstone campaign's chief spokesman.
"Social Security is going to be a big issue after this election. Cuts in benefits are part and parcel of any privatization scheme. Norm is scrambling to get out from under his previous support for the Bush plan of privatization," Mr. Farrell said.
Mr. Coleman said he believes that the heavy TV-ad campaign that the AFL-CIO, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other liberal groups have been running on Mr. Wellstone's behalf throughout July and August may have hurt the Republican challenger in the short term.
"I wouldn't be surprised if he's stretched out a lead over the past month. They've poured in a ton of money into their ads, well over $1.5 million just in the last month," Mr. Coleman said.
The former mayor has been running some ads as well. But Mr. Coleman said the National Republican Senatorial Committee has decided for tactical reasons to hold back its big media purchases until after Labor Day "when people begin paying attention to the campaign."
----
Bush backs Clinton on pardon data
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-11707376.htm
The Bush administration argued in court papers that documents related to contentious pardons made by former President Clinton should be withheld from the public to protect the privacy of the pardon-seekers and the president's right to receive confidential advice.
"The president is entitled to receive confidential advice and candid assessments from government attorneys," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The government asserted its argument in more than 100 pages submitted to U.S. District Court earlier this month as part of a lawsuit filed last year by the nonprofit group Judicial Watch, which is seeking access to records of the 177 pardons and commutations that Mr. Clinton considered or approved on the last day of his presidency.
These documents would address, among other contentious issues, the behind-the-scenes deliberations on the clemency that Mr. Clinton granted to fugitive financier Marc Rich and the lobbying done by brother Roger Clinton on behalf of other pardon applicants.
"The release of these documents would have a chilling effect on the deliberative process," Mr. McClellan said.
Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said the administration was not invoking executive privilege but instead was making a legal argument, in an effort to have the Judicial Watch suit dismissed, about the breadth of internal communications it sees as qualifying for protection should the government ultimately be compelled to produce documents.
The Freedom of Information Act provides a so-called "presidential communications privilege" that exempts from disclosure rules certain memos and other records circulated between a president and his advisers within the White House.
The Justice department has concluded that the documents sought by Judicial Watch are protected under the laws dealing with freedom of information, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said from President Bush's Texas ranch in Crawford.
But, as Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained it, the Bush administration is trying to expand the presidential communications privilege to executive-branch records outside the White House.
In its memorandum to the court, the government argues: "To exclude these documents from the scope of the privilege merely because they were initially generated at the Justice Department rather than the White House would arbitrarily and unconstitutionally limit the president in his choice of key advisers regarding the exercise of his clemency power, which is entrusted to him directly under the Constitution without limit."
The government also argued on behalf of the privacy rights of pardon applicants, saying the release of documents that Mr. Clinton considered "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
Mr. Fitton called the privacy argument ludicrous.
"The Bush White House is essentially saying, 'Leave Marc Rich alone, leave Roger Clinton alone, they're private figures,'" Mr. Fitton said.
"We believe there is a tacit agreement between the Clinton-ites and the Bush-ites not to probe too deeply into each others affairs, and this is part of it."
The court will not rule on the White House pleading for dismissal of the lawsuit until after Judicial Watch files its response in mid-September.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Report of Mass Afghan Graves Won't Be Probed, Envoy Says
U.N. Official Cites Danger and Weakness of Government
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4265-2002Aug27?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 27 -- The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan said today that the weakness of the Afghan government and the risk to investigators or witnesses make it almost impossible to investigate reports that there are mass graves in northern Afghanistan.
The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, was speaking about a report in Newsweek magazine that mass graves discovered in May near the northern city of Shebergan could contain as many as 1,000 bodies of Taliban prisoners who suffocated in sealed trucks last November while being transported by Afghan militiamen from Kunduz province to a militia prison at Shebergan, 200 miles to the west.
Afghan authorities have said they are willing to cooperate in any probe by international human rights groups or other foreign agencies, but they have not initiated an investigation. President Hamid Karzai sent a delegation to the area several days ago, but the result of the trip has not been made public.
A team of U.N. investigators confirmed the existence of mass graves in the town of Dasht-i-Leili in May and exhumed three bodies, which they said showed signs of suffocation. After the Newsweek article appeared last week, Brahimi's office here called for a "full-fledged investigation" of the site, although it said the safety of any witnesses must first be ensured.
The envoy's comments today, however, made clear that, in his view, the political volatility of the issue inside Afghanistan is too extreme at this point to conduct any probe.
"I don't think the government has the capacity" to carry out an investigation, Brahimi told reporters. "We have a responsibility to find out what happened, but our responsibility to the living has to take precedence. We can't take the risk of putting anyone's life in danger."
The deaths allegedly occurred during the transport of prisoners by a militia under the command of Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, who still controls the region and whose influence has not been challenged by the Karzai government.
Dostum has made no public comments on the allegations. But the Afghan defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, a rival of Karzai's and a powerful ally of Dostum's in the Northern Alliance militia coalition, said last week he consulted with regional authorities and doubted the reports were true.
Brahimi's remarks appeared to confirm a belief among Afghans that Karzai, who commands no troops of his own and has been forced to share power with Fahim, Dostum and other former militia leaders since December, is not in a position to challenge Dostum despite domestic and international concern over the massacre reports.
"Politics is the art of the possible," Brahimi said shortly before leaving for an extended trip to the United States. "Afghanistan has many problems. . . . There is no judicial system you can expect to face up to a situation like this and no proper police to protect people. Decisions must be made."
Brahimi said in some cases accountability must take "second place to peace and stability. You can choose to please yourself and make statements of principle, or you can see . . . in a given moment and place what is possible."
He compared Afghanistan to the situations in Chile and South Africa over the past decade, where abuses by repressive governments were not prosecuted by subsequent democratic administrations in the interest of preserving stability. In both countries, commissions were established to determine the truth about past abuses, but not to take action against the culprits.
The Newsweek report described Dostum's militiamen cramming Taliban fighters who had surrendered into sealed trucks for the trip to Shebergan. The report said many prisoners suffocated slowly in the intense heat and that drivers were beaten by Dostum's troops for trying to allow the captives to breathe. It said between 900 and 1,000 prisoners may have arrived dead and been buried in mass graves in Dasht-i-Leili.
The report also said numerous U.S. Special Forces troops were in the area at the time, but it did not establish whether they were aware of the prisoners' deaths. The Pentagon said Monday that U.S. forces reported they were unaware of what happened to the prisoners.
The U.S. forces were allied with Dostum's troops, and more broadly with the entire Northern Alliance coalition, in ousting the Taliban movement from power last November.
--------
U.S. Troops Focus on Border's Caves to Seek bin Laden
New York Times
August 28, 2002
By IAN FISHER with JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/international/asia/28AFGH.html
ASADABAD, Afghanistan, Aug. 23 - After months of frustration, American commanders appear to have concluded that Osama bin Laden is probably still alive and moving between mountain hideouts somewhere on a 250-mile stretch of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The hunt for Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has proved to be as murky as the silted rivers flowing through these inhospitable mountains. Nearly a year after Sept. 11, and nearly nine months after Mr. bin Laden's associates delivered their last videotape of him discussing the attacks in New York and Washington, hard facts about the quest are elusive.
But some American officers, speaking privately, say the assumption driving the manhunt is that the men are alive. They cite Afghan and Pakistani intelligence reports, mostly sketchy, that have spoken of Mr. bin Laden and an entourage of several dozen moving more than once since the American bombing of the Tora Bora mountains late last year.
Some of those reports, the officers say, have suggested that the fugitives may have moved through the mountains on horseback, probably on cloudy nights to elude aerial surveillance. The region being searched covers four provinces - Kunar, Nangahar, Paktika and Paktia - and the adjoining Pakistani tribal areas.
At the time of the biggest American ground battle of the war - at the Shah-i-Kot Valley, 100 miles southwest of Kabul, in March - American commanders said Qaeda and Taliban fighters, who resisted American troops for 11 days, might be protecting Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri.
But after the battle, no trace of the Qaeda leaders was found. United States military spokesmen said some Qaeda men appeared to have slipped through mountain passes toward Pakistan.
A spokesman for the American command, Lt. Col. Roger King, said Special Forces units deployed to bases like the one at Asadabad were working on the assumption that applying pressure on any possible hideout was the best means of exposing their quarry.
"I'd say it's a reasonable conclusion that we feel that if bin Laden is alive, we're providing enough pressure to make sure he keeps moving," Colonel King said. "It's easier to spot a moving target."
The Special Forces units leading the hunt move by helicopter or in camouflaged Humvee jeeps, often followed by clusters of helmeted soldiers clutching assault rifles.
Operating deep in tribal areas where suspicions of outsiders run high, the soldiers show an edginess that hints at the hazards and the importance of their mission. Twice in August, the Americans opened fire on Afghans in the Asadabad area, killing five men. On one occasion, the Americans acted after a man in a passing vehicle appeared to be aiming his rifle at them.
The victims turned out to be relatives of a local tribal chief with past Taliban connections, but many here say the Americans killed men with no current links to Islamic militants.
Who is on whose side, whom to trust, whom to regard as a potential enemy has been a conundrum for the Americans from the moment they arrived. Mostly the Americans have relied on local tribal leaders, but relations with them can be fickle.
On Wednesday evening, surrounded by some of the most powerful men in Asadabad, Hajji Rohullah Wakil, a tribal leader, said it was "possible" that Al Qaeda was regrouping in the mountain fastnesses. But Mr. Wakil said he had his doubts and had passed them on to the Special Forces, who set up a base here several months ago.
"I told them, `If there are Al Qaeda, tell us and we'll take care of them,' " Mr. Wakil, 42, said as he sat on a pile of mats in his compound, in the satisfied afterglow of a dinner for a new regional governor. As if to prove the futility of the American quest, he added, "It's been three months, and they haven't caught any Al Qaeda."
A few hours after that conversation, American soldiers made a surprise swoop in Asadabad, and their target could hardly have been a bigger surprise: Mr. Wakil and 11 of his associates, all of whom were tied up with plastic handcuffs, were loaded aboard a helicopter and whisked off to the American military headquarters at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
American troops on both sides of the border have dropped leaflets urging the people to turn in any Qaeda "terrorists" who seek refuge and proclaiming the $25 million reward that Washington has posted for Mr. bin Laden. One Pashto-language pamphlet handed out in Torkham, a Pakistani border town, read: "The Taliban and Al Qaeda have devastated your country. They are your, and our, enemies, so help us arrest them."
In public, American commanders continue to say what they have for months: that Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri may be alive, or they may be dead, and that if they are alive, they may be in Afghanistan or in Pakistan.
Those statements form a pattern of understatement adopted after the failure last year to find any fugitives at Tora Bora. The Pentagon believed then that it had the Qaeda leader trapped in the caves southeast of Jalalabad, but failed to find any trace of him after pulverizing the caves with waves of B-52 bombing.
In the recriminations that followed, with some American officers saying poor strategy had allowed Mr. bin Laden to escape to Pakistan through snow-clogged passes that the American forces had failed to seal, the Pentagon's approach shifted. Instead of declaring the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders to be their prime objective, the commanders began saying their aim was to disrupt Qaeda's ability to function by "mopping up" its remnants in the hinterland.
When they have been asked about Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri, senior officers have been elusive, as Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the American military effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was in a news conference at Bagram on Sunday.
"What I will say is that we have not seen convincing proof that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are dead," he told reporters, standing before a huge American flag for a morale-boosting pep talk to some of the 7,800 American troops in Afghanistan. "So what we do is we continue to confirm or deny the intelligence reporting that we get."
The general added: "Now, am I going to say where i think bin Laden is right now? No, I'm not. Because I wouldn't want to give anybody any source of alert. I actually don't know whether he's alive or dead. I do know that a great many nations on this planet are very interested in the man if he is still alive. And I'll leave you by saying, `If he's still alive, it's only a matter of time.' "]
The Special Forces unit also briefly detained and questioned a photographer for The New York Times who took their pictures. They demanded that the photographer clear his photographs from his digital camera and hand over a roll of exposed film, saying photographs of them could compromise their mission. Some photographs survived.
The American units have technical advantages, especially helicopters and surveillance satellites and drones. But the terrain also presents big handicaps to pursuers. Roads are little more than goat tracks. Villages lie scattered deep in gorges, or high on the mountain shoulders, and the tribespeople, living in mudwalled compounds, are heavily armed.
Culture and faith, too, seem to favor the fugitives. Despite the rewards offered by the Americans, anyone who turned in Qaeda leaders would be inviting certain punishment locally.
The frontier areas have long been strongholds of militant Islamic groups that began to flourish in the 1980's, when Muslim guerrillas fought Soviet occupation troops. In addition, the Pashtun people who predominate on both sides of the border have a strict tribal code that makes it a binding duty to offer hospitality to strangers and protect them from enemies.
In Asadabad, as at other American bases along the border, the soldiers get accustomed to the danger of sudden attacks.
In late August, the Asadabad base came under rocket attack from the neighboring mountainside twice in two days, though none of the rockets hit the base. After the second attack, commanders at Bagram dispatched two A-10 ground attack aircraft that pounded the mountainside, but no attackers were found, alive or dead.
The attacks came hard on the heels of the arrest of Hajji Wakil, and seemed to fulfill the predictions made by his supporters after he was seized.
"I don't know why the Americans did this," said Muhammad Amin, an intelligence officer on the new governor's staff, who is part of a local establishment that at least nominally is allied to the Americans. "But I can see it will upset the tribes here, and it will create problems."]
For the Americans, Mr. Wakil could stand as a metaphor for the uncertainties they face. He seems the model of an American ally - veteran of the American-backed guerrilla war against the Soviet invaders in the 1980's, a man grown wealthy from frontier trade and other businesses, a member of the tribal assembly that elected Hamid Karzai president in June.
But some Afghan military commanders paint a different picture, of a man suspected of having ties to Arab militants. Those Afghans suggest that Mr. Wakil might know quite a lot more than he had disclosed to the Americans about Qaeda activities in the area - that he might, in effect, have been a sort of double-agent, keeping contacts with the Americans so he could pass information to fugitives in the mountains.
Adding to the complexities, the hunt has led to new strains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with each country seeking to move the focus of the American search into the other's territory. Government leaders in Islamabad and Kabul have engaged in a tit-for-tat, with first one, then the other, citing intelligence reports indicating that Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri, if alive, are no longer on their territory.
-------- arms sales
[Please reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
A call to new arms
August 28, 2002
David C. Isby
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020828-278673.htm
In his recent annual report, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote: "It is not possible to defend against every threat. . . . The only defense . . . is to take the war to the enemy." Pre-emption is not just about Iraq. This administration is using the threat of pre-emptive war as the central theme of its campaign to counter Saddam Hussein's longstanding commitment to acquire a nuclear capability. If administration statements on pre-empting emerging threats likely to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are to be taken as more than rhetoric - largely for the benefit of Saddam - then Congress and the public alike have been put on notice of a significant evolution in U.S. national security strategy.
This change in U.S. strategy was forced by the proliferation of WMD and delivery systems to states that may not be deterred by the threat of retaliation and non-state terrorist groups. These people want the ability to hurt the United States very badly, and are willing to do just about anything they can to achieve this capability. When and whether they would be willing to use this capability once they achieve it - given enough time or money Saddam will only be the first - is something we can never truly know; even the best intelligence is limited in its ability to divine intentions (rather than ascertain capabilities). This characterization of the threat raises two further questions: What needs to be done to protect against it and to prevent it from being a threat?
The answer to the first question - protection - is reflected in current investment in missile defense and intelligence. Building a broad spectrum of capabilities against the full range of WMD-armed threats - including the terrorist with home-brewed biological weapons and the "axis of evil" with long-range missiles - is going to be expensive in terms of money and resources as well as politically.
The answer to the second question - prevention as well as protection - brings up the issue of pre-emption. Preventing WMD threats has been a goal of U.S. policy for decades, and it has been largely successful through a range of effective multilateral and bilateral initiatives. But U.S. policy has so far not prevented Saddam and terrorists from coming closer to their WMD goals. That is why a major war with Iraq is being considered as a policy option. Today, the only alternative would either rely on deterrence and intelligence to avoid conceding the first blow to Saddam or to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, requiring accurate targeting and imposing tremendous political and diplomatic costs.
The test as to whether the administration's statements of pre-emption are going to change national strategy will be reflected in whether it is willing to invest in giving the United States the capability to pre-empt distant WMD threats without having to choose between the unpleasant (regional conflict) or the unacceptable (nuclear strike) options. While such capabilities are likely to be too late for the emerging confrontation with Saddam, there are a number of investments that could provide increased pre-emptive capability in the mid- or longer-term future. These could include investment in weapons such as conventionally armed intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles capable of defeating either time-critical targets (such as missile launchers) or the hardened and deeply buried targets that many potential threats have constructed to house their infrastructure. If the goal is to have an ability to strike with the rapier of conventional force rather than the nuclear bludgeon, this will require a greater investment in intelligence to target these strikes. This may require constellations of radar satellites like the proposed Discoverer II, technically feasible but likely to be costly.
Like missile defense, a pre-emptive capability against WMD is in addition rather than in place of the other spending required by military transformation. Like missile defense, it is likely to be seen by the services as having the potential to act and a diversion and drain of scarce resources. But if the current administration - as it considers what to do about Saddam - wants future administrations to have a greater range of options against future threats rather than the current options of allowing them the potential first blow, mounting a major regional conflict or launching a nuclear strike, then it will have to start funding a new range of military capabilities and systems that will make the commitment to pre-empt threats more than rhetoric.
David C. Isby is a Washington-based defense analyst and author.
-------- biological weapons
Pentagon to track disease outbreaks
By Pamela Hess
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
August 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-29475018.htm
Washington and three other cities will get a Pentagon-backed experimental "medical surveillance system" this fall and winter to track diseases in the hope of identifying a biological attack before it causes an epidemic.
The system will cobble together environmental monitors that will sample the air for biological agents, and software to collect data from pharmacies, hospitals and doctors' offices and send it to a central system that will search for "spikes" of unusual symptoms.
For instance, a jump in sales of cold and flu medicine during the summer could suggest a man-made outbreak of a respiratory disease.
The $300 million, two-year pilot program is sponsored by the Defense Department and is being designed to determine what kind of monitoring and reporting systems can quickly identify outbreaks.
"Our goal is not to protect the cities. Our goal is to find out how to do it," Ron Yoho with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said in an interview.
No such system was in place in Washington last year when anthrax-laced mail killed two District postal workers. Three other persons nationwide died in the anthrax attacks.
"We all recognize this is something we need to do," said Anna Johnson-Winegar, deputy assistant to the defense secretary for chemical and biological defense. "It has been less than robustly supported. It's a matter of competing priorities. A lot of people had put a biological terrorist attack in the hypothetical category until last fall. Shame on us."
Besides Washington, Albuquerque, N.M., has volunteered itself to test the system.
The Defense Department will hold a "competition" in December during which other cities can nominate themselves to test the system. The other two testing sites will be announced in early 2003 and environmental samplers and software will be distributed by midyear.
The cities with the best chances of being selected would have mass transit, including a subway system, a major airport, and be on the coast, the officials suggested.
It is not clear whether the biodefense system contemplated now would make any difference in the event of a small-scale attack, the officials said. However, it might have improved the chances that hospitals would have recognized the symptoms of anthrax earlier.
"It certainly would have been more probable," Mrs. Johnson-Winegar said. "We are trying to synthesize [the information] so that it would have been like all those people were seen by the same doctor."
Presumably, had the victims gone to the same doctor, a pattern would have been noticed and investigated. Two of them did, in fact, and both survived.
At least one of the postal workers who died last fall from anthrax in the Washington area was treated for flu and released from a hospital without the anthrax infection being detected.
"In this game, 12 hours, 24 hours or 48 hours can make a big difference in treating people," said Paul Bergeron, an analyst on the Pentagon's chemical and biological defense program.
Medical surveillance is not a new concept: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly tracks outbreaks of diseases, including an ongoing monitoring of the progress of the West Nile virus. The system relies on doctors and hospitals to report infectious diseases to a central database where anomalies and suspicious clusters are identified.
Most of the biological-detection projects tend to be "point detection," that is, machines that suck in air samples to check for the presence of certain agents. Those systems are limited, however, by their range, how often they are checked, and by the organisms and chemicals they are programmed to recognize.
Federal, state and local organizations already have more than 100 information systems designed for health surveillance, the National Association of County and City Health Officials says.
The Pentagon's software, based on the existing Army program known as "Essence," requires no additional inputs from health care professionals. It merely mines data off records already kept by hospitals and pharmacies.
That information also will have been scrubbed for privacy concerns by the health care provider, and the government will get no names or personal data.
"No data will ever come to us that haven't already passed through filters," Mr. Yoho said.
Acting on the data will also be the responsibility of health officials, Mr. Yoho said. If a biological event is detected, the most likely scenario for response is that hospitals will be notified and they will contact patients and other potential victims.
Biological attacks are often slow to be noticed. The early symptoms of many diseases resemble common viruses until it is too late to treat them and they have been spread to others.
Anthrax is not communicable from person to person, but a host of other agents believed to be in the arsenals of several countries are, including smallpox and Ebola hemorrhagic fever.
Many infectious diseases incubate for a week or more, during which time the patient feels healthy but is capable of infecting others. That is why medical surveillance matters - to pool the individual cases into a central sample and determine quickly whether a terrorist has released a biological agent.
"Only a short window of opportunity will exist between the time the first cases are identified and a second wave of the population becomes ill," the CDC warned in an April 2000 report. "During that brief period, public health officials will need to determine that an attack has occurred, identify the organism, and prevent more casualties through prevention strategies (e.g., mass vaccination or prophylactic treatment).
"As person-to-person contact continues, successive waves of transmission could carry infection to other worldwide localities."
The Pentagon will also spend $120 million to set up a "virtual" biological terrorism research facility, tying together the multitude of researchers working on various aspects of biological defense.
----
Tokyo Court Confirms Japan Used Germ Warfare in China
Compensation Denied for Deaths Caused by Diseases Spread in WWII
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4146-2002Aug27.html
TOKYO, Aug. 27 -- A district court here ruled today that Japan conducted germ warfare in World War II, bluntly contradicting the continued insistence by the government that there is no proof of such crimes. But the court rejected claims for compensation by elderly Chinese victims.
The compensation ruling was a blow to the Chinese who traveled here during the trial to describe the horrible deaths of loved ones killed by rare diseases during the fighting with Japanese forces in 1941 and 1942.
"This is so unjust," said Chen Zhi Fa, 69, who came from Zhejiang province to testify about the deaths of his father and brother in 1941. "This cannot prevail."
Despite testimony from former Japanese soldiers involved in the biological experiments, the Japanese government contends there is no proof that the Imperial Army spread fleas infected with bubonic plague over the Chinese countryside and infected food with cholera during its wartime invasion of China.
While brushing aside that denial, the court ruled that wartime victims could not collect compensation from the Japanese government.
The decision follows a pattern in which Japanese courts have -- with rare exceptions -- rejected a string of legal claims slowly emerging from the shadows of Japan's Asian conquests during World War II. Lawsuits brought on behalf of slave laborers, women forced into prostitution for Japanese troops, torture victims, Koreans forced into military duty and Allied prisoners of war have all been dismissed.
The suit over germ warfare was brought after historians had painstakingly peeled the secrecy back from the activities of Japan's notorious Unit 731, which carried out the biological experimentation in China. Former members of the unit, who said they were wracked by guilt, testified to horrific experiments on Chinese. Japanese lawyers who volunteered to help bring the case presented eyewitness accounts of 180 Chinese residents, and some elderly Chinese boldly made the trip here to testify.
"Japan has a serious problem. The legal system needs overhaul," said Wang Xuan, 50, whose search into her family's past led her to help organize the case. "It is absurd that the ruling confirmed Japan's biological warfare, but the Japanese government doesn't have to take any responsibility."
Victims in the case said they felt they had been denied justice at every turn. Some members of Unit 731 became pillars in the Japanese medical and business communities after the war and were never prosecuted; in fact, they held regular reunions.
The United States made a secret deal to exempt the biological war crimes from the Tokyo trials held after the war, in exchange for the results of the gruesome experiments. The Japanese government denied the existence of the deal and the secret unit for years, and still insists in the face of journals, documents and testimony that it doesn't know what the unit did. Nationalist historians have gained increasing acceptance for accounts that diminish or omit the army's use of biological and chemical weapons against the Chinese.
In its ruling today, read by Presiding Judge Koji Iwata, the court said, "The evidence shows that the Japanese troops, including Unit 731, used bacteriological weapons under the order of the Imperial Japanese Army's headquarters and that many local residents died."
But the court rejected the lawsuit's request for damages of $84,000 to each person because "no international law that enables individuals to sue for war damages had been established at the time or has been now."
Keiichiro Ichinose, a Japanese attorney for the Chinese, said the loss was tempered by the unqualified declaration about the biological warfare.
"The fact that the court confirmed it is revolutionary," he said. "But the court did not have the courage to admit responsibilities on the part of the Japanese government. I think there will be a time when [the government] will have to admit it. In that sense, this is the first step."
Neither the government's attorneys nor Foreign Ministry spokesmen would comment after the ruling. The trial, which has played out over nearly five years, has drawn only perfunctory media coverage in Japan. Many Japanese say they are tired of the arguments about a war that has been over for more than half a century. But China, North Korea and South Korea say the issue remains relevant, contending that Japan has failed to confront its wartime crimes like Germany did.
Although the Soviet Union tried 12 Unit 731 members in 1949, their gruesome accounts at the trial were dismissed by the United States as Cold War propaganda. In 1981, an American journalist revealed the agreement between the United States and Japan not to prosecute Unit 731 members. The following year, author Seiichi Morimura exposed the unit's history to Japanese in "The Devil's Gluttony."
Testimony at the trial bolstered what historians found in documents pried from archives or discovered by accident, and in the accounts of several Unit 731 members given during an extraordinary public confession in 1993. That evidence confirmed the Imperial Japanese Army had mounted an ambitious program to try to spread plague and disease behind Chinese lines during the war.
Japanese researchers grew fleas in a bathtub, mixed them with wheat to attract disease-carrying rats, infected them with bubonic plague, and airdropped them over China's eastern province of Zhejiang and central Hunan province from 1940 to 1942, according to witnesses at the trial.
The Chinese plaintiffs described the unseen and unknown disease that raced through towns and villages. People died in hours or days, their bodies swollen and black. Those who came to their funerals often took the disease home with them, said Ding De Wang, 69, who testified that his father died in convulsions two days after being exposed to the plague. At the time, Ding was 8.
The Chinese government estimates diseases introduced by Japan killed 270,000 civilians, though there is little evidence to support the figure. Yoshio Shinozuka, 77, a member of Unit 731 who volunteered to testify, told of the human experimentation that went on at the unit's Harbin headquarters in northeastern China. Subjects were injected with the plague, and split open moments after, or perhaps even before, they died in agony so researchers could perform an autopsy, Shinozuka testified. He said they were referred to as "logs, like pieces of wood."
China claims about 3,000 subjects died in experiments to produce such diseases as cholera, plague and anthrax as weapons of war. Some have compared the experimentation to that of Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele.
The Japanese government's stance on reparations for its wartime conduct is that they were settled by the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty that formally ended the Pacific War, and in subsequent bilateral treaties.
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.
-------- chemical weapons
Argentine police find some of stolen toxic chemical
REUTERS ARGENTINA:
August 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17461/story.htm
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentine police said they had recovered part of a shipment of 20 tonnes of a highly toxic derivative of deadly cyanide that had been stolen last week, but some apparently was still missing.
Police found 12 tonnes of the substance in several bags in an abandoned tractor trailer in a poor suburb outside Buenos Aires on Saturday, provincial police said in a statement. Officials were not immediately available to give details on what happened to the rest of the stolen shipment.
The substance was stolen from a large truck last Monday as it was being driven to a petrochemical plant belonging to local chemical firm Atanor . The police said they had returned the material to the company.
A spill of the same toxic material - which can be used to make crop fumigation materials among other things - in a poor Buenos Aires suburb a decade ago killed seven people.
In May, thieves in Mexico stole a truck carrying 10 tonnes of lethal sodium cyanide, sparking fears it could be used by terrorists, but the majority of the shipment later was recovered.
-------- china
Separatist Group In China Added To Terrorist List
U.S. Endorses Fight Against Ethnic Uighurs
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 27, 2002; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64814-2002Aug26?language=printer
BEIJING, Aug. 26 -- The Bush administration has added a violent Muslim group seeking independence for China's Xinjiang province to its official list of foreign terrorist organizations, a senior U.S. diplomat said today.
The decision, announced by Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage after a day of meetings with Chinese leaders, is the strongest U.S. endorsement yet of China's assertion that it is fighting terrorism, not peaceful dissent, among the ethnic Uighurs who reside in the country's far western stretches.
It is also the latest sign that Washington and Beijing are taking steps to improve relations before President Jiang Zemin's scheduled visit to the United States in October. On Sunday, the Chinese government published regulations on the export of missile technology, meeting a long-standing U.S. demand.
Armitage said the State Department designated the little-known East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization several days ago. He provided few details, saying only that "after careful study, we judged . . . that it committed acts of violence against unarmed civilians without any regard for who was hurt."
The Chinese government has been pressing Washington for months to include the group on the terrorist list, an act that triggers financial sanctions and immigration controls. In the meetings today, Chinese leaders expressed satisfaction with the U.S. move, Armitage said.
China has been eager to present itself as a partner in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But human rights activists have accused the government of using the campaign to justify harsh tactics to suppress political dissent among Xinjiang's 8 million Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims, many of whom yearn for independence or at least greater autonomy from Chinese rule.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the pro-independence East Turkestan Information Center based in Sweden, warned that the U.S. decision to list ETIM as a terrorist organization gives China a green light to pursue its crackdown on Uighurs.
"Now, anyone who speaks out will be labeled a terrorist connected to this group -- intellectuals, religious figures, anyone who is unhappy with Beijing," he said. "The government crackdown will intensify, and that will cause more Uighurs to turn to extremism and terrorism."
Raxit said he disagreed with ETIM's support of violence to liberate Xinjiang, but he also said he did not consider its members to be terrorists. "They are extremists, but it is the Chinese government that is using violence against innocent civilians," he said. "They are the terrorists."
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch was more reserved, saying it had no information about ETIM and urging only that Uighurs in U.S. custody not be extradited to China, where they would not be afforded due process and could face execution.
Armitage said he emphasized to Chinese officials "the absolute necessity to respect minority rights" as the country moves forward with "a very difficult, anti-terrorism, counterterrorism fight with ETIM."
China has blamed Uighur terrorists for a long list of bombings, assassinations and other crimes inside and outside Xinjiang, but it has said little about ETIM. In January, it issued a report alleging that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network provided the group weapons, money and training in Afghanistan. Members then sneaked back into Xinjiang and set up secret cells across the country to produce weapons, the report said.
Western diplomats and other analysts have questioned the claims, saying China has not produced evidence to support them. But sources briefed by U.S. diplomats said suspects captured in Afghanistan have confirmed ETIM has links to al Qaeda and has been involved in terrorist acts, including the murder of a Chinese diplomat in Central Asia.
Hasan Mahsum, the group's leader and China's most wanted fugitive, denied any ties with al Qaeda during a January interview with Radio Free Asia, according to Uighur exile groups.
-------- drug war
Investigation Opened in Case Criticized by Rights Groups
New York Times
August 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/national/28AP-TULI.html
AUSTIN (AP) -- With a federal investigation dragging on, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn has opened a state investigation into a 1999 Tulia drug bust that civil rights groups say was racially motivated.
"There has been some confusion over whether there even was an ongoing investigation," Cornyn said. "I became concerned things had gotten bogged down."
In a letter Monday to R. Alexander Acosta, deputy assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division, Cornyn said he told his staff to open an investigation and has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to join.
Cornyn said he didn't want to interfere with a federal investigation but said a state review is needed to see if any Texas laws were broken.
In his letter, Cornyn asked that state investigators be allowed to review the federal case. A Justice Department spokeswoman would say only that the federal investigation is still open and declined further comment.
Swisher County authorities arrested 43 people in a drug sting, including 37 blacks. Of those arrested 11 were found guilty and another 17 accepted plea agreements.
Civil rights groups have vigorously protested the Tulia bust, which brought national attention and questions about the way the state's drug task forces conduct investigations.
Many of the cases against black Tulia residents were based solely on the testimony of officer Tom Coleman, who said he spent 18 months working undercover to make drug cases against a large portion of the town's black population.
Coleman worked alone and used no audio or video surveillance. Little or no corroborating evidence was introduced during the trials. Coleman himself was charged with theft and abuse of power during the investigation. The charges against him were later dropped.
The charges against the last defendant were dropped in July.
Jeff Blackburn, an Amarillo attorney who represents several of the Tulia defendants, said the investigation is long overdue.
"We have demanded an investigation for well over a year now," Blackburn said. "However, it's one thing to investigate, it's another to take real action. And Mr. Cornyn is in a position to take action. His office needs to take over these cases and see to it that some justice finally starts getting done."
"It's about time," state Rep. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said Monday night. "He's being very political. Where was he when it was going on?"
The case has drawn national media attention in recent weeks with Cornyn running for U.S. Senate. The Republican said Monday his decision to open an investigation during his campaign was a coincidence.
"This is part of my job," he said. "I do that regardless of whether I am up for election or not."
Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart and the district attorney, Terry McEachern, have denied allegations of racial bias and stand by the arrests and convictions. So has Coleman, who no longer works in law enforcement.
McEachern did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.
While Cornyn's office investigates the arrests, it also has received a habeas corpus appeal from one of the Tulia defendants. The attorney general's office will have the job of defending the state in federal court.
Cornyn said the state investigation shouldn't conflict with the appeal.
"The job of every prosecutor is not merely to convict but to see that justice is done," Cornyn said. "There is no limitation to finding out what the facts are."
-------- iran
Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran
Pair Are Plotting Attacks, Sources Say
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 28, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4231-2002Aug27?language=printer
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Aug. 27 -- Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad and Zabol, according to Arab intelligence sources.
The two -- Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, whom U.S. officials reported had been killed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost in January -- are directly involved in planning al Qaeda terrorist operations, according to the intelligence sources, who are outside Saudi Arabia and did not want their names or countries disclosed.
With Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, in hiding, the sources said, and with the death of the former military chief, Muhammad Atef, the two have assumed operational control of al Qaeda's military committee, which directs attacks, and its ideological or religious committee, which issues fatwas, or statements, to justify those attacks.
The idea of the transfer of power arose after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, when it became apparent to al Qaeda that the United States might attack Afghanistan and capture or kill some of its senior leaders, the sources said. The need to put the transfer into practice became even more apparent in March with the capture in Pakistan of Abu Zubaida, a Palestinian and senior al Qaeda planner.
The sources also said that one of bin Laden's sons, Saad, who is in his early twenties, is being groomed as his father's successor because of the symbolism offered by the idea of a dynasty. And while the sources said that Saad has not assumed a formal position, he has increasingly been communicating with operatives worldwide in order to burnish his standing with them.
"[Saad] has authority, but Zawahiri is still number two," said a senior Arab intelligence officer.
Dozens of other al Qaeda fighters, and possibly more, are also staying in a cluster of hotels in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and in guesthouses in Zabol, about 400 miles south on the Iranian-Afghan border, the sources said.
The report from these sources supported the Bush administration's long-standing assertion that Iran -- or at least hard-liners in the conservative clerical line of authority that controls the army and intelligence services -- is harboring al Qaeda fighters.
A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied that al-Adel and Walid are in Iran and added, "Iran's policy is not to permit such people to enter Iran."
Nevertheless, the sources said al-Adel and Walid meet regularly with lieutenants in Mashhad and Zabol, and that Iran has also been used as a way station to other countries for al Qaeda fighters who have fled Afghanistan since the Taliban was defeated in November.
The sources said Iran's transfer of 16 al Qaeda operatives to Saudi Arabia in June, along with small deportations to other countries, were a pretense used to rebutt the Bush administration's charges and encourage the idea that it was cooperating in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, cited the June handover as an instance of such cooperation in an interview this month.
Officials in Arab countries said that captured al Qaeda operatives have said in interrogations that their Iranian hosts had told some of them they had to leave after Bush included Iran in an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union address. But crucial al Qaeda figures were allowed to stay, they said, and some of those who left were provided with false papers or had their passports cleaned of incriminating stamps.
Still others, or their wives and children, were turned over to their home governments in a display of solidarity with the United States and its allies.
In one case, the wife of a prominent al Qaeda figure was sent home and told officials when she arrived that her husband was still in Iran, another intelligence officer said.
"There is an Iranian role in hosting al Qaeda and sponsoring the movement of al Qaeda," said the senior Arab intelligence officer. The officer said Iran's reformist government, which may have qualms about aiding al Qaeda, is powerless to prevent the military and the intelligence service from assisting fugitives from Afghanistan.
Iran's motives are not entirely clear. Its seemingly contradictory actions may be explained by tensions between reformers and conservatives within the government, Arab officials said. Moreover, the hard-line conservatives, in sheltering al Qaeda, do not appear to be acting out of any innate sympathy for bin Laden's group, the sources said.
Some elements in the Iranian system seem to believe that they can use al Qaeda for their own unstated purposes, a source said. One intelligence officer noted that a number of captured al Qaeda operatives said the Iranians told them before their departure that they may be called on at some point to assist Iran. But they were not told how.
The two most important figures said to remain in Iran are al-Adel and Walid.
Al-Adel was the head of al Qaeda's security committee, a position he apparently still holds. He has been indicted in the United States for murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and the destruction of buildings and property of the United States, all in connection with the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.
Walid, a longtime bin Laden lieutenant, is from the North African nation of Mauritania and has played a role in developing the doctrine to justify al Qaeda attacks. He now has assumed control of al Qaeda's religious committee and, because he is in Iran with al-Adel, is also participating in military planning, the sources said.
Pentagon officials said Jan. 8 that Walid had been killed in Afghanistan. But the sources said that assertion was incorrect, and added that reliable information from Iran indicates that he is increasingly important to al Qaeda's future.
They also said al Qaeda is now working on the assumption that its e-mail and phone communications are being monitored. The group is becoming increasingly sophisticated in using electronic communications to send messages and deceive intelligence agencies, and is also relying on human couriers, often women.
Under al-Adel, two other key operatives are rising in the organization's military structure, the sources said. And through them, al Qaeda, traditionally a small, hard-core group, is building alliances with other Islamic extremists who can act as proxies.
Among them is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a Pakistani born in Kuwait who is also known as "The Brain," has been described as the logistics expert behind the Sept. 11 attacks. He is now said to be operating out of Pakistan. He has been linked by a phone intercept with the incendiary attack on a historic synagogue in Tunisia in April that killed 14 German tourists, six Tunisians and a Frenchman, according to German officials.
Mohammed is also reported to have visited Germany in 1999, but a Western intelligence official said the report was based on information from only one source, although he described the source as "normally reliable."
Mullah Bilal, or Bilal bin Marwan, a Saudi accused of helping plan the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, was also behind a plan to attack U.S. and British naval ships in the Strait of Gibraltar this year, according to Moroccan officials. The sources said he, like Mohammed, has become critical to the group's current functioning and is also working out of Pakistan.
The sources said al Qaeda has also planned attacks elsewhere in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf this year, including another plan by Bilal to attack U.S. ships in Bahrain. Al Qaeda also planned to kill Americans on the streets of Saudi Arabia, the intelligence officers said. The group had discussed putting silencers on guns to be used in the attacks. The operations were thwarted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the sources said.
Based on interrogation of suspects and other intelligence, one official said al Qaeda saw a real opening to damage U.S.-Saudi relations because of rifts between the two countries since Sept. 11. And he said an atrocity on Saudi soil remains a major al Qaeda goal because of the expectation that the recrimination that could follow would rupture relations between the countries.
The official, from a country other than Saudi Arabia, said that while the Saudi authorities had been "passive" toward al Qaeda financing and recruitment in the past, they have seriously stepped up their efforts against the organization and have broken up al Qaeda plots.
-------- iraq
Powell Aide Disputes Views on Iraq
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4616-2002Aug27?language=printer
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 27 -- The Bush administration's argument that an attack on Iraq would make it easier to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict received a challenge from an unlikely source: retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
In a speech to the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee, reported in the Tampa Tribune, Zinni said war against Iraq would alienate U.S. allies in the region. "We need to quit making enemies that we don't need to make enemies out of," Zinni said.
In Friday's speech, Zinni argued that the United States would be wiser to negotiate peace between Israelis and Palestinians and to pursue the al Qaeda network before going after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way," Zinni said, "and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another way," the newspaper reported.
"The president has made no decisions," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today in response. "And the president will continue to be deliberative, be patient. But as the vice president said yesterday, we will not underestimate this risk."
Zinni, a former chief of the U.S. Central Command, holds an unpaid position in the administration. He works exclusively on Israeli-Palestinian issues when asked by Powell, but has not undertaken any missions since the beginning of the year.
-- Dana Milbank
----
Iraqi Envoys Courting Support in Syria, China
U.S. Allies in Mideast Warn of War on Hussein
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4191-2002Aug27?language=printer
CAIRO, Aug. 27 -- Senior Iraqi envoys sought to enlist support in Syria and China today against increasingly explicit U.S. threats of attack against President Saddam Hussein's government. Meanwhile, two close U.S. allies in the Arab world warned that a new war against Hussein could sow chaos in the Middle East.
The urgent Iraqi diplomacy -- with Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan in Damascus and Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in Beijing -- came after a speech Monday by Vice President Cheney outlining what the Bush administration says are imperative reasons for pushing Hussein from power and warning it must take action sooner rather than later.
Cheney's forceful language also intensified fears of disruption in oil markets, raising prices. The benchmark Brent crude rose to $27.22 a barrel today on the London market, a rise of 17 cents. Prices had jumped 65 cents on the U.S. market soon after Cheney's speech Monday, when London markets were closed for a holiday.
Responding to Cheney's remarks, Ramadan told reporters in Damascus that the threats were more U.S. "despotism" against Arabs and the entire Arab world should worry that a U.S. attack on Baghdad would be another sign of U.S. animosity toward Arab states.
"We could not care less about the threats that are out there. Iraq has a long history with these threats and such despotism," Ramadan told reporters during a trip to Syria to boost economic ties and discuss diplomatic strategy in the face of the U.S. warnings.
His comments echoed language attributed to Hussein today. "The American threats do not target Iraq alone but all the Arab nation," the Iraqi president said during a meeting with the foreign minister of Qatar, according to the official Iraqi News Agency, Reuters reported.
"Iraq has implemented all obligations imposed on it by [U.N.] Security Council resolutions," Hussein said in accusing the international body of not following through on its commitments, including respecting Iraq's sovereignty and lifting sanctions imposed following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, was reported to be in China, which wields veto power on the Security Council and has traditionally opposed interference in other countries' affairs. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz also is likely to travel as part of the Iraqi campaign to gather support for opposing a U.S. attack, diplomats said.
Egypt, a traditional U.S. ally and part of the coalition against Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, warned that the kind of attack envisaged by Cheney would be a bad idea with unforeseen consequences.
"Striking Iraq is something that could have repercussions and post-strike developments. We fear chaos happening in the region," President Hosni Mubarak said in remarks to students that were reported on Egyptian television. Mubarak said that, contrary to Cheney, he sees "no need" for military action against Baghdad.
Similar opposition was expressed today by the leaders of Qatar, another close U.S. ally.
A U.S. war with Iraq would be a "catastrophe," that country's foreign minister, Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, said during a visit to Baghdad, according to wire service reports from the city. "We are of course against any military action."
Qatar is the home of a forward-deployed U.S. armored division and a recently completed air base where U.S. planes are stationed. It also is being considered as a substitute for the regional U.S. air command center currently based 70 miles southeast of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The Qatari minister was in Iraq to try to convince Hussein's government to accept the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.
The fact that such U.S. allies as Egypt and Qatar are wary of action against Iraq reflects a broad regional consensus which holds that while the Middle East would be better off without Hussein, the risks involved in a war are greater than those posed by his remaining in power.
Countries such as Syria, which have strained relations with the United States, interpret the possibility of military action more ominously. Although Syria joined the Gulf War coalition that reversed Baghdad's occupation of Kuwait, a top official in the government of President Bashar Assad said today that a U.S. conflict with Iraq this time would be part of a larger assault on Arabs.
"The accusation of terrorism has become an assault weapon in the hand of the United States that it uses as slander in the face of those it does not approve of and against countries that it covets control over," Chief of Staff Hasan Turkmani said in comments that are scheduled for publication in the country's Army magazine next month but were released today, according to wire service reports.
Although Syria has helped with the fight against al Qaeda terrorists, the Bush administration has criticized its support of Palestinian militant groups and the Hezbollah movement in neighboring Lebanon.
In Germany, U.S. talk of war with Iraq also encountered high-level opposition. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it was wrong to consider preemptive strikes in a region where there is already too much violence, Reuters reported. "To talk about an attack against Iraq now is wrong," Schroeder said in a campaign speech in the western town of Bremen. "Under my leadership, Germany will not take part in that."
----
World Leaders Urge U.S. Restraint in Iraq
August 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-World-US-Iraq.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China's vice premier said Wednesday that Beijing opposes a possible American attack against Iraq, urging caution as the United States considers military action against Saddam Hussein.
``China does not agree with the practice of using force or threatening to use force to resolve this issue,'' Vice Premier Qian Qichen told Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Sabri was visiting Beijing in a mission to gather support among countries traditionally friendly toward Iraq in the face of the threats from Washington.
Qian joined Germany, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in calling for restraint Wednesday, after Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the United States could face disastrous consequences if it delays action against Iraq.
Still, Xinhua reported that Qian repeated China's demand that Iraq strictly implement U.N. Security Council resolutions, which call for the return of U.N. arms inspectors. That would be a first step toward lifting U.N. sanctions imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
--
Britain said Thursday it is considering calling for a deadline to be set for Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq.
The Foreign Office issued a statement that said the government would discuss this possibility with its allies, including the United States.
But it did not say whether the U.N. Security Council should set the deadline or what should be done if the Iraqi leader ignored it.
U.N. inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998, and Iraq has barred them from returning. There has never been a deadline set for their return, and the British proposal would pressure the Iraqi president to allow them back or face any consequences.
Still, Britain has repeatedly said it is too early to decide whether to participate in a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq. But it also has agreed with Washington that something must be done about Iraq's alleged possession and development of weapons of mass destruction.
--
Other leaders also urged Washington to proceed carefully. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the Americans should resist attacking Iraq and any military action would not reflect U.N. policy. He said he favored dialogue with Saddam.
``The U.N. is not agitating for military action'' against Iraq, Annan told a news conference after talks with Botswana's President Festus Mogae.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Wednesday renewed their criticism of plans to use military force against Saddam. Schroeder insisted that Germany wouldn't take part in an attack -- ``at least not under my leadership.''
Fischer told German radio that ``with no change in the analysis of the threat posed by Iraq, we believe a regime change brought about by military intervention to be highly risky and its consequences unclear, which is why we reject it.''
Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the region, on Wednesday repeated its opposition to a military attack on Iraq, saying Washington should insist on a return of weapons inspectors.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said: ``Attacking the Iraqi people will force them into backing their government.''
Bahrain's king, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, reiterated his country's opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said that during a visit to Syria on Wednesday, Sheik Hamad urged Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions and spare the region ``further tensions and suffering.''
With key allies balking at a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stumped for support in Japan on Wednesday and indicated Washington was just getting started on building a coalition against Baghdad.
Armitage declined to say how many nations back Washington's push for toppling Saddam.
``I don't think I'd care to give a laundry list because I don't think we've choosed sides yet on the question of who would do what,'' Armitage told a news conference wrapping up a five-nation Asia tour in Tokyo.
``When the U.S. lays out a public case against Iraq, we expect to have a fair amount of international support,'' Armitage said.
Cheney on Monday argued that a pre-emptive strike to stop Saddam from developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons was necessary. ``What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness,'' he said.
Inspectors left Baghdad ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes in December 1998 to punish Iraq for not cooperating with inspections. Iraq has barred them from returning.
The United Nations has failed to persuade Iraq to readmit the inspectors despite three rounds of talks since March. Iraq said it wants to continue a dialogue on their return -- but with conditions Annan has rejected.
While U.S. officials have said they are not rushing into a war with Iraq, they have not ruled out the use of military action either.
--------
Iraq and Poison Gas
by DILIP HIRO
August 28, 2002
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=hiro20020828
It is suddenly de rigueur for US officials to say, "Saddam Hussein gassed his own people." They are evidently referring to the Iraqi military's use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August.
Since Baghdad's deployment of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time, the question is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side--a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, the full consequences of which have yet to play themselves out.
During the five years following October 1983, Iraq used 100,000 munitions, containing chiefly mustard gas, which produces blisters first on the skin and then inside the lungs, and nerve gas, which attacks the nervous system, but also cyanide gas. From the initial use of such agents in extremis to repel Iranian offensives, the Iraqis went on to deploy them extensively as a vital element of their assaults in the spring and summer of 1988 to retake lost territories. At the time, even as the US government had knowledge of these attacks, it provided intelligence and planning assistance to the Iraqi army, according to an August 18 front-page report by Patrick Tyler in the New York Times.
Iraq's use of poison gases to regain the Fao Peninsula, captured by Iran in early 1986, was so blatant that the United Nations Security Council could no longer accept Baghdad's routine denials. After examining 700 Iranian casualties, the UN team of experts concluded that Iraq used mustard and nerve gases on many occasions.
Yet, instead of condemning Iraq unequivocally for its actions, the Security Council, dominated by Washington and Moscow, both of them pro-Baghdad, balanced its condemnation of Iraq with its disapproval of "the prolongation of the conflict" by Iran, which had refused to agree to a cease-fire until the Council named Iraq the aggressor (which America got around to doing in 1998!).
Contrary to its proclamations of neutrality, Washington had all along been pro-Iraq. It lost little time in supplying Baghdad with intelligence gathered by the Saudi-owned but Pentagon-operated AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) flying in the region. This tilt became an embrace after the re-election of Reagan as president in November 1984, when Iraq and America re-established diplomatic ties.
From mid-1986, assisted by the Pentagon, which secretly seconded its Air Force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts, Iraq improved its accuracy in targeting, hitting Iran's bridges, factories and power plants relentlessly, and extending its air strikes to the Iranian oil terminals in the Lower Gulf. Under the rubric of escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers, the Pentagon built up an armada in the gulf, which clashed with the puny Iranian navy and destroyed two Iranian offshore oil platforms in the Lower Gulf in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on a US-flagged super-tanker docked in Kuwaiti waters.
It was against this backdrop that Iraq began striking Teheran with its upgraded Scud ground-to-ground missiles in late February 1988. To recapture Halabja, a town of 70,000 about fifteen miles from the border, from Iran and its Kurdish allies, who had seized it in March, the Iraqi Air Force attacked it with poison gas bombs, killing 3,200 to 5,000 civilians. The images of men, women and children frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington.
It was only when, following the truce with Teheran in August, Saddam made extensive use of chemical agents to retake 4,000 square miles controlled by the Kurdish rebels that the Security Council decided to send a team to determine if Iraq had deployed chemical arms. Baghdad refused to cooperate.
But instead of pressing Baghdad to reverse its stance, or face an immediate ban on the sale of US military equipment and advanced technology to Iraq by the revival of the Senate's bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz chose merely to say that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey, and "other sources" (which remained obscure), pointed toward Baghdad's using chemical weapons. These two elements did not add up to "conclusive" proof. Such was the verdict of Shultz's British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe. "If conclusive evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled out," he said. But neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further attempt to get at the truth. Baghdad went unpunished.
That is where the matter rested for fourteen years--until "gassing his own people" became a catchy slogan to demonize Saddam in the popular American imagination.
-------- israel / palestine
Lebanese militants fire at Israeli jets
Briefly
Washington Times
August 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020828-753169.htm
BINT JBEIL, Lebanon - The Lebanese Islamic movement Hezbollah opened anti-aircraft fire yesterday on Israeli fighter bombers violating Lebanese air space, police said here.
Hezbollah's armed wing, the Islamic Resistance, fired on the warplanes as they flew over the southern region of Bint Jbeil, but did not hit any, police said.
Israeli overflights of Lebanon are frequent, despite U.N. rulings that they violate the "blue line" the United Nations drew between the two countries after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000.
-------- mideast
Saudis oppose attack on Iraq
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-24469557.htm
CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush told Saudi Arabia's ambassador yesterday that Saddam Hussein is a "menace to world peace," but the Saudi regime remained opposed to a U.S. military strike against Iraq.
Mr. Bush denounced Saddam during an hourlong meeting with Prince Bandar bin Sultan at the president's Prairie Chapel Ranch.
"The president made it very clear again that he believes Saddam Hussein is a menace to world peace, a menace to regional peace," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
After the meeting, a Saudi spokesman made clear that the kingdom had not been swayed from its opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq.
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, said the United States should instead wait for Saddam to allow the resumption of U.N. inspections for weapons of mass destruction.
"There are negotiations under way between the U.N. and the Iraqis on letting the inspectors back," Mr. al-Jubeir told CNN. "If we can achieve the objective of having the inspectors on the ground and dismantling his weapons-of-mass-destruction program, we will have done so without firing a single bullet or losing one single life."
But Vice President Richard B. Cheney declared on Tuesday that a return of weapons inspectors to Iraq would provide "no assurance whatsoever" that Saddam has given up his pursuit of nuclear weapons and should not avert "pre-emptive action" by the United States.
Mr. Fleischer later cautioned that the vice president "did not make the case for pre-emptive attack; he made the case for pre-emptive doctrine."
But responding to questions from The Washington Times, Mr. Fleischer acknowledged yesterday that the administration's "pre-emptive doctrine" encompasses a pre-emptive military attack. Asked what other kinds of action could be taken, he declined to specify.
On the eve of the meeting, Mr. Bush telephoned Prince Abdullah to disavow a private defense analyst's recommendation to a Pentagon advisory board that the United States threaten Saudi Arabia with retaliation unless it stops supporting terrorism.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks were Saudis, and the kingdom has given money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
This has led to widespread criticism of Saudi Arabia by U.S. commentators. In an effort to quell rising Saudi anger over such criticism, Mr. Bush told the crown prince that it was irresponsible and did not reflect the sentiments of the administration.
As the president was appeasing the Saudis, the kingdom issued a list of its accomplishments in the war against terrorism. The move was aimed at countering anti-Saudi sentiment in the United States.
The nine-page document said that the royal family and the state-run media have "publicly and consistently condemned terrorism." It also cites the arrest of 2,800 terrorism suspects by Saudi authorities, including 200 who are being detained for interrogation.
The statement also said that Saudi Arabia has worked with the United States to block more than $70 million in suspected terrorist assets around the globe. The kingdom has frozen 150 bank accounts suspected of being linked to terrorists.
Public relations initiatives aside, the two nations remained far apart on the question of military action against Iraq. Mr. al-Jubeir spent much of the day making a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr. Cheney's speech, the most comprehensive argument by the administration for moving pre-emptively against Iraq.
"I can't speak for the vice president, but he was talking about the doctrine of pre-emption," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "Whereas, what we talk about in this case is an issue of pre-empting an attack against Iraq."
"We still think that war at this time is not advisable," he added. "There is no country in the world that supports it. There is no legal basis for it. There is no international sanction for it. There is no coalition for it."
But in a meeting with 3,000 Marines and their families at Camp Pendleton, Calif., yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted that more countries would come around to a pro-American stance if the United States decided to attack Iraq.
"Leadership in the right direction finds followers and supporters," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"I would submit that in the event that another decision has to be made, and the president makes it, regardless of what it's about or where it is, that he will find his way to the right decision, and other countries will find their way to the right decision," he said. "We'll find that in a relatively short period of time, there will be support across broad areas for doing the right thing."
Mr. al-Jubeir also disputed Mr. Cheney's assertion that after Saddam's ouster, "our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991."
"Our view is that it's the other way around," the Saudi spokesman said. "You need to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem, you need to tone down the anger that's directed at the U.S. in the region, and then you need to pursue a legal process to bring Saddam into compliance."
"And if that doesn't work, then you pursue other options," he added. "But you don't put the cart before the horse."
Saudi warnings about roiling the "Arab street" were dismissed by the vice president during his speech Monday at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Noting that similar warnings were issued before the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Cheney predicted: "After liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy in the same way throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans."
In addition to discussing Saddam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his meeting, Mr. Bush also raised the issue of custody disputes involving children born to one Saudi and one American parent.
Specifically, he brought up the case of Monica Stowers and her children, who are not allowed to leave the kingdom, and advised the royals to let the family reunite in America, Mr. Fleischer said.
Saudi Arabia was not the only Middle East nation to react negatively yesterday to Mr. Cheney's speech. Saddam himself, during a meeting in Baghdad with the foreign minister of Qatar, reiterated his position that an attack on Iraq would be tantamount to an attack on "all the Arab nation."
The Qatari foreign minister also expressed his opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq, although he also said that Saddam should allow the resumption of U.N. weapons inspections.
"We are, of course, against any military action," Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani told reporters on Monday.
Prince Bandar was accompanied by six of his eight children, some of whom joined the Bush family for lunch at the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Several of the children, including one who attends Baylor University in nearby Waco, later visited the school, where classes resumed this week.
•Rowan Scarborough contributed to this report from Washington.
----
Bush Moves to Ease Tensions With Saudis
By Dana Milbank and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4406-2002Aug27?language=printer
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 27 -- One day after Vice President Cheney made an impassioned case for ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, President Bush moved today to shore up badly frayed relations with Saudi Arabia, whose opposition to military action would make waging war much more difficult.
Bush telephoned Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, Crown Prince Abdullah, on Monday evening to emphasize that he wants strong ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Today, he hosted Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan and his family for lunch at the Bush ranch, an honor that Saudi officials viewed as a public relations coup.
The diplomatic outreach came as Cheney essentially ruled out all options but a military strike against Hussein, a stance that was met with consternation in the Arab world and fueled new questions from European allies. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he fears "chaos happening in the region" if war erupts. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw took issue with Cheney's argument that it would be useless for U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq. And German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called Cheney's ideas "highly risky and wrong."
Administration officials acknowledged that they have little hope of winning Saudi support for military action against Iraq. The goal, sources close to the administration said, is to get the kingdom to tone down its opposition, agree to hold oil prices stable and allow Persian Gulf neighbors such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar to admit U.S. troops. The Pentagon is still seeking Saudi agreement for the use of an advanced U.S.-built air operations center in the Saudi desert and permission for U.S. planes to use Saudi airspace.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made it clear today that broad international support is not a prerequisite for U.S. action. "It is less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decisions and doing the right thing," he said at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego.
Adel Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Abdullah, hailed Bush's meeting with Bandar as "a very powerful signal to anyone who thinks there is enmity between the two countries." He noted that Bush has had only four visits to his ranch by foreign guests, and two were by Saudis.
But he reiterated Saudi Arabia's opposition to a war against Iraq. "There is no country in the world that supports it," he said. "There is no international sanction for it. There is no coalition for it."
Jubeir said the Bush administration has not asked for permission to use Saudi bases, for flyover rights or for other steps that would ease a U.S. campaign against Iraq. "They are not there yet," he said. "You have a situation where the rhetoric about using force is way ahead of where policy is."
The meeting with Bandar came after an unusually tense period in U.S.-Saudi relations, fueled most recently by the disclosure that a Pentagon advisory panel had received a briefing describing Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States. Administration officials went to great lengths to control the image of today's meeting, keeping Bush's ranch, the president and the Saudi ambassador off limits to reporters and cameras.
An earlier visit to the ranch by Abdullah, in April, was a near disaster, sources said. Bush appeared poorly briefed about Abdullah's peace proposal for the Middle East, they said, adding that Abdullah told others afterward he was insulted that Bush could speak only in generalities about the plan. Abdullah reportedly felt he had invested a great deal of personal prestige in getting Arab nations to support the proposal, which would have led to the recognition of Israel.
Even before that meeting, Abdullah had a tense conversation with Cheney over Iraq. Abdullah confronted Cheney over his concern that officials in Cheney's office had been spreading the word that the Saudis would privately back a war with Iraq despite their public protestations. "No, the answer is no. I said 'No' in Saudi Arabia, I say 'No' now and I will say 'No' tomorrow," Abdullah told Cheney, one source privy to the conversation said.
The two countries have been at odds since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia has opposed action against Iraq and has objected to the United States's use of Saudi air bases. U.S. officials have grumbled that the kingdom has not been cooperative in counterterrorism efforts. The repressive nature of the Saudi government has galvanized conservatives in the Republican Party, which Bush touched on today when he urged Bandar to resolve the custody disputes involving American children who are barred from leaving Saudi Arabia.
After last fall's attacks, Saudi Arabia hired political consultants to improve its public image in the United States. But Americans continue to take a skeptical view of the country. A poll released last week by GOP pollster Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates found that 63 percent of Americans had a negative opinion of Saudi Arabia, compared with 50 percent in May.
"They understand public and government opinion has shifted against them," said Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. "They really don't want a big split with us."
In April, Abdullah upbraided Cheney over the administration's failure to engage in the Middle East peace process, saying the administration's credibility in the region was being destroyed, sources said. He also scorned the idea that a war with Iraq would open up avenues of peace in the Middle East, they said.
On the eve of Bandar's visit, however, Cheney again made the case that the ouster of Hussein would lead to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
In the United States, Cheney's speech on Monday was interpreted as evidence that the administration has begun to move toward a war with Iraq.
"The vice president would not be laying out the case so clearly without some kind of action to follow," said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon advisory board who is close to Cheney. Adelman said he expects a "ramp-up" to military action that will include speeches, papers, congressional debates and military preparations. "It could all be done in a few months," he said.
Analysts said Cheney's speech -- which came as a surprise to U.S. lawmakers -- reflected a concern that the administration was losing the debate on Iraq to opponents of an attack, including some former top advisers to Bush's father.
"They realized they had to weigh in," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The surge of criticism from GOP stalwarts "may be keeping Saddam off balance, but they thought, 'we're losing it, we've got to do something here.' "
Kessler reported from Washington.
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Yemen offers to shield al Qaeda sympathizers
Briefly
August 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020828-753169.htm
SAN'A, Yemen - President Ali Abdullah Saleh urged any members of al Qaeda hiding in the provinces to surrender, promising they would not be handed over to the United States.
"If you haven't committed any hostile acts or violent deeds, you are part of us, and we will not make you stand trial and we will not hand you over to the Americans," he said Monday. "We are not going to hand over any Yemeni citizen to any foreign country."
Mr. Saleh said there was mention of al Qaeda members in Yemen during interrogation of prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He said his government has sent clerics to track them down.
-------- spy agencies
Too much focus on being cops
Third of three parts
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020828-90292464.htm
The mood was somber in the Situation Room at the White House as President Bush convened a meeting of his top National Security Council advisers several days after the September 11 attacks.
Among those present in the small, electronically sealed room in the basement of the executive mansion were National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and CIA Director George J. Tenet.
Robert S. Mueller III, the new FBI director, was there as well. Mr. Mueller, a former U.S. attorney in San Francisco who had been on the job only days before the attacks, told the secret conclave that the FBI would pursue Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to "preserve prosecutions" of the terrorists.
Mr. Ashcroft interrupted Mr. Mueller to contradict him.
"No, we're not going to 'preserve prosecutions,'" the head of the Justice Department said. "We're going to use FBI intelligence to prevent further attacks."
Mr. Ashcroft spoke for the rest of Mr. Bush's assembled team in underlining that terrorist attacks no longer would be treated solely as law enforcement matters but as matters of national security.
Several weeks later, the "War Cabinet" met again, this time at the presidential retreat, Camp David, in the hills of remote Western Maryland. Mr. Bush called on Mr. Mueller to brief the group on the FBI's efforts against al Qaeda. The FBI director, unprepared, had no information to share.
"He just fell flat on his face," a source familiar with the Camp David meeting said.
The impression left on the other Cabinet members was that Mr. Mueller was out of his league in running what was supposed to be the world's premier investigative agency.
Mr. Mueller, however, did not preside over the dismantling of the FBI's intelligence capabilities that left the bureau blind to al Qaeda terror cells in the United States. Shortsighted political leaders did.
The bureau's counterterrorism chief, John P. O'Neill, had singled out the growing domestic threat of radical Islam more than five years earlier. He went on to become security director for the World Trade Center and was among the more than 2,800 killed there.
Islamic radicals pose "the greatest threat coming to us domestically in the United States," Mr. O'Neill told a conference of corporate security managers in April 1996.
"No longer is it just the fear of being attacked by international terrorist organizations; attacks against Americans and American interests overseas," Mr. O'Neill said. "A lot of these groups now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to."
The FBI, Mr. O'Neill said, had observed Islamic radicals practicing in the United States with small-arms and defensive-tactics training. "And on a few rare occasions," the counterterrorism chief told the security managers, "we have actually seen explosives training taking place in the United States."
Caught off guard
Yet the Clinton administration refused to recognize the threat outlined by Mr. O'Neill, despite warnings from within the FBI and despite a failed 1997 letter-bomb campaign directed at American targets by associates of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
The administration hastened the demise of effective intelligence-gathering by further politicizing the CIA and the FBI, where promotions were made on the basis of politics and feel-good affirmative action rather than operations experience.
One result was that the FBI had no clue that al Qaeda terrorists had plotted within the United States for as long as two years. In late 2000, the FBI reported secretly to the White House that no al Qaeda members were in the country.
Dale Watson, the FBI's intelligence chief, testified at a Senate hearing in February that the bureau was caught off guard by the terror attacks because most of the 19 successful hijackers entered the country close to September 11. Asked about the presence of al Qaeda cells within the United States, Mr. Watson declined to discuss details in public.
The reason was obvious: The FBI was embarrassed that its intelligence section had been so ignorant. To draw attention away from the lapse, Mr. Watson told senators that "there are hundreds of investigations" in the search for al Qaeda cells.
What he did not say was how many of those investigations were opened after September 11 and that the reason the FBI didn't know about al Qaeda cells in the United States was that its agents had not infiltrated radical Islamic groups here.
More important to the Clinton administration than countering domestic terror was the political correctness of an FBI reorganization under a new director, Louis J. Freeh. The Clinton Justice Department, led by Attorney General Janet Reno, sought to refocus domestic counterintelligence efforts on anti-abortion bombings, even though the FBI knew that problem was not as serious as the growing threat of Islamic terrorism.
'Momentous' moves
Mr. Freeh, following the push for diversity over performance, appointed a black, a Hispanic and a woman to top FBI posts on Oct. 13, 1993. The appointments marked a "momentous day," he said.
His reorganization also included the first of several shifts that seriously harmed the FBI's intelligence-gathering capabilities and led indirectly to the failure to detect the movements of bin Laden's al Qaeda network before September 11.
Mr. Freeh abolished the job of deputy director for investigations, considered the third-highest position in the FBI. The last official in that job, W. Douglas Gow, had no intelligence background even though he was in charge of the decades-old Intelligence Division from January 1990 to June 1991.
The FBI director appointed a criminal-side agent, Robert B. "Bear" Bryant, to take over the new National Security Division, which replaced the Intelligence Division. Mr. Bryant was promoted from head of the Washington field office, where he had won praise for directing the investigation of CIA mole Aldrich Ames. (The real hero of that operation, though, was squad supervisor Leslie Wiser, who disobeyed orders to break the Ames case wide open.)
Mr. Bryant, those who worked with him say, had little use for intelligence specialists. He bragged that he put counterintelligence agents on criminal cases. He convinced Mr. Freeh that responsibility for counterterrorism should be transferred from the Criminal Division to the National Security Division. And so counterintelligence - and more importantly, its approach to fighting terrorism - was given a lower priority.
A commission led by William Webster, a former director of both the FBI and CIA, concluded that the bureau damaged its intelligence capabilities as well as internal security by fostering a law enforcement approach to crime, terrorism and counterintelligence.
"Until the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the FBI focused on detecting and prosecuting traditional crime," the Webster commission's report said. "That focus created a culture that emphasized the priorities and morale of criminal [division] components within the bureau, which offered the surest paths for career advancement. This culture extolled cooperation and the free flow of information inside the bureau, a work ethic wholly at odds with the compartmentation characteristic of intelligence investigations involving highly sensitive, classified information."
This orientation within the FBI dismissed rules intended to protect information as "cumbersome, inefficient and a bar to success," the report said.
"Whether the two can co-exist in one organization is a difficult question," the report concluded, referring to criminal and intelligence operations, "but they will never do so in the FBI unless the bureau gives its intelligence programs the same resources and respect it gives criminal investigations, which, employing its own sensitive information and confidential sources, would also benefit from improved security."
Not a player
FBI counterintelligence veteran I.C. Smith agrees with that critique and says there was "a de-emphasis on the collection of intelligence" during the Clinton years.
"They never really felt comfortable in handling intelligence information," Mr. Smith says of FBI leaders. "They worked these cases like bank robberies."
Shortsighted political leaders in Congress and the White House had already forced FBI agents to make do with low technology, including primitive computer systems that hindered da