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NUCLEAR
Republicans for Loose Nukes
Hundreds Get Radiation Pills
Scott Ritter addresses Iraqi parliament
U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts
Iraq Said to Step Up Bid for Nukes
Iraq Denies Seeking Nuke Materials
U.S. Cites New Evidence Saddam Seeking Nuclear Bomb
Nuclear threat from Saddam is 'real issue'
Reporter: Al - Qaida Eyed Nuke Plants
Reporters Find Cracks in UK National Security
Bush's Father Feared Expanded Role in Iraq
Powell strikes hawkish note on Iraqi
Questions for the Commander in Chief
Powell Defends a First Strike as Iraq Option
Cheney Defends Pre - Emptive Doctrine
MILITARY
War enters grittier stage
How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them
Iraq war could add 65p to a gallon
Boeing builds new plant to meet demand
Ill Americans Seek Marijuana's Relief in Canada
Iran Says U.S. Is Exploiting 9/11
Ex-Inspector Warns Against Iraq War
Saddam Seeking Weapons, Cheney Says
Nuclear threat from Saddam is 'real issue'
Bush admin: Iraq renewed quest for nukes
Musharraf: Radicals Must Be Checked
Russia Denies U.S. Access on Bioweapons
Learning to Spy With Allies
Eyes in the Sky, Ears to the Wall, and Still Wanting
Bin Laden's Guys Have Cloaks and Daggers, Too
Bush to tell UN to disarm Saddam
Turks Would Be Reluctant Ally Against Iraq
US pours arms into Gulf region
POLICE / PRISONERS
Little Change in a System That Failed
Goss sees further probe of intelligence failures
Congress eases scrutiny of FBI abuses
Patriot Act's scope, secrecy ensnare innocent, critics say
Feeling Secure, U.S. Failed to Grasp bin Laden Threat
Poll Finds Unease on Terror Fight and Concerns About War on Iraq
Aides Say Bin Laden Planned Sept Attacks
ENERGY AND OTHER
Russia Sees U.S. As New Market For Oil Reserves
U.N. Rights Chief Blasts Terror War
35 Malaysian Deportees Die
ACTIVISTS
Forest Fires Prompt a Policy Showdown
Police Detain 7 People on Vieques
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Republicans for Loose Nukes
Sunday, September 8, 2002
Washington Post; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51802-2002Sep7?language=printer
THE REMOVAL of 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging Yugoslav reactor by a U.S.-led international team last month was an encouraging first step toward addressing one of the most serious, and relatively neglected, fronts in the war on terrorism. The Bush administration often speaks of the grave risk that terrorists will obtain weapons of mass destruction or the means to manufacture them; but even as it promises to deal with one possible source of those weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, there are dozens of others around the world that remain unsecured. Rogue regimes are usually not involved, but the risk may be as great: At more than 350 locations in 58 countries, bomb-grade radioactive materials are available, sometimes under thin or nonexistent security. The State Department says it is particularly worried about as many as two dozen sites in 16 countries, where the raw materials for nuclear bombs are vulnerable to theft or diversion. Officials say more missions such as the Yugoslav extraction are under consideration; but if they are to occur on the scale and with the urgency that is needed, the administration must clear away some obstacles -- including the irrational resistance of some Republicans in Congress.
The mission at the Vinca reactor near Belgrade, which removed enough uranium to make two or three nuclear bombs, succeeded by overcoming what had been one of the biggest roadblocks to safeguarding such nuclear materials: a lack of cooperation from Russia. Moscow previously had refused to take responsibility for the nuclear material it supplied to dozens of countries during the Soviet era; but in this case its Ministry of Atomic Energy worked closely with the U.S. departments of State and Energy and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. The Yugoslav material, which was moved to a Russian facility that has a security system upgraded with U.S. assistance, will be converted into a form of uranium not usable in weapons as part of another U.S.-supported program. Such close cooperation offers the prospect that bomb-grade materials stored in other former Soviet republics and allies could be similarly secured: Sites in Belarus and Ukraine are among those most in need of attention.
But current law bars the administration from using funds from the highly successful Nunn-Lugar programs for securing nuclear materials outside the former Soviet Union; consequently, the administration was obliged to obtain $5 million from the private Nuclear Threat Initiative to carry out the Yugoslav operation. No broader program currently exists for securing bomb-grade materials or preventing attacks on nuclear facilities in the many poor or unstable countries that possess them; nor has anything been done to secure radiological materials.
Legislation sponsored by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) that would begin to address these problems has passed the Senate, attached to the Defense authorization and appropriation bills. The measures would allow Nunn-Lugar funding to be used globally under certain conditions, and permit President Bush to waive restrictions that have been holding up funding for crucial programs in Russia, including one designed to destroy dangerous stockpiles of chemical weapons. Yet though the need for urgent action has been abundantly clear since 9/11, some House Republicans still don't get it; they are supporting language that would actively block the use of funds to secure nuclear material or biological and chemical weapons in countries such as Yugoslavia. At a time when the United States is contemplating a preventive war to keep such material out of the hands of terrorists, this stance is senseless; it is past time that Congress accepted that such missions are a vital component of the war on terrorism.
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Hundreds Get Radiation Pills
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radiation-Pill.html
CLINTON, Ill. (AP) -- A year ago, Charles and Deborah Bateson may have disregarded a chance to stock up on pills that help block radiation in case of an accident at the nuclear plant near their home.
They were among the first to get the pills Saturday.
``The way the world is right now, you never know what's going to happen,'' Charles Bateson said.
Hundreds of residents within 10 miles of the Clinton nuclear power plant took advantage of a weekend giveaway of potassium iodide pills. The pills can block buildup of one type of radiation in the thyroid gland, but do not guard against other radiation.
Clinton-area residents are the first in Illinois to be offered the pills by the state Department of Nuclear Safety. The agency later plans to offer potassium iodide to residents near Illinois' five other working nuclear plants.
DNS spokeswoman Patti Thompson said the giveaway allows the department to address safety and emergency concerns.
Since Sept. 11, federal nuclear regulators have made potassium iodide available to the 33 states with nuclear plants; three other states have distributed pills to those who live in the shadow of nuclear plants. In those states, officials say, between 10 and 34 percent of those eligible chose to stockpile the medication.
On the Net:
Department of Nuclear Safety: http://www.state.il.us/idns/
-------- iraq
Scott Ritter addresses Iraqi parliament
BBC
Sunday, 8 September, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/not_in_website/syndication/monitoring/media_reports/2244614.stm
Mr Ritter had a reputation for toughness as a weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a former senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has addressed a special session of the Iraqi National Assembly's Arab and Foreign Relations Committee in Baghdad.
The following are excerpts from his speech, which was carried by Iraqi Satellite Channel Television:
"I understand that I appear before you today not only as the first American citizen to address your body, but also as the first non-governmental speaker as well. And I thank you for providing me with this opportunity..."
"My country seems on the verge of making an historic mistake, one that will forever change the political dynamic which has governed the world since the end of the Second World War; namely, the foundation of international law as set forth in the United Nations Charter, which calls for the peaceful resolution of problems between nations...
"As someone who counts himself as a fervent patriot and a good citizen of the United States of America, I feel I cannot stand by idly, while my country behaves in such a fashion...
"A case for war"
"My government is making a case for war against Iraq that is built upon fear and ignorance, as opposed to the reality of truth and fact.
"We, the people of the United States, are told repeatedly that we face a grave and imminent risk to our national security from a combination of past irresponsible behaviour on the part of Iraq and ongoing efforts by Iraq to re-acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic weapons ... which have been banned since 1991 by a Security Council resolution...
"The truth of the matter is that Iraq is not a sponsor of the kind of terror perpetrated against the United States on 11 September, and in fact is active in suppressing the sort of fundamentalist extremism that characterises those who attacked the United States on that horrible day.
"This is the truth, and once the American people become familiar with and accept this truth, the politics of fear will be defeated and the prospect of war between our two countries greatly diminished...
No threat
"The truth of the matter is that Iraq today is not a threat to its neighbours and is not acting in a manner which threatens anyone outside of its own borders.
When speaking of international law as set forth by the United Nations Charter, it is impossible to come up with any scenario today that would justify military action against Iraq based upon its current behaviour.
"The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction, either in terms of having retained prohibited capability from the past, or by seeking to re-acquire such capability today...
"Iraq, during nearly seven years of continuous inspection activity by the United Nations, had been certified as being disarmed to a 90-95% level - a figure which includes all the factories used by Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction, together with the associated production equipment, as well as the vast majority of the products produced by these factories...
"Iraq must loudly reject any intention of possessing these weapons and then work within the framework of international law to demonstrate this a reality.
The only way that Iraq can achieve this is with the unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors, allowing such inspectors unfettered access to sites inside Iraq in order to complete the disarmament tasks as set forth in Security Council resolutions...
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
----
U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has intensified its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.
Over the past 14 months, Iraq has tried to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said that several efforts to arrange the shipment of the high-strength tubes were blocked or intercepted, but they declined to say, citing the extreme sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
American officials said the diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the tubes had persuaded intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program and that the most recent attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.
The attempted purchases are not the only signs of a renewed Iraqi interest in acquiring nuclear arms. Mr. Hussein has met several times in recent months with Iraq's top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.
Iraqi defectors who once worked for the nuclear weapons establishment there have told American officials that acquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority. American intelligence agencies are also monitoring new construction at potential nuclear sites.
While there is no indication that Iraq is on the verge of deploying a nuclear bomb, Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been cited by hard-liners in the Bush administration to make the argument that the United States must act now, before Mr. Hussein acquires nuclear capability and thus alters the strategic balance in the Persian Gulf.
The possession of nuclear weapons would enhance Iraq's sway in the region, and could also embolden it to the point of using its biological and chemical weapons, Bush administration officials argue.
An Iraqi defector and Iraqi opposition movements say that Mr. Hussein has also heightened his efforts to develop newer and more chemical weapons of late. Before the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Iraq had one of the largest stocks of chemical weapons in the developing world. In addition, some administration experts argue that Iraq has biological weapons and even stocks of smallpox that it could use to devastating effect.
The Bush administration officials contend that Mr. Hussein refrained from using such chemical and biological weapons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 because he feared a devastating retaliatory blow from the United States. These officials argue that Mr. Hussein might conclude that America would not dare strike him if he had nuclear weapons.
"The jewel in the crown is nuclear," said a senior Bush administration official. "The closer he gets to a nuclear capability the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card."
"The question is not `why now?' " the official said, referring to a possible campaign to remove Mr. Hussein. "The question is `why is waiting better?' The closer Saddam Hussein gets to a nuclear weapon the harder he will be to deal with."
The administration briefed members of Congress on Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction this week, but it is not known to what extent officials talked about the blocked shipments. Congressional leaders said they will hold hearings on Iraq policy soon. .
Given the special intelligence-sharing relationship with Britain, the information on the attempted purchases - and other information - may be included in a dossier Prime Minister Tony Blair plans to release in a few weeks on Iraq's weapons programs.
The Central Intelligence Agency still says it would take Iraq five to seven years to make a nuclear weapon if it must produce its own supply of highly enriched uranium for a bomb, a Bush administration official said.
American intelligence officials believe that Iraq could assemble a nuclear device in a year or somewhat less if it obtained the nuclear material for a bomb on the black market. But they say that there are no signs that Iraq has acquired such a supply.
Still, Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions as well as what defectors said in recent interviews about Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.
In drawing up plans for military action, the Bush administration is preparing to act while Iraq's conventional forces are still reeling from the effects of United Nations sanctions and the Persian Gulf war, Iraq's nuclear arsenal is nonexistent and the shock of the last year's terrorist attacks have made many Americans receptive to the idea of pre-emptive military action.
Critics say that the last decade has shown that Mr. Hussein can be contained through a combination of United Nations sanctions and carefully targeted airstrikes. Washington should enlist United Nations backing to force Mr. Hussein to accept inspectors back, and the assessments issued by the C.I.A., they insist, show that Washington has time to try its hand at diplomacy and that there is no urgent need to invade Iraq.
But hard-liners at the White House and Pentagon are alarmed by the failure of American intelligence to detect prior to Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf war that it had a well-developed and carefully hidden nuclear weapons program.
Conscious of this lapse in the past, the hard-liners argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found firm evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a "smoking gun," they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.
President Bush seems to share the hard-liners' concerns and, officials say, is determined to resolve the Iraqi issue during his presidency.
Painting an up-to-date picture of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is not easy. United Nations weapons inspectors have not visited Iraq for almost four years, leaving large gaps in their knowledge about Mr. Hussein's weapons programs.
Consequently, Bush administration officials are hoping to use what one official called a "mosaic" of disturbing new reports, such as intelligence that Iraq has attempted to purchase the special tubing to make centrifuges, to underscore their warnings about Iraq's military ambitions.
These reports go beyond Iraq's nuclear program. American officials say that an Iraqi opposition leader recently gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has already authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Iraqi resistance that might be stirred up if United States attacks.
The paper was provided by Abdalaziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iranian-based exile group, during his recent visit with other Iraqi opposition leaders in Washington. It is being analyzed by American officials.
A 20-Year Effort to Build a Bomb
Iraq's nuclear ambitions have a long history. Iraq first sought to obtain the plutonium for a nuclear bomb by purchasing a nuclear reactor from France, among other steps. That effort was stymied when Israel bombed the plant in 1981.
Iraq's next step was to mount a secret program to develop highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. American officials discovered after the gulf war that Iraq had carefully hidden programs for almost every kind of unconventional weapon, and that it had been pursuing at least two methods of trying to produce fissile material.
Baghdad, they concluded then, was only several years away from making a nuclear bomb. Although analysts concluded that the weapon would have been too large to put on Iraq's missiles, it would have dramatically altered the strategic military balance in the Middle East.
Under the cease-fire arrangements made after the Persian Gulf war, Iraq promised to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and to admit United Nations weapons inspectors. American and United Nations officials believe, however, that Iraq sought to keep its nuclear program alive by, for example, keeping its teams of nuclear scientists together.
Frustrated by Iraq's repeated refusal to cooperate fully with United Nations inspectors, the Clinton administration - joined by Britain, also President Bush's most likely partner if he decides to attack Iraq - ordered a series of airstrikes in late 1998.
The United Nations inspectors were withdrawn shortly before attacks, and Mr. Hussein has not allowed them to return. The absence of the inspections has deprived American intelligence of useful information about the status of Iraq's program.
Former American government experts say that Iraq is not on the verge of fielding a nuclear weapon, but has the expertise in nuclear weapon designs and engineering to develop nuclear arms over time.
"If he has revived his program, it would probably take Iraq a number of years to complete a production scale facility for producing fissile material and they would probably require a considerable amount of foreign equipment and expertise," said Gary Samore, a staff member on President Clinton's National Security Council who has overseen a new study of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"But if they keep working at it, it is likely that they will eventually get there," Mr. Samore added. "The fact that they were able to successfully conceal a mammoth project prior to the Gulf war has to give you some concern that they are pretty good in the art of deception."
Bush administration officials say the quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes is one of several signs that Mr. Hussein is seeking to revamp and accelerate Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Officials say the aluminum was intended as casing for rotors in centrifuges, which are one means of producing highly enriched uranium.
Centrifuge technology takes uranium in a gas form and then spins it to separate the lighter and heavy isotopes. Rotors are the spinning part of the centrifuge machine. In 1991, Iraq planned to build a centrifuge plant of 1,000 machines designed to produce 10 kilograms, or more than 22 pounds, of highly enriched uranium a year. That was enough for half a bomb's worth given the Iraqi design for a nuclear weapon.
In addition to the special aluminum tubes, one senior Administration official said that Iraq had mounted other equipment, epoxy resins that could be used for centrifuges. A key issue is whether the items Iraq has tried to buy are designed solely for centrifuge use or could have other applications.
Experts say the dimensions and precise specification of the aluminum tubes would provide a clear indication of its intended use. Iraq used European designs for centrifuges in its earlier efforts and American experts know what type of tubes are needed to make such centrifuges. Senior Bush administration officials insist the dimensions, specifications and numbers of the aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy show that they were intended for Mr. Hussein's nuclear program.
Those skeptical about the urgency of the threat say Iraq's procurement efforts illustrate how dependent it is on foreign assistance and the difficulties it is encountering in trying to develop nuclear weapons. But administration hard-liners say the attempted purchases confirm Mr. Hussein's persistent determination to acquire nuclear weapons and that export controls can slow but not stop this effort.
Chemical Weapon Warheads
Chemical weapons could be a major worry on the battlefield if the United States to mounts an invasion. According to the United Nations Special Commission, or Unscom, the now defunct group charged with inspecting and disarming Iraq after the Gulf war, industrial-scale chemical weapons production began in 1982. Iraq acknowledged having produced sufficient quantities of chemical precursors for almost 500 metric tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, as well as hundreds of tons of mustard gas, tabun and sarin.
In its war with Iran, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, Iraq used artillery shells, aerial bombs and rockets to deliver deadly chemicals. Iraq disclosed after the war that it had also deployed some 50 missiles equipped with chemical warheads.
The United Nations inspectors were able to verify Iraq's claims to have destroyed 34,000 special munitions and 823 tons of key chemical precursors. But they were unable to account for 2,000 supposedly unfilled munitions, and 25 "special warheads" intended to hold chemicals or germs. The inspectors were also unable to verify Iraq's claims to have destroyed 500 mustard-gas shells and 150 aerial bombs.
One central mystery concerns VX, a nerve agent so potent that a drop on the skin or inhaled can kill an adult within minutes. Although Iraq claimed to have destroyed at least 3.9 tons of the nerve agent and hundreds of tons of precursor chemicals needed to produce it, the inspectors concluded that Iraq might have retained enough precursor chemical to make about 200 tons of VX. After inspectors found VX traces on Iraqi warheads in the summer of 1998, they challenged Baghdad's assertions that Iraq had never loaded its warheads with VX.
In interviews in a European capital late last month, an Iraqi who said he was involved in the chemical weapons program before he defected two years ago said that Mr. Hussein had never stopped producing VX and other chemical agents, even when United Nations inspectors were in Iraq.
Speaking on the condition that neither he nor the country in which he was interviewed be identified, Ahmed al-Shemri, his pseudonym, said that Iraq had continued developing, producing and storing chemical agents at many mobile and fixed secret plants throughout the country, many of them underground.
"All of Iraq is one large storage facility," said Mr. Shemri, who claimed to have worked for many years at the Muthanna State Enterprise, once Iraq's chemical weapons plant. Since leaving Iraq, he has joined the Iraqi Officers Movement, an opposition group.
Mr. Shemri said that Iraq produced five tons of stable VX in liquid form between 1994 and 1998, before the United Nations inspectors left the country. Some of this chemical agent, he said, was made in secret labs in the northern city of Mosul and in the southern city of Basra. United Nations inspectors confirmed they had rarely visited either plant because of their long distances from Baghdad.
He said Iraq had the capacity to make at least 50 tons of liquid nerve agent, which he said was to be loaded into two kinds of bombs and dropped from planes.
Of even greater concern is Mr. Shemri's contention that as early as 1994 Iraq had invented and is now producing a new, solid VX agent that clings to a soldier's protective clothing and makes decontamination difficult.
An intelligence report dating to October 1990, two months after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, reflected American concern that Iraq might have mastered the production of "dusty VX," despite the fact that there was no evidence it had done so. "Dusty agents can penetrate US CBW overgarments under certain conditions," the report warned. It recommended that soldiers throw ponchos over their protective gear if such an agent were used.
Mr. Shemri said that Iraq had received assistance in its chemical, germ and nuclear programs from Russian scientists, many of whom are still working in Iraq. At least two Iraqi scientists also traveled to North Korea in early 2002 to study missile technology, he said.
Asked about Mr. Sehmri's assertions, American officials said they believed these reports were accurate, although they noted that North Korea and Iraq had regular technical exchanges, and that Russian scientists appeared to be freelancers and not part of a Russian government effort.
An former United Nations inspector called at least some of Mr. Shemri's information "plausible." While he said it was impossible to determine the accuracy of all his claims, he believed that Mr. Shemri "is who he claims to be, and worked where he claimed to work."
Arsenal of Deadly Germs
On the spectrum of weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons are somewhere between nuclear and chemical weapons. They have the potential to kill not only troops on the battlefield but also can used to strike at and terrorize an adversary's civilian population.
Iraq denied the existence of a germ warfare program entirely until 1995, when United Nations inspectors forced Baghdad to acknowledge it had such an effort. Then, after insisting that it had never weaponized bacteria or filled warheads, it again belatedly acknowledged having done so after Hussein Kamel, President Hussein's brother-in-law, defected to Jordan with evidence about the scale of the germ warfare program..
United Nations and American records show that Iraq made over 22,000 gallons of anthrax and over 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, one of the world's most lethal poisons. The fate of those stocks remains uncertain. Any botulinum toxin produced before 1991 would no longer be active, but prewar stocks of anthrax spores could still be deadly if they had been stored properly.
In its final report to the United Nations Security Council in 1999, the inspectors said Iraq had concealed almost 160 bombs and more than two dozen Scud missile warheads filled with anthrax.
The warheads that Iraq had at the time of the Persian Gulf war were extremely inefficient. They detonated on impact and did not disperse their chemical or germ agents in an airburst. It is not known if Iraq has devised an improved warhead. Iraq could also try to disperse the germ agents by using aircraft or unmanned drones. The germs could be dropped in a bomb or sprayed into the air.
Mr. Shemri said he was told that Iraq was still storing some 12,500 gallons of anthrax, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflotoxin and 2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country.
American officials have also expressed intense concern about smallpox, one of history's greatest scourges, which was declared eradicated from human populations in 1980. Today, only the United States and Russia have publicly declared stocks of the virus. But terrorism experts say clandestine supplies probably exist in several countries, including Iraq.
Although Bush administration officials say they have no proof that Baghdad has the smallpox virus, intelligence sources say they cannot rule out that possibility.
"There's a number of sensitive things," said a senior government official who has studied the evidence for more than a decade. "On a scale of one to ten, I'd say it's probably a six" that Iraq has the virus.
Experts say Baghdad could easily have obtained the starter germs from a natural outbreak of the disease that swept Iraq in 1971 and 1972.
The virus infected at least 800 people, according to "Smallpox and its Eradication," a World Health Organization book.
During the Gulf war, evidence of Baghdad's interest in smallpox came to light as allied forces discovered that a number of Iraqi soldiers had been vaccinated against the disease. The clue was ambiguous, however, since some allied troops had also had immunizations.
In 1994, United Nations inspectors examining Iraqi plants found a freeze drier at the repair shop of the State Establishment for Marketing Drugs and Medial Appliances that was industrial-sized and marked "smallpox machine" in Arabic.
Iraqi officials insisted the machine was not for drying the smallpox virus, but for drying the vaccinia virus, at the heart of the smallpox vaccine. This is a common practice, and the answer was judged plausible by the United Nations inspectors. If it was a lie, however, the machine had sinister implications - as did further clues contained in three papers on smallpox that were in documents on weapons programs turned over to the United Nations by Iraq.
It is Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons, however, that is at the top of the Bush administration's list of worries and which forms a key part of its case for a potential military campaign to overthrow Mr. Hussein. In their effort to make their case, Bush administration officials are even using Mr. Hussein's own words.
They cite a speech Mr. Hussein gave after meeting with the head of Iraq's Atomic Energy Organization. In the speech Mr. Hussein said "the importance of collective work in enabling the individual to overcome any trouble and achieve what is beyond his capabilities and energy."
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Iraq Said to Step Up Bid for Nukes
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraq has recently stepped up attempts to import industrial equipment that could be used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, a U.S. intelligence official says.
Several equipment shipments destined for Iraq have been stopped, the official said Saturday, declining to say by whom or where. They included a precisely made kind of metal tube that can be used in uranium-enrichment programs, the official said.
It is unclear whether any other shipments got through. The official said Iraq's efforts to obtain the tubes have take place in recent months, declining to provide more details to protect American intelligence sources.
U.S. intelligence officials, however, do not believe Iraq has obtained any enriched uranium or plutonium. Without those materials, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein cannot build a nuclear weapon.
However, officials described the shipments as evidence that Saddam has been trying to revitalize his nuclear weapons program -- and also evidence he does not have a nuclear weapon.
Saddam's weapons programs are the Bush administration's main justification for threatening war against Iraq.
Over the years, Iraq has made numerous attempts to import various kinds of equipment that could be used in nuclear, biological or chemical weapons' research and manufacturing programs.
Some of this equipment, however, also has benign uses in manufacturing, medicine or other industries, so U.S. intelligence officials aren't always certain whether a particular piece of equipment is destined for Saddam's weapons program.
The New York Times and The Washington Times both have reported on Iraq attempts to buy metal tubes that could be used to enrich uranium.
Information on Iraq's programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998. Iraq is believed to have kept some chemical and biological weapons, such as mustard gas and anthrax, as well as a few Scud missiles.
But unless Saddam provides these weapons to terrorists, they are primarily a threat to Israel and U.S. troops in the field, not American cities.
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Iraq Denies Seeking Nuke Materials
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq denied reports it is trying to collect material for nuclear weapons and building up sites once targeted by U.N. inspectors, saying Sunday the claims were lies spread by the United States and Britain to justify an attack.
The denial came as President Bush has begun taking his case for possible military action against Iraq to his allies, meeting the day before with British Prime Minister Blair at Camp David and preparing to deliver a key speech at the United Nations this week.
Blair -- the strongest voice in support of Bush amid much European criticism -- said Sunday he believed that those opposed to action would change their minds after seeing evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allegedly poses.
Blair told Sky news television that critics are asking ``sensible questions,'' but said they ``can be convinced if they see the evidence.''
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan dismissed reports from recent days cited as evidence against Saddam's government.
The head of a U.N. atomic weapons team said Friday that satellite photos show new construction at several sites linked to Saddam's past nuclear efforts. And a U.S. intelligence official said Saturday that Iraq has recently stepped up attempts to import industrial equipment that could be used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
``There is no such a thing,'' Ramadan told reporters when asked about both reports. ``They are telling lies and lies to make others believe them.''
He said the United States and Britain were seeking an excuse to attack Iraq.
In the United States on Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney said Saddam is ``actively and aggressively'' trying to build a nuclear bomb and argued that the United States is justified in striking first against any government that plans to attack America.
Welcoming Blair to Camp David on Saturday, Blair said the satellite images of the construction was enough to justify action against Saddam.
``I don't know what more evidence we need,'' Bush said.
Blair said Sunday that the United States and Britain would rally ``the broadest possible international support'' for stopping Saddam from stocking biological and chemical weapons or acquiring nuclear arms.
France, Germany, Russia and China have all been outspoken opponents of any unilateral U.S. attack on Baghdad.
Moscow said Sunday that such an attack would cause disorder in the Middle East and undermine international anti-terrorism efforts.
``If, under the pretext of combatting terrorism, attempts are made to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, it will ... inflict irreparable damage on unity'' within the anti-terror coalition,'' Igor Ivanov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Iraq has come under pressure from Europe and Arab nations to accept U.N. weapons inspectors -- barred for nearly four years -- in hopes of defusing the crisis.
Scott Ritter, an American who was once on the inspections teams, visited Baghdad on Sunday, saying Iraq posed no threat and urging it to prove that by opening up to inspections.
Cooperation on inspectors would leave the United States ``standing alone in regards to war threats on Iraq and this is the best way to prevent the war,'' Ritter said on his third visit arranged by the Iraqi government since he resigned from the U.N. inspection team in 1998.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Ritter was no longer ``in the intelligence chain.''
Other members of the U.N. teams that investigated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction from 1991 to 1998 have told The Associated Press that Iraq probably possesses large stockpiles of nerve agents, mustard gas and anthrax.
They add that while the country does not have a nuclear bomb, it has the designs, equipment and expertise to build one quickly if it were able to get enough weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
Many former inspectors say Iraq's arsenal is not much of a threat because Saddam has been deterred so far by fear of U.S. retaliation and apparently has been reluctant to share his weapons with terrorists.
Iraq, while denying it still has weapons of mass destruction, has offered only to continue dialogue with the United Nations about the return of inspectors. It has not responded to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's demand that inspectors be allowed to return unconditionally as a first step to further talks.
``We want to maintain dialogue only with the United Nations without the pressuring of a certain country,'' said Ramadan, the Iraqi vice president. ``If the United States attacks Iraq not only Arabs but the whole world will oppose it, if they have one enemy today then there will be 10 more.''
Sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that the country has surrendered nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
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U.S. Cites New Evidence Saddam Seeking Nuclear Bomb
September 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top advisers to President Bush cited new evidence on Sunday that Saddam Hussein is trying to make a nuclear bomb as they made the administration's case to topple the Iraqi leader -- with or without international support.
``We don't want 'the smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said as some allies and members of the U.S. Congress demanded still more details of the Iraqi threat before a possible U.S. pre-emptive strike.
U.S. officials first disclosed on Saturday that there was evidence Iraq had been intensifying its bid for nuclear weapons with a global search for necessary materials.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said that in the past 14 months, Iraq had attempted to purchase thousands of special aluminum tubes they believe were to be used in devices to enrich uranium.
``We know about a particular shipment -- we've intercepted that,'' Vice President Dick Cheney said in a television interview. ``We don't know what else -- what other avenues he may be taking out there.''
Rice, Cheney and other Bush aides discussed these Iraqi nuclear efforts on Sunday news shows, and said there were differing estimates of how long it might take Saddam to develop nuclear arms. But as Rice put it, ``We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.''
The comments were part of a concerted diplomatic offensive by the Bush administration, including a speech by the president to the United Nations this Thursday, to persuade Americans and the world there is a case to act quickly against Saddam.
Cheney said a war against Iraq would not be ``that tough a fight.'' But in an interview with NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' he conceded that U.S. troops would have to remain in Iraq for a long time to ensure a peaceful transition to a new government.
``The danger of an attack against the United States by someone with the weapons that Saddam Hussein now possesses or is acquiring is far more costly,'' Cheney said.
Cheney said there has been no final decision on whether to oust Saddam by force. But he suggested one could be made soon.
``We'd like to do it with the sanction of the international community,'' Cheney said, adding he hopes the U.S. Congress votes on it before lawmakers recess for the year. ``But ... this problem has to be dealt with one way or the another.''
Bush made similar commitments when he met close ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his Camp David retreat on Saturday.
PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE
Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing on ``Fox News Sunday,'' said the United States has no choice but to consider a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
``It is always an option for the United States, and for that matter, it's an option for the United Nations,'' Powell said. ``I think it has risen in the hierarchy of thinking these days because it's a different world after 9/11.''
The United States has had to rethink its national security strategy after last year's attacks, which Washington says were carried out by the al Qaeda group led by Osama bin Laden.
Cheney said while there has been no evidence Saddam had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks, he has long had contacts with the al Qaeda.
Powell said even if Saddam makes an about-face and permits a return of U.N. weapon inspectors, they would be useless unless given for the first time unfettered access.
``No inspection regime would be of any use, based on our experience, unless it's anywhere, any time, anyplace, anybody,'' Powell said.
A New York Times/CBS News poll released Saturday found that most Americans believe the administration has yet to make a convincing case against Iraq, and want congressional as well as allied support before there is any U.S. assault.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on CBS' ``Face the Nation'' program, said he expected Bush to soon win broad support for a possible attack on Iraq.
``The fact that there is not unanimity today should be no surprise. He has not made the case (but) the case will be made ... in the weeks ahead,'' Rumsfeld said. ``If you are right, if you provide leadership ... people over time find their way to support that leadership.''
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said on Sunday he wanted more information before deciding whether to support U.S. military action. But Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the panel's ranking Republican, predicted Congress would ultimately back it.
In an appearance with Graham on CNN, Shelby said it is uncertain if Iraq poses an imminent nuclear threat. ``But what bothers me is what we don't know,'' Shelby said. ``Are we going to wait until it is too late? I hope not.''
--------
Nuclear threat from Saddam is 'real issue'
September 8, 2002
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20029821648.htm
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that there is sufficient evidence Saddam Hussein is working on nuclear weapons and called on other world leaders to support an effort to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Although Mr. Bush again refused to release information to prove Saddam poses an imminent threat to the United States and the world, Mr. Blair pointed to a new report by a nuclear watchdog group as evidence Iraq is making strides in attaining a nuclear capability.
"That threat is real. We only need to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning showing what has been going on at the former nuclear-weapons sites to realize that," Mr. Blair said before his three-hour meeting with Mr. Bush at the presidential retreat in Camp David.
The report, which was released Friday, cites satellite photos showing construction at several Iraqi sites linked to Saddam´s development of nuclear weapons.
"We know that they were trying to develop nuclear-weapons capability. And the importance of this morning´s report is that it yet again shows that there is a real issue that has to be tackled here," Mr. Blair said.
The president, however, said no new information is necessary to illustrate Saddam´s threat to the world. Citing a 1998 report by the same atomic agency, Mr. Bush said Iraq was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon." "I don´t know what more evidence we need," Mr. Bush said.
Both leaders played down calls for another attempt by the United Nations to resolve the problem by forcing Iraq to readmit weapons inspectors, kicked out by Saddam in 1998.
Mr. Bush noted that U.N. resolutions seeking to prevent Saddam from acquiring weapons of mass destruction have proved fruitless in the past -- a fact, he said, that is well-known by other world leaders.
"A lot of people understand that this man has defied every U.N. resolution; 16 U.N. resolutions he´s ignored. A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction. A lot of people understand he has invaded two countries. A lot of people understand he´s gassed his own people. A lot of people understand he is unstable."
"So we´ve got a lot of support. A lot of people understand the danger," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Blair said yesterday that the United States and Britain will seek the "broadest possible international support" in how they deal with Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.
"People should have confidence that we will approach this issue in a sensible and measured way," Mr. Blair told reporters after his meeting with Mr. Bush.
"We did so in respect of Afghanistan; we did so earlier in respect of Kosovo, and we will do so again, and [EnLeader] we will do it on the basis of the broadest possible international support," Mr. Blair said. The two leaders met just days before Mr. Bush will address the United Nations in New York to make his case against Saddam. Yesterday, both men sought to convince other world leaders that Iraq poses a threat to the world. "It´s an issue not just for America, not just for Britain; it´s an issue for the whole of the international community," said Mr. Blair, who added that the United Nations could be a solution "but the U.N.´s got to be the way of dealing with this issue, not the way of avoiding dealing with it."
Mr. Blair said Saddam cannot be trusted to cooperate with U.N. inspectors based on a past "catalog of attempts by Iraq to conceal its weapons of mass destruction, not to tell the truth about it over not just over a period of months, but over a period of years."
Mr. Bush noted that Congress -- with the House voting 360-38 and the Senate voting unanimously -- adopted resolutions in 1998 calling for regime change in Iraq.
"The Clinton administration supported regime change. Many members of the current United States Senate supported regime change. My administration still supports regime change.
"This man is a man who said he was going to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, and for 11 long years he has not fulfilled his promise," the president said.
Still, Mr. Bush, who has repeatedly said he has not decided on a course of action in Iraq, said there are plenty of options other than a military strike.
"There´s all kinds of ways to change regimes," he said.
Mr. Blair has said he will release documents within the next few weeks detailing the threat posed by Saddam. Mr. Bush -- who aides say is planning to use his U.N. address to say that unless there is immediate multilateral action, the United States will act alone -- sought to persuade Americans to back his call to oust Saddam. "Americans must understand that when a tyrant like Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, it not only threatens the neighborhood in which he lives, it not only threatens the region, it can threaten the United States of America, or Great Britain for that matter," Mr. Bush said.
On Friday, Mr. Blair said his nation is prepared to back the United States "when the shooting starts." Britain is one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with the United States, Russia, China and France. Each holds veto power over any U.N. resolution on Iraq. The other three council members came out Friday in opposition to the U.S. plan to oust Saddam.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended Washington´s mounting campaign for action against Iraq, saying Saddam -- not Mr. Bush -- is responsible for the growing talk of war. "It is not the United States who is bringing the battle to Saddam Hussein; it is Saddam Hussein who is bringing the battle to the entire international community," Mr. Powell said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde. Mr. Powell said Saddam´s continued defiance of U.N. resolutions has made Baghdad´s weapons program an issue that concerns the world.
A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Mr. Bush´s request for support of military action to oust Saddam, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the United Nations must decide the matter. "It is necessary to send weapons inspectors to Baghdad without conditions to check whether Iraq is producing mass-destruction weapons or not," Mr. Ivanov said.
In Iraq, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said he doubted whether readmitting U.N. weapons inspectors would prevent a U.S. attack.
-------- terrorism
Reporter: Al - Qaida Eyed Nuke Plants
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Al-Jazeera.html
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Al-Qaida considered striking U.S. nuclear facilities in the Sept. 11 attacks and hasn't ruled out nuclear attacks in the future, an Arab television reporter who interviewed two plotters of the terror attacks said Sunday.
Yosri Fouda, correspondent for the satellite station al-Jazeera, told The Associated Press that he was taken, blindfolded, to a secret location in Pakistan to meet Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh in a June interview arranged by al-Qaida operatives.
Fouda said he waited until now to air the audiotaped interview -- it is scheduled to run Thursday on al-Jazeera -- because he wanted to include it in a documentary marking the first anniversary of the attacks.
A videotape of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden released by U.S. officials in December for many established al-Qaida's responsibility for Sept. 11. According to Fouda's account, Mohammed and Binalshibh spell out the link even more clearly.
U.S. officials regard Mohammed as one of the highest-ranking al-Qaida leaders at large and believe he is still planning attacks against U.S. interests. U.S. officials say Binalshibh was a member of a Hamburg-based cell led by Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian-born suspected lead hijacker on Sept. 11.
``I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee and Ramzi (Binalshibh) is the coordinator of the ``Holy Tuesday' operation,'' Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. Sept. 11, 2001 fell on a Tuesday.
Mohammed said planning began two and a half years before Sept. 11 and that the first targets considered were nuclear facilities.
We ``decided against it for fear it would go out of control,'' Fouda quoted Mohammed as saying. ``You do not need to know more than that at this stage, and anyway it was eventually decided to leave out nuclear targets -- for now.''
Fouda, speaking by telephone from London, said al-Qaida operatives told him not to bring any electronic equipment -- including a camera or recorder -- to the interview. The al-Qaida members videotaped the interview but instead of sending a copy of the video as they promise, sent him only the audiotape, he said.
Fouda said at one point, while he was being led blindfolded to the meeting, he thought he was going to meet with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Fouda said during the two days he spent talking to the two, Mohammed once referred to bin Laden in the past tense and that a sense of disarray led him to believe bin Laden could be dead.
Fouda, an Egyptian reporter and host of al-Jazeera's investigative program Top Secret, said he flew to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, and then to Karachi on al-Qaida instructions. In Karachi, he was taken blindfolded and via a complicated route to an apartment where he met the two men he recognized as Mohammed and Binalshibh.
Al-Jazeera had announced last week it will broadcast the interviews as part of its coverage marking the anniversary of the attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Fouda wrote about the interview for London's Sunday Times in a story that appeared this week. He told the AP he approached the Times to publicize the documentary.
He wrote in the newspaper that during the interviews, he learned that the U.S. Congress had been the fourth target. Hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while another airplane crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers apparently stormed the hijackers.
Fouda also learned Atta had been a sleeper operative in Germany since 1992 and started detailed planning with a 1999 meeting in Afghanistan with other sleepers.
Once in the United States, Atta communicated with higher ranking al-Qaida officials via e-mail, Fouda wrote. But when he had determined everything was ready, he telephoned Binalshibh in Germany to tell him the date, using a riddle that referred to the shapes of the numbers 9 and 11.
The Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera has drawn world attention with its broadcast of interviews with and statements by Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants.
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Reporters Find Cracks in UK National Security
September 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-britain-security.html
LONDON (Reuters) - As the specter of terror loomed large over Britain at the approach of the anniversary of last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, two Sunday newspapers have again exposed cracks in national security.
In what has become something of a media obsession, a reporter from the tabloid The People smuggled a steel meat cleaver onto a domestic flight, while another from the News of The World used fake references to gain access to a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear sites and airports are considered high on terrorist hit-lists, with security significantly stepped up after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The lapses were reported days after another journalist smuggled an imitation pistol onto a plane at London's Heathrow airport.
They also come after a Swedish man of Tunisian origin was arrested last month on suspicion of trying to hijack a plane bound for Britain from near Stockholm.
In The People's investigation, reporter Roger Insall cleared airport security with a meat cleaver and a four-inch dagger concealed in a hairbrush -- two much more formidable weapons than the ``box-cutters'' said to have been used in the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks.
MINISTER ORDERS REPORT
``Amazingly, we were able to pull the weapons out mid-flight right under the noses of two uniformed flight attendants sharing the same row of seats,'' Insall said.
Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said he was extremely concerned.
``I have asked for an immediate report from the airport operator to find out exactly what happened and what remedial action has been taken,'' Darling said in a statement.
``I cannot stress enough the importance of the aviation industry being as vigilant as they possibly can,'' he said.
BAA Plc, which runs Heathrow airport, said it took any breach of security seriously.
``We're concerned these items were apparently taken through our security, but items deliberately concealed can be difficult to detect,'' a spokesman said.
``We keep our security under constant review and we are actively seeking to improve security processes through new technologies, working with the government and research agencies.
BAA added that thousands of banned items were confiscated from passengers daily and that all hold luggage was thoroughly screened.
The News of The World reporter took a job as a fire-watcher at the Dungeness B nuclear power station in Kent, southern England.
Though he was not given clearance by the Office of Civil Nuclear Security, a temporary pass allowed him access to the reactor refueling zone at the heart of the power station.
Interviews with senior members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network -- blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks -- this week by Qatar-based al-Jazeera television revealed that nuclear power plants were considered a future target.
-------- us politics
Bush's Father Feared Expanded Role in Iraq
Advisers Agreed Not to Seek Regime Change
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51526-2002Sep7?language=printer
Four years ago, former president George H.W. Bush wrote that there was unanimity within his administration that the 1991 Persian Gulf War should end once the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's had been driven from Kuwait.
If he had sent U.S. military forces on to Baghdad, Bush asserted in the 1998 book he wrote with Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser, "The United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs," Bush wrote in the book, titled "A World Transformed.''
As the administration of President Bush intensifies its efforts to convince Congress, the American public and U.S. allies of the need to confront Hussein again, it is also looking at how a policy on Iraq evolved within the first Bush administration 11 years ago.
In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.N. Security Council that November authorized the use of force to drive the Iraqis out but did not make a change of government in Baghdad part of the package. President George H.W. Bush and his aides informally decided that although removing Hussein would be beneficial, that goal would not be part of U.S. policy unless the Iraqi president used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. or coalition troops or a neighboring country such as Israel. He did not.
Months before the war began in January 1991, while Pentagon planners were still at work, the White House had discussed the question of Hussein's future.
At a December 1990 meeting of senior national security officials, Hussein's removal was set aside, according to Scowcroft. Making it a formal goal of the coalition the United States was assembling for the war "was well beyond the bounds of the U.N. resolution guiding us," he wrote. If the United States announced such a goal unilaterally, he added, "We would be committing ourselves -- alone -- to removing one regime and installing another and if the Iraqis themselves didn't take matters into their own hands, we would be facing an indefinite occupation of a hostile state and some dubious 'nation-building.' "
There also was the problem of maintaining the support of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia that were vital to the war effort, Bush wrote: "We also believed the United States should not go it alone. . . . Mounting an effective military counter to Iraq's invasion required the backing and bases of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states."
On Feb. 26, 1991, two days after U.S. and coalition troops began their successful ground offensive to free Kuwait, Bush wrote in his diary, "We would declare an end once I was sure we had met all our military objectives and fulfilled the U.N. resolutions."
The following day, after then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney reported that the southern part of Kuwait was free and that military operations would halt that day or the next, U.S. television screens were filled with pictures of U.S. aircraft, artillery and tanks pounding Iraqi units fleeing north from Kuwait City to the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The carnage had an effect on the White House. "We had all become increasingly concerned over impressions being created in the press about the 'highway of death' from Kuwait City to Basra," Scowcroft wrote.
In the Oval Office that afternoon, Bush asked his advisers, including Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if it was time to stop. They decided it was. "There was no dissent," Scowcroft wrote.
Bush later wrote that Robert M. Gates, who was deputy national security adviser at the time, told him, "We crushed their 43 divisions, but we stopped -- we didn't just want to kill, and history will look on that kindly."
There had been a secret plan drawn up by the Army's chief operations officer to seize Baghdad, according to a book by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor published in 1995. The plan was circulated after the war ended. "While it raised the possibility of a decisive victory, it also opened the door to a protracted occupation of Iraq, which was not the kind of war Powell or [Gen. H. Norman] Schwartzkopf wanted," they wrote.
Bush, in his book, laid out other reasons for not sending U.S. forces into Iraq, many of which are being cited by U.S. and foreign opponents to a new military offensive. "The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well," Bush wrote.
Referring to a doctrine first applied by the Reagan administration, Bush noted, "There was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles."
It was also possible that invading Iraq could lead to a breakup of the country, which was opposed by Iraq's Arab neighbors as well as Turkey, which feared that an independent Kurdish state might be created in northern Iraq, Bush wrote.
U.S. intelligence and Arab coalition members had told Bush that defeating Hussein would quickly lead to his being forced from power. That did not happen. Instead, an uprising among Shiites in southern Iraq was quickly put down by Iraqi forces. A similar attempt by the Kurds in northern Iraq also was squashed.
Accused of having encouraged those uprisings, Bush said that although he had said removal of Hussein "would be welcomed," his fate "was up to the Iraqi people." He added that "for very practical reasons there was never a promise to aid an uprising."
Cheney, who has taken a lead role as vice president in pushing for preparations to take military action against Hussein, played the same role 12 years ago as defense secretary. Bush wrote that months before any operations were launched 11 years ago, while Secretary of State James A. Baker III was "reluctant" to contemplate use of force and pressing for diplomacy and sanctions to get the job done, Cheney "recognized early that sooner or later it would come to force."
Cheney "was probably ahead of his military on this," Bush wrote. While the military did not appear eager to go to war until other options had been exhausted, Cheney "led the way for the military . . . leading, not pushing, the military to understanding and fulfilling the missions set for them by the president."
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Powell strikes hawkish note on Iraqi
KAREN RICE,
The Scotsman,
September 8, 2002
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1000462002
US SECRETARY of State Colin Powell set a hawkish tone today, insisting that Saddam Hussein would develop nuclear weapons sooner or later and refused to rule out a unilateral US strike on Iraq.
Powell, normally considered to be one of the doves in the US administration, warned that the "US had enormous military power and we have the capability to do just about anything we set our minds to."
Speaking in an interview with David Frost set to be broadcast this morning, Powell said Iraq was considerably weaker than when it was last attacked 12 years ago.
He said: "After the Gulf War when we were able to get into Iraq with the inspectors... they were further along than we had thought. And so you can debate whether it is one year, five years or nine years - the important point is that they are still committed to pursuing that technology. And if they're committed to pursuing that technology, then obviously they're committed to trying to have a nuclear weapon."
Powell underlined the importance of allowing weapons inspectors to re-enter Iraq.
He said: "How much more they (Iraq) have done since 1998, what their inventories might be like now, this is what is not known and this is one of the reasons it would be useful to let the inspectors go in.
"They have to be able to go anywhere they need to, any time they need to, to see whatever they have to see to assure the world that these weapons are not there or are being brought under control."
He added: "I would guesstimate that the Iraqi army is perhaps at one third or a little better than one third of its capability of 12 years ago."
Powell claimed that President Bush had not yet decided whether to take military action, a view at odds with that of other senior, and more 'hawkish' members of the US administration such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
He said the president was "examining all of our options - political, diplomatic, military".
Powell refused to support Cheney's call for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq but conceded that there was an imperative to do "something".
"There is an imperative not to allow this regime, this regime which we characterise as evil and have every reason to characterise it as such, there is an imperative not to allow this regime to continue to stick its finger in the eye of the international community, to stick its finger in the eye of the civilised world."
"The United States has enormous military power and we have the capacity to do just about anything we set our minds to. But when you say this 'action', the President has not decided on this action or any other action. As almost all of these 14 nations have said, and many other nations have said, we are not in receipt of a military plan from the United States of America.
"The President has not decided to undertake military action. And the President is examining all of his options, and when he has completed that examination it will be as a result of consultation with friends, consultation within his administration.
"The President will take the case to the public and to the international community."
Powell also admitted there were disagreements between the President's advisors over what to do about Iraq.
"He has said to all of our friends and allies around the world he will consult closely with them, and that of course includes consulting with the United Nations.
"The actual form of that consultation, how he goes about it, these are issues that are being widely discussed within the administration," Powell said.
China, Russia and France, key members of the UN Security Council, are each thought likely to rule out any military action without a UN mandate.
President Mubarak of Egypt has said that no Arab states are in favour of such action.
Meanwhile US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said any US military action against Iraq would not deflect from the country's 'war on terrorism'. Rice said: "Threats are threats and the war on terror is going to get all of the attention that it needs. If we have to take action against Iraq it will also get the attention that it needs."
Rice played down, but did not reject, calls for a new UN ultimatum directed at Iraq.
She said: "The president is going to talk with [permanent members of the UN Security Council]. He's going to talk with other leaders about what makes sense as we move forward. But we shouldn't have any illusions that it's somehow the absence of UN resolutions that's put us in the situation that we are now."
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Questions for the Commander in Chief
By Zell Miller
Sunday, September 8, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48684-2002Sep6?language=printer
When it comes to showing deference to our president in a time of war, I doubt there are many who have more respect for him as a leader and an individual than I do. As a Marine, I was taught to say, "Aye, aye, sir," do an about-face and go do the job my commander in chief ordered me to do.
That's just my nature, and that's why I'm with the president 100 percent on his homeland security bill now in the Senate.
I also believe he has gathered together the finest national security team since Harry Truman had George Marshall.
So, when it comes to expanding the war on terrorism to Iraq, I stand with the president and I will not criticize his judgment. He has already made the case with me, and I am convinced that Saddam Hussein has to go.
But I always like to run things by my focus group back home, and lately the comments from my focus group tell me that the folks out there in Middle America, sitting around their kitchen tables, have questions that need to be answered before we march our soldiers into Iraq.
Now, my focus group is not one of those formal meetings where you pay people to sit around a conference table in an office building. It's a very informal chat with the regulars at Mary Ann's Restaurant, up the street from my home in rural Young Harris, Ga. They are construction workers, retired teachers, farmers, preachers and the waitresses who chime in with their opinions as they pour coffee and bring more biscuits. Several of these folks have previously worn the uniform of this country, some in combat. Not an Ivy Leaguer in the bunch. Not a single one reads the New York Times, The Washington Post or the Weekly Standard. And their television time is devoted mainly these days to the evening news and to watching the Braves, who are close to clinching another division pennant.
I jotted down some of the questions that they want the president to answer in building a case for going to Iraq.
(1) Even if Hussein has nukes, does he have the capability to reach New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta?
(2) The old Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles for decades, many of them capable of reaching our major cities, and yet we didn't get into a war with the Soviets. The president needs to explain why Iraq is different.
(3) Who will join with us in this war and what share will they be willing to bear? (There was also some grumbling about our boys in Afghanistan "just doing guard duty" to protect those warlords.)
(4) What happens after we take out Hussein? How long will our soldiers be there? And, again, with whose help?
(5) There is concern about too much deployment. We've got our soldiers stationed all over the world. Someone needs to bring us up to date on where they all are, why they are there and how long our commitment to keep them there is.
(6) How does our plan in Iraq fit in with the whole Middle East question? How will it affect Israel? How will it affect our war on terrorism? Does taking Saddam out help or hurt that entire messy situation?
(7) At Mary Ann's Restaurant, Tony is all right. But Putin is not. Why are we putting so much trust in him? Is he still with us in the war on terrorism, or was that just so much talk at a photo op?
(8) The people at Mary Ann's know very well who fights our wars -- the kids from the middle-class and blue-collar homes of America. Kids like their grandchildren. They want to hear the president say that he knows and understands that.
(9) Forgive my bluntness, but these folks also want to hear the president and the vice president say that this war is not about oil.
(10) They also want to hear an explanation of why we didn't take care of this in the Persian Gulf War, and why it is on our doorstep again so soon.
None of the above in any way should be interpreted as my backing down in my support of the president's effort. His position and his principles have already made the case with me. I write this in the spirit of trying to get a better explanation for the folks back home and the folks across Middle America. Those folks who love their country very much and who respect their president, but who need a few more answers.
The writer is a Democratic senator from Georgia.
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Powell Defends a First Strike as Iraq Option
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/middleeast/08POWE.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended President Bush's policy of pre-emption against countries that threatened the United States and in an interview on Friday played down talk of tensions with American allies in Europe as squabbling among friends.
At a time when the Bush administration has begun making the case to foreign leaders for why President Saddam Hussein of Iraq should be ousted, Secretary Powell argues that the United States has been unfairly characterized as unilateralist and opposed to treaties.
Secretary Powell, in the interview aboard his plane on his way back from Africa, said that he disagreed that the president's embrace of the idea of pre-emptive strikes against enemy threats was a departure from traditional policy.
"Pre-emption has always been available as a tool of foreign policy or military doctrine," he said. He noted, however, that since Sept. 11 the policy of pre-emption - or prevention, as he sometimes calls it - has "risen in the hierarchy of options a bit" because of the devastating threats posed by terrorists. [Excerpts, Page 26.]
"It must be used with great care and judiciousness and with a clear understanding of the obligations that we have as a responsible member of the international community," he said.
Secretary Powell looked characteristically confident as he prepared for a new round of diplomacy aimed at ousting Mr. Hussein.
He said he did not feel isolated within the administration and had not been the target of criticism by more hawkish cabinet colleagues for encouraging President Bush to build international support for the campaign against terrorism.
"I get all the support that I need from my colleagues in the administration, and I certainly get all the support I need from the president," he said.
Secretary Powell has differed with others in the administration on many issues, often quite visibly, and those splits have become part of the debate over confronting Iraq. He acknowledges the differences and in recent days has tried to smooth them over. "Some are real, some are perceived, some are overhyped," he said.
To convince the American public and the international community that the campaign against terrorism must be sustained, Secretary Powell said the administration would argue that the United States is engaged in a "different kind of war" against an enemy that will not be vanquished with "one Tomahawk strike or one battle."
"It may be a war of diplomacy as we get friends who rally to the campaign, to make sure they stay with it," he said. "It may be a war of politics, where you make sure people understand in other countries that if you want to be part of this great coalition, it may cost you politically, but we are expecting you to do that."
"We are paying occasionally a political price to do what we think is right, and we hope that you will do the same thing."
Secretary Powell, who served as President Reagan's national security adviser and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush, said his government experiences were like bookends for two major events: the end of the cold war and the start of the campaign against terrorism.
Sept. 11 changed the nature of American diplomacy, he said, by showing the need "to break the old model of super-power conflict, where everything was measured against this chess board of the red side of the map and the blue side of the map, Communism versus democracy."
He said the terrorist attacks shattered cold-war assumptions about America's relations with China and Russia, opening the door to cooperation among the nuclear rivals against a shared enemy: stateless terrorists who are seeking their own biological and nuclear weapons.
"Here was something that had nothing to do with any of the old cold war models," he said. "Here was an enemy that affected us all. And it was something that everybody could join in against."
This mutual enemy made it easier for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to accept the United States' withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Secretary Powell said. It also allowed Washington to repair relations rapidly with Beijing after a Chinese fighter jet collided with an American surveillance plane off China last year.
"Everybody thought: `Oh dear, this is going to throw the whole relationship into the ditch,' " he said. "But within 10 days, we had figured out a way to get out of that problem. And the reason for that is that both sides, both the Chinese and the United States, realize that as serious as that was as an incident, it could not be allowed to derail an important relationship."
By contrast, many diplomats feel the trans-Atlantic relationship is deteriorating amid anger with the Bush administration for opposing the International Criminal Court and other treaties that are popular in Europe.
But Secretary Powell insisted that such tensions were not new and did not threaten the United States alliance with Europe.
"I have never known a period even in that 15 years, or even before in my experience, where there weren't some tensions between the United States and Europe," he said.
"You can also just look within Europe and you can find significant differences between the nations of Europe," he added. "But no one accuses France of being unilateral if it disagrees with other countries in Europe on a particular issue."
He argued that criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign policies were often based on the faulty assumption that Washington disliked working in coalitions.
"People do often jump to the conclusion that because there's a disagreement, that we don't care about our friends and allies," he said. "We certainly do."
He also played down reports of a rift between himself and Mr. Bush's other senior foreign policy advisers, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. They do not always favor unilateral action, he said, and he does not always oppose it.
In Africa, several foreign ministers complained about the briefness of his visit: two working days in three countries. But he said the terrorism concerns had not caused the State Department to lose sight of issues like the Middle East, human rights, H.I.V./AIDS and trade.
Addressing criticism of America as a global bully, he said: "Our record and our history is not one of going out looking for conflict, it is not one of undertaking pre-emptive acts for the purpose of seizing another person's territory, another people's territory, or to impose our will on someone else. Our history and our tradition is always one of defending our interest."
But in a clear reference to the possibility of attacking Iraq, he defended the policy of pre-emptive action.
"Sometimes, if we can defend those interests even before most of the world recognizes those interests are being threatened, then I think it is a tool that should be available to the president," he said.
--------
Cheney Defends Pre - Emptive Doctrine
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein is aggressively seeking nuclear and biological weapons and ``the United States may well become the target'' of an attack, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday as the Bush administration pressed its case for toppling the Iraqi leader.
Cheney and top administration officials took to the Sunday talk shows as part of President Bush's effort to convince the public, Congress and other countries that action against Saddam is urgently needed. The officials cited the Sept. 11 attacks in making the case that the world cannot wait to find out whether the Iraqi president has weapons of mass destruction.
``The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN's ``Late Edition.''
``How long are we going to wait to deal with what is clearly a gathering threat against the United States, against our allies and against his own region?''
Added Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on CBS's ``Face the Nation'': ``Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000; it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children,''
Cheney said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that the United States is justified in striking any country it believes is planning an attack against America, applying the Bush administration's new foreign policy doctrine on pre-emptive military action to Iraq.
Cheney, citing unspecified intelligence gathered over the past 12 months to 14 months, said Saddam has the technical expertise and designs for a nuclear weapon, and has been seeking a type of aluminum tube needed to enrich uranium for a weapon. The tubes have been intercepted through one known channel, Cheney said.
``We know we have a part of the picture and that part of the picture tells us that he is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons,'' Cheney said.
Cheney said he did not know for sure whether Saddam already has a nuclear weapon. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not think so.
Bush will address the United Nations on Thursday to build his case for action against Iraq. But Secretary of State Colin Powell said whatever the United Nations decides, Bush will reserve the right to go it alone against Iraq.
``The president will retain all of his authority and options to act in a way that may be appropriate for us to act unilaterally to defend ourselves,'' Powell said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
Bush outlined a new doctrine in June warning he will take ``pre-emptive action, when necessary, to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.'' He mentioned no specific nations at the time. On Sunday, Cheney pointed a finger directly at Iraq.
Critics, some of them in countries allied with the United States, have questioned whether military action to achieve the U.S. government's goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein from power is legal under international law.
Asked about the criticism, Cheney said in the case of Iraq, such action is justified.
``If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force,'' Cheney said.
Powell added, ``When you can intercept a terrorist act that is heading your way or you can deal with a regime or a situation before it comes to a crisis level and threatens you, then it is an option that you should keep in mind and on the table.''
Iraq's vice president denied Sunday that his country is trying to collect nuclear material or building up sites that U.N. weapons inspectors used to visit. Taha Yassin Ramadan, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, charged that the United States and Britain are seeking an excuse to attack Iraq.
``They are telling lies and lies to make others believe them,'' Ramadan said.
Bush administration officials expressed deep skepticism about giving Saddam another chance to open up his country to U.N. weapons inspectors. Officials say Bush is considering giving Saddam a last-ditch deadline for allowing unfettered access to weapons inspectors.
``The issue is not inspectors or inspections. That is a tool,'' Powell said. ``Disarmament is the issue. And we will stay focused on that, and we believe that regime change is the surest way to make sure that it's disarmed.''
Cheney said that if the United States led an attack on Iraq, American forces would have to stay there for a prolonged period afterward to ensure ``we stood up a new government and helped the Iraqi people decide how they want to govern themselves until there was a peaceful stability.''
War could be very costly, he said.
But, he added, ``The danger of an attack against the U.S. by someone with the weapons that Saddam Hussein now possesses or is acquiring is far more costly than what it would cost us to go deal with this problem.''
-------- MILITARY
War enters grittier stage
September 8, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20029821016.htm
When hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon´s southwest wing, one of the first on the scene was a 69-year-old ex-Navy pilot in a business suit who had just recently left a long stint in the corporate world.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld´s symbolic show of bravery on September 11, 2001, gave him little time to ponder then what the gaping hole in his building meant to his troops. A year later, Mr. Rumsfeld regards President Bush´s war on international terrorism as -- like World War II -- a fight for national survival. Whether it succeeds will depend not only on the stamina and determination of the commander in chief, but on his field generals, fleet admirals and the nation´s 21st secretary of defense.
Less than a month of intensive war planning preceded the first counterattack, on Oct. 7, a Sunday, when American warplanes bombed Taliban targets in Afghanistan. A stern Mr. Rumsfeld appeared in the Pentagon press room to explain what was at stake -- in the short-term and beyond.
"While our raids today focus on the Taliban and the foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, our aim remains much broader," he said then, flanked by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Our objective is to defeat those who use terrorism and those who house or support them. We share the belief that terrorism is a cancer on the human condition and we intend to oppose it wherever it is."
As the nation prepares for the observance on Wednesday, the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Bush administration officials say that most of what Mr. Rumsfeld said that day has come true, or is coming true. They cite achievements in a war that is largely geared toward destroying Osama bin Laden´s al Qaeda network, which carried out the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon as well as crashing the plane in Pennsylvania.
Americans have been reminded there is a cost to those victories. In hostile fire and by accident, 51 American soldiers have died while fighting terrorists, 41 in the Afghan theater and 10 in the Philippines.
With the first big job of ousting the Taliban regime completed, the U.S. military has entered a new, grittier phase in the war on terrorism. It must find and eliminate small pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, attacking them in villages, caves or on mountain passes. The enemy is smart, elusive and deadly. Some blend in with the common folk, waiting for the right moment to fire a rocket-propelled grenade.
"Our operations today consist mainly of smaller operations, cave-by-cave searches, sweeps for arms, intelligence, small pockets of terrorists as they have dispersed - understandably," Mr. Rumsfeld says.
Tracking down terrorists
The U.S. air and ground assault likely killed hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, depleting an original force of about 4,000 men. U.S. commanders estimate there may be as many as 2,000 al Qaeda guerrillas left to be dealt with in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. Globally, the network operates cells in 50 to 60 countries, including several in the United States.
In some cases, the job of finding them falls on the CIA and law enforcement authorities. In other places, like Afghanistan and the Philippines, the task goes to special-operations forces, such as the Army´s Green Berets and the crack counterterrorist unit Delta Force.'
"If you look at what the war aims were laid out by President Bush before committing military force to Afghanistan, they are not accomplished yet," says Jack Spencer, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "It´s an ongoing mission. However, we are far along in that mission. We have disrupted al Qaeda, we have destroyed the al Qaeda network in Afghanistan and the Taliban is no longer in power."
Indeed, bin Laden no longer enjoys the base of operations he once had in the poor, landlocked country of Afghanistan. A growing number of military analysts believe that he is either dead or boxed in. The CIA has not collected a confirmed intelligence report on bin Laden since December. His top aide, Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri, is also unaccounted for.
A U.S.-friendly government, led by Hamid Karzai, has been established in the capital, Kabul. Instead of hosting al Qaeda terror training bases and Taliban extremists, Afghanistan is home to more than 7,000 U.S. troops who are hunting down remaining enemy forces.
"I suspect it would be accurate to say that the security situation in Afghanistan is the best it´s been probably in close to a quarter of a century," Mr. Rumsfeld recently told reporters. "Afghanistan has a transition government with a popular mandate. It´s no longer a safe haven for terrorists. Humanitarian aid is flowing. Women are able to work. Children are back in school. And executions in soccer stadiums have stopped. The country has been liberated."
Demonstrating military might
The Afghan war provided all U.S. military branches with a chance to test new ways to combat terrorists. The Navy provided most of the tactical air strikes, as the Air Force was denied basing rights in areas close to Afghanistan. The Air Force, however, did innovative war fighting, using lumbering B-52 bombers and satellite-guided munitions for "on-call" raids when signaled by ground troops.
The Army provided Green Beret "A-Teams," who quickly organized resistance fighters and turned the tide of battle against the Taliban regime.
"The Army stands ready to defend everything the terrorists would destroy, whatever the price and however long it takes," says Army Secretary Thomas White. "We won´t stop until everyone who would harm us is either dead, disabled or discouraged. Simply put, our will to win over evil defines us as a nation. The Army gives expression to the will of our people because we are truly the people´s army."
Outside of Afghanistan, the Bush administration can point to other achievements. It early on persuaded Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to cut ties with the Taliban regime, support the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and crack down on militants and al Qaeda followers in his own country.
Every week, there is evidence that Gen. Musharraf is slowly chipping away at al Qaeda´s infrastructure inside of Pakistan. In one recent example, Pakistani authorities in late August raided homes in Peshawar and arrested 11 militants and confiscated evidence of terrorist operations. It was in Pakistan that the CIA got its hands on one of the top prizes in the war, bin Laden aide Abu Zubaydah, who continues today to provide valuable information to interrogators.
Another top bin Laden aide, operations chief Mohammed Atef, is dead, killed in a December bombing raid on a house south of Kabul.
Critics of the war
Despite these successes, critics of the campaign exist within and outside the Pentagon.
Bin Laden, and scores of al Qaeda followers, may have escaped from Afghanistan´s Tora Bora region in December during the last major battle of 2001. Some fault Gen. Tommy Franks, who as head of the U.S. Central Command is running the war, for relying too much on local Afghan guerrillas and not putting more American soldiers on the ground to block escape routes.
Mark Burgess, a military analyst at the Center for Defense Information, says it was impossible to seal off all escape routes there, or during another major battle, Operation Anaconda in March. "But it seems more could have been done than was done," he says.
More disturbing, he says, is that after-action inspection of caves in Tora Bora and the Anaconda battlefield in eastern Afghanistan did not appear to confirm the U.S. estimate of hundreds of enemy dead.
But Mr. Burgess argues the best way to measure success in a war on terrorism is not the number of enemy dead, but how many attacks have been foiled.
"That is hard to quantify," he says. "You probably will never know how many operations you have prevented." Mr. Spencer says it´s difficult to fault Gen. Franks. The U.S. military was still trying to figure out how to fight a ground war against terrorists when bin Laden made his stand at Tora Bora.
"I have no problem using indigenous forces," Mr. Spencer says. "These missions were largely new to our military. It would be nice to have Osama bin Laden dead or in a jail cell. But short of that, where we have him now is OK." One of Gen. Frank´s guiding principles has been not to repeat the mistakes of the Soviet Red Army during its failed occupation of Afghanistan. They put a large ground force in Afghanistan in the 1980s, only to see Islamic rebels launch numerous guerrilla assaults that forced Moscow eventually to retreat.
"I will tell you that in the nine or 10 years of Soviet experience in Afghanistan, they put 620,000 soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan," Gen. Franks says. "And I think the results of that particular approach to the Afghan problem are recorded well in history."
Looking for al Qaeda
The hunt for al Qaeda pockets inside the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater has been slow. Mr. Rumsfeld has become so impatient with the capture-kill rate that he has ordered Gen. Charles Holland, who heads the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., to draw up a new war plan for using covert warriors. He wants plans in place to move special operations soldiers to targets on a moment´s notice, get them into the country to kill or capture the enemy and then get out.
"It´s a matter of finding them," the defense secretary says, "interrogating them, stopping them, killing them if you have to, capturing if you must, and seeing if we can´t put so much pressure on these terrorist networks that we´re able to defend the American people and our friends and allies across the globe."
This new phase in the war is not assured of success. A new report from the Rand Corp., a research and analysis organization often relied on by the government, says the war to wipe out the al Qaeda network could take decades, bringing added risks.
"The greatest challenge in the second phase of the campaign against terrorism is that as military operations move beyond a single theater, the more complex tasks will be dispersed among numerous departments, agencies and officers," writes terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins, "and the focus on the overall U.S. strategy will be lost, along with the nation´s ability to coordinate operations."
Mr. Jenkins argues that Washington´s ability to detect a planned attack is "limited," while the al Qaeda network is showing an ability to adapt while on the run.
"It is possible that al Qaeda will adapt to the more difficult post-September 11 operational environment by morphing into an even looser network, developing more initiative and resources to local operatives."
Still, the Bush administration can point to a number of successes around the globe.
- The Philippines. The Pentagon inserted 600 Army Green Berets into the Philippines to train the local army in how to hunt down members of the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. Under U.S. guidance, the locals have killed scores of terrorists, including an important terrorist leader, Abu Sabaya.
- Yemen. This country´s border with Saudi Arabia along the Persian Gulf was once a safe haven for al Qaeda operations. It was from this tribal region that terrorists planned and launched the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in 2000.
But Yemen has been receptive to U.S. Special Forces soldiers coming in and training the army in counterterrorism. Yemen´s military has attacked several militant strongholds. The result is that Yemen is disappearing as a sanctuary for bin Laden´s operatives.
- Somalia. The United States feared that al Qaeda members flushed from Afghanistan and Pakistan would set up new bases in Somalia. But so far, any such migration has been prevented by Navy interception of ships in the Arabian Sea and constant surveillance by Navy P-3 Orion spy planes.
- International. The administration estimates that the United States and its allies have arrested or detained more than 2,000 al Qaeda members and followers, some of whom were about to launch terrorist attacks. In one such arrest, intelligence information gained through searches of al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan enabled law enforcement officials in Singapore to foil a planned attack on Americans.
Importance of nation-building
The Pentagon is slightly adjusting Phase 2 in its mission in Afghanistan. Hunting down al Qaeda and Taliban fighters is still a top goal. But the American commander in the country, Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, is focusing more of his attention on nation-building activities.
"I do think increasingly our focus is shifting to training the Afghan National Army, supporting [peacekeepers], supporting reconstruction efforts, those kinds of things that contribute to long-term stability," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the London Daily Telegraph recently. "But I suspect we´re going to find for some time to come people there, both some Afghans and more importantly non-Afghans, who still regard us as the enemy."
The U.S. military´s role in rebuilding Afghanistan rests heavily on the Army´s civil affairs soldiers, a branch of special operations headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C.
There are about 200 such soldiers in Afghanistan. Gen. McNeill has asked for even more as he attempts to win the hearts of villagers and farmers who were once beholden to strict Taliban Islamic rule.
Among the construction priorities: schools, water wells, roads and bridges. Already, workers are nearing completion of a bridge linking Baghram, site of a large coalition air base in the north, to Kabul.
Hospitals are now being operated by members of the international community.
"Prior to October of last year," Gen. Franks says, "26 million people in Afghanistan had not had much medical capability, and women for sure had no medical capability, because of the specific practices in that country. Women were not permitted to see physicians, because women were not permitted to be treated by men, and men were the only qualified doctors in the country."
Says Mr. Burgess: "If you look at Afghanistan a year ago in terms of the Afghan people, their lot in life is certainly a lot happier than it was."
Administration hawks, led by Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Wolfowitz and Vice President Richard B. Cheney, believe the war on terror cannot be won while Saddam Hussein rules Iraq. The dictator will likely attain his goal of owning nuclear weapons, Bush officials argue, and those weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists who would use them to blackmail or attack the United States.
The war´s second year may well be marked more by military operations in Iraq than the Afghanistan mission. The president is said to be close to a decision on an option to prevent Baghdad from building atomic weapons. "It seems to me force of arms is going to be the only way to solve the Iraq problem," Mr. Spencer says. "Unfortunately, a decade of diplomacy has only exacerbated the threat that Iraq poses."
-------- arms sales
How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them
By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
UK Sunday Herald -
08 September 2002
http://www.sundayherald.com/print27572
THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's rep orts on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.
The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.'
This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chem ical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.'
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.
It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.
However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations des troyed most of Iraq's wea pons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.
According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'.
Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.
Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.'
He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.
The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme.
Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.
'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.'
-------- business
Iraq war could add 65p to a gallon
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday September 8, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,788165,00.html
Motorists could face petrol price rises of up to 65p a gallon if war on Iraq destabilises the Middle East, a new City analysis suggests.
The price of crude oil has already risen as a result of speculation about US military intervention. But the report from City accountants Tenon suggests that oil prices could double to $60 a barrel if supplies from Saudi Arabia are disrupted by tensions rippling out from any conflict between Iraq and the West.
The increase at the petrol pumps would force British householders to tighten their belts elsewhere, with drastic consequences for spending on the high street.
The report comes as Richard Haass, director of policy at the US State Department, reveals in an interview with ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby Programme today that the US fears Saddam could hold them to ransom over oil.
He said America's prime motive was preventing terrorism, but it also wanted to avoid 'a situation where the Iraqis threaten - much as they did to Kuwait over a decade ago - the stability of the world's energy supplies, but this time back it up with nuclear weapons'. His words will be seized on by critics such as former Cabinet Minister Mo Mowlam, who last week claimed that talk of tackling the rogue dictator was merely a smokescreen for a war over oil supplies.
The report by Maurice Fitzpatrick, head of economics at Tenon, assumes that military action against Iraq would trigger either rogue missile strikes against Saudi Arabia or an internal revolt of pro-Islamic anti-American activists against the fragile Saudi regime. Either would seriously disrupt the country which produces a tenth of the world's oil, which he calculates could raise prices to $60 a barrel.
'That kind of rise in oil prices would mean the price of petrol could go up by around 65p a gallon,' said Fitzpatrick. 'It's one of the direct impacts that people would notice most and could lead to a drain out of other consumer spending.'
Sheikh Yamani, the former Saudi oil Minister, warned on Friday that a second Gulf war could even send oil prices to $100 a barrel if neighbouring Arab countries were attacked by Saddam.
Britain would be cushioned from higher oil prices as it is an oil producer as well as a consumer. But a doubling in oil prices could still wipe 2 per cent off Britain's GDP, Fitzpatrick said, and threaten a recession.
--------
Boeing builds new plant to meet demand
Sunday September 8, 2002
By Mark Odell,
FT.com
http://biz.yahoo.com/ft/020908/1031119146085_1.html
Boeing is building a "smart bomb" factory in an attempt to meet the huge rise in demand from the US military for precision weapons as the Pentagon gears up for war against Iraq.
The decision follows a series of orders from the US air force and navy for guided bombs and missiles worth more than a combined $1bn for Boeing and Raytheon. The procurement programme will not only rebuild weapon stocks depleted by the continuing campaign in Afghanistan but will enhance the US armed forces' capability for precision strikes.
Boeing confirmed late last week that it had started work on a larger production line for its Joint Direct Attack Munition to replace the current facility at St Louis, Missouri, which is already running ahead of its design capacity of 1,500 units a month.
The new factory, which is due to open in January, will more than double Boeing's JDAM capacity as it ramps up production to 2,000 units by the end of the year and 2,800 units by August 2003.
JDAM is a set of manoeuvrable fins strapped to existing "dumb" bombs and uses satellite guidance to steer the weapon.
First used in small numbers by US aircraft in Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, the weapon has come into its own in the current campaign in Afghanistan.
"JDAM is absolutely the weapon of choice out there," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons. At least 75 per cent of the estimated 15,000 bombs dropped by the US in Afghanistan were precision- guided. In the Gulf War, that number was well below 10 per cent.
The Pentagon, which planned to order a total of 87,500 JDAMs when it first took delivery of the weapon in 1999, has almost tripled that target to 238,000. Boeing has won about $750m of JDAM orders in the past eight months.
Raytheon has also benefited from the US military's increasing reliance on precision strike weapons. The Pentagon recently confirmed a $200m order for laser-guided bombs, which are more accurate than JDAM but are affected by poor weather conditions and smoke.
It is also supplying the US navy with a further 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles worth more than $250m. Boeing's commercial aircraft business is facing the prospect of a strike over pay and conditions by the 26,000 members of its largest union, after attempts at government-backed mediation failed over the weekend.
The International Association of Machinists said Boeing had "refused to move on any of the key issues" and it would ask its members to vote "as soon as practicable" on the final offer.
The IAM urged its members to reject the offer in an earlier vote, which was left uncounted after mediators intervened.
-------- drug war
Ill Americans Seek Marijuana's Relief in Canada
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/americas/08VANC.html
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Four decades ago, a wave of American draft dodgers fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam. Some turned to planting marijuana seeds to make a living and spurred an underground industry that is now booming across British Columbia.
Over the last year or so, a new generation of Americans has flocked into western Canada, fleeing the Bush administration's crackdown on the clubs that say they provide marijuana to sick people, particularly in California.
A handful who face drug charges and convictions in the United States have applied for political asylum. Hundreds more American marijuana smokers live underground existences here, local marijuana advocates say.
Canada is in the awkward position in which it either must stand up to the United States - and encourage more refugees and asylum applications - or evict people who say they suffer from cancer and other deadly diseases.
While general use of marijuana is illegal in both countries, Canada has been far more tolerant of its use for medical purposes.
"It's an exodus," said Renee Boje, 32, a California fugitive from drug charges who has applied for refugee status. "Canada has a history of protecting the American people from its own government like during the Vietnam War, and the Underground Railroad that protected American runaway slaves."
Most of the Americans here do not face charges at home, marijuana advocates say, but came because they can get the drug more cheaply and easily here now since the American clubs were shut down. "Compassion clubs" thrive in several Canadian communities to serve what they say are the medical needs of severe pain sufferers.
"In the last year the number of Americans coming and intending to stay has skyrocketed," said Marc Emery, president of the B. C. Marijuana Party, who provides legal aid to the Americans. He estimated that the number of recent arrivals was "in the hundreds."
Some of them work on farms, living a countercultural life not very different from that of the previous generation of American refugees. Others are living on the street, or moving from couch to couch in homes of Canadian marijuana users. Some have gone into businesses like herbal medicine stores or work in marijuana cultivation.
To Bush administration officials, the American fugitives are simply lawbreakers.
"It's regrettable that people who are charged with criminal offenses in the United States don't face justice here and put a burden on another country," said John Walters, President Bush's drug policy chief.
He said that there was no evidence that smoking marijuana was an effective medicine, and that the agenda of many who argue for medicinal marijuana is to legalize drugs.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Drug Enforcement Administration director, Asa Hutchinson, have stiffened enforcement against marijuana clubs that had grown around California after an initiative called Proposition 215 passed in 1996, making marijuana legal for treating some sick people. Asserting the superiority of federal antidrug laws, federal agencies have raided some clubs, and others have closed or gone underground.
Steven W. Tuck, a 35-year-old disabled veteran of the Army, fled to Canada pretending he was going fishing after his club was repeatedly raided and he faced drug charges. He was arrested for overstaying his visa and, fearing deportation, applied for refugee status.
Sitting recently in Vancouver's Amsterdam Cafe, where smoking marijuana is allowed, he was sweating and shaking awaiting a friend who had gone out to buy some. "I have to have marijuana to stay alive," said Mr. Tuck, who said his torment began in 1987 with an Army parachuting accident that caused spinal and brain injuries.
If he is sent home and denied marijuana, Mr. Tuck says, he fears he will die "choking on my vomit in jail."
The Canadian Justice Ministry will not discuss refugee cases. To grant asylum, Canada would have to determine that the Americans would face unwarranted persecution at home.
The cases come at a time when the cabinet and Parliament are discussing whether to decriminalize marijuana, with many Canadians arguing that American attitudes are overly restrictive. [On Sept. 4, a Canadian Senate committee recommended that the country legalize marijuana use for people over 16.]
There is also a cabinet debate over whether the government should provide marijuana to chronically ill Canadians or conduct clinical trials first.
"We can't base our policy on social issues like this on American standards, especially in an area where they're very conservative," said Industry Minister Allan Rock, a former health minister who believes that chronically ill patients should have access to quality-controlled marijuana.
The most prominent American fugitive here is Steve Kubby, 55, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California in 1998. He and his wife, Michele, have an Internet news program on marijuana issues.
They fled California last year for the rural British Columbia town of Sechelt after the police found 265 marijuana plants, a mushroom stem and some peyote buttons in their house. Mr. Kubby had been sentenced to four months of house arrest and three months of probation, which he feared might eventually lead to a prison term in which he would be denied the marijuana that he says he needs to treat his adrenal cancer.
"If I don't smoke pot," he said, "my blood pressure goes through the roof and would either burst a blood vessel or cause a heart attack."
He appealed his sentence, then brought his family to Canada. He was arrested here, and he could be deported.
Meanwhile, he applied for permission to cultivate and possess marijuana for his own medical use. He provided Canadian authorities with a letter from a University of British Columbia doctor who substantiated his need "to continue to use cannabis to control the symptoms caused by his disease."
The government recently granted him the right to grow and possess a limited amount for a year, which advocates viewed as a major victory.
"It's threatening to the whole ideology of prohibition," Mr. Kubby said, "which says any marijuana use is criminal."
-------- iran
Iran Says U.S. Is Exploiting 9/11
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
SEPTEMBER 08, 2002, 10:29 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=IRAN%2dUS
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran chided the United States for what it sees as its failure to recognize Iran's counterterrorism efforts and accused Washington of using terrorist tactics itself.
``America's approach since Sept. 11 has been to fight terrorism through the use of force and violence, the same language used by terrorists,'' Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said at a news conference on Sunday.
Kharrazi said U.S. policies have promoted ``global insecurity, anti-Islamic sentiments and clashes among cultures.''
The Iranian chief diplomat accused the U.S. administration of using the attacks as a pretext to settle accounts with countries that disagree with Washington's policies.
``They did that in the name of fighting terrorism and that was a great mistake,'' he said.
Kharrazi also criticized what he described as U.S. failure to recognize Iran's ``sincere contribution in fighting terrorism.''
``We supported the return of stability in Afghanistan, encouraged Afghan groups to support the interim government and arrested al-Qaida suspects entering Iran. Instead of praising our efforts, America named Iran part of an 'axis of evil,''' he said.
The minister said Iran has arrested and deported anybody who has links with al-Qaida and will continue its crackdown on other suspects if information is available.
``We will continue our efforts (against al-Qaida) in spite of the country's long borders with Afghanistan which makes the mission more difficult,'' he said.
Kharrazi accused the U.S. administration of supporting local Afghan terrorist groups against Iran.
``We have solid evidence that America is in contact with local Afghan terrorist groups on our border organizing them against Iran's interests,'' he said, without elaboration.
-------- iraq
Ex-Inspector Warns Against Iraq War
By SAMEER N. YACOUB
Associated Press Writer
SEPTEMBER 08, 2002 13:02 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=IRAQ%2dRITTER
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq is incapable of producing weapons of mass destruction and should prove it by allowing in U.N. weapons inspectors, a former inspector said Sunday.
With his comments in Baghdad, Scott Ritter - who has been a sharp critic of U.S. policy on Iraq - joined a long list of European and Arab countries who have urged Iraq to accept inspectors to defuse a crisis with the United States. The United States accuses Iraq of stockpiling or trying to stockpile chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and has called for the Baghdad regime to be toppled - possibly by force.
Iraq's cooperation on inspections would leave the United States ``standing alone in regards to war threats on Iraq and this is the best way to prevent the war,'' said Ritter, who spoke to members of parliament and to journalists on his third trip to Iraq since he resigned from the U.N. inspection team in 1998.
As in the past, his trip was organized by the Iraqi government. The rest of his schedule was not yet public.
``The truth is Iraq is not a threat to its neighbors and it is not acting in a manner which threatens anyone outside its borders,'' Ritter said. ``Military action against Iraq cannot be justified.''
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell disputed Ritter's comments on ``Fox News Sunday,'' saying the remarks had came from ``somebody who's not in the intelligence chain any longer.''
``Why don't they (the Iraqis) say any time, any place, anywhere, bring them (the inspectors) in, everybody come in, we are clean?'' Powell said. ``The reason is, they're not clean. And we have to find out what they have and what we're going to do about it.''
Iraq, while denying it has banned weapons, has offered only to continue dialogue with the United Nations about the return of inspectors. It has not responded to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's demand that inspectors be allowed to return unconditionally as a first step to further talks.
Other members of the U.N. teams that investigated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction from 1991 to 1998 have told The Associated Press that Iraq probably possesses large stockpiles of nerve agents, mustard gas and anthrax. They add that while the country does not have a nuclear bomb, it has the designs, equipment and expertise to build one quickly if it were able to get enough weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
A U.S. intelligence official said Saturday that Iraq has recently stepped up attempts to import industrial equipment that could be used to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
Several equipment shipments destined for Iraq have been stopped in recent months, the official said, declining to say by whom or where. It is unclear whether any shipments got through. U.S. intelligence officials, however, do not believe Iraq has obtained any enriched uranium or plutonium.
Many former inspectors say Iraq's arsenal is not much of a threat because Saddam has been deterred so far by fear of U.S. retaliation and apparently has been reluctant to share his weapons with terrorists.
Ritter, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer, resigned from the U.N. inspection team in August 1998 after several years as a member. He left denouncing former U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration for having withdrawn support for the U.N. agency and undermining weapons inspection.
He has since said Washington used the inspectors to spy on Iraq - a longtime charge by Baghdad - and manipulated the United Nations to provoke a confrontation with President Saddam Hussein as a pretext for U.S. airstrikes on Iraq.
Months after Ritter's resignation, U.N. inspectors complaining of lack of cooperation from Iraq left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British strikes and they have been barred from returning since then.
----
Saddam Seeking Weapons, Cheney Says
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press Writer
SEPTEMBER 08, 2002, 11:40 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=US%2dIRAQ
WASHINGTON (AP) - Saddam Hussein is ``actively and aggressively'' trying to build a nuclear bomb, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday as he argued that the United States is justified in striking first against any government that plans to attack America.
President Bush outlined a new foreign policy doctrine in June warning he will take ``pre-emptive action, when necessary, to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.'' He mentioned no specific nations at the time. Cheney said Saddam seems to fit that description.
``We find ourselves on the one hand with a demonstrated greater vulnerability - Sept.11 - and on the other hand with the very clear evidence that this is a man who is resuming all those programs that the U.N. Security Council tried to get him to forgo some 10 or 11 years ago,'' Cheney said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``And increasingly we believe the United States will become the target of those activities.''
Saddam has the technical expertise and designs for a nuclear weapon, and has been seeking a type of aluminum tube needed to enrich uranium for a weapon, Cheney said. ``We know we have a part of the picture and that part of the picture tells us that he is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons,'' he said.
The Iraqi president has also stepped up his efforts to produce and deliver biological weapons, Cheney said.
Assessing Saddam's suspected weapons arsenal, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, ``I think he is a danger to American interests right now, our interest in the region and, in due course, interest elsewhere as he develops the capability to deliver this kind of weapon at greater ranges.''
Powell, on ``Fox News Sunday,'' added: ``But I don't think we should just sit around and wait to see whether or not he does it or not.''
Iraq's vice president on Sunday denied that his country is trying to collect nuclear material or building up sites that U.N. weapons inspectors used to visit. Taha Yassin Ramadan, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, charged that the United States and Britain are seeking an excuse to attack Iraq.
``They are telling lies and lies to make others believe them,'' Ramadan said.
Critics - some of them in countries allied with the United States - have questioned whether military action to achieve the U.S. government's goal of removing Saddam from power is legal under international law.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the administration must consider pre-emptive strikes to head off attacks against the United States, Cheney said.
``If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that if necessary by military force,'' he said.
Squeamish European allies have neither the experience of a massive attack like the one on Sept. 11, nor the ability to topple Saddam, Cheney said.
Cheney said that if the United States led an attack on Iraq, American forces would have to stay there for a prolonged period afterward to ensure ``we stood up a new government and helped the Iraqi people decide how they want to govern themselves until there was a peaceful stability.''
War could be very costly, he said.
But, he added, ``The danger of an attack against the U.S. by someone with the weapons that Saddam Hussein now possesses or is acquiring is far more costly than what it would cost us to go deal with this problem.''
``The risk here that has to be weighed isn't just what's it going to cost you to do this today, it's what will the cost be if you don't do it?'' he said.
----
Nuclear threat from Saddam is 'real issue'
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 8, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20029821648.htm
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that there is sufficient evidence Saddam Hussein is working on nuclear weapons and called on other world leaders to support an effort to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Although Mr. Bush again refused to release information to prove Saddam poses an imminent threat to the United States and the world, Mr. Blair pointed to a new report by a nuclear watchdog group as evidence Iraq is making strides in attaining a nuclear capability.
"That threat is real. We only need to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning showing what has been going on at the former nuclear-weapons sites to realize that," Mr. Blair said before his three-hour meeting with Mr. Bush at the presidential retreat in Camp David.
The report, which was released Friday, cites satellite photos showing construction at several Iraqi sites linked to Saddam´s development of nuclear weapons.
"We know that they were trying to develop nuclear-weapons capability. And the importance of this morning´s report is that it yet again shows that there is a real issue that has to be tackled here," Mr. Blair said.
The president, however, said no new information is necessary to illustrate Saddam´s threat to the world. Citing a 1998 report by the same atomic agency, Mr. Bush said Iraq was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon." "I don´t know what more evidence we need," Mr. Bush said.
Both leaders played down calls for another attempt by the United Nations to resolve the problem by forcing Iraq to readmit weapons inspectors, kicked out by Saddam in 1998.
Mr. Bush noted that U.N. resolutions seeking to prevent Saddam from acquiring weapons of mass destruction have proved fruitless in the past -- a fact, he said, that is well-known by other world leaders.
"A lot of people understand that this man has defied every U.N. resolution; 16 U.N. resolutions he´s ignored. A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction. A lot of people understand he has invaded two countries. A lot of people understand he´s gassed his own people. A lot of people understand he is unstable."
"So we´ve got a lot of support. A lot of people understand the danger," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Blair said yesterday that the United States and Britain will seek the "broadest possible international support" in how they deal with Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.
"People should have confidence that we will approach this issue in a sensible and measured way," Mr. Blair told reporters after his meeting with Mr. Bush.
"We did so in respect of Afghanistan; we did so earlier in respect of Kosovo, and we will do so again, and [EnLeader] we will do it on the basis of the broadest possible international support," Mr. Blair said. The two leaders met just days before Mr. Bush will address the United Nations in New York to make his case against Saddam. Yesterday, both men sought to convince other world leaders that Iraq poses a threat to the world. "It´s an issue not just for America, not just for Britain; it´s an issue for the whole of the international community," said Mr. Blair, who added that the United Nations could be a solution "but the U.N.´s got to be the way of dealing with this issue, not the way of avoiding dealing with it."
Mr. Blair said Saddam cannot be trusted to cooperate with U.N. inspectors based on a past "catalog of attempts by Iraq to conceal its weapons of mass destruction, not to tell the truth about it over not just over a period of months, but over a period of years."
Mr. Bush noted that Congress -- with the House voting 360-38 and the Senate voting unanimously -- adopted resolutions in 1998 calling for regime change in Iraq.
"The Clinton administration supported regime change. Many members of the current United States Senate supported regime change. My administration still supports regime change.
"This man is a man who said he was going to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, and for 11 long years he has not fulfilled his promise," the president said.
Still, Mr. Bush, who has repeatedly said he has not decided on a course of action in Iraq, said there are plenty of options other than a military strike.
"There´s all kinds of ways to change regimes," he said.
Mr. Blair has said he will release documents within the next few weeks detailing the threat posed by Saddam. Mr. Bush -- who aides say is planning to use his U.N. address to say that unless there is immediate multilateral action, the United States will act alone -- sought to persuade Americans to back his call to oust Saddam. "Americans must understand that when a tyrant like Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, it not only threatens the neighborhood in which he lives, it not only threatens the region, it can threaten the United States of America, or Great Britain for that matter," Mr. Bush said.
On Friday, Mr. Blair said his nation is prepared to back the United States "when the shooting starts." Britain is one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with the United States, Russia, China and France. Each holds veto power over any U.N. resolution on Iraq. The other three council members came out Friday in opposition to the U.S. plan to oust Saddam.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended Washington´s mounting campaign for action against Iraq, saying Saddam -- not Mr. Bush -- is responsible for the growing talk of war. "It is not the United States who is bringing the battle to Saddam Hussein; it is Saddam Hussein who is bringing the battle to the entire international community," Mr. Powell said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde. Mr. Powell said Saddam´s continued defiance of U.N. resolutions has made Baghdad´s weapons program an issue that concerns the world.
A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Mr. Bush´s request for support of military action to oust Saddam, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the United Nations must decide the matter. "It is necessary to send weapons inspectors to Baghdad without conditions to check whether Iraq is producing mass-destruction weapons or not," Mr. Ivanov said.
In Iraq, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said he doubted whether readmitting U.N. weapons inspectors would prevent a U.S. attack.
----
Bush admin: Iraq renewed quest for nukes
September 8, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20020908-054803-4952r.htm
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 -- Iraq has been stepping up its "relentless" quest for nuclear weapons, seeking specialized materials in recent months, a senior Bush administration official confirmed, as President Bush prepared his arguments to the United Nations this week that there is an urgent need to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
After spending about six hours with Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair returned to London Saturday night, after agreeing that his country could just as easily be the next target of a rogue state or terrorists, according to one report.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who has declared repeatedly that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction, was invited to speak to the Iraq's National Assembly, telling them Sunday the United States may be on the verge of a "historic mistake."
"The world has consistently underestimated how close (Saddam) is to acquiring weapons" of mass destruction, a senior administration official told reporters late Saturday. "This is part of the record of Saddam Hussein's continued efforts, relentless efforts to acquire (weapons of mass destruction)," he said.
The official confirmed what had been reported by The New York Times on its Web site Saturday and in the newspaper Sunday, that in the past 14 months Iraq has tried to buy thousands of aluminum tubes specially designed for use in centrifuges in which to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
The senior administration official said that in the days ahead "more additional information will come to light. Old information will be viewed in a new light." All of Iraq's attempts to obtain the specialized tubing were blocked before delivery, the official said.
The New York Times article said that after the Gulf War, American officials discovered that Iraq was pursuing at least two methods for producing highly enriched uranium and that as recently as last month, Saddam gave a morale-boosting speech to Iraq's Atomic Energy Organization.
Senior administration officials told The Washington Post that Bush's speech Thursday to the U.N. General Assembly will lay out the case for urgent action against Iraq and will say time is running out to stop the country's program of developing weapons of mass destruction, the newspaper reported Saturday and Sunday.
In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Europe is just as vulnerable to attack as the United States. "It could indeed be London or Berlin," she told the newspaper. "And I think that is what President Bush and Prime Minister Blair both see."
White House National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on a conference call after Blair left Camp David Saturday night that Rice had attended the meeting with Blair along with Vice President Dick Cheney, although Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not. The Cabinet secretaries did meet with Bush prior to the Blair meeting.
"The prime minister and the president discussed the common threat the world faces from Saddam Hussein," McCormack said. The two also talked about "intensifying the reconstruction effort" in Afghanistan and about the Middle East, though he could provide no details of conversations other than on Iraq.
Blair, in a joint news conference with Bush Saturday, was broadly supportive of Bush's views about Iraq, saying the country "is an issue for the whole of the international community. But the U.N. has got to be the way of dealing with this issue, not the way of avoiding dealing with it."
"Now, of course, as we showed before in relation to Afghanistan, we want the broadest possible international support," Blair said.
Blair referred to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency "showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapons sites," a report of new construction that suggests new momentum to the development effort.
Bush answered that, "We just heard the prime minister talk about the new report" and added that, "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
However, The Washington Post reported Sunday that a spokesman for the IAEA said there was no new report on Iraq, only ambiguous pictures made public in July of commercially available satellite images. "Construction of a building is one thing. Restarting a nuclear program is another," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told the newspaper.
Prior to their meeting Blair said that "the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability ... that threat is real."
He added that "the policy of inaction is not a policy we can responsibly subscribe to. So the purpose of our discussion today is to work out the right strategy for dealing with this, because deal with it we must."
Even as Blair and Bush met, a new poll released in Britain indicated that Blair faces substantial public opposition at home to British involvement in any U.S. strike against Iraq that doesn't have U.N. approval.
A poll conducted exclusively for London's Independent newspaper found that 60 percent of those surveyed (and almost two-thirds of Labor Party voters) said Britain shouldn't join any unilateral U.S. strike against Iraq.
-------- pakistan
Musharraf: Radicals Must Be Checked
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pakistan-President.html
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf reiterated his support Sunday for an international anti-terrorism effort and said Islamic radicals must be held in check in his nation and elsewhere.
Musharraf also said his country's relations with India were ``at their lowest ebb'' as the two nuclear rivals continued to trade artillery fire over the contested province of Kashmir.
Speaking at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Musharraf said the world needs a better understanding of Islam and the roots of terrorism, saying hate ``must be stamped out with the same zeal with which the fights against terrorism is being pursued.''
``We must diagnose the malaise and treat the root causes of terrorism. What is it that conjures up such storms in the mind? What motivates a suicide bomber that his instinct for survival is overcome by a death wish?''
Musharraf is in the United States for the start of the annual debate at the United Nations' General Assembly, at which the United States is expected to make its case for a military action against Iraq.
Musharraf was shunned by the United States and its Western allies after he seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999. But he evolved into a key American ally in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban after Sept. 11, when he abandoned support for the Afghan Islamic movement and threw his support to the United States.
Pakistan allowed the United States to use bases in Pakistan to support the military effort against the Taliban and al-Qaida, shared intelligence with the Americans, and cracked down on militants within his borders.
However, Musharraf has said he was not interested in playing a similar role in any future U.S. military operation against Iraq.
Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan won him praise in the West but enraged Pakistan's hardline Islamic movement, which maintained close ties to the Taliban.
``I remain determined not to allow a fringe element to hold the entire nation hostage and hijack our agenda of reforms,'' he said, noting that Islam as a whole should be understood as a religion of peace and tolerance.
A major rally of 5,000 members of conservative Islamic parties Sunday denounced the United States and Musharraf, saying upcoming elections are a sham and calling for removing Musharraf.
Militants from Pakistan are also at the core of a military standoff with India. The nuclear rivals have a million troops along their shared border after a series of terror attacks in India, which blames the conflict on Islamic militants harbored by Pakistan. Islamabad denied the charge and said it can't control every extremist group.
Just Sunday, Indian and Pakistani border troops traded artillery fire in Kashmir, killing a civilian and a soldier. Indian officials called the shelling the most intense in weeks, while Pakistani officials called it ``routine.''
Speaking at Harvard, Musharraf said that Indo-Pakistani relations are now ``at their lowest ebb'' and accused India of ``intransigence.''
India's and Pakistan's ``forces confront each other eyeball to eyeball with most dangerous possibilities of the eruption of conflict by accident,'' he said.
-------- russia
Russia Denies U.S. Access on Bioweapons
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51857-2002Sep7?language=printer
Russian officials have rebuffed a new U.S. attempt to pry loose key secrets from their former biological weapons program, including a genetically altered strain of anthrax bacteria that Pentagon scientists are eager to study and that Russia had earlier promised to deliver, according to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).
Government and security officials also balked at allowing a U.S. congressional delegation to visit one of Russia's four military-run biological research labs, which have remained closed to Americans despite a decade of cooperation between the two countries on securing stockpiles of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
The rejections came during a visit to Russia in late August by a delegation headed by Lugar, who is backing legislation to expand U.S.-Russian efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Despite progress in many areas -- including the destruction of hundreds of warheads, bombers and submarines -- the incidents underscore lingering "bureaucratic opposition" to the cooperation on terrorism pledged by President Vladimir Putin and President Bush at a summit last November in Texas, Lugar said.
"It shows that Putin is far ahead of much of Russia's bureaucracy on these matters," Lugar said Friday in a briefing to reporters.
But Lugar also warned against allowing the setbacks to undermine a 10-year-old U.S. commitment to help Russia destroy or secure its vast stockpiles of unconventional weapons -- a stockpile that Lugar describes as the United States' greatest security threat. Opposition in Congress to providing more assistance to Russia has delayed the opening of a U.S.-funded Russian facility built to incinerate nearly 2 million Soviet-era chemical weapons, potentially enough to destroy the world's population 20 times over, Lugar said.
Lugar said that at other stops on his trip, Russians worked closely with Americans to turn former weapons factories into research centers to cure diseases and reduce terrorism threats.
Lugar acknowledged he was unsuccessful during his visit in resolving a five-year dispute with Russia over a genetically modified strain of anthrax bacteria. The strain, developed by scientists at the Russian State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in the city of Obolensk, has been reported in scientific journals to resist many anthrax vaccines.
Eager to learn whether U.S. vaccines would work against the strain, the Defense Department in 1997 signed a contract with Russian researchers to acquire a sample. But Russia has refused to release the microbes, citing laws restricting the export of dangerous pathogens. Lugar pressed the issue Monday with senior Russian officials at Obolensk, and again three days later at a meeting in Moscow, but was given no firm commitment on the release of the strain.
Russia's refusal to honor the contract has been cited by some in Congress who oppose granting a permanent waiver that would free up millions of dollars in U.S. spending for nonproliferation projects in Russia. Last month, Bush signed a temporary waiver that restored funding only through Sept. 30.
Another sore point for the White House has been Russia's refusal to allow U.S. inspection of four biological research labs controlled by its Defense Ministry. While the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars to enhance security and retrain scientists at Russia's civilian-run bioweapons factories, the veil of secrecy surrounding military labs has fueled suspicions that Russia is continuing research on offensive weapons. Russia has said all research on offensive biological weapons has stopped.
One of the closed labs, the Center of Military-Technical Problems of Biological Defense at Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), was the site of an accidental anthrax release in 1979 that killed at least 68 people.
On Wednesday, Lugar's delegation traveled to another closed center, the Scientific Research Institute at Kirov, after receiving signals that a visit might finally be permitted. But despite an enthusiastic airport reception by Kirov's political leaders and news media, Lugar was refused entry to the military facility.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had no explanation for the refusal during a meeting the following day.
Lugar said he warned Kirov officials they were jeopardizing their future by holding on to Soviet-era secrecy.
"They were interested in getting [Western] pharmaceutical companies to invest in these facilities," Lugar said. "But as I told them, it's a non-starter if investors can't even get inside the place."
-------- spy agencies
Learning to Spy With Allies
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/weekinreview/08FRAN.html
WHAT will Al Qaeda do next? One big problem in figuring it out has been that, in important ways, the terrorist network is more effectively globalized than the modern intelligence organizations that try to penetrate it.
The spy agencies are a throwback to the days when nations fought each other, rather than an amorphous international web of nihilists with no national interests or political program to slow them down.
So even as Al Qaeda moves its people and money around the globe as if national boundaries no longer exist, the spy agencies keep checking their backs to make sure none of their traditional rivals (or allies) are stealing trade secrets or otherwise turning cooperation to its own advantage.
The year since Sept. 11 has made intelligence officials think about this, though, and they are trying, with some success, to change.
"The way we think of Al Qaeda today is the day-before-yesterday's version," said Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "We are dealing with human beings united in commitment. The organization mutates and transforms itself according to operational requirements."
Al Qaeda's foes do not share information as well or adapt as quickly. Their mentality erects barriers to sharing sensitive information with domestic sister agencies, let alone foreign governments. Secrecy is a hallowed right, and breaking down that tradition is proving difficult.
But interviews with terrorism experts and intelligence and counterterrorism authorities across Europe in recent weeks found unanimous recognition of the problem.
"These (terrorist) groups communicate and support each other in logistics, such as falsification of identification and finances and weapons procurement," said Klaus Ulrich Kersten, head of Germany's criminal investigations agency, the Bunderkriminalamt. "This means that the intelligence work of secret services requires an exchange of information between countries. From my standpoint, I am convinced that it is necessary to intensify cooperation with many countries, including in North Africa and the Middle East." Consider the reasons: Al Qaeda may have a few core leaders, but its training and tactics are easily transferred to individuals and cells as well as to organizations with shared goals, allowing it to adapt to new dangers quickly and efficiently.
Across Europe, intelligence officials say that since American bombs began falling in Afghanistan last October, radicals who learned their skills at camps there have dispersed to their home countries and other places, changing the nature of the threat. For example, the suicide bombing that killed 21 outside a Tunisian synagogue in April appears to have been the work of a Qaeda operative trained in Afghanistan. The German police said he appeared to be working on orders from a network leader hiding in Pakistan.
To face such threats, Mr. Kersten and others envision a radical new willingness to share information that would cut across old ideologies, alliances and borders. Among the steps being tested is the exchange of intelligence and police personnel between countries; four German investigators are working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington and a larger number of F.B.I. agents is working alongside counterparts in Germany. Nevertheless, say the experts, the mindset of these agencies needs to change - the part of it that places a premium on guarding information, even at the cost of damaging the chances of success.
SOME progress had been made before Sept. 11, but experts say far more must be done to prevent similar attacks. So far, they said, there is no blueprint for changing the way espionage and counterterrorism efforts are conducted, even though new techniques for cooperation are being tried out.
For example, intelligence and security authorities from several countries, including Morocco and France, have helped interrogate suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members at the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As a result, American intelligence officials say, the United States and its allies are discovering more about Al Qaeda's operations. The Moroccans uncovered a plot to attack American and British ships in the Straits of Gibraltar and a French official said his government gained new insights into relationships among Algerian terrorists in France.
In a similar vein, the German government set up a special commission to coordinate investigations and information sharing with the United States after Sept. 11. Spanish intelligence and police cooperated with the F.B.I. in trying to recreate the travels of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the hijackers. This cooperation goes beyond previous efforts to catch or prosecute terrorists who committed crimes; the new emphasis is on uncovering and thwarting plans for attacks that have yet to take place.
In Europe, where borders are virtually open between countries, there is a recognition that cooperation is essential if terrorists and other highly mobile criminals are to be stopped. So the police and intelligence agencies have exchanged information on Qaeda cells in Germany, France, Italy and Spain regularly in recent months, and European intelligence officials feel they are working relatively smoothly as a group. But many say that the United States defines cooperation as a one-way street that leads to Washington and Langley, Va. "The Americans take a lot more than they give," a senior intelligence agent in France said.
The American attitude in part reflects the natural resistance of the world's last superpower to sharing sources and methods and, some in Europe fear, a growing tendency to act unilaterally. American officials defend their demands for help by pointing out that the United States was the target of an attack that was planned in part in Europe; they also say the risk of upsetting allies is outweighed by the dangers of another attack - for which, they say, the United States is at greater risk than Europe.
If working with allies is problematic, things get even mopre complicated when Americans work with countries like Syria, which the United States accuses of sponsoring terrorism; with Pakistan, which has a history of ties to the Taliban; and with authoritarian regimes like those in Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Working with such countries can fly in the face of concerns about human rights. But doing so can also be seen as a strategic necessity, defended by the need to keep them on the same side as the world's leading democracies.
"The only way to fight international terrorism is through international cooperation," said Dieter Wiefelspütz, a prominent Social Democratic member of the German parliament. "The most important thing is developing good relations at the working level."
But that is easier to say than to accomplish, given the bureaucratic and national barriers to truly open exchanges. In January 2000, for example, the Malaysian intelligence service, acting on a tip from the Central Intelligence Agency, set up surveillance on a critical Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur and passed on photos and a list of participants to the C.I.A. But the cooperation broke down when the C.I.A. did not pass on the information to the F.B.I. This failure to share information may have allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to slip into the country within days of the meeting. ANOTHER example, which illustrates the benefits of cooperation and its limits, is the case of Mohamed Heider Zammar, a Syrian-born German citizen who is suspected of recruiting members of the Hamburg group involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The episode, recounted by Moroccan and American intelligence officials, began last October when Mr. Zammar left Germany for Morocco, where he intended to divorce his wife. He received a new German passport and someone in the German government provided its number and possibly his travel plans to the Americans.
When Mr. Zammar stepped off the plane in Casablanca, he was greeted by Moroccan security police who had been tipped to his arrival by American authorities. At the Americans' request, the Moroccans put Mr. Zammar on a plane to Damascus, where Syrian police took him into custody on an old charge.
The Syrians interrogated Mr. Zammar for weeks and shared the results with the United States, American intelligence officials say. The Americans credit the information with helping piece together aspects of the Sept. 11 plot.
But when the Germans asked about Mr. Zammar's whereabouts in response to a request from his family last winter, the State Department said it had no idea where he was, German officials say. To their anger, the Germans only learned he was in Syria from news media accounts this summer.
Similarly, police officials in Hamburg, who are continuing to investigate Islamic extremists, complained in interviews that they have not received any information from the Zammar interrogations.
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Eyes in the Sky, Ears to the Wall, and Still Wanting
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By JAMES BAMFORD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/weekinreview/08BAMF.html
ON Oct. 4, 2001, less than a month after terrorists attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center, a news bulletin sent fresh chills throughout much of the world. A jetliner packed with Israeli tourists exploded high above the Black Sea several hours after taking off from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, killing all 78 people aboard. Immediately, sabotage or a suicide bombing related to the Sept. 11 attacks was suspected, and Israeli officials refused to rule out the possibility of "a terrorist act."
But thousands of miles away, behind the cipherlocked door to Room 1E069 at the highly secret National Security Agency near Washington, analysts knew almost at once what really happened. Seconds before the explosion, an alert was triggered by an American spy satellite designed to watch for the bright flash of a Russian missile launch. Monitoring the satellite were specialists assigned to the N.S.A.'s little-known Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center. It quickly became clear to the analysts that the explosion was a deadly mistake, caused by a stray missile fired during a routine Ukrainian military exercise.
For more than 50 years, providing the country with early warning of a nuclear missile attack from Russia has been the first priority of the American intelligence community. The system has worked well, thanks largely to billions of dollars worth of technical intelligence. This consists of super-sophisticated imaging, early warning, and eavesdropping satellites and giant ground-based listening posts that supply more than 85 percent of all American intelligence. If the fuel for an ICBM in a Siberian silo is replaced on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday, analysts in some windowless office in Washington will quickly know about it and begin searching for indications of a pending nuclear launch.
Today, some are demanding from the intelligence community the same degree of precision and protection with regard to terrorist attacks. But preventing domestic and international terrorism in the future will probably depend as much on dumb luck as on smart people.
During the cold war, eavesdropping on unencrypted Russian communications was a relatively simple task since the Soviet military was easy to locate and they communicated endlessly over known communications channels. But in the post-9/11 world, the N.S.A. is faced with the flip side of the coin. Members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups operate in small cells hidden throughout the world, communicate infrequently and often with untraceable phone cards over random pay phones. E-mail messages are sent using anonymous computers, servers and screen names in libraries, copy shops or other public places. It is little surprise, therefore, that the last time the N.S.A. was able to eavesdrop on Osama bin Laden was in 1998, three years before the attacks.
According to the N.S.A. director, Lt. General Michael V. Hayden, the problem is in the numbers. "Forty years ago there were 5,000 stand-alone computers, no fax machines and not one cellular phone," he said. "Today there are over 180 million computers - most of them networked. There are roughly 14 million fax machines and 40 million cellphones, and those numbers continue to grow." In addition, worldwide telephone use has ballooned by about 18 percent annually since 1992, totaling some 82 billion minutes by the late 1990's. "Osama bin Laden has at his disposal the wealth of a $3-trillion-a-year telecommunications industry," General Hayden said.
Given such statistics, a 2001 Congressional report says, the N.S.A. is "faced with profound `needle-in-the-haystack' challenges." Much of the information is picked up by more than a dozen large listening posts around the world, a single one of which, one former N.S.A. director said, "can generate a million inputs per half hour." That's two million phone calls, e-mail messages, faxes and other types of communications every hour. "U.S. intelligence operates what is probably the largest information processing environment in the world," he said.
The biggest problem, however, is trying to understand and analyze it all, a fact made dramatically clear by the Sept. 11 attacks. Even though important messages from Afghanistan were picked up on Sept. 10, they were not translated until the day after the attack, and even that speed might simply have been generated by the attack itself. Although the messages would not have, in themselves, disclosed the plot, they might have been one more piece of the puzzle.
By the time of the attack, the lack of language ability within the intelligence community had become scandalous. A senior N.S.A. official said that when American troops were sent into Haiti in the 1990's, the N.S.A. had only one Haitian Creole linguist. Yet there are millions of American citizens who speak the language fluently. The agencies were equally unprepared linguistically prior to the conflicts in Somalia, the Balkans and, tragically, Afghanistan.
Efforts to rectify this lack of linguistic skill among the intelligence community are under way, but technology - in all it can and cannot do - may be the agency's ultimate undoing by turning it deaf. The agency can no longer simply put out giant receiving dishes and collect worldwide satellite communications like rain from the sky. More and more communications companies are burying hard-to-tap fiber optic cables in which signals are converted into light waves and travel over hair-like glass fibers. Also making life difficult for the eavesdroppers is widespread, inexpensive encryption and the change from easily processed analog communications to complex digital signals. Where once the information flowed like a steady stream, much of it now travels in hard to follow packets over rapidly switching routes.
These were problems long recognized by the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida. Almost alone, he and his committee have spent years pushing hard for the N.S.A. to get up to speed. Six months before the September attacks, General Hayden also saw disaster looming, but by then it was too late. "N.S.A. is in great peril," he said "We're behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications revolution." About the same time, a Congressional report warned, "N.S.A. is not well positioned to analyze developments among the assortment of terrorist groups."
TODAY, a year after the attacks, N.S.A. is still behind, a member of the House Intelligence Committee said. Serious internal problems, he said, are "preventing the agency from keeping pace with the global telecommunications industry."
A severe lack of technological development was also a key factor in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's failure to connect the dots prior to Sept. 11. An agent in Phoenix expressed concern about suspicious Middle Eastern-looking men training at various flight schools. His memorandum never made it to the agents in Minnesota who had arrested a suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, taking flight training. But memorandums in such circumstances are obsolete. Rather, the bureau should have had procedures in place for the information to be uploaded simultaneously into the intelligence community's secret online database, known as Intelink. Had that been done, the agents in Minnesota would have quickly come across the information from the Phoenix agent simply by entering a few keywords in Intelink's Google-like search engine. Incorporating agent-level F.B.I. counterterrorism reports into Intelink should now be standard procedure.
The days when the intelligence community could offer the country near perfect warning of a serious attack have ended. They ended on Sept. 11 when a hardware store box cutter became a weapon of mass destruction, and when technology - long the intelligence community's best weapon against attack - also became a principal tool of the terrorists. "Technology has now become a two-edged sword," General Hayden said. "On the dark side it has become the enemy."
James Bamford is the author of ``Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency'' (Anchor, 2002).
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Bin Laden's Guys Have Cloaks and Daggers, Too
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/weekinreview/08FILK.html
FOR all the resources American agents are devoting to watching the myriad tentacles of Al Qaeda, one of the things they have been forced to consider is that Al Qaeda may be watching them.
The world's most formidable terrorist organization has its own spies, and it thinks highly of them, too. In a training manual discovered in the home of a Qaeda member in Manchester, England, an unknown author praised the virtues of the well-trained Islamic sleuth.
"The spy is called an eye because his work is through his eyes, or because of his excessive preoccupation with observation," the Qaeda manual purred, "as if all his being is an eye."
While no one knows the extent to which the crackdown of the past 12 months has disrupted Al Qaeda's intelligence gathering apparatus, it now seems clear that the network's members relied heavily on the methods of cloak and dagger to plan and execute their attacks as well as to protect themselves from hostile governments.
They conducted surveillance of possible targets. They donned disguises. They ran safehouses. They studied their adversaries, right under their adversaries' well-trained noses.
The detention and deportation of hundreds of suspected Qaeda sympathizers in America and Europe, and the possible death of many of the group's senior leaders, have probably seriously damaged large tracts of the group's intelligence network, experts say, but remnants have probably survived.
"You can be sure, they still have people watching," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and the author of a new book, "Inside Al Qaeda" (Columbia University). "Al Qaeda placed great emphasis on gathering intelligence."
Indeed, the discoveries of the past year have revealed just how much Al Qaeda valued spying and the black arts, and how the group managed to marry the modern to the medieval. The manual in England, believed to have been written originally for an Egyptian jihadi group, is one of more than 30 handbooks thought to have been used by Al Qaeda that have been discovered. In its 100 pages, the book discusses the whole galaxy of espionage techniques, including surveillance, interrogation, disguise and torture. It goes into minute detail, anticipating nearly every situation that might involve a Qaeda operative.
IT tells a reader that most information about the enemy can be found in public sources like magazines, newspapers and books. It discusses the difficulties of recruiting agents - "the most dangerous task that an enlisted brother can perform."
Another part of the book lists ways to determine whether a member of the group is being followed, and recommends, as a countermeasure, walking down a dead-end street to see if the person believed to be in pursuit keeps up the chase.
"It is preferable to rent apartments in newly developed areas where people do not know one another," the book says.
Virtually every sort of behavior, from torturing a hostage to killing one, is rationalized as long it serves the higher purpose of the religion. "Since Islam is superior to all human conditions and earthly religions, it permits spying for itself but not for others," the handbook says.
These methods were employed for Sept. 11. The hijackers did their homework: they visited the World Trade Center before the attack, Mr. Gunaratna said, and they bought portable global positioning equipment to determine the exact coordinates of the buildings. They bought videotapes of the instrument panels of the jets they were planning to commandeer. They took preliminary trips on airlines to prepare themselves for the hijackings.
Just as important, the hijackers insinuated themselves into Western society with a skill evoking Orson Welles' Nazi sleeper in "The Stranger." The Sept. 11 hijackers shaved their beards and avoided other Muslims, as their manuals told them to. They lived in the United States legally. When they got traffic tickets, they paid them.
Such preparation and attention to detail is the heart of Al Qaeda's tradecraft. Members of the organization began photographing the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1993, five years before it was bombed, says Peter L. Bergen, author of "Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden" (Free Press, 2001). Planning for the Sept. 11 attacks began at least two years before the hijackings.
Although Al Qaeda is believed to employ sophisticated means for passing intelligence, like encrypted e-mail messages, the group appears to trust flesh and blood for the most important work.
"Human couriers carry the most sensitive information," Mr. Gunaratna said.
The preference for spy-to-spy contact seems obvious enough. In March, American and Pakistani law enforcement agents shot and captured Abu Zubaydah, believed to be the most important Qaeda leader caught to date, after the Americans reportedly intercepted a satellite phone call that led them to his house in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
It is the human links that may still survive in the West, Mr. Gunaratna believes. Before Sept. 11, Al Qaeda relied on what Mr. Gunaratna calls "A teams" and "B teams" for gathering intelligence; the A teams did the most sensitive work, while the B team engaged in mostly legal activities like surveillance. In the crackdown following Sept. 11, members of both groups have probably been deported or detained, Mr. Gunaratna said, and the senior leaders of Al Qaeda may have died. But Mr. Gunaratna believes that some operatives may still be able to do their old jobs, particularly in Europe, where the crackdown against Muslim organizations has been less sweeping than in America.
There have been hints of an organized effort to spy on Americans aboard. In recent weeks, pilots and flight attendants have complained that men of Middle Eastern descent have been watching, following and taking photographs of them after they land in European airports. At the same time, there have been several reported thefts of pilot and flight attendant uniforms and flight bags.
"What is arousing concern is that it's a pattern," said Capt. Stephen A. Luckey, national security chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association.
FOR all of Al Qaeda's attention to detail and planning, events since Sept. 11 suggest that the group may have had an intelligence failure of its own. The first order of intelligence work is to understand your adversary. Following the retreat of the Americans from Somalia in 1993 and the ineffectual cruise missile strikes against his camps in 1998, Mr. bin Laden may have been expecting a tepid American response to a murderous attack on American soil.
Today, a year later, Mr. bin Laden is either dead or in hiding, and the group that sheltered him, the Taliban, has been crushed.
"He thought we were cowards," Mr. Bergen said.
-------- un
By Karen DeYoung and Mike Allen,
Washington Post,
September 8 2002
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/07/1031115956503.html
United States President George Bush plans to tell world leaders at the United Nations this week that unless they take quick, unequivocally strong action to disarm Iraq, the US will act on its own, senior administration officials said on Friday.
The President's speech this Thursday will open the door to a possible new round of UN inspections of Iraq's weapons.
The move is a step back from months of escalating threats of unilateral military action by the Bush administration and an insistence that only the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein can ensure safety from weapons of mass destruction.
Launching the international consultations he promised last week, Mr Bush on Friday telephoned the leaders of China, Russia and France, who offered him little but resistance.
Mr Bush told the leaders he will send high-level officials to each of their capitals after his UN speech. With the exception of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, major foreign leaders have said they disapprove of a US invasion of Iraq, and stressed that the UN is the proper place to deal with President Saddam. A Kremlin official said Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed "serious doubts" about the validity of invading Iraq under international law. French President Jacques Chirac insisted the UN must determine the response to Iraq. Chinese officials did not offer comment.
Those three nations, along with Britain and the US, comprise the "permanent five" Security Council members with veto power.
The administration began briefing congressional leaders privately on the Iraqi threat last week, and will send its senior team to testify at hearings in the expectation that Congress will pass a resolution of support. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are to discuss Iraq on TV talk shows. On Friday night, Mr Rumsfeld's office withdrew an article by him for the Washington Post, making the case for pre-emptive military action.
Sources said Mr Bush's announcement on Wednesday that he would seek congressional approval, and make his case to the UN, was recognition that the administration could not be seen to be ignoring domestic and world opinion.
However, several senior officials said they could not envision a workable new inspection regime. They expressed virtually no confidence that the Security Council can agree, let alone implement a resolution that would achieve full, verifiable Iraqi disarmament in an acceptable timeframe. Nor do they believe President Saddam would accept inspections.
Making room for such an option, however, is now seen by the White House as a necessary price for achieving the support for an invasion. Mr Bush's challenge to the UN is expected to include an explicit expectation of such endorsements in the event other options fail.
In his UN speech, officials said, Mr Bush plans to present the threat from Iraqi chemical, biological and eventually nuclear weapons in its starkest terms, and to try to shift the responsibility for dealing with Iraq from Washington to the world. A senior official said Mr Bush will remind the Security Council that its enforcement track record in Iraq is abysmal.
At their Camp David strategy session yesterday, Mr Bush and Mr Blair were to consider options for ensuring any Security Council resolution be as strong as possible - perhaps by having Britain introduce it. Mr Blair, British sources said, believes that Mr Bush must go one more round with the UN before taking unilateral action.
-------- turkey
Turks Would Be Reluctant Ally Against Iraq
Economic Concerns, Threat From Kurds Complicate U.S. Effort to Court Strategic Muslim Country
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51860-2002Sep7?language=printer
ISTANBUL, Sept. 7 -- In the 44 years since Turkey first accommodated U.S. fighter jets on its soil, military cooperation between the two allies has been a matter of crisp daily routine. But this summer, when the Pentagon sent word to Turkey's general staff that it wanted to send over teams to survey bases and airfields that might be useful in a campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the reaction was not so much crisp as brittle.
" 'Why?' " one Western official involved in the exchange recalled the Turks demanding. " 'Tell us now. Don't tell us 24 hours before you send in the troops or something.'
"They are," the official said, "a little suspicious."
The suspicions have foundation, say Turkish officials, Western diplomats and independent analysts.
President Bush and his top aides have made clear their intention to drive Hussein from power, and Turkey might be the most crucial U.S. ally if Bush opts for military means to accomplish his goal. Besides being the only Muslim member of NATO, a vaunted island of stability in near Asia and a secular role model to nations tempted by political Islam, the nation of 60 million is a logical staging ground for land and air operations against its troublesome neighbor to the south.
But the last time the United States mounted a military campaign against Iraq, in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Turkey lost twice, sacrificing both its largest trading partner and a chunk of its peace of mind. The uprising by Iraq's ethnic Kurds immediately after the war, and the eventual Kurdish control of much of northern Iraq, unsettled a Turkish government that has been at war with separatists among its own Kurdish population for most of the last two decades. And in the long drum roll to a possible new campaign in Iraq, Washington has caused fresh unease in Turkey by conspicuously courting Iraqi Kurds as a major ally.
Today, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit reaffirmed his government's stance when he told Turkey's Anatolian News Agency that "before taking any steps linked to Iraq, the United States absolutely must enter into dialogue with Turkey."
"We don't want to come into disagreement with the United States, but we also do not want war in our own region," Ecevit said.
However, Turkey's strong public reluctance to support a U.S.-led war on Iraq is accompanied, according to diplomats, former diplomats and analysts, by a private acknowledgment that Turkey would not risk being left out if one in fact goes forward.
The result is a tangle of overlapping sensitivities that U.S. officials have tried to pick through with care.
"I have never met a Turk who likes this idea," said Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, referring to the prospect of a new Iraq campaign.
"There won't be any problem on the technical side when people begin to move," Parris said. "The question will be how we deal with Turkey's requirements and . . . showing the politicians they won't be saps getting absolutely nothing for all their trouble."
Before attacking Iraq 11 years ago, U.S. officials promised to offset the economic impact on Turkey by having leading members of the anti-Hussein coalition provide the Ankara government with $1 billion a year. But diplomats and others here say that none of the money has materialized, while the estimated cost to date of losing trade with Iraq stands between $12 billion and $50 billion.
As they approach Turkey this time, U.S. officials have gingerly moved to address what one Western diplomat called "a certain lingering suspicion" of new promises. When Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz visited last month, he pointed out that Congress had appropriated $200 million to pay off U.S. loans to Turkey, on top of an overdue $28 million toward Turkey's expenses as head of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.
Diplomatic sources say that Turkish officials, while avoiding the term compensation, have also indicated an appetite for reductions on a $5 billion military debt, special consideration on arms contracts, and technology transfers on par with those the United States offers Israel, another close Turkish ally.
Turkey also wants assurances that Washington will use its influence to ensure continued assistance from the International Monetary Fund, which already is lending Turkey $16 billion to shore up an economy that all but collapsed early last year.
"Turkey doesn't want to convey that they're being bought off," said one Western diplomat, who noted a private U.S. expression of intent to provide the loan if the IMF does not. "On the other hand, they're sort of on a knife's edge economically and politically."
But gaining Turkish support is not as simple as writing a check, officials and analysts emphasize.
By all accounts, Turkey's overriding concern is its own sovereignty, which it saw threatened by the unexpected fallout from the last U.S. campaign against Iraq. In the Gulf War, the elder Bush administration encouraged Iraq's persecuted minorities to rise up against Hussein, including ethnic Kurds in the country's northern reaches. The uprising ended with Hussein still in power but the battered Kurds protected by U.S. and British warplanes enforcing a "no-fly" zone north of Iraq's 36th parallel.
That protection offered a tantalizing taste of the freedom craved by the region's 25 to 30 million Kurds, who are spread across adjoining portions of Iraq, Syria, Iran and, most significantly, Turkey. Turkish Kurds had begun an armed rebellion in 1984, aimed at establishing a separate Kurdish homeland. The rebellion claimed an estimated 30,000 lives before subsiding two years ago, and Turkey's leaders are not eager to see a new regional war revive Kurdish nationalism.
Wolfowitz and others have publicly assured the Turks that the United States will not allow a Kurdish nation to be carved out of Iraq -- or its neighbors. But Turkish officials nevertheless contend that the Americans have not satisfactorily explained how a fragmentation of Iraq would be avoided if Hussein were toppled.
"What is your exit strategy?" asked an official in the Turkish Foreign Ministry. "We have to tread our way very carefully when thinking of a surgical or traumatic change in the region. The dismemberment of Iraq is not an impossible outcome scenario."
The bottom line for Turkey is full disclosure both of U.S. war plans and current thinking on who, or what, will replace Hussein. When he met Turkish President Ahmet Sezer in South Africa last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell emphasized that Turkey would not be surprised by U.S. action.
"They have to share their plans with us if they want our cooperation," said a second Foreign Ministry official.
In addition, officials said Turkey also saw a need for an active hand in an uncertain enterprise that could carry profound consequences for its future.
"Wolfowitz told the Turks, 'The train is leaving. If you're on it, you can help to steer it,' " one diplomat said.
Yet Turkish officials, while not disputing that reading, emphasize that Turkey's cooperation will be necessary only if the operation goes forward. And it has not stopped them from trying to prevent that, despite public claims by prominent hawks in Washington that Turkey is on board.
"The ability to say, 'The Turks are with us' is important in the bureaucratic struggle in Washington that must precede any action," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
However, Aliriza said, Turkish cooperation "is not an endorsement" of a U.S. decision to attack Iraq again. "It's an explicit recognition of the decision."
-------- us
US pours arms into Gulf region
Equipment and troops move in on a scale not seen since Desert Storm as planes strike Iraqi base
Dan Plesch, Peter Beaumont and Paul Beaver
Sunday September 8, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,788172,00.html
The United States has begun the massive military build-up required for a war against Iraq, ordering the movement of tens of thousands of men and tonnes of matériel to the Gulf region.
Despite the assurances of President George Bush and Tony Blair that 'no decisions' had been made on how to deal with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, compelling evidence has emerged in the past week that the US has begun a military build-up not seen since the last Gulf war. Among the troops arriving in the region are an estimated 2,500 in Jordan. Although officially en route for an exercise, sources claim their real purpose is to provide anti-missile protection in the Jordanian desert to give Israel advance warning against any Iraqi attack launched in response to a US invasion.
Last week Reuters reported that the US navy had chartered a large civilian cargo carrier to take battle tanks to the Gulf at the end of September. However, sources familiar with the ship's manifest claim that the cargo is missiles, ammunition and tracked transport vehicles for a build-up of munitions for an air campaign. In the next move up to 20,000 US Marines from Camp Pendelton in California are to arrive in the region in mid-October.
There have also been persistent reports that US and British Special Forces have established an operating base near Incerlik in Turkey, from which they have begun mounting liaison missions into northern Iraq in recent weeks.
Sources say British military liaison teams have arrived in the Gulf. They claim Britain is likely to agree to commit a 'division minus' - comprising two armoured brigades - to support the three US divisions expected to be deployed.
The slow but persistent build-up is reminiscent of the slow gathering of forces prior to the Gulf war, which was characterised by blanket official denials that the troop movements were related to preparations for war.
In a further sign that US and British forces are preparing for attacks on Iraq, allied aircraft struck a ground-based Iraqi anti-shipping missile site at Basra in the early hours of yesterday.
That strike followed raids against Iraqi air defence sites last week that sources claim may have involved up to 100 planes. Similar attacks have been carried out every few days this year. These types of attacks were common during the Clinton administration but were discontinued by President Bush because they were thought to be achieving little.
Their resumption is part of the military and political preparation for a larger assault. Rather than starting a new war, an option for the supporters of 'regime change' is to ratchet up attacks a step at a time, until a final drive to Baghdad.
'What is clear,' said one source, 'is that the US and Britain have begun the air phase that would be required for a wider attack, launching raids under the auspices of the existing no-fly zones. The intention is that Iraq will have no air defence capability at all should the US and UK decide to attack. It is a pretty strong message to Saddam.'
Since the Gulf war, the US has more than doubled the rate at which it can fly and ship troops around the world; it can have close to 100,000 troops available within weeks.
Despite all the talk over lack of regional allies, the US now has the use of bases in Georgia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which it did not have at the time of the Gulf war, as well as huge old Soviet airbases in Bulgaria and Romania.
Several thousand Special Forces troops are already in the Caucasus and Central Asian states, while part of the 18,000-strong 82nd Airborne Division is at hand in Afghanistan.
Among other units, a 20,000-strong Marine Expeditionary Force will arrive in the Gulf in October supported by 72 A-10 Air Force planes.
The US Army has part of its 3rd Infantry Division in Kuwait and weapons for at least one armoured division. B-52 bombers, carrier-based war planes and other bombers based in Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar are also available.
In Iraq, the US is said to be preparing forward airbases in the Kurdish-controlled north.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Little Change in a System That Failed
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/weekinreview/08RISE.html
WASHINGTON - EVEN though American intelligence agencies were harshly criticized after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington for having missed signs that attacks were planned, there has been surprisingly little fundamental restructuring in the year since. Certainly there has been less change than was predicted in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001.
A broad debate has begun over how to reorganize domestic and foreign intelligence in the face of a supple, unfamiliar and suicidal new form of threat. Still, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have proven remarkably resilient in defense of their own turf.
Even as Congress argues over the shape of a new Homeland Security Department, for example, it is clear that the department will not get broad espionage or law enforcement powers that could challenge the current status of either the C.I.A. or F.B.I.
To be sure, the security agencies have been busy changing some procedures and reinforcing some abilities. Some legal and regulatory restrictions that had hampered coordination between the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.have been eased. Under the new USA Patriot Act, for example, the C.I.A. can have access to secret grand jury material and wiretap information obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And senior officials now can work more closely together. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, are included with the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, in a daily meeting with President Bush on terrorist threats.
The F.B.I. has also begun a reorganization designed to bolster its analytical ability and to break down attitudes at the bureau that kept it oriented toward the prosecution of criminal cases rather than the early detection of terrorist plots. But the effort is far from complete, and the basic arrangement in which the bureau controls domestic intelligence is intact.
At the same time, the C.I.A. has greatly enlarged its counterterrorism center and has started a crash drive to hire more analysts, case officers and translators. Its covert action abilities, which withered in the 1990's after the cold war ended, are gradually being revived, as is the agency's paramilitary arm, the Special Activities Division, which sent C.I.A. officers to work with Special Operations forces in Afghanistan.
Despite the chorus of critics who charged that the Sept. 11 attacks represented an intelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. have not been broken up or subsumed into any new terror-fighting organization. Indeed, both agencies got big budget increases after Sept. 11 - Congressional decisions that confirmed the agencies' clout even as they responded to the public's yearning for safety.
At the same time Congress was approving the money, though, lawmakers complained that intelligence and law enforcement officials had failed to interpret a series of signals that critics have claimed held the key to preventing the Sept. 11 attacks.
If only the C.I.A. had placed two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, on an immigration service watch list as soon as the agency concluded they were probably Al Qaeda operatives. If only F.B.I. headquarters had listened to an agent in Phoenix and had begun to scrutinize Arab men attending flight schools. If only the bureau had obtained a warrant before Sept. 11 to search the laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose eagerness to become a pilot had marked him for suspicion.
These lapses are now coming under intense scrutiny from the joint congressional committee investigating the attacks, and lawmakers familiar with the investigation say that even more missed clues will emerge this fall.
So far, however, some proposals for change have gone no further than informal discussions among intelligence officials and outside experts. One of these would strip the F.B.I. of its counterintelligence functions and create a new domestic intelligence agency modeled after Britain's M.I.5., a domestic intelligence-gathering agency that operates apart from law enforcement.
OTHER proposals are slowly making their way through the bureaucracy, and are certain to be altered or quashed by interagency battles. One calls for giving the secretary of defense greater authority over the major military intelligence agencies, a move that might diminish the authority of the director of central intelligence.
The reluctance to seek bolder change has many roots. Mr. Tenet's close relationship with President Bush has clearly helped him withstand the crisis. Mr. Mueller, meanwhile, has become a strong advocate for keeping the F.B.I. intact, arguing that breaking it up would hurt coordination of domestic terrorism investigations.
Congress, meanwhile, appears to prefer incremental change, at least in part because congressional committees are set up in ways that mirror the turf of the executive branch agencies.
Even so, Congress continues to explore what went wrong a year ago, and this summer a House intelligence subcommittee issued a report that said the C.I.A. had been unable to penetrate Al Qaeda's leadership with well-placed spies who could provide timely warnings of the group's intentions. Officials have also said the F.B.I. had not developed informants among legitimate members of Al Qaeda cells in the United States.
The issue of human intelligence came up at a Senate hearing last February when Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, questioned Mr. Tenet. "What the fellows at the Dodge City coffee klatch ask me," Mr. Roberts said, "is, if John Walker Lindh could get to talk to Osama bin Laden, why in the heck couldn't the C.I.A. get an agent closer to him?"
Mr. Tenet said he couldn't give a complete answer in public, but that it wasn't true that the C.I.A. didn't have any sources.
Six months later, though, the report from the House intelligence committee's subcommittee on terrorism concluded that the failure to develop better human sources inside Al Qaeda was one of the C.I.A.'s most glaring weaknesses.
Without well-placed spies, the United States was forced to depend heavily on two broad categories of information. One was "technical intelligence," the information from a dizzying array of gadgets that eat up most of the $30 billion-plus annual intelligence budget. That includes imagery from spy satellites and information from ground sensors and unmanned aircraft as well as intercepted telephone calls, e-mail messages and other forms of communications.
The second broad category was "liaison," information provided by cooperative foreign intelligence services from their own sources, whose credibility is often unknown.
In recent years, both have proved valuable; they provided general, yet increasingly urgent warnings that Al Qaeda was on the move against the United States. A series of communications intercepts convinced American counterterrorism experts in the spring and summer of 2001 that Al Qaeda was planning a major strike somewhere, sometime soon. And a friendly foreign intelligence service - perhaps more than one - sent operatives under cover into Al Qaeda's Afghan training camps long before Sept. 11, according to some American officials. Through foreign intelligence liaison, the C.I.A. gathered information about the Qaeda camps from those operatives.
Still, those methods didn't provide a specific warning of Sept. 11. By the summer of 2001, the absence of high-level spies inside Al Qaeda left American officials certain from their intercepts that Al Qaeda was planning a major strike, but unaware of where or when.
Critics say the inability to adequately penetrate Al Qaeda reflects problems that date at least to the end of the cold war. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, American intelligence officials recognized the need to develop new capabilities to recruit sources inside unconventional "hard targets" like terrorist groups and drug cartels. But angry and frustrated former C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials have charged that in the 1990's, both agencies were saddled by risk-averse and politicized bureaucracies that discouraged officers in the field from aggressively acting to penetrate those targets.
At the C.I.A., critics cite guidelines imposed in 1995 requiring management approval for the recruitment of any spy with an underworld background or a record of human rights violations.
The House terrorism subcommittee concluded that the guidelines had sent a message to the field: recruiting spies with questionable backgrounds was more trouble than it was worth.
At the F.B.I., meanwhile, fears that agents would be accused of racial profiling or singling out religious groups helped make top managers hesitate about recruiting informants to penetrate terrorist groups in the United States.
A play-it-safe attitude prevailed, with the reluctance to take aggressive steps reflecting the sometimes awkward tension that exists between the goals of protecting civil liberties and safeguarding security - a balance that many law enforcement and intelligence officials believe has hobbled efforts to learn terrorists' intentions.
Americans, in fact, have always been ambivalent about how much power they want to give agencies that pry into the lives of private citizens. The shock of Sept. 11 has radically altered the American mood, and the balance has shifted in favor of more latitude.
But intelligence remains a distasteful craft - one of guile and deceit. And perhaps, as the world's lone superpower, the United States does not always have to rely on such manipulations to get what it wants. Throughout history, the nations that have had the greatest - or at least the most intimidating - intelligence services have not necessarily been dominant powers. During World War II, Britain had the pre-eminent intelligence service, breaking the Nazi codes and turning Hitler's network of spies back against Germany as double agents. But by then Britain was settling into its role as America's junior partner.
DURING the cold war, East Germany's infamous Stasi was widely respected by Western intelligence officials as the most effective security service in the Soviet Bloc. It seeded West Germany's government with dozens of spies, and harried both Bonn and Washington. Its effectiveness continued right up until the time the Berlin Wall fell and East Germany ceased to exist.
Today, Israel is known for having one of the best intelligence services of any small nation in the world. Yet that is a necessity born of Israel's perilous strategic position in the Middle East.
In America, meanwhile, Congress and the public still struggle to find the right balance. Some legal and regulatory restrictions on intelligence activities have been relaxed, but neither the C.I.A. nor the F.B.I. has been truly unbound.
One year after Sept. 11, even as they demand more safety, the American people may still be ambivalent about their spies and law enforcers, after all.
--------
Goss sees further probe of intelligence failures
September 8, 2002
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20029824724.htm
The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence says findings from the joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence panels will not be the "last word" on pre-September 11 intelligence failures, and he left the door open for follow-up by an independent commission.
Interviewed yesterday on CNN´s "Novak, Hunt & Shields," Rep. Porter J. Goss of Florida was asked if he would object to a "blue-ribbon investigation" after the joint bipartisan probe of the intelligence committees is completed.
"I have no problem with whatever is going to come next. I don´t know what a blue-ribbon investigation is. But I think there will be follow-onCQ to what we do. In fact, I would be disappointed if there weren´t," Mr. Goss said.
Many Democrats in Congress have called for such an investigation. Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has said he would entertain the idea of an investigation by a blue-ribbon commission, once the current joint inquiry is wrapped up. Mr. Graham has until Feb. 28 to write the joint panel´s report.
For months, the Bush administration has argued against an independent commission, fearing members might leak classified information. But sensitive information has already been leaked, infuriating the White House. The FBI is trying to find out if someone on the intelligence committee was the culprit.
On CNN, Mr. Goss was asked about remarks made by Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and a member of the intelligence committee, who has said the current investigation is "understaffed" and "overwhelmed."
Mr. Goss replied by saying: "It would be no surprise to say that in the time we have and with the amount of people we have, we are not going to exhaust every possible lead that should be exhausted. What we are going to do is, I think, [lay] a very excellent foundation of what actually happened and where we should be asking other questions and what fixes we should be making now."
"I don´t think anybody´s pretended that this would be the final and last word on what happened on 9/11," said Mr. Goss, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and former clandestine services officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Asked if the investigation has shown him that intelligence failures were worse or not as bad as he believed immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Goss said: "What I´ve learned is we have to define exactly what we mean by intelligence failure, because the failure was much broader than just our foreign intelligence capability."
"It went to the interrelationship of that foreign intelligence capability with our law enforcement mechanisms and our regulatory agencies in the United States: the Federal Aviation Administration, the airport people, the customs people, the immigration people and so forth," the Florida Republican said, adding:
"What we have found is there is a frightening lack of coordination, of integration between the capabilities and the rule-making and, frankly, just the communication, just the daily business that should be going on among federal agencies. This has not been happening. And that clearly let down the gates in some places they shouldn´t have been down."
Mr. Goss also said there was a "psychological factor" involved in the intelligence breakdown. "In the ´90s, we enjoyed wonderful blue-sky prosperity, a peace dividend. We weren´t concerned about threats," he said.
The congressman said the intelligence community was "issuing warnings," but "people weren´t listening, and the warnings weren´t specific enough."
The Independent, a London newspaper, reported yesterday that the United States ignored a clear warning from the emissary of a Taliban leader that the al Qaeda network was planning a major attack on American soil.
The newspaper said an emissary acting for Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who was then the Taliban´s foreign minister, warned both the U.S. consul-general in Pakistan, David Katz, and the United Nations in Kabul of the impending attack. But he was ignored. A State Department official told the Reuters news agency yesterday: "We took all the warnings seriously" and issued travel advisories and other public announcements. "But we had no specific information," the official said.
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Congress eases scrutiny of FBI abuses
By ALAN ELSNER,
Reuters,
Sun, Sep. 08, 2002
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/4030989.htm
WASHINGTON - Since the attacks of last Sept. 11, congressional oversight of the FBI has slackened considerably, allowing the agency to use aggressive tactics that may skirt the rights of suspects, liberal and conservative civil liberties activists say.
"Pressure on the FBI from oversight bodies has relaxed since the attacks. A lot of people on Capitol Hill have concluded this is not a good time to put pressure on the FBI to behave itself," said Timothy Lynch, director of a project on criminal justice at the conservative Cato Institute.
Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Lawyers for Human Rights, said the lack of congressional scrutiny of FBI activities came at precisely the wrong time. Law enforcement agencies, she said, would always be tempted to trample individual rights in the name of national security when the country seemed threatened and people felt unsafe.
"Before 9/11, there was a growing consensus in Congress that the FBI needed more oversight and needed reform. All of that went away after 9/11 when arguably it ought to have increased," she said.
One victim of the FBI's newfound freedom may be Steven Hatfill, a former researcher at an infectious disease laboratory, suspected of sending letters laced with anthrax through the mail last year and killing five people.
Attorney General John Ashcroft coined a new quasi-legalistic phrase to define Hatfill's status in the anthrax investigation, calling him a "person of interest."
Although he has not been charged and Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, Hatfill's life has been effectively ruined, he said, since he was identified in leaks to The New York Times and then to other media.
Television crews were tipped off in advance when the FBI searched his home. Agents also searched and allegedly "trashed" his girlfriend's apartment, confiscated his passport and personal documents.
Last week, Hatfill lost his job at Louisiana State University after the Justice Department told the school it could not use him on projects funded by government grants.
"My life has been completely and utterly destroyed by John Ashcroft and the FBI," Hatfill said. "My professional reputation is in tatters. All I have left are my savings and they will be exhausted soon because of my legal bills."
The FBI has declined to comment about the Hatfill case other than to say he is one of several scientists they are looking at in connection with the anthrax investigation.
Gene Guerroro, an analyst with the Open Society Institute which monitors human rights, said such behavior by the FBI was not unusual and could be expected more often after Sept. 11.
'STANDARD TECHNIQUE'
"There's a real problem with the misuse of federal law enforcement authority. Things like trashing the girlfriend's apartment is a standard technique when you want to put pressure on a witness. It happens with great regularity," he said.
An FBI official would not discuss the agency's investigative methods and said it stays within the law.
In a rare public rebuke, the secret court that supervises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act recently criticized the Justice Department and FBI officials for supplying what it said was erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications from search warrants and wiretaps.
Kris Kolesnik, who served as an aide to Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley for 18 years and is now with the National Whistleblowers Center, said the FBI used the media as a tool to blacken the reputations of suspects when the agency had insufficient evidence to bring charges.
"Rumor and innuendo is second nature to the FBI. If they think you are a suspect, they try to break you any way they can and they definitely feel they have more freedom since 9/11 to behave in this kind of way," he said.
"It's a simple abuse of authority. They do it all the time and they do it with impunity," he said.
Hatfill is not the first victim of such tactics. His case recalls that of Richard Jewell, the security guard who was branded as the chief suspect of an investigation into a deadly bombing during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Jewell was ultimately cleared but not before he endured months of media persecution and FBI surveillance. He later won substantial monetary settlements from two TV networks.
"In their mad rush to fulfill their own personal agendas, the FBI and the media almost destroyed me," Jewell said after being formally cleared.
Then there was the case of former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee who spent nine months in solitary confinement under suspicion of passing secrets to China before being released with an apology from the presiding judge in 2000.
One of the few lawmakers keeping up the pressure on the FBI has been Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton who chairs the House Government Reform Committee.
Burton held hearings this year into how the FBI knowingly used false testimony from Mafia informants in Boston to jail four men for a 1968 murder it knew they did not commit.
Anxious to protect itself and its sources, the FBI maintained its cover-up for decades. Two of the four died in prison. The other two were released after spending over 30 years behind bars.
At a hearing in February, Burton said: "A lot of people in this country, myself included, grew up revering the FBI ... It's been very sobering to hear about some of these terrible abuses going on in an agency I've always revered.
"It shows what happens when the government uses an ends justifies the means approach to law enforcement," he said.
----
Patriot Act's scope, secrecy ensnare innocent, critics say
Looking Back, Looking Ahead - A nation remembers
Seth Rosenfeld, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, September 8, 2002
San Francisco Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/08/MN30478.DTL
Soon after the Pakistani native bought several books through EBay last fall, the FBI dropped by his South Bay home to ask if he planned to make weapons and engage in terrorism.
The man was a scientist with a Stanford University degree, a permanent U.S. resident who had been in America more than 20 years. He and his lawyers agreed to meet with an FBI agent, and explained that he purchased the technical books solely for professional purposes.
Since Sept. 11, FBI and INS agents have interviewed hundreds of Northern California residents as part of their probe of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to lawyers and civil rights groups.
The agents are armed with sweeping new powers under the Patriot Act, giving them greater access to
information -- including library records, book store receipts, subscription lists, credit and banking records, e-mails, phone conversations and student files.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said the measures are needed to prevent terrorism and that criticism of them aids terrorists. Civil libertarians say the measures go too far and undermine constitutional principles.
"Are you going to be reported to the FBI for buying a particular type of book?" said San Jose lawyer Thomas Ehrlich, who described the case of the Stanford scientist, but declined to name his client. "That's something to be concerned about."
The FBI agent said EBay had reported the book purchases, according to co- counsel Daniel Mayfield, and seemed satisfied with the scientist's explanation.
EBay Vice President Henry Gomez denied the firm provided the information to the FBI. A bureau official declined to comment on any specific cases.
So far, the full impact of the Patriot Act remains unknown, partly because the Bush administration has insisted on secrecy that some courts and members of Congress have called excessive. Three federal courts have ruled that the Justice Department unlawfully withheld the names of detainees or closed deportation hearings.
The USA Patriot Act -- short for the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act" - - is 342 pages long and amends 15 different laws. Hastily approved by Congress and signed by Bush Oct. 26 after little debate, it dramatically increased federal search and surveillance powers.
The act scales back safeguards Congress imposed after 1970s revelations that the FBI, CIA and other agencies unlawfully spied on law-abiding citizens.
The act's broad language means anyone could become subject to its intrusive measures, which generally have far less judicial oversight than do investigative procedures in criminal cases.
But the law is harshest on immigrants, said David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. "The law allows the government to exclude aliens based solely on political views, deport them based on innocent political associations and detain them on the attorney general's say-so," Cole said.
Here are some episodes from anti-terror investigations in California, and some of the expanded government security measures that may apply.
SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS
An alarming fax arrived last spring at the office of a Middle East student group at San Francisco State University.
The fax, which was mostly in Arabic, warned the group not to be around for a certain event -- what the group's lawyer, Joseph Morehead, said "obviously would be a terrorist act."
Morehead said he sent the fax to the FBI, but that instead of investigating the threat, the FBI asked for a list of the group's members and for interviews with them. "These people were being the citizen informants that Ashcroft wants, " said Morehead, "and the government turned it around on them."
Ultimately, he said, the FBI told him the fax was a hoax.
At least one of the terrorists suspected in the Sept. 11 attacks had come to the United States on a student visa, and some of the Patriot Act focuses on schools.
Student records are confidential under the Family Education Records and Privacy Act, passed in 1974 in response to disclosures that the government had used them in spying on anti-Vietnam War protesters.
But the Patriot Act amends the law to require schools to disclose student records -- including grades, courses, family information and medical records --
without student consent.
The act also allows agents access to previously confidential data collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics, including demographic information enabling them to focus on schools based on ethnic makeup.
To get an order for these records, a Justice Department official needs only to certify to a federal court that they are relevant to a foreign intelligence or anti-terrorism investigation.
The American Civil Liberties Union contends the Patriot Act fails to guard against "fishing expeditions that violate student privacy or investigation based upon racial profiling."
LIBRARIES, BOOKSTORES, MEDIA
The Patriot Act allows the FBI to obtain library records on anyone when agents believe they may be relevant to a terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.
The act also lets agents obtain a wide range of "business records" that include bookstore receipts, newspaper subscription lists and, possibly, journalists' unpublished notes and photographs.
The law imposes a gag order on librarians and others required to turn over the information.
The FBI may get an order for the records by certifying to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that they are relevant to a terrorism or intelligence probe.
"The Patriot Act has a potentially chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of bookstore customers because it gives the FBI the power to investigate what people are reading," said Chris Finan, head of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
The act has sparked concern about whether the FBI can access unpublished news materials traditionally treated as confidential, said Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit group that promotes the right to know.
FINANCIAL RECORDS
In June, a Muslim woman put on her traditional face covering and went to the Bank of America branch near Tarzana (Los Angeles County) where she had been a customer for 10 years. She showed identification, but the bank refused to cash her check or open her account.
A bank official told her she looked suspicious, according to Jana Abdulgawad, of the Northern California chapter of the Council on American- Islamic Relations, which has documented instances of post-Sept. 11 discrimination against Muslims.
Bank of America spokesperson Juliet Don said the bank would look into the matter.
Financial institutions are a focus of the Patriot Act, which imposes new requirements on them in an effort to identify terror funds. Investigators believe some of the Sept. 11 terrorists used false Social Security numbers to open U.S. bank accounts.
The act sets new requirements on financial firms to verify the identity of anyone opening a new account, maintain records of the verification and determine whether the customer's name appears on any list of known or suspected terrorists, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The rules apply to banks, securities brokers and mutual fund firms.
The Patriot Act also modifies the Bank Secrecy Act to require the institutions to more closely track suspicious transactions and to share reports about them "upon request" with government agencies, including the CIA, if the requested information will be used for intelligence activities.
The law also grants federal agents secret access to personal credit reports.
Bradley Jansen, until recently a policy analyst with the conservative Free Congress Foundation, said federal agents already had access to volumes of financial reports. He doubts the new measures will help fight terrorism.
"They are not making us more secure," Jansen said, "but they are invading our privacy."
TELEPHONE TAPS AND E-MAIL
Randy Hamud, an outspoken Muslim lawyer in San Diego who has represented several men detained since Sept. 11, figures the FBI has tapped his phone and searched his computer.
"I already assume my . . . conversations are being monitored," he said in an interview. "There is no privacy any more for Arabs and Muslims and their representatives."
The FBI declined to comment on Hamud's assertion.
Last fall, Ashcroft issued a new rule allowing agents to monitor phone calls between lawyers and their clients if there is "reasonable suspicion" the conversations may be helping terrorist acts. Defense lawyers say the rule violates the constitutional right to counsel.
In addition, the Patriot Act grants the FBI expanded powers to tap telephones and electronic communication devices in the United States during intelligence probes related to foreign powers.
The FBI may get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a "roving" tap on any phone or communication device that a targeted individual is using. This allows monitoring of conversations and e-mails when the target switches phones or computers.
John Podesta, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who was President Clinton's chief of staff, cited a privacy problem in the new measure.
"It is conceivable," Podesta said, "that all the pay phones in an entire neighborhood could be tapped if suspected terrorists happened to be in that neighborhood."
THE INTERNET
One of the act's most significant sections boosts federal power to trace Internet traffic, said Ken Gude, a policy analyst with the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C.
The act permits federal agents to collect electronically "routing" and "address" information on the Internet.
Agents need only certify to a court that the information "likely to be obtained" is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." That is far lower than the standard required to eavesdrop on phone calls in a regular criminal case.
The act says agents are not supposed to access the content of Internet messages, but experts say that technically it may be difficult to separate content from address and routing information.
The address information itself reveals visits to Web sites.
"The government may now spy on Web surfing of innocent Americans," said Lee Tien, a lawyer with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.
TALK AND TIPS
Barry Reingold, 61, a retired Pacific Bell employee, was working out at his San Francisco gym last October, talking about the terrorist attacks, when he sharply questioned U.S. foreign policy.
A few days later, two FBI agents appeared at his Oakland apartment, showed their badges and asked to speak with him about his locker room remarks, Reingold said. When an agent noted he had the right to free speech, Reingold replied, "I do, and that ends our conversation."
Federal agents have questioned hundreds of Northern Californians about the Sept. 11 attacks and their political and religious beliefs, said Riva Enteen, San Francisco program director of a National Lawyers Guild hot line providing free legal counsel to those contacted by the agents.
The vast majority of those interviewed are Muslim or Middle Eastern, Enteen said.
In some cases, like Reingold's, the FBI visit was apparently sparked by an anonymous tip.
The Bush administration has called on the public to report suspected terrorist activity, and last month planned to launch Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System).
But after fierce criticism from civil libertarians and some members of Congress, the administration dropped a plan to enlist postal carriers, utility workers and others with access to private homes to report suspicious activity as part of TIPS.
The administration hopes to proceed with a trimmed version of the operation that asks maritime, shipping, trucking and mass transit workers to report such activity, said Assistant Attorney General Deborah Daniels. She noted, though, that pending legislation would block the plan.
Other FBI visits were apparently based on lists of immigrants. Ashcroft has said law enforcement officials would interview some 8,000 mostly Arab and Muslim men who were in the United States on nonimmigrant visas.
Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI agents went to the San Francisco home of Kamal Hakim, who came to the United States from Yemen and became a permanent resident in 1995.
Hakim, 34, said he voluntarily spoke twice with agents, who asked about his associates, his travels and his views on the attacks.
Cara Jobson, Hakim's immigration lawyer, contends the government's focus on Middle Eastern men has been misplaced.
"It's profiling of the worst sort," she said. "Its neither an effective way to do security nor a just way to treat people."
SECRECY
Some members of Congress have asked the Justice Department to detail how it has used its powers under the Patriot Act.
In June, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the committee's ranking Democrat, sent Ashcroft 50 questions.
Among them: How many times has the department requested records from libraries, bookstores and newspapers? How many roving wiretaps has the department requested? How many U.S. citizens have been subject to surveillance under orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?
The committee is charged with oversight of the department, but Ashcroft refused to respond to many key questions, saying he would instead respond to the House Intelligence Committee.
Corallo, the Justice Department spokesman, said, "We have fully cooperated with Congress, and we will continue to cooperate with Congress."
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said he supports many of the Bush administration's anti-terror measures, but that its insistence on secrecy threatens to undermine the democratic system of checks and balances.
"There is a fundamental principle that any expansion of government authority should be matched by a corresponding expansion of oversight and accountability," Aftergood said. "And that, more than anything else, is the principle that I see being violated."
E-mail the writer at srosenfeld@sfchronicle.com.
-------- terrorism
Feeling Secure, U.S. Failed to Grasp bin Laden Threat
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/asia/08ATTA.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - Americans had every reason, the experts say, to have seen it coming - and still, somehow, did not.
After all, the twin towers had been shaken once before, in 1993. But that did not stop the border services from admitting more agents against American targets, as they had earlier given a visa to the blind Egyptian sheik who gave religious sanction for the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat.
As embassies exploded overseas, as American military barracks and bases were bombed, as American warships were attacked by skiffs full of nitrates and diesel oil, as intelligence agencies learned of plots to blow up a dozen jumbo jets over the Pacific, and as a millennium bomb plot was stopped at the Canadian border, the country was still not able to defend itself.
What some members of Congress have called the greatest failure in American intelligence since Pearl Harbor was also the failure to recognize an open and determined enemy. Osama bin Laden announced publicly that he was going to smite the empire. He assured Americans that he had motive, means and opportunity.
If he seemed an apparition from the fringe, there were the attacks on embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 to demonstrate his low-tech ingenuity, radiating out from the mud-brick huts of Afghanistan.
Since last Sept. 11, the authorities have disclosed how the hijackers trained at American flight schools; one suspected conspirator was arrested a month before the attacks for his erratic statements and terrorist links in France; an alert agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Arizona theorized that what occurred on Sept. 11 could occur, but this premonition never reached the White House terrorism chief, Richard A. Clarke, who during the summer of 2001 was frantically trying to determine the vector from which the next attack would come. There were shards from the intelligence services of Egypt and other nations: a big attack was coming. There was a message from Mr. bin Laden to one of his wives to return home quickly to Saudi Arabia.
An extraordinary confluence of American instincts appears in hindsight to have dulled the nation's readiness, chief among them the complacency Americans shared about the security of their continent whose shores seemed impervious to malevolent assault even after Japan's 1941 surprise attack and the British insult of 1812.
There was also an innate resistance to the kind of domestic intelligence gathering that the authorities consider necessary for tracking suspected terrorists and subversives, along with other pressures to preserve civil liberties. Many Islamic radicals arrived in Europe and the United States claiming human rights protection after fleeing authoritarian regimes.
Add to that the long degradation of American intelligence gathering, what some dissident intelligence officers call a retreat from traditional espionage under a succession of directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, even as Washington spent record amounts for spy satellites.
The system was on yellow alert, but the system was flawed.
Intelligence Stretched Thin
The C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, established in 1986 and staffed with C.I.A. and F.B.I. analysts, had no agents of its own in the field; its requests for action, surveillance and agent recruitment were routinely turned down by C.I.A. station chiefs abroad, according to a former C.I.A. officer assigned to it; the center, until Sept. 11, was disconnected from the fabric of F.B.I. counterintelligence work in the United States. In 1995, the C.I.A. was forced to go around its own creation to set up a "virtual" station to track the movements of its major terrorist target, Mr. bin Laden. This, too, was a conspicuous failure. The C.I.A. used the Predator unmanned drone in Afghanistan during President Bill Clinton's last year in office. When it showed promise, capturing a glimpse of Mr. bin Laden, the agency withdrew it for redesign.
The blueprint for the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban was written a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, in the Clinton administration after the Cole was hit, according to Clinton administration officials. In the fall of 2000 toward the end of his presidency, Mr. Clinton, frustrated by a lack of solid intelligence about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts, could not move against Al Qaeda, his aides say. His national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, said he laid it all out to George W. Bush's team, including Condoleezza Rice, who later told Time magazine that she did not remember the briefing. Instead, a lengthy review of counterterrorism policy began anew.
The uncomfortable reality, according to some experts who have reconstructed the events, is that the bitter battle over the disputed 2000 election and the transition of a new administration trying to sort out its national security priorities also put the campaign against terrorism, and American policy, into suspended animation at the precise moment that the most destructive terrorist strike in history was being prepared.
The centerpiece of Mr. Bush's national security strategy coming into office was his program to dismantle the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and persuade skeptical allies and Russia that the United States should deploy missile defenses.
Although Mr. Bush received an intelligence briefing in August 2001 indicating that Al Qaeda might hijack commercial jets in the United States, it was not until the beginning of September that an action plan to root out the terrorist network, on a scale even more ambitious than the Clinton plan, was making its way to the president's desk. But by then four American jetliners with 19 well-trained and disciplined hijackers were almost airborne.
Powerful Yet Ineffective
When the terrorists shredded the twin towers and cleaved the Pentagon, the nation was staggered, but a whole class of specialists, C.I.A and F.B.I. officials, White House and Pentagon aides and analysts uttered the same name that morning in anger and frustration.
They knew at that moment what it has taken many Americans nearly a year to fully absorb: that the most powerful nation on earth had not been able to muster a trait it cherishes most - effectiveness. A year on, that is the greatest frustration and it is why so many experts and members of Congress are trying to answer the question, as Americans did after Pearl Harbor - how did it happen and how can we prevent it from happening again? Al Qaeda is still out there, perhaps with Osama bin Laden still in command, and after him, others will come, not the least because America's relationship with the Arab and Muslim world is getting worse. In addition, the president's focus on preparing a war plan for Iraq is uniting the region against Washington, Arab leaders say.
To the extremists, it does not seem to matter that America, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has defended freedom. One theory is that terrorists lash out at America because they cannot lash out at authoritarian regimes at home. But Mr. bin Laden broke that mold. He is not acting out some transference of hatred, argues one C.I.A. veteran of the war in Afghanistan, but rather a grand strategy for Islamic rebirth that is "vigorous" and "combative" and aims to gain control of the entire Middle East.
Since his slash at the heart of America, and the murder of more than 3,000 people, Mr. bin Laden's popularity may be resurgent. Bernard Lewis, the Princeton University specialist on Middle Eastern studies, said last month that Mr. bin Laden was taking on the aura of a latter day "Middle Eastern Robin Hood." His goal, Mr. Lewis said, is to "defy the strong and to protect - and ultimately avenge - the weak." He "remains an enormously popular figure not only with the extremists and radicals who form his main support group, but in much wider circles in the Muslim and more particularly in the Arab world," Mr. Lewis said.
Thus America will remain a prominent target. The question is how effective can it be in reducing the risk.
It is impossible to look at Sept. 11 in isolation from the five decades of crisis, confrontation and eruption in the Islamic world. Four Arab-Israeli wars since the creation of the Jewish state have laid a foundation of intractable conflict in the region. The Iranian revolution of 1979, followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; Sadat's assassination in 1981; Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, followed by Syria's - all were major events that set off waves of terrorism and the spread of extremist ideology. The ripple effects spread as far as the Russian republic of Chechnya and the Philippines.
Terrorism was a permanent feature of warfare in the region. Israel's underground used terror tactics against the British Mandate in Palestine. The Six Day War of 1967 activated the Palestine Liberation Organization that used hijackings and terrorist strikes, like those of Black September and the unforgettable assault on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
All the while, in Iran, a Persian sandstorm was rising with the return from exile in February 1979 of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ayatollah Khomeini awakened the latent rage of impoverished and devout Muslims in Iran, sweeping from power the Westernized and corrupt court of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, America's ally on the southern flank of the Soviet Union. The old ayatollah blamed the Great Satan for Iran's ills and whipped up a storm of terror that has yet to exhaust itself. Ever since Iranian students breached the wall of the United States Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, taking 62 Americans hostage, American interests have been prominent targets.
"After 1979, there was nobody within the Muslim world or outside it who was unaware of militant Islamism," the French scholar Giles Kepel observed.
The devilment for the United States has always been how to respond. Ronald Reagan tried several ways, none of which worked particularly well. On April 18, 1983, a truck bomber destroyed the United States Embassy in Beirut, killing 50 people, including Robert C. Ames, the C.I.A.'s top expert on the Middle East, and six other C.I.A. officers.
Suspicion fell immediately on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as it did in the truck bomb attacks that killed 241 Marines and 58 French soldiers later that year in Beirut. But the United States did not respond in either case. Caspar W. Weinberger, the defense secretary, and Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not believe in responding to terrorists without proof and a clear military objective.
The Trail to New York
Even when terrorism came ashore in 1993 with the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, the terrorists did not seem very effective and their destructiveness was soon outperformed by Timothy J. McVeigh, who killed 168 people by collapsing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
But to dismiss the 1993 bombing in New York is to miss the profile of migration by Islamic extremists to America. Their circles were inter-locking, connecting the blind Egyptian sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, then largely unknown, and El Sayyid A. Nosair. Mr. Nosair was the extremist who in 1990 organized the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League in New York, and then began plotting the 1993 assault on the World Trade Center with Ramzi Yousef.
Defensively, America, too, played in the swamp of extremism. Presidents Carter, Reagan and the first Bush helped to galvanize, finance and arm an Islamic war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the largest C.I.A. operation since Vietnam. A strong current of jihad already existed in South Asia, binding Saudi Arabia with Pakistan, first in the Muslim fight against Indian hegemony, but second in Afghanistan, where an Islamic movement for years had been agitating against "godless" Communist rule.
Egypt and China served as weapons suppliers while Saudi Arabia was the guardian of Muslim orthodoxy. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the chief of Saudi intelligence, worked with American C.I.A. directors to support the "freedom fighters" who came from all over the Muslim world. The Afghan mujahedeen gathered devout young men willing to die defending their faith and land. The C.I.A. provided them with arms, even Stinger missiles to shoot down Soviet helicopters, and others taught them guerrilla tactics. America and Saudi Arabia exploited this culture of jihad, Prince Turki says today. In hindsight, he adds, Mr. bin Laden, the Taliban and Al Qaeda all are manifestations of the extremism it promoted. Abandoned, it eventually turned against its sponsors.
"I did not fight the Communist threat while forgetting the peril from the West," Mr. bin Laden reminded a French journalist in 1995.
As an avenger of the faith, Mr. bin Laden had weak credentials with the psychological overlay of a loner. Born to the silver spoon of his father's construction empire, he was the only son of a his father's Syrian wife, Hamida, whose secularism may have broadcast immodesty to the other bin Laden wives and may have been a source of torment for the young Mr. bin Laden, say Saudi officials who knew him.
His father died when he was 11 years old and Mr. bin Laden inherited more than $30 million. He went off to King Abdul Aziz University in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where he drifted into the religious debates incited by Islamic revivalism. He never finished school.
In 1979, Islamic radicals, inspired by Iran, seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and were brutally suppressed by Saudi national guard forces. A month later, in December, Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan and soon Mr. bin Laden was on Pakistan's frontier, immersed in the circle of holy men and volunteers there to wage holy war. That's where, in 1984, he met Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian radical who also sprang from wealth in the Nile Delta and who had been hardened by three years in prison for suspected involvement in the Sadat assassination.
Mr. bin Laden's mentor in the Afghan jihad was a soft-spoken cleric named Abdullah Azzam, who ran a safe house and base in Peshawar for the American- and Saudi-backed freedom fighters. Mr. Azzam's horizon was liberating Afghanistan, but Mr. Zawahiri appears to have supplanted his influence and opened Mr. bin Laden's mind to a grander design: to topple all the corrupt rulers of the region, establish conservative Islamic rule and drive out the influence of Christians and Jews. To Mr. Zawahiri, access to Mr. bin Laden's money was critical to realize the dream. Mr. Azzam was assassinated in 1989 and Mr. bin Laden took over the base that was to become Al Qaeda, which means "the base."
Triggering bin Laden
The crucial event that led to Mr. bin Laden's decision to turn on his homeland and on the United States may well have been the Persian Gulf war, when he rushed to the Saudi leadership and offered to raise an army of mujahedeen to push the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. When American and allied forces came instead, and stayed, Mr. bin Laden - rejected and, perhaps, belittled at home - reconfigured his enemies to include the Saudi royal family and America.
Looking back on the 1990's, Mr. bin Laden was only one of several terrorist engineers building circuits toward America. In 1993, he may have provided assistance to the warlord Gen. Muhammad Farah Aidid when his troops shot down two Black Hawk helicopters in the ambush that left 18 Americans dead in Somalia.
In 1990, the American Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, issued a multiple entry visa to the Egyptian sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, who had escaped house arrest in Egypt and had visited the jihad networks of Afghanistan. He moved to New York and a terrorist cell formed in his mosque.
Iran's terrorism was especially virulent as it appeared under the control of government ministries in Tehran. Its secret services organized assassinations of dissidents throughout the Middle East and Europe. In 1996, a senior officer for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Ahmad Sherifi, is believed by the F.B.I. and Saudi intelligence to have organized and trained the Saudi extremists who drove a truck bomb into the Khobar Towers barracks near Dhahran, killing 19 American servicemen.
Thus the campaign against terrorism already had many fronts.
Mr. bin Laden spent much of the decade maneuvering in the Islamic fringe that he yearned to organize and lead. In Afghanistan, he allied himself with the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and integrated Qaeda forces into the militia. He erected networks in Yemen and Sudan, where he had spent millions setting up a base in the mid-1990's, only to be expelled under Saudi and American pressure. Neither regarded him dangerous enough to arrest.
Once back in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden issued a stream of declarations in the style of a high cleric of Islam.
"We, with the help of Allah, call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it." He added, "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." By 1998, "the base" had become hardwired from Kandahar to California and Kuala Lumpur, with way stations, cells and safe houses in between. Al Qaeda directed the twin embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, even as the C.I.A. and F.B.I. agents had Qaeda operatives under surveillance.
In June 1998, Saudi Arabia, with the blessing of the Clinton administration, had pressed Mullah Omar to turn over Mr. bin Laden for trial in the kingdom, Prince Turki says.
The Taliban leader agreed during a June 1998 meeting in Kandahar, and negotiations began to use Muslim law to expel him. But an American cruise missile attack against Mr. bin Laden made him famous. When Prince Turki returned in September, Mullah Omar had reversed himself, and rebuked Saudi Arabia.
"Mullah Omar came to me and started insulting the Kingdom," Prince Turki said. He quoted the Taliban leader as saying: "Instead of coming to ask us to deliver this worthy man, you should put your hand in ours and let us fight the Americans. The kingdom is an occupied country."
"I just got up and left," Prince Turki recalls.
Al Qaeda was soon planning the attack on the Cole. American intelligence officials believed they had penetrated important parts of the organization, but the hydra had many heads.
A Simple Failure
The intelligence failure that admitted the Sept. 11 attackers to the United States for a long season of training before they boarded four Boeing passenger jets that morning, may not be as complicated as many Americans think, according to a number of veterans of the campaign against terrorism.
The C.I.A. and Pentagon have spent billions on new collection hardware, spy satellites with real-time imagery of the globe. From space, ground and sea based antennae, the National Security Agency sucks voice and data streams like a fire hose and feeds them to computer buffers for analysis. Most of the data gathers electronic dust there.
The chronic shortage of language experts is N.S.A.'s Achilles' heel so much so that one of the most sensitive bits of intelligence revealed about Sept. 11 was that the N.S.A. had intercepted a Qaeda message on Sept. 10 saying, "Tomorrow is zero hour." But no one translated it until after it was over.
Some intelligence veterans say that the re-organization of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. are not as important as getting back to the basics of espionage and counterespionage: recruiting valuable agents in Middle Eastern countries to penetrate terrorist organizations. To run those agents and build the networks, the United States needs better trained intelligence officers, experts in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures who are fluent in the languages of the region. And the C.I.A.'s top management, as well as Congress, must support and protect these secret efforts in order for them to succeed, the veterans say.
But after a generation or two of reformist criticisms, risk aversion is now epidemic in American intelligence, veterans say. Some of the fixes are obvious. In the computer age, law enforcement is not wired properly. After the attack on the Cole in August 2000, the F.B.I. was searching for two Qaeda suspects, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi, because Malaysian intelligence had placed them at a meeting of terrorists in December 1999. They were living openly in San Diego. Mr. Hazmi was listed in the telephone directory. Mr. Midhar used a credit card in his own name and they were active at the San Diego Islamic Center, and both participated in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The F.B.I. computer system was a hodge podge of systems that was forced on a culture that preferred handwritten or typed reports. The entire F.B.I. data base of agent reports went on line in the 1990's, but the software written for the system could not search for multiple terms, like "flight training" and "hijack." Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, said it would take two years to bring the agency up to date, another indication of how slow the agency responds.
American embassies abroad repeatedly issued visas to known terror suspects. State Department computers were not linked to the C.I.A. or F.B.I., or to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Some changes have already been made to address the intelligence failures that left the country vulnerable to the Sept. 11 attacks. Still, senior members of the Bush administration say they expect another terrorist strike and, therefore, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently observed, "Business as usual won't do."
Americans will have to find a new and effective balance, one that takes into account that a terrorist "goes to school," as Mr. Rumsfeld said, on the vulnerabilities of an open society, but without undermining, as others warn, the tenets of an open society.
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Poll Finds Unease on Terror Fight and Concerns About War on Iraq
New York Times
September 8, 2002
By ADAM CLYMER and JANET ELDER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/politics/08POLL.html
Americans increasingly doubt that their government has done enough to protect them against terrorist attacks and are convinced, despite misgivings, that there will be a war against Iraq, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows. Majorities do not want war without Congressional and allied support first and a clear explanation from President Bush.
One year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, about half of the public said the Bush administration did not have a clear plan to fight terrorism, and nearly as many said they felt somewhat uneasy and not safe from another terrorist attack.
Just a quarter of the public, but a third of those in the Northeast, said they feared an attack in their own area. Only one American in 10 said the administration had made "a lot of progress" in eliminating terrorist threats from nations besides Afghanistan.
The survey portrayed a hesitant nation with a sense of inevitability and little of the eager combativeness that surrounded the reaction to the bombing of terrorist targets in Afghanistan last year. A large majority said it expected the American forces to "end up fighting against Iraq."
But only one-fourth said Iraq presented such a grave threat that the United States should act now, while two-thirds said the nation needed to wait for support from its allies. Another big majority said Mr. Bush should get Congressional approval before making war.
The troubled answers about the campaign against terrorism at home and abroad conveyed a similar fatalistic, slightly cranky mood. A year ago, three-fifths of Americans said the government had done enough to protect them against another terrorist attack; now just two-fifths do. That sharp drop in confidence was mirrored in follow-up interviews.
Mary Wool, a retired store owner in St. Louis, said she objected to "the whole thing at airports, going through your luggage." She said: "I don't think they are serious. It's just harassment and to make people think they are doing something."
Such worries highlighted the importance of President Bush's speech to the United Nations on Thursday, in which he plans to set forth his reasons for regarding Iraq as an international menace. Sixty-four percent of the 937 adults interviewed by telephone last Monday through Thursday said the Bush administration had not clearly explained its position. Even 57 percent of those who said they thought an attack was needed now expressed that sentiment.
Mr. Bush's overall approval rating remains strong. Sixty-three percent said they approved of his handling of his job as president. That still repre sented a drop from 70 percent in mid-July and the mid-80's recorded last fall and winter. That rating was accompanied by a sharp drop in approval of his handling of foreign policy, to 54 percent from 68 percent in July, and by slight declines in support for his handling of the economy and the war on terrorism. The poll's margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.
The respondents said they thought the Bush administration was making "some" progress rather than "a lot" on goals Mr. Bush had set out for the war on terrorism. These goals included closing terrorist camps and establishing a stable government in Afghanistan, eliminating terrorist threats from other countries, making air travel safe and improving America's image in the Arab world.
Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden remains a benchmark of sorts for success in Afghanistan. Three-quarters of the poll's respondents said they think he is still alive; 61 percent said the United States will not have won the war in Afghanistan unless he is captured or killed.
The survey did not test political attitudes in depth, but offered some troubling signs for the president's party in the midterm elections.
Only 37 percent of all respondents said they trusted the government to make the right decisions all or most of the time, down from 55 percent, the highest measure in decades, recorded last October in the first flush of support for the beginning of the war on terrorism. Another political indicator showed a steady negative, as 43 percent said the nation was going in the right direction while 49 percent said it was seriously "off on the wrong track."
A generic question about how registered voters planned to vote for representatives in November showed a statistically insignificant Democratic edge of 41 percent to 37 percent, a gap too small to foretell results in the three dozen or so closely contested House races. But among voters 45 and older, who make up about three-fifths of the off-year electorate, Democrats did much better.
The public is ambivalent over the issue of a pre-emptive attack of the sort urged by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Half the respondents were asked whether the United States should attack "another country" if that country did not attack first, and 47 percent opposed such an attack, while 41 percent favored it if the United States thought that country might launch an attack.
The other half were asked the same question, but with the word "Iraq" used instead of "another country." Then 61 percent favored a pre-emptive strike and 26 percent opposed it. The margin of sampling error for each group was plus or minus five percentage points.
One respondent, Tom Tully of Columbus, Ohio, said, "Every day we wait to attack, Saddam is building more chemical weapons, and some sources say he already has nuclear weapons." Mr. Tully, 35, an unemployed computer engineer, said: "If not now, when? Might as well do it now than later when it gets more difficult."
But Leona Miller, 75, a retired nurse and real estate agent in Bremerton, Wash., said: "I oppose the attack on Iraq. George Bush is on a vendetta started by his father. It is getting-even stuff."
Support for a war declined when the public was offered other alternatives or considerations. Fifty-six percent cautioned delay so that the United Nations could try to get weapons inspectors back in Iraq. When asked if they would favor war if it would last "months or even years," 49 percent favored a war and 44 percent opposed it.
Sixty-two percent said the president "should have to get the approval of Congress before taking military action against Iraq." Among those 65 and older, or old enough to recall World War II, 74 percent said Congressional approval was required. Still, the 62 percent figure was down from the 71 percent who said so in a CBS News poll early in August.
Women and the elderly were least enthusiastic about war. For example, while 27 percent of the public said the nation should go to war now without waiting for allied support, only 21 percent of women and 10 percent of people 65 and older took that view.
The Sept. 11 attacks themselves have not passed out of mind or out of conversation. Three-fifths of the public said they thought about them at least once a week, and a third said they talked about them that often.
Two out of five respondents said their own lives had changed since the terrorist attacks, and four out of five said the country had changed.
David Lechner, 47, a printer in Huntingburg, Ind., spoke of both changes, saying: "When I watched the trade center come down, tears ran down my face. It hit home that I'm no different from the rest of the people. I am conscious of it daily; it doesn't just come and go. But it made the nation 10 times stronger than it was. There is unity and strength."
Cheryl Krusinski, the wife of an Air Force captain, was teaching second grade in Washington a year ago. "They told us to lock our classrooms, that Washington was being attacked," Ms. Krusinski said. She said talking to her students, one of whom lost his father in the attack on the Pentagon, was "emotional," and she continually relived the experience. She said that day had re-emphasized the importance of her husband's occupation. "I know he'll be going and that has big emotional impact, but I realize it's for a greater purpose, to protect our country."
The view that the government had not done enough to protect Americans against terrorism held fairly steady across various demographic groups.
As an example, in a follow-up interview, Monica Sanders, 21, a college student from Modesto, Calif., said that airport security alone was not enough. "All other forms of transportation should be checked," she said. "There are terrorists in the country who could do something on a highway or a train."
Vic Stinnett, 35, a welder in Mountain Home, Idaho, said, "The government could do things like background checks on people who go in and out of the country." He added: "A thumbprint or fingerprint scan would be a good idea. Any questionable stuff could be tied in with your passport."
Louise Steward, 67, a retired bank worker in Tampa, Fla., said: "The only way we would feel more secure would be to clean up all of Iraq and all of Afghanistan. We need to get our troops out there and clean up the mess. That is what the government should do: mop it up."
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Aides Say Bin Laden Planned Sept Attacks - Reporter
September 8, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-alqaeda.html
DUBAI (Reuters) - Two key al Qaeda network members have affirmed that Osama bin Laden was personally involved in planning the September 11 attacks on the United States, a journalist who interviewed the two men said on Sunday.
Yosri Fouda, an investigative journalist with al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television, said the interviews did not give evidence on whether the Saudi-born militant was dead or alive.
``You can say that Yosri Fouda, the journalist who carried out the interviews, said that the interviews will prove that he (bin Laden) had an integral role in planning the attacks,'' Fouda told Reuters by telephone from London.
Fouda was referring to interviews he had in June in or near the Pakistani port city of Karachi with Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shaibah (also known in Germany as Ramzi Binalshibh), and Kuwaiti-born Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad, who he described as the chief of al Qaeda's military operations.
Shaibah is a former room-mate of Egyptian Mohamed Atta, the apparent leader of the 19 hijackers of the airliners that were flown into U.S. landmarks last September 11, killing more than 3,000 people.
Qatar-based Jazeera television broadcast the first part of Fouda's documentary, titled ``Top Secret,'' last Thursday. It will air the second part, including the interview, this coming Thursday.
Washington has accused bin Laden and al Qaeda of being responsible for the attacks in which the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were destroyed and U.S. military headquarters at the Pentagon damaged.
Sheikh Mohammad appears on a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Web site list of most-wanted ``terrorists.'' Shaibah is wanted in Germany for suspected links to al Qaeda and is thought to have wanted to take part in the hijackings, but was denied a U.S. visa.
HEADED MILITARY COMMITTEE
``Sheikh Mohammad said he headed the military committee that planned the (U.S.) attacks and Shaibah said he was the coordinator,'' Fouda told Reuters in his account of remarks by the two men.
The group had praised the deadly attacks but had previously fallen short of admitting responsibility for them.
Fouda said the two admitted that the Muslim militant group had considered targeting U.S. nuclear facilities in the attacks, but it then abandoned the idea, ``at least temporarily.''
``Sheikh Mohammad told me that they then decided against the idea 'for the time being' because they thought it might get out of their control,'' said Fouda.
``He (Mohammad) said when thecommittee met we decided to carry out a martyrdomoperation in the United States, and then we discussed the targets. At first we wanted to target nuclear reactors,'' he said, noting that the fourth airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania was heading toward the U.S. Congress at Capitol Hill in Washington.
``Shaibah said that Atta called him on August 29 and told him a riddle to set the date of the attacks,'' he said.
``He was imitating Atta's Egyptian accent who asked his help to solve a riddle that a friend told him: 'what do you make of two sticks (eleven) a slash and a round (donut-shaped) cookie with a stick hanging from it (a nine)?','' he said.
Fouda said the television interviews were carried out using al Qaeda equipment.
``They never allow anyone to bring in their own equipment and I had to rely on their cameras,'' he said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Russia Sees U.S. As New Market For Oil Reserves
Deals Could Ease Washington's Reliance On Mideast, Create Windfall for Moscow
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51859-2002Sep7?language=printer
MOSCOW -- In their hour of need, as the Nazis were marching on Moscow during World War II, desperate Russians received a lifeline from the United States in the form of supply convoys sailing into the Arctic port of Murmansk. Now some six decades later, Russia wants to turn the ships around.
To help the United States in its war on terrorism, Russia may build a deep-water port at Murmansk where it could load up supertankers with plentiful Russian oil and ship it to America. The United States would be less vulnerable to disruptions in the oil supply from the Middle East, and Russia's oil barons would have a massive new market to cultivate.
A year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks redefined U.S.-Russian relations, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are working to turn their new friendship into a tangible new partnership between the world's largest energy consumer and the steward of one of the world's largest energy reserves. Ignoring skeptics, Bush and Putin signed an energy cooperation agreement at their May summit in Moscow and plan to convene an oil and gas conference in Houston Oct. 1-2.
If they succeed, the partnership could be among the most far-reaching changes to the international order in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
For the first time, Russia would provide significant economic goods to the United States, no longer playing the role of financial supplicant as it has since the demise of the Soviet Union. Closer energy ties would also further diminish U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East and give Bush flexibility in confronting Iraq.
"The United States wants to be prepared for some kind of disruption," said Konstantin Reznikov, the senior oil analyst at Alfa Bank here in Moscow. "The relationship between the United States and the Middle East -- and Saudi Arabia in particular -- deteriorated after the September 11 events, so now they're targeting to get more crude oil from other regions."
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham echoed that view during a recent visit here to promote cooperation. "Russia will play a pivotal role in ensuring global energy security," he said, adding that "the more diverse the sources of energy are, the less likely it is that disruption on one part of the planet will interrupt supplies."
Some oil executives here estimate that Russia, which currently supplies virtually no oil to the United States, could soon provide as much as 1 million barrels a day, or nearly 10 percent of U.S. imports, replacing most of Saudi Arabia's supplies if necessary. As Russia's surging oil industry recovers from its post-Soviet hangover, it has now surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil production.
No one is more enthusiastic about the prospect than Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of Yukos, Russia's second-largest oil company. As he studies the situation, he does the math of international crisis out loud and figures the United States could survive with its own oil reserves and Russian help.
"Say a disruption from some Middle Eastern suppliers, say 1 million extra barrels a day from Russia, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and America doesn't have anything to worry about for a year and a half," he said in an interview. "And in a year's time, Russia can increase its shipments by a million barrels a day."
In a move intended to symbolize the possibilities, Khodorkovsky sent the first supertanker of oil directly from Russia to the United States this summer, followed by a second supertanker a month later and by a smaller, third ship last week. "America, here's a gift from Siberia!" trumpeted one Russian newspaper.
Yet some oil executives and analysts dismissed the shipments as little more than public relations, maintaining that the additional cost makes it a bad economic bet for Russian companies and outlining the myriad logistical difficulties of transporting oil halfway around the world from Siberia to the United States. As if to add another caveat about the dangers of doing business with Russian companies, a firm that had sued Yukos for unpaid bills briefly managed to hold up payment for the first oil sent to Houston by going to U.S. District Court.
"The reality is, it's all nice words, but I'm not sure for Russian oil companies it makes economic sense at this point," said Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at United Financial Group, a Moscow-based brokerage firm. "It's clear that America really wants Russian oil in America, but I'm not sure they're going to be that happy to pay an extra $1.25 per barrel."
Simon Kukes, president of Tyumen Oil Co., Russia's third-largest, falls somewhere in the middle. While he believes the shipments to Houston have been important, he figures it will take five years, not one, to reach an export rate of 1 million barrels a day.
"We're making too much noise about Russia being a replacement for Saudi [Arabia]," said Kukes, who spent two decades working in the oil industry in the United States until returning to Russia after the fall of communism. "In the nearest future, it's impossible and when you do that, you just put a needle in the relationship" with Saudi Arabia.
With the world's largest natural gas reserves, Russia has always been an energy powerhouse, but lately it has become a dominant player in world oil markets again after years of decline. When the Soviet Union fell apart, it lost oil-rich republics such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and its state-owned petroleum companies became targets for emerging oligarchs who bought them up at rigged auctions and siphoned off assets to overseas accounts.
As a result, oil production plummeted from 12 million barrels a day in the 1980s to 7.7 million in 1992, the first year Russia was a stand-alone nation, to 6.1 million through most of the mid-1990s.
By the end of the 1990s, however, as crude prices began to soar, oil moguls changed course. Having carved up much of the industry and seeing increased political stability with Putin's arrival in the Kremlin, they began investing some of their huge profits back into their companies for the first time, bringing in better technology, shedding costly old systems and developing new reserves. Since 1999, capital investment has tripled and oil production has shot up dramatically, reaching 7.7 million barrels a day in August -- topping even Saudi Arabia. Many believe it could soar as high as 9 million or even 10 million barrels a day within a few years.
The difference is that Saudi Arabia exports nearly all its oil, while Russia sells less than 5 million barrels a day abroad -- making it still by far the second-largest exporter. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has the capacity to produce an extra 3 million barrels a day with the flick of a switch, allowing it extraordinary market influence, while Russia is producing at full capacity, holding nothing back to leverage in a crisis.
Getting Russian oil to U.S. markets is no easy task, either. Khodorkovsky's oil started out in the Siberian town of Nefteyugansk, was shipped via pipeline to three Black Sea ports in Ukraine -- Novorossiysk, Theodossia and Kavkaz -- and loaded aboard three small tankers because a supertanker cannot pass through the Bosporus Strait. The three small ships then made a rendezvous at the Greek port of Agio Theodori on the Aegean Sea, where they off-loaded their oil into a single supertanker, which then sailed out of the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic to Houston.
Khodorkovsky maintained that the venture was more economically feasible than critics believed, but he and other oil executives are searching for less convoluted routes.
Russia plans to build a shipping terminal near St. Petersburg set to open next year, which would help; however, the big tankers have trouble navigating the channels around Denmark just as they do the Bosporus. Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company is exploring a plan to reverse the flow of the Druzhba-Adria pipeline so that oil can flow from Russia, through Ukraine and Hungary, to the Croatian port of Omisalj, where it could be loaded aboard supertankers that can easily head out to sea.
And there is the Murmansk port, where Lukoil, Russia's largest oil company, has proposed building a deep-water, ice-free shipping terminal. Supertankers loaded there could head up into the Barents Sea and directly out to the Atlantic. Khodorkovsky is intrigued and has said he may join Lukoil in the venture.
Yet the idea provokes strong opposition from other sectors of the Russian oil industry. Transneft, the state-owned company that controls the country's pipeline network, opposes a new Murmansk port and has pushed instead for a pipeline to the Pacific coast that could be used to load ships bound for California.
Another plan seems to have been rejected already. The Rosneft oil company this year sent a proposal to Putin to create a strategic petroleum reserve of 70 million to 80 million barrels as an emergency supply for the West in case of crisis. But Putin's fuel and energy minister recently said he sees no need for such a reserve.
In an interview, Vladimir Milov, Russia's deputy minister for fuel and energy, said the Murmansk project and other ideas are all under consideration as part of a strategic energy plan he expects to submit to the government by the end of the month. Russia needs to modernize and upgrade its port facilities and improve the pipelines that serve them, he said. In particular, he said, Russia plans to try to increase its pipeline capacity by 70 percent by 2020.
"We still have problems with infrastructure," said Milov, who co-chairs a U.S.-Russian energy working group set up at the Bush-Putin summit in May.
The U.S. side is looking for ways to help. Abraham has agreed to fund a study of East Siberian oil reserves, which are largely untapped as Russian oil companies concentrate on the more accessible oil to the west. And the Bush administration is trying to encourage more direct investment by U.S. oil companies.
"There's a convergence of interests of U.S. companies, Russian companies and the Russian government -- and now the U.S. government has joined the fray," said a high-ranking U.S. official who has been meeting with the Russians. "There's an energy now on the subject that had been absent."
Leonid Fedun, vice president and part-owner of Lukoil, said U.S. interest has grown noticeably since Sept. 11. "For us, the U.S. market is very attractive and inviting," he said, noting that Lukoil already owns 1,300 gas stations in the United States that it bought from Getty Petroleum.
The renewed enthusiasm holds some irony for Russians who thought they might not see foreign investors return after the economic crisis four years ago cost many of them dearly. But Fedun said that fear has dissipated. "Not many still remember the default of 1998," he said.
-------- human rights
U.N. Rights Chief Blasts Terror War
By CLARE NULLIS
Associated Press Writer
Sep 8, 2002 3:38 AM EDT
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_HUMAN_RIGHTS?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME
GENEVA (AP) -- Departing U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson, in a bleak assessment of the state of human rights, accused governments of hiding behind the ongoing war on terrorism to trample civil liberties and crush troublesome opponents.
"Suddenly the T-word is used all the time," Robinson said, referring to terrorism. "And that's the problem."
The United States, Russia and China were among the nations she said were ignoring civil rights in the name of combating international terrorist groups.
"Everything is justified by that T-word," the 58-year-old former Irish president said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I hope that countries will put human rights back on the agenda because it tended to slip after September 11."
Robinson argued the Bush administration set the tone by holding detainees from Afghanistan without charge at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She also criticized Washington's opposition to the new International Criminal Court.
"The world needs leadership in human rights and the United States could give great leadership. It's not giving it at the moment, unfortunately," said Robinson, who leaves her post Wednesday.
When Robinson took other governments to task for abuses in the post-Sept. 11 era, they often cited the United States as an example in arguing that human rights standards have changed, she said.
"And I've had to say the standards have not changed," Robinson said.
"The United States must be seen to fully uphold international human rights and humanitarian standards. The attacks on New York didn't just kill many innocent people - they were an attack on freedom and democracy, and we must uphold these standards. And we can do that and effectively combat terrorism."
Robinson said a number of countries were using the excuse of fighting terrorism to clamp down on legitimate opposition and curtail freedom of expression. She singled out Russian military operations in the restive republic of Chechnya and China's clampdowns on Muslim Uigurs and in Tibet.
It was Robinson's willingness to use her office as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to criticize such big powers that made her a darling of activists like Amnesty International. But it ultimately caused her downfall.
Robinson initially wanted to quit last year at the end of her four-year term, saying she was frustrated by a lack of funding. She was persuaded by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to stay an additional year, then she let it be known she was willing to remain in office until 2005.
That offer was declined, diplomats have said, because of U.S. annoyance at her criticism of the Guantanamo detention camp and her perceived anti-Israel stance, and anger in Moscow over her persistent clamoring for an inquiry into the suppression of Chechen rebels.
"I do most of the work constructively, diplomatically ... but there are times when there must be a voice in the United Nations for the victims of violations," Robinson said.
One of Robinson's last visits was to China, where she said she had mixed feelings.
On the one hand, she said, China has made big strides in technical programs to educate police, prison officers and judges about human rights treaties.
"But on the side of the reality of human rights, I'm very worried," she said, citing recent arrests of labor leaders to quell unrest, the detention of a well-known AIDS activist and the continuing widespread use of the death penalty.
Despite her gloomy overall assessment, Robinson said she took heart from her perception that human rights are being increasingly accepted as a fundamental part of development.
Asked what she considered the worst human rights violation, she said, "Extreme poverty." She said the United States, in particular, needs to show more recognition of economic and social rights.
Robinson said she felt no bitterness at being eased out, saying she will be campaigning for a "more ethical globalization and a fairer world." She also wants to use her contacts to tap universities and foundations for more resources to promote human rights in developing countries.
Robinson said she was confident that her successor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat who headed the interim U.N. administration in East Timor, is capable and committed.
And she offers him one bit of advice given to her by an Irish poet friend: "If you become too popular in that job, you're probably not doing a good job."
----
35 Malaysian Deportees Die
Reuters,
WORLD In Brief,
Sunday, September 8, 2002
Washington Post; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51846-2002Sep7?language=printer
NUNUKAN, Indonesia -- Indonesian officials said 35 deportees from Malaysia died at sprawling makeshift camps in Borneo as a navy vessel arrived with medical help.
A crackdown on illegal immigrants in Malaysia has strained relations with the country's poorer neighbors, Indonesia and the Philippines, as reports mount of deportees dying from malnutrition and disease.
Philippine and Indonesian women have reported being raped or being forced to work as sex slaves while awaiting deportation.
A senior Indonesian welfare department official said 17,000 illegal Indonesian workers and their families were stuck in makeshift camps near the country's border with Malaysia.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Forest Fires Prompt a Policy Showdown
President Presses Congress to Ease Rules on Logging [and raise rules against protesters]
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51807-2002Sep7?language=printer
The Bush administration is pressing for regulatory changes to speed up selective logging in national forests to prevent catastrophic fires, despite Democrats' warning that the changes would undermine long-standing environmental protections and provide a windfall to the logging industry.
The proposal is aimed at reducing legal barriers to thinning underbrush and small trees, as well as commercially attractive old-growth trees. It was announced last month by President Bush and delivered to Congress on Thursday by Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton.
"This legislative proposal would give us management tools we desperately need to help get our forests and communities out of the crisis they are in," Veneman told the House Resources Committee. "It recognizes that time is not on our side" and that forest managers "must be empowered to act quickly and effectively."
The debate promises to be another bruising battle over environmental principles between a Republican administration bent on easing government restrictions on industry, and Democrats and moderate Republicans closely allied with environmentalists who worry about wholesale logging on federal lands.
Though he won congressional approval earlier this year to move ahead with a nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert, Bush has suffered a number of setbacks in environmental disputes, including the Senate's rejection of his proposal to drill for oil and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
With mounting concern this summer over one of the worst western wildfire seasons in modern history, however, western Democrats will be under enormous pressure to join the president and Republicans to loosen federal restrictions on logging, despite their reservations. Already, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) have voiced support for some sort of compromise.
Moreover, Democratic opposition to Bush's approach may have been undermined when Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) inserted language in an emergency spending bill in July to exempt some forest-thinning projects in the Black Hills from environmental laws.
Daschle said at the time that the amendment merely codified a settlement reached by the Forest Service, many environmental groups and the timber industry. But Bush and congressional Republicans have seized on the majority leader's action to insist on similar but much broader legislation to expedite wildfire fuel-reduction efforts throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Norton says Daschle's amendment may dramatically improve the chances for passage of a Republican forest management plan this year. "It shows there is bipartisan recognition that red tape has interfered with good forest management," Norton said in a recent interview.
GOP Reps. Scott McInnis (Colo.), Dennis Rehberg (Mont.) and John B. Shadegg (Ariz.) have introduced separate bills that would ease restrictions on forest fire management. Meanwhile, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) intends to offer an amendment to an Interior Department spending bill next week that combines elements of Bush's and Daschle's approaches.
Administration officials say Craig's amendment offers their best chance of prevailing this year. But Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) dismissed the president's plan as "an unprecedented environmental protection rollback."
"I can't imagine that something like the Bush proposal could ever get 60 votes," Reid said, referring to the supermajority needed to move any significant legislation through the narrowly divided Senate.
The administration's Healthy Forests Initiative would restructure the rules that govern appeals of federal decision-making on logging in fire-prone areas -- particularly making "less cumbersome" the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the bedrock environmental protection legislation that was enacted 30 years ago.
The measure would waive NEPA regulations for any forest-thinning project consistent with a comprehensive strategy adopted in May by administration officials, 17 governors, local and tribal leaders and environmentalists for managing 10 million acres of fire-prone federal forests.
Bush's plan essentially would prevent environmental groups or individuals from going to court to temporarily block timber sales and forest-thinning projects -- although Craig has said his version would "still allow some degree of protest or appeal."
--------
Police Detain 7 People on Vieques
September 8, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Police detained seven people on Vieques in a rock-throwing incident near U.S. Navy land at the end of a first week of bombing exercises, authorities said.
One of the people detained late Saturday is a brother of leading pro-statehood politician Carlos Pesquera, said Col. Cesar Gracia, the police official in charge on Vieques.
No charges had been filed.
Gracia said two police officers were slightly injured in the clash.
Navy security officers fired tear gas at demonstrators who were allegedly throwing rocks over a Navy fence line, he said.
The detentions came at the end of a first week of bombing exercises, which began Sept. 3 and are expected to last some three weeks. No exercises were scheduled for Sunday.
President Bush has promised the Navy will withdraw from Vieques by May 2003, but as the United States moves closer to a conflict with Iraq, there are doubts whether the Navy departure will be stalled.
The latest exercises in the U.S. territory -- the third since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- involve 10 ships, two attack submarines and some 80 planes in the USS Harry S. Truman Battle Group.
The military has used the bombing range for more than six decades. Opposition grew when a civilian guard was killed by two bombs dropped off-target in 1999. Since then, only inert bombs have been used.
Opponents say the exercises harm the environment and health of Vieques' 9,100 residents. The Navy denies the claim.
Hundreds of people have tried to thwart the exercises by invading the range and have been arrested, jailed and fined.
Protests have weakened since Sept. 11, with activists saying they fear stiffer jail sentences and fines.
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