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NUCLEAR
Butler accuses US of nuclear hypocrisy
Horrors done to our own by us
Bonior opposes Iraq war, says sanctions will work
Bush's Visionary Seers
From Boston to Babylon
Comments sought on Hartsville plant
Japan's METI raps TEPCO for falsifying reactor data
U.S. Envoy Arrives in North Korea for Talks
Russian 'atomic city' builds future on nuclear dreams
Russia diverted U.S. aid on arms, inspector reports
Detention of Accused Spy Extended
NAU prof believes mining of uranium hikes cancer rates Michael Marizco
Rocky Flats Will Remain Radioactive
Georgia Power to Pay Whistleblower
Ads Aim at Shutting A-Plant
Violations Found at Ohio Nuke Plant
Small Fire at Pa. Nuclear Plant
Deputy fires gun at Yankee
Hanford's glassification project price tag likely to be $5.6 billion
Fluor almost done moving spent fuel out of 300 Area
Congress's war dissenters strive to be heard
Clinton Warns Bush of Consequences of Attack on Iraq
'The president is authorized to use Armed Forces'
MILITARY
Ex-Bosnian Serb Leader Enters Guilty Plea to The Hague
Boeing reviving work on nuclear converter
U.S., Bogota to Resume Aerial Drug Interdiction
Aggressive Colombian Drug Spraying Pleases U.S.
U.S. Forces to Train Colombia Army
Europeans say no to war on Iraq: Poll
Militants kill 30 on bloodiest day of Kashmir polls
The Generals Speak
Official Suggests a U.S.-Iraq Duel
A Case Not Closed
US hardline on Iraq leaves full-scale invasion a 'hair-trigger' away
US Strikes Southern Iraq Air Defense Center-Military
What We Don't Know . . .
Israeli official denies report that Mossad followed 9/11 terrorists
An Israeli's Sorrowful Rule Over a Sullen Nablus
Israeli Troops Rehearse Arafat Expulsion
U.S. forces in region
Iran, Kuwait Sign Military Accord
Kuwait Tests Sirens, Gas Masks, Chemical Drills
NATO's Robertson Sounds Alarm on World Security
C.I.A. Rejects Request for Report on Preparations for War in Iraq
Senators Say CIA Withholding Info
CIA takes editorial to task
Homeland espionage
Iraq Arms Experts Probably Spied - Swede Inspector
UN Inspector Briefs Split Security Council on Iraq
Operation Endless Deployment
The U.S. Military: learning from its mistakes
C.I.A. Rejects Request for Report on Preparations for War in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
EPA Passes on Chemical Security Responsibility
EPA Drops Chemical Security Effort
D.C. police to take on crime before it occurs
Detainees Attempt Suicide at Guantanamo
ENERGY AND OTHER
Spain's Endesa plans experimental renewables plant
Germany set to boost its offshore wind energy sector
Kuwait sees heavier Gulf War environmental damage
Biodiversity Hotspots Detailed in New Website
ACTIVISTS
UN E-mail addresses
War foes get word out to Congress
House defeats effort to allow tax-free politics in churches
Peace visit to Iraq had outside help
-------- NUCLEAR
Butler accuses US of nuclear hypocrisy
By Gerard Noonan, Education Editor
October 3 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/03/1033538680140.html
The former chief weapons inspector in Iraq Richard Butler has lashed out at United States "double standards", saying even educated Americans were deaf to arguments about the hypocrisy of their stance on nuclear weapons.
Mr Butler, an Australian, told a seminar at the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies that Americans did not appreciate they could not claim a right to possess nuclear weapons but deny it to other nations.
"My attempts to have Americans enter into discussions about double standards have been an abject failure - even with highly educated and engaged people," Mr Butler said. "I sometimes felt I was speaking to them in Martian, so deep is their inability to understand."
Mr Butler's comments to the seminar, held on September21, are reported in the university's latest newsletter.
"What America totally fails to understand is that their weapons of mass destruction are just as much a problem as are those of Iraq," he said, adding that Hollywood storylines fuelled such attitudes.
Mr Butler said the horror of September 11 had only entrenched the idea in Americans that there are 'good weapons of mass destruction and bad ones'.
Mr Butler, who headed the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq in the early 1990s, is a former Australian ambassador for disarmament.
Earlier, delivering the university's Templeton Lecture, Mr Butler said one of the most difficult times with the Iraqi regime had been dealing with this issue of inconsistency.
"Amongst my toughest moments in Baghdad were when the Iraqis demanded that I explain why they should be hounded for their weapons of mass destruction when, just down the road, Israel was not, even though it was known to possess some 200 nuclear weapons," he said.
"I confess, too, that I flinch when I hear American, British and French fulminations against weapons of mass destruction, ignoring the fact that they are the proud owners of massive quantities of those weapons, unapologetically insisting that they are essential for their national security, and will remain so."
Mr Butler said that manifest unfairness - double standards - produced a situation "that was deeply, inherently unstable".
"This is because human beings will not swallow such unfairness. This principle is as certain as the basic laws of physics itself."
Mr Butler said one problem encountered in Iraq was that materials and technologies employed in making a chemical or biological weapon were identical to those used in a range of benign products for medical, industrial or agricultural use.
The UN Security Council's decision in 1991 to destroy, remove or render harmless Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was unique and far-reaching, far tougher than past attempts to disarm defeated countries like Germany and Japan.
-------- depleted uranium
Horrors done to our own by us
Oct 3, 2002
Herald Tribune (Florida)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=SH&Date=20021003&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=210030624&Ref=AR&Profile=1029&SectionCat=FRONTPAGE
When a country decides to demonize an entity, it must first look back at its own history to judge whether it can assume the moral high ground on any particular issue. When George Bush talks about Saddam Hussein using chemical weapons against his own people, he conveniently forgets or is ignorant of America's history in this arena.
The original Ground Zero experiments showed us that our government knowingly exposed our soldiers to dangerous levels of radiation. Only recently, the Pentagon admitted to using sarin and VX gases on U.S. Navy ships between 1964 and 1968. In 1970, CNN and Time ran a story claiming we used sarin on Vietnam deserters in Laos. This story was retracted because it was said to contain serious faults.
The now-infamous MKULTRA experiments used electro-convulsive shock, doses of LSD and sedation to manipulate the minds of unwilling suspects, including soldiers. We must not forget the veterans who to this day are suffering and dying from cancer caused by Agent Orange exposure. The same can be said for the brave soldiers from Desert Storm who suffered only 147 casualties in the field of battle but have since lost another 7,758 fellow combatants to Gulf War Syndrome. To this day it is not absolutely clear whether the cocktail of vaccinations that were administered are to blame or whether the illness was caused by using tons of depleted uranium munitions to destroy Iraqi armor.
When injured soldiers return from battle, the fight for them has just begun. It takes many years to break down the stonewalling of uncooperative governments who seem determined to keep the truth from those they have just used to defeat the enemy. It is only when relevant documents become available to us via the Freedom of Information Act that we finally learn of the horrors bestowed upon our own by our own.
Colin Felton Bradenton
----
Bonior opposes Iraq war, says sanctions will work
By Chad Selweski,
Macomb Daily Staff Writer
October 03, 2002
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=5582846&BRD=988&PAG=461&dept_id=141265&rfi=6
Reps. Jim McDermott, right, and David Bonior, speak Wednesday on Capitol Hill about their trip to Iraq. "The Iraqi people are not enemies of ours," Bonior said. Back from a controversial trip to Baghdad, U.S. Rep. David Bonior said Wednesday that he believes the majority of Americans agree with his assessment that weapons inspections -- not war -- are the way to deal with Saddam Hussein.
In discussions with Bonior and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington and Mike Thompson of California, Iraqi officials made their first move toward accepting "unconditional" U.N. inspections of suspected weapons sites, according to Bonior.
"They seemed quite up front. We had very frank, honest discussions with them," said Bonior, a Mount Clemens Democrat. "They allowed inspections for seven years, thousands of inspections. And those inspections worked.
"We don't have to do this through war."
Since Bonior left for Iraq last Thursday, the political sands have shifted.
Iraq reached agreement Tuesday to allow U.N. inspectors unrestricted access to most -- but not all -- sites. And the Bush administration has apparently succeeded in securing strong congressional support for a war resolution targeting Saddam.
The newest version of the congressional resolution is gaining momentum quickly and Bonior concedes that it will pass overwhelmingly in the House, which is now expected to vote before the Senate.
The former House Minority Whip, Bonior finds himself at odds with the House Democratic leadership, including his longtime ally Richard Gephardt, the House Minority Leader.
Bonior said he was not surprised that the lawmakers' 4-day trip to Iraq generated such controversy, with critics calling them dupes and accusing McDermott of treason for criticizing President Bush while on "enemy soil."
"The Iraqi people aren't enemies of ours. We are congressmen and we have a right to speak our minds. We are all Vietnam-era vets and we have the right to speak out on this," said Bonior, whose pro-Sandinista stance in Nicaragua sparked controversy in the 1980s. "We ought to engage in dialog. If we isolate ourselves, we'll soon find ourselves engaged in war."
The congressman said he believes Iraq will eventually agree to some form of U.N. inspections at Saddam's eight palaces and other presidential sites that cover a combined 12 square miles. But he said the Iraqis, who claim U.S. inspectors are spies, will likely insist that no Americans from the U.N. team be allowed on those sites.
Bonior also predicted that a French plan, not the U.N. resolution proposed by the Bush administration, will prevail.
The plan put forward by France, one of five permanent members with veto power on the U.N. Security Council, calls for inspections first. But if Iraq fails to cooperate with the U.N. inspection teams, military action could follow.
"The French position is probably where we'll be, at the end of the day," Bonior said, adding that he opposes the plan. "If the Iraqis don't comply, we'll have a second resolution by the Security Council that would allow for a multinational force to go in."
The three congressmen visited ill-equipped Iraqi hospitals and clinics and broken down wastewater treatment facilities. Bonior said they saw how the Iraqi economy is "being destroyed" by the economic sanctions imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The nation suffers 500,000 premature deaths of children annually because of improper nutrition and a 120 percent jump in cases of lymphoma and leukemia.
He said the lawmakers witnessed "incredibly moving" scenes of mothers comforting children who were dying of cancer. Bonior said the U.N. and United States should study what role Pentagon weapons, coated with depleted uranium and deployed in the Gulf War, may have played in the increased cancer deaths.
Though several studies have found no link between uranium-coated artillery and cancer rates, Bonior said he views the issue as reminiscent of Agent Orange, the defoliant that was eventually found to have sickened U.S. troops in Vietnam.
Though Bonior was a staunch hawk three years ago during the war in Kosovo, he now finds himself recognized nationwide as one of the leading doves in Congress on an Iraqi war.
While Capitol Hill is poised to pass a resolution giving Bush the power to use military force in Iraq "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate," Bonior raises numerous questions about the impact of a military campaign to remove Saddam from power.
His list of concerns: the number of American casualties; the destabilization of the Middle East and Muslim world; who replaces Saddam; how long U.S. troops remain in Baghdad; and the cost of the war and post-war occupation.
In addition, the 26-year congressional veteran said he doesn't believe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's pronouncements that a link has been established between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network. And he wonders how the Bush doctrine of pre-emption to eliminate threatening regimes doesn't also apply to North Korea and Libya.
A war, he predicted, will create global "anarchy," with the United States targeted by a new wave of terrorists and shunned by our longtime allies.
"What we'll be doing is unleashing on the streets of the Arab world a whole new radicalized generation that hates America. Our embassies will be in constant danger. Governments ... will be destabilized," he said.
"None of this is necessary. We contained Stalin and the Soviets for decades. We can contain Saddam."
----
Bush's Visionary Seers
By Dan Fahey, AlterNet
October 3, 2002
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14222
A few years back the movie "Wag the Dog" captured the attention of Americans and followers of American politics. The premise was that an American president started a war to divert attention away from domestic problems. When in 1998 President Clinton ordered U.S. planes to bomb Iraq while Congress intensified its inquiry of his love life, the "wag the dog" concept seemed to become a reality.
This summer, in the midst of the Bush administration's "War on Terrorism," Hollywood released another movie mimicking reality. In "Minority Report," police forces arrest people for crimes they have not yet committed. A small group of visionary seers inform the police of an impending crime, and the police launch a preemptive strike against the alleged criminal. There's just one problem: sometimes the visionary seers are wrong.
The Bush administration recently announced a new military strategy remarkably similar to the theme of "Minority Report." The Bush Doctrine, outlined in the new "National Security Strategy for the United States," states that the administration "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively" against national security threats. The driving force behind a decision to attack will be a prophesy of impending doom from a small group of visionary seers, ostensibly led by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney. There's just one problem: Sometimes these visionary seers might be wrong.
Apparently, the visionary seers in the administration think they should be able to direct the awesome fury of the American military against states and organizations that might threaten American citizens or, perhaps more importantly, American "interests." These seers claim to know a terrorist or a ruthless dictator when they see one, perhaps because they collectively have so much experience providing funding, weapons, and even anthrax and other biological agents to their type.
From the Contras to the Indonesian military to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Agency, Rumsfeld, Cheney and recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike have openly supported plenty of bad guys and terrorists. But we are now asked to overlook that fact and focus on a good guy turned bad: Saddam Hussein.
The Bush administration is rushing forward with plans to invade Iraq and impose a "regime change" on the premise that Saddam Hussein has suddenly become a major threat to America, or perhaps more importantly, American "interests." Rumsfeld and Cheney keep claiming Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but now that the door has been opened to United Nations inspections to verify these claims, they say we can't trust the inspections and might need to invade Iraq anyway.
Even if Iraq does have chemical or biological agents tucked away somewhere, the Bush Administration and its shadows in Israel and Britain have not presented compelling evidence that the mere existence of these weapons justifies a potentially costly and destabilizing conflict ending in a regime change. The seers in the Bush Administration ask the American public and the international community to trust their judgment, but they don't want to provide the facts to back up their assertions, and they unjustifiably ridicule those who express reservations or promote diplomatic solutions. Is this any way to run a democracy?
In order to justify a preemptive strike against a sovereign nation, our government should have solid and credible evidence that the threat is real and requires immediate action leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation. To date, the Bush administration has not satisfied this well-respected principle of international law.
Based on publicly available information, there does not appear to be any solid and credible evidence that Iraq poses a real and immediate threat to the United States or was involved in any way with the brutal attacks of 9/11. In the absence of an immediate threat, we do fortunately have the luxury of deliberation and should carefully consider the implications of the Bush Doctrine and of invading Iraq. In addition, there is a choice of military and non-military means to address the danger of Saddam Hussein and other real or perceived enemies. So why is the administration pushing so hard for war right now?
If the Bush administration has solid evidence that Saddam Hussein is about to invade or attack the U.S., then it should produce the evidence and use it to build international support for a preemptive strike. The administration's seers boldly claim the evidence exists, but what if they are mistaken? What if they only see through lenses smeared with blood and oil and fogged by power and arrogance? Which repressive dictatorship would they have our young men and women invade next? Saudi Arabia? What is their exit strategy for the War on Terrorism?
The movie "Minority Report" made me think about a future world in which people could be arrested based on the tip of a stranger or the vision of a government seer. The Bush Doctrine has thrust the United States into this future, and the implications for global peace and security are both troubling and profound. As we debate the wisdom and necessity of launching a preemptive war against Iraq, let us also ponder the perception of the Bush administration's seers and the possibility that they are wrong.
Dan Fahey served in the Persian Gulf in July 1991 on the USS Arkansas, and was later discharged as a conscientious objector. He has written extensively on the use of depleted uranium munitions in the wars in Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
----
From Boston to Babylon
3 - 9 October 2002
Issue No. 606 Published in Cairo
by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/606/fe2.htm
Dr Chris Busby is scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, and sits on the UK government's Depleted Uranium Oversight Board. He is an international expert on low-level radiation, and Green Party Science and Technology speaker. He spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly about nuclear terrorism and his recent journey to Iraq in search of evidence of the effects of depleted uranium
In September 2000, I was approached by Yousri Fada, the London bureau chief of Al-Jazeera. He wanted to interview me about how depleted uranium might be able to cause harm, even at radiation levels which were conventionally believed to be far too low. There was plenty of evidence, both through Gulf War syndrome, and through the effects seen in Iraq, of some enormously powerful agent causing ill health. Congenital malformations, cancers, various other illnesses -- all seemed to point to radiation as a source.
Since about 1995 I've been suggesting that Gulf War syndrome is partly or wholly caused by exposure to depleted uranium, through high local doses from particles to tissue. This is not a model which is used by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, though this is beginning to change. At that time, it was believed that uranium had a very low radiological impact, because it was an alpha emitter, and because it was a very weak emitter (ie had a very long half life). On the other hand, the amount of radiation involved in the Gulf was very great, because the quantities used were huge. DU is not very radioactive, but they were chucking it about in very large quantities. The 350 tonnes of uranium dropped in Iraq are equal to about a kilogramme of plutonium. If somebody dropped a kilogramme of plutonium on this country, there would be hell to pay.
Yousri asked me how I would convince scientists that these kinds of illness were due to DU. I said the obvious way was through an epidemiological study. You find the people who are ill, and show that they've been contaminated in some way, by measuring the contamination in the area where they live. Then you compare them with people who are living in areas that are not contaminated.
Shortly afterwards, Yousri got back to me, and said: the Iraqi government would like you to come out. I was a bit nervous: it seemed to me that Iraq was a really dangerous place to go, and I'm not a fantastically brave person. But in the end I thought I'd go and see what was going on, because I felt sorry for the people.
I flew to Jordan, and from there I travelled by taxi to Baghdad, where I met up with the film crew. On the Saturday, I was taken to see the director of public health, and then I was given a tour of the public hospital, and visited the radiotherapy and oncology departments.
The hospitals in Iraq are in a terrible state. They can't get the drugs, they can't get the parts for the radio- therapy machines, they can't repair their computers -- they can't even get bloody pencils. They have to cut all their pencils into little sections, and then work out the calculations they can't do on their computers with a tiny stub of pencil on a piece of paper. It makes me cry to see what they're doing to them.
When the World Health Organisation sent Dr Max Parkin out there to report on the alarming increase in cancer, his response was: "They don't have proper computers. All we found was a 286, so their cancer registry can't be of a sufficiently high standard for us to believe their figures." That was just so arrogant! Whatever computers they may have, they can certainly count!
The Iraqis I met were very nice people. It's terribly sad the way that they've been treated. They're just very nice ordinary human beings, who are being destroyed on the basis of some concept of "culture". It's enough to make a cat laugh, that people like George W Bush consider America more cultured than this civilisation which goes all the way back to Babylon.
I looked at their public health records, and found some things in them which nobody would have thought of inventing. For example, if you look at the number of cases of childhood leukemia by age cohort, in any place where there is no change in leukemogenic stress -- radiation or chemicals -- you would expect to find the peak in the 0-4 age group. There are various theories about why this is, but this is what you find. In Iraq, in 1998-99, the peak in childhood leukemia was in the 5-9 age group -- the group that was born immediately after the war.
I think that's a real result. And since then I've seen various papers sent me by people in Iraq showing that the increases in leukemia and other malformations are quite general, and point to contamination by some radiological agent. I've got the results by district, and you can correlate the increases in leukemia in children with the districts where they used DU.
The next day we travelled down south to the desert near Basra, where "The Mother of All Battles" was fought. All the dead tanks were still lying there. We found a lot of contamination. I'd already measured the levels of alpha emitters in the air in Baghdad. I found that there was a 20-fold increase in alpha activity in the air in the desert round the Desert Storm area. In Basra itself, it was already 10 times higher than it was in Baghdad.
For me, taken together, the cancer registry information and the radioactivity readings constitute strong prima facie evidence that these illnesses and deaths were being caused by depleted uranium.
The military know perfectly well that DU has all these effects, but they want to use it because it wins them the battles. It's actually destroyed tank warfare. Tanks are of no use any more, because they can come down with an A10 with a Gatling gun, fire these cheap bits of nuclear waste, and just wipe them out.
I've seen a picture where they've put a bullet through one tank and it's gone out the other side and destroyed the tank behind it as well. This is just a piece of DU, which the nuclear industry should be paying them to take away! Professor Doug Rockie says that the corpses they discover after these tanks have caught fire are called "krispie critters" -- they're like little bits of charcoal, but highly radioactive. Anyone who handles them gets the disease. It's awful.
Most countries, even countries that don't have nuclear weapons, could create weapons of mass destruction. It's a catch-all phrase. Certainly the Iraqis had a nuclear programme, and they have nuclear physicists, who I met, who know all about how to make nuclear bombs. If it comes to that, I could make a nuclear bomb, given the parts. I think it's possible that Saddam Hussein has got enriched uranium from somewhere. But I can't imagine that he would use it. And to be honest, I can't imagine that terrorists would use it either. Because I think if they were going to, they would have done so by now.
Nor do I think that Saddam has got any more weapons of mass destruction than he had at the time of the last Iraq war, and he probably has a lot less. The Israelis, on the other hand, have certainly got WMD, they admit to it, and so have the South Africans, and the Koreans, and the Indians and the Pakistanis, and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all... So what the hell are we doing, going to war with the Iraqis, for no good reason?
The Green Party isn't just about environmental justice. You cannot have environmental justice without social justice. And we don't have social justice. So we should support people because we believe that it is right to do so under the circumstances. Morally right. And it's morally right to oppose the imperialism of the Americans, their attempt to spread the American dream all over the planet, and all the craziness that comes with that. Just as it is right to oppose the way in which the Israelis are behaving against the Palestinians. We must always support those people who are fighting for freedom and their own rights.
For more information on his research, see: www.llrc.org www.greenaudit.org
----
Comments sought on Hartsville plant
The Tennessean
Thursday, 10/03/02
http://www.tennessean.com/growth/archives/02/10/23226802.shtml?Element_ID=23226802
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday gave members of the public 30 days to comment on six preliminary requests from Louisiana Energy Services on potential licensing issues for its proposed Hartsville, Tenn., uranium-enrichment plant.
LES last month chose Hartsville as its preferred site for the $1.1 billion facility, which would process uranium for ultimate use as fuel in nuclear power plants.
It hasn't sought a license from the NRC.
LES filed the six requests with the NRC in April, seeking clarification on points that would be issues in any licensing application. Among the issues are the need for a uranium enrichment facility, LES' financial qualifications, whether such a plant would have an adverse effect on minority and poor residents, and disposition of depleted uranium left over after processing.
The NRC will consider the comments in developing a position on the six issues. Comments may be sent to Michael Lesar, chief, Rules Review and Directives Branch, Division of Administration Services, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555.
- KATHY CARLSON
-------- japan
Japan's METI raps TEPCO for falsifying reactor data
REUTERS JAPAN:
October 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18015/story.htm
TOKYO - Japan's trade ministry reprimanded Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) yesterday for falsifying nuclear safety data records and called on the nation's largest power utility to take steps to avoid further scandal.
TEPCO is under fire for falsifying reports on nuclear safety inspections in the 1980s and 1990s, and hiding the existence of cracks in the shrouds of several of its reactors.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) will conduct thorough inspections of TEPCO's three nuclear power plants, focusing on whether proper safety checks were made and proper records maintained, a ministry official told a news conference.
TEPCO must also submit a report by the end of March on its moves to improve inspection procedures and ensure no more mistakes are made, METI said.
"The incidents not only cast doubt on TEPCO's attitude to safety, but they have badly shaken the public's trust in nuclear energy itself, which is a pillar (of Japan's) energy supply," the METI official said.
METI Minister Takeo Hiranuma summoned TEPCO President Nobuya Minami to the ministry yesterday to tell him about the action being taken against the Tokyo-based utility.
Hiranuma had already told a news conference this week that the government would not press for criminal charges against TEPCO.
Minami is due to resign on October 14 to take responsibility for the scandal.
TEPCO said it had already closed seven nuclear reactors, and planned to close another reactor later this month for safety checks.
Nuclear power provides a third of resource-poor Japan's electricity.
To make up for a shortfall in power supply due to the closures, the company said it would resume operations of three mothballed oil-fired thermal power plants.
TEPCO's shares ended yesterday up 0.45 percent at 2,210 yen, while the Nikkei stock average fell 2.36 percent.
-------- korea
U.S. Envoy Arrives in North Korea for Talks
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-usa.html
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - Special envoy James Kelly arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday and began high-level talks with North Korea, the most senior U.S. official to visit since President Bush said the country was part of an ``axis of evil.''
Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and his nine-member delegation made the short flight out over the Yellow Sea and on to the North Korean capital from South Korea.
North Korea's official KCNA news agency reported Kelly's arrival and outlined the purpose of his mission to Pyongyang, which has launched tentative economic reforms and pushed ajar its long-closed diplomatic door.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Kelly had talks with a delegation led by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan and an informal dinner with the same foreign ministry officials on Thursday evening.
``Assistant Secretary Kelly will be continuing his discussions tomorrow with North Korean officials,'' Boucher said. ``His mission is...to explore comprehensive dialogue with North Korea and, based on close coordination with South Korea and Japan, to explain U.S. policy and seek progress on a range of issues of long-standing concern to the United States.''
Boucher said it was premature to go into the substance of the talks and he did not say whether Kelly would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
The North Korean agency said: ``The special envoy will explain the present U.S. administration's Korea policy and its stand on the resumption of dialogue with the DPRK and exchange views of issues of bilateral concern.'' DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The team is scheduled to return to Seoul on Saturday after the highest-level dialogue between the arch-rivals in two years and the first such encounter under the Bush administration, apart from a brief meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun in Brunei in July.
Kelly did not take reporters with him and so it will be difficult to find out how each side perceives the talks until he returns to Seoul or the North Korean media report on the visit.
South Korean newspapers were doubtful about swift progress but did not rule out the possibility of an upbeat outcome.
``It is hard to expect the U.S. to extend financial aid without any positive action from the North on pending military issues,'' the daily Chosun Ilbo said in a commentary.
``But the North may decide to make small concessions on U.S. demands and take a maximum advantage of U.S. channels,'' it said.
Kelly's small U.S. military passenger aircraft flew nonstop to Pyongyang along a route out over the Yellow Sea rather than directly over the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that has bisected the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than peace.
BREAKTHROUGH OR START?
Kelly was resuming a dialogue that tailed off in the last weeks of the administration of president Bill Clinton after a visit to Pyongyang by then secretary of state Madeleine Albright in October 2000 for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Bush reviewed policy toward North Korea for five months before agreeing to resume dialogue, but it has taken another 15 months to set up the Kelly trip. In January he said North Korea, Iraq and Iran formed an ``axis of evil'' bent on sponsoring terrorism and spreading weapons of mass destruction.
In contrast to its inspections-or-war approach to Iraq, the United States wants to talk to North Korea about its production and export of missiles, its frozen nuclear program and its huge array of conventional forces along the DMZ border with old foe South Korea, as well as human rights.
With an information vacuum forming, it was difficult to assess whether Kelly's visit was shaping up to be an uncomfortable but timely start to a drawn-out journey or would result in unexpected concessions from Kim.
Last month, in a stunning about-face, Kim apologized to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for abductions of Japanese citizens and offered security concessions, notably an extended moratorium on missile tests.
Kelly said that progress, and Koizumi's tough dialogue, had helped convince Washington to move now. Critics have said the United States had been looking marginalized and needed to get back into the game.
North Korea's decision to introduce tentative economic reforms and other signs it is ready to emerge from diplomatic isolation have encouraged South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who has made reconciliation with the North a cornerstone of his presidency, which ends in February.
-------- russia
Russian 'atomic city' builds future on nuclear dreams
Story by Larisa Sayenko
REUTERS RUSSIA:
October 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18012/story.htm
ZHELEZNOGORSK, Russia - The streets of this Siberian city are eerily clean and uniform, free of the buzz of commerce and jumble of billboards found even in the smallest and poorest of Russian provincial cities.
The few visitors who pass into the city through the kilometres (miles) of pine forest and the rings of barbed wire are met instead by a banner reading "Honour and homeland above all."
It is not easy to get into Zheleznogorsk, one of Russia's nine 'closed cities', a well-preserved bastion of the Soviet defence complex where satellites are built and the plutonium stuffing of nuclear warheads was produced.
With the country scrapping, not building, nuclear weapons and Russian space programmes chronically under-funded, the big business in this city is the burial of spent nuclear fuel from Russian reactors and former Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe.
"You think the city sighs with joy when the country sends up a new satellite?" asked one Zheleznogorsk resident. "No, only when a train arrives with spent nuclear fuel. That means salaries will probably be paid for the next six months."
Zheleznogorsk's hopes for prosperity rest on a storage facility that holds 6,000 tonnes of spent fuel from Russian and foreign nuclear power plants.
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry has said the storage facility earns $50 from each kg (2.2 lb) of Russian spent fuel, $200 from that sent from former members of the Soviet bloc, and hopes to earn $1,000 from the unwanted fuel of developed countries.
HOLES IN THE FENCE
At the nuclear cemetery, 3,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel already lie cooling in containers under several metres of clear water. Many residents of Zheleznogorsk would happily take more.
Some worry that with the pools more than half full, space is running out.
As it is, there is often not enough is the state coffers to pay the scientists, most of whom say they survive on the produce from their vegetable gardens.
"I know of some holes in the fence (surrounding Zheleznogorsk)," a local journalist said. "People with cottages make them to get to their vegetable patches quicker."
A local engineer said the city had tried plans to convert military plants to civilian use but they had not worked out.
"This is how we live - we look forward to each trainload of somebody else's crap," said the engineer, who like other sources declined to be identified.
NUCLEAR COMPETITION
For more trains carrying spent fuel to roll into Zheleznogorsk, Moscow needs to cut a deal with the United States, which has made Russia's nuclear ambitions a bone of contention.
Washington says Russia's contract to build civilian nuclear reactors in Iran could end up helping Tehran acquire nuclear weapons and that without proper security Russia's own nuclear materials could end up in a 'dirty bomb.'
Washington has the power to influence Russia's access to 90 percent of the world's spent fuel, according to the Natural Resources Defence Council, a U.S. nongovernmental organisation.
"Russia has two options: One, act alone and lose the market, or two, enter into a cooperative agreement with the United States," Tom Cochran, director of the NRDC's Nuclear Programme, said in Moscow.
Residents, however, say they see a 'great game' unfolding between the United States and Russia for an international market in spent nuclear fuel.
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry has plans to build a new facility to hold 20,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in Zheleznogorsk, nearly an eighth of the world's total.
President Vladimir Putin last year signed a law allowing the import of foreign spent fuel into Russia despite opinion polls that showed a vast majority of Russians opposed it.
The government, however, has yet to sign a series of decrees needed to bring fuel in from further abroad than former Soviet satellites such as Bulgaria. Soviet era reprocessing agreements with those countries are still in effect, allowing them to ship fuel to Russia.
'LIFE IS GOOD THERE'
Russia's environmentalists have rallied to oppose nuclear waste imports. A national environmental group, Ekozashchita, set up a tent camp on the road to the Krasnoyarsk nuclear camp earlier this year to protest against spent fuel import plans.
But in Zheleznogorsk itself, even the local environmental newspaper, Citizen Initiative, writes about spent fuel in economic terms.
"In our rich region, it is a crime to live in poverty. We should put the situation to rights as far as payment for spent fuel storage is concerned and get full payment, not the crumbs that the Atomic Energy Ministry throws us," Citizen Initiative wrote recently.
Its pages are also full of obituaries.
"People don't live so long there," said a Krasnoyarsk taxi driver. "What's worse, radiation can wreck a man below the belt."
"But life in the closed cities is good. The bus is free, and they get free coupons to the cafeterias. Everything is good, like it was before."
----
Russia diverted U.S. aid on arms, inspector reports
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 3, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021003-71573602.htm
The Pentagon spent nearly $100 million to build facilities in Russia to convert liquid rocket propellant for commercial use, only to find out later that Moscow already used the components in its space program, says a government report.
The Pentagon spent $95.5 million as of July to design and build the plants to turn heptyl and amyl - components in rocket fuel for nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles - into consumer products.
But Russia informed the United States in February it had already used the fuel in its space program, according to the 44-page report signed by David K. Steensma, the Defense Department's deputy assistant inspector general for auditing.
"We are left with a big white elephant," said a defense source, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The inspector general's report states that the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is now spending $1.2 million for maintenance and security while it decides what to do with the buildings.
"As a result, the heptyl and amyl disposition facilities that cost the United States $95.5 million will not be required for their intended purpose," the IG report states.
Mr. Steensma recommends that in the future the DTRA negotiate firm contracts with commitments from Russia on how it plans to dispose of weapons components before investing millions of U.S. taxpayer money into any facilities. The contract needs to "provide adequate transparency rights to Department of Defense, and include remedies," says the report, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Times.
The report also urges the DTRA to exercise more oversight. "The director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency could have more assurance that Russia will provide weapons systems for disposal by performing more complete inspections of equipment provided to Russia and by identifying other potential uses that Russia may have for weapons systems that Russia has agreed to provide for disposal," the IG report said.
A spokesman for the agency declined to comment.
But the report says the agency director did not dispute the IG's findings. The agency has plans for an auditing team that will monitor Russian proceeds from rocket-fuel sales and make sure they fund other threat-reduction programs.
"The planned actions are positive steps in the right direction," the IG report states.
The threat-reduction agency oversees an 11-year-old program in which the United States supplies billions of dollars to help Russia dispose of chemical, nuclear and other weapons. Congress authorized the program in the 1991 Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. The aim is to consolidate and destroy much of the massive Cold War arsenal left over after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and reduce the chance that such material could fall into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups.
In March, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asked the Pentagon inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz, to investigate a Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to convert 30,000 metric tons of liquid rocket fuel from decommissioned ICBMs into a more benign substance. Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and Senate Armed Services Committee member, also has pushed for an investigation.
Congress has provided $4.7 billion since 1992 for Russia, as well as the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
--------
Detention of Accused Spy Extended
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Spy-Trial.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- A Moscow city court on Thursday extended the pretrial detention of a Russian arms control researcher accused of spying for the United States, one of his lawyers said.
Lawyer Valdimir Vasiltsov said the decision extends Igor Sutyagin's detention until Tuesday and the court is to meet on Friday to decide whether to order a further extension.
The Federal Security Service argued that Sutyagin could flee Russia if released, Vasiltsov said.
Sutyagin, a scholar at Moscow's respected USA and Canada Institute, was arrested in October 1999 on suspicion of passing information on new-generation submarines and the combat-readiness of Russia's nuclear weapons and missile warning systems to a British company allegedly set up as a CIA cover. Prosecutors have asked for a 14-year sentence.
Sutyagin has pleaded innocent, maintaining the analyses he wrote were based on open sources and that he had no reason to believe the British company was an intelligence cover.
A court in Kaluga, about 100 miles south of Moscow, had been expected to deliver a verdict in the case last December, but instead instructed prosecutors to continue investigating and left Sutyagin in jail.
The pretrial detention period was to expire in September, but a Moscow city court extended it until Oct. 8. Sutyagin's lawyers appealed that extension to the Supreme Court, which sent it back to the Moscow court for review on Wednesday.
Although the case against Sutyagin is still being handled by Kaluga authorities, the Moscow court has jurisdiction over his detention. Sutyagin was moved from Kaluga to a Moscow jail in June.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NAU prof believes mining of uranium hikes cancer rates Michael Marizco
Arizona Daily Sun
Sept. 15, 2002
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0915cancerrate15.html
FLAGSTAFF - With cancer rates higher for Native Americans than any other population in this country, Michael Amundson, an assistant professor of history at Northern Arizona University, has one suggestion for the NAU scientists who received $4.5 million to study the issue.
Look at a map, find the uranium mines, then superimpose them on a map of where the poorest people in the country live. The two maps, he said, will be almost identical.
"People with the least amount of power get the most environmental damage," said Amundson, who has detailed that damage in a new book, Yellowcake Towns, published by the University Press of Colorado. Yellowcake was the nickname given to processed uranium ore.
NAU will use the grant to study why cancer rates are so much higher for Native Americans than for other populations. Some suspect the cancer rates are higher because of uranium. However, nobody has yet made a direct correlation between high cancer rates among Native Americans and old uranium mining towns.
Grant supervisor Roger Van Andel has said the possibility exists because of the piles of radioactive ore that have survived on the reservations. Dust from the tailings is inhaled, and stormwater seepage increases the likelihood that the tailings have entered the water supply.
Amundson said the uranium mining business has been big business in this country dating to 1889. The business boomed on the Colorado Plateau beginning in 1922.
The ore found north of Durango, Colo., contained carnotite, a radioactive mineral. From this, mining companies were able to separate three basic elements: radium, a steel alloy named vanadium and uranium.
During the Manhattan Project, 14 percent of the uranium used for the first atom bombs was pulled from the Colorado Plateau. What Amundson called a "green sludge" was eventually refined and made into the Hiroshima bomb.
After World War II, the government began rummaging through the stockpiles of that same ore to pull out the uranium as part of the Cold War nuclear buildup.
Uranium mining towns began sprouting throughout the Southwest, including Moab, Utah; Grants, N.M.; and Tuba City, about 100 miles north of Flagstaff.
One of the byproducts of uranium decay was a little-known gas called radon. A radioactive inert gas, it has been used in cancer treatments.
These days, radon is known as the second-highest cause of lung cancer after smoking, the U.S. surgeon general says. The uranium industry boomed in the late 1940s and busted in the 1950s, then saw a resurgence in the 1970s after the oil embargo. While it petered out in the mid-1980s, debris piles of the uranium ore still exist on reservations.
But the National Cancer Institute has published its findings on cancer incidence rates for 1995 to 1999. For gallbladder cancer rates, the numbers for races and ethnic groups showed a drop for each one except Native Americans, which rose about 10 percent.
Leukemia rose 10 percent for Native Americans while dropping 5 percent for Hispanics and rising only 1 percent and 2 percent for Asian and Anglos, respectively.
Stomach cancer has gone down in every group except Native Americans, where it has risen 10 percent.
Amundson wouldn't be surprised to find that uranium is a cause of those higher cancer rates.
-------- colorado
Rocky Flats Will Remain Radioactive
By Michael de Yoanna,
October 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-03-02.asp
DENVER, Colorado, The Department of Energy is warning that even after the Rocky Flats Superfund Site is converted to a wildlife refuge, contamination from plutonium, uranium and americium will persist.
The acknowledgment comes as the Department of Energy (DOE) proposes alterations in amendments to the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement of 1996.
Working under the watch of the Environmental Protection Agency and Colorado health department, the DOE says the alterations represent a vast improvement for public health compared with the current agreement for the cleanup of the 6,500 acre former nuclear weapons manufacturing plant located 15 miles northwest of downtown Denver.
"There will be at least 10 times more protection," said Joe Legare, an assistant environmental manager with the DOE.
Rocky Flats (Photo courtesy Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board)
Currently, 651 picocuries of contamination per gram of soil are allowed to remain in the surface soil of the rocky terrain that is home to a diverse ecology, including the endangered Prebles meadow jumping mouse. Under what is proposed, 50 picocuries of contamination per gram of soil would be acceptable on the surface.
The proposed levels of cleanup are based on the fact that a full time U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife ranger will be employed at Rocky Flats when it is turned into a wildlife refuge in 2006.
The proposed changes will be formally released sometime next month and are subject to a 60 day public comment period. The changes follow several years' of dialogue between various federal, state and local groups and citizens.
Recognizing the limitations of the final $4 billion budget allocation that was in 2000 set aside by Congress for the site's cleanup, the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments in a September 9 letter voiced support for the proposed changes.
The coalition represents seven local governments, including the city of Westminster, which lies down-water from Rocky Flats, and the city of Boulder, where 100,000 people reside.
The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge covers 6,000 acres of the former nuclear weapons production facility (Photo courtesy National Wildlife Federation)
The Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, a citizen's group, has yet to reach consensus on the issue. However, the board is asking critical questions regarding the level of involvement the federal government ought to retain at Rocky Flats beyond 2006 and what is being done to ensure the safety of people who visit the future wildlife refuge.
Legare said that is why the DOE is pushing for a proper cleanup now. "We want to do this once," he said.
It is likely, however, that the DOE will maintain some kind of presence even after a record of decision closes the Superfund site, according to Pat Etchart, a spokesman for the DOE at Rocky Flats. The DOE would monitor water for contamination, he said.
Victor Holm, a member of the citizens advisory board, said the "potential exists to get a less than optimum cleanup." That's because given the proposed changes, deeper soils - some soils lying as close to the surface as six feet - will be left untouched and contaminated.
At least one area should be dug up, Holm said. "The pipelines that carried a high concentration of material should be taken out," he said.
Those pipes, used for everything from the manufacture of plutonium triggers to water for laundering clothes, are largely concentrated in a 70 acre portion of Rocky Flats' 400 acre industrial area.
"I'd like to see more detail in the plan," Holm said. "We should really get into it." Holm however does not go as far as others on the citizens' board who recommend that the entire site be brought to "background" radiation levels - the small amount of radiation that naturally occurs.
Tom Marshall, a researcher for the Boulder based Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, wants to see that kind of cleanup. The peace center has monitored issues at Rocky Flats and been actively engaged in all aspects of public participation since the organization's founding in 1983.
Rocky Flats has long been controversial. In this newspaper photo from the early 1980s, people circle the facility in protest. (Photo courtesy Department of History University of Colorado)
Etchart said the cleanup levels supported by the peace center would be impossible to attain given current funding.
Marshall countered that the proposed changes lack long term stewardship and appear to give the DOE the chance to shirk its responsibilities while posing a grave risk to future generations. In a position paper, the peace center warns that plutonium that will be left behind "remains dangerously radioactive for a quarter-of-a-million years."
"An alpha emitter, plutonium can prove harmful if taken into the body by inhalation, ingestion, or through an open wound," the peace center paper states. "Once in the body, it may lodge in the lungs or migrate to the liver or to the surface or marrow of bone. For as long as it resides in the body, and this could be for the rest of the person's life, it continues to bombard surrounding tissue with radiation."
The DOE and Colorado state health department note that the plutonium moves slowly and that the movement of contaminated soils can be monitored by taking samples from groundwater wells.
Until December 1989, the Rocky Flats plant made components for nuclear weapons using various radioactive and hazardous materials such as plutonium, uranium and beryllium. Nearly 40 years of nuclear weapons production left behind contaminated soils and groundwater. A cleanup effort began in 1995.
The Rocky Flats Closure Project is online at: http://www.rfets.gov/default.htm
The Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board is found at: http://www.rfcab.org/
The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center is at: http://www.rmpjc.org/
-------- georgia
Georgia Power to Pay Whistleblower
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Georgia-Power-Whistleblower.html or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40617-2002Oct3?language=printer
ATLANTA (AP) -- A federal court has ordered Georgia Power Co. to pay $4 million to a whistleblower executive fired 12 years ago after he raised questions about the company's management of nuclear power plants.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered the power company to pay former executive Marvin B. Hobby $4 million in back pay. Georgia Power also will have to send a letter to every employee welcoming Hobby back to the company.
Hobby was manager of Georgia Power's nuclear operations division.
In 1989, Hobby wrote an internal memo suggesting Georgia Power wasn't following government policy as it turned over control of a nuclear plant in Waynesboro, Ga. Hobby also complained that he was asked to lie in testimony against a company employee involved in a separate whistleblower case.
A few months after Hobby wrote the memo, he was dismissed. Hobby's attorney, Michael Kohn, said Georgia Power told Hobby the reason for his firing was downsizing. For years, Hobby could not find work in the power industry.
The company hasn't decided whether to appeal the ruling, Georgia Power spokesman John Sell said.
-------- new york
Ads Aim at Shutting A-Plant
New York Times
October 3, 2002
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/nyregion/03NUKE.html
Environmentalists will start running a series of advertisements today to turn up the pressure on Gov. George E. Pataki to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which they call a terrorist target and a threat to millions of people.
The ads, financed by the group Riverkeeper, include an ominous television spot with satellite views of Indian Point at the center of an immense bull's-eye. The narrator speaks of the "evacuation zone" and "peak fatality zone," and says, "within the peak injury zone, there are some pretty big towns," as the camera zooms in to Manhattan.
Riverkeeper's campaign raises the volume and the political stakes of one of the most heated issues in the Hudson Valley. The television ad will appear in New York City and the Hudson Valley, and will coincide with print ads in Metro-North Railroad stations and some newspapers.
Officials at Riverkeeper say they hope to force the governor's hand now, because they believe he will be more likely to move against the plant under the pressure of a political campaign, when he has more to fear from public opinion, than after the election. Polls show Mr. Pataki with a sizable lead over his Democratic rival, H. Carl McCall, who has said the plant should be closed.
Mr. Pataki's office would not comment directly on the ads, or on the concerns raised by Indian Point's opponents. Instead, a spokesman read a statement that said Mr. Pataki had "launched the most comprehensive effort in the nation to combat terrorism and enhance safety at public facilities across the state."
In the past, the governor has declined to take a position on shutting down Indian Point.
Larry Gottlieb, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which bought the two operating Indian Point reactors in the last two years, called Riverkeeper's campaign "an act of desperation," and he accused the group, which has not made an endorsement in the gubernatorial race, of "using their dollars to push one candidate over another."
The movement to shut down Indian Point ballooned after the Sept. 11 attacks, when one of the airplanes that struck the World Trade Center flew down the Hudson, almost directly over the plant, raising questions about what would happen if it was hit.
Experts in nuclear power and federal officials have said that nuclear power plants could be terrorist targets.
-------- ohio
Violations Found at Ohio Nuke Plant
By John Seewer
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 3, 2002; 5:32 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39896-2002Oct3?language=printer
TOLEDO, Ohio -- The government said Thursday it had found 10 violations at a nuclear plant where an acid leak nearly ate through a 6-inch-thick steel reactor cap.
The plant's operator, FirstEnergy Corp., failed to take action to correct safety concerns and violated rules for operating the reactor, the report said.
The boric acid leak at the Davis-Besse plant was the most extensive corrosion ever found on a U.S. nuclear reactor and led to a nationwide review of all 69 similar plants. A second, smaller hole was found later at Davis-Besse.
Inspectors found the leak in March, during a maintenance shutdown at the plant near Toledo. The Nuclear Regulator Commission has said it should have been spotted as many as four years ago.
The latest report from the NRC inspectors said the violations included failure to remove large amounts of acid on the reactor head, which led to nozzle cracking, and failure to notice acid deposits on air coolers.
FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins said the findings were consistent with the company's investigations. He said the company already has fixed some of the problems.
"We weren't really surprised by anything in that report," Wilkins said. He said, however, that the company expects to be fined.
FirstEnergy is spending about $200 million to repair the plant, install a new cap and buy replacement power until it is restarted. It has been shut down since Feb. 16.
On The Net:
NRC: http://www.nrc.gov
FirstEnergy: http://www.firstenergycorp.com
-------- pennsylvania
Small Fire at Pa. Nuclear Plant
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Nuclear-Plant-Fire.html
BERWICK, Pa. (AP) -- A fire broke out early Thursday at PPL's Susquehanna nuclear power plant and was quickly put out, officials said.
The fire, detected at around 2:30 a.m., was confined to a startup transformer on Unit 2, according to a company news release. An automatic system extinguished the flames, and the transformer will be replaced with a spare on site, PPL said.
The fire apparently was caused by an internal failure, company spokesman Herbert Woodeshick said. He could not give a monetary estimate of the damage.
The incident was classified as an ``unusual event,'' the least serious of four federal classifications of power plant emergencies.
PPL Corp. is a global energy company based in Allentown. The plant is in east-central Pennsylvania.
On the Net:
http://www.pplweb.com
-------- vermont
Deputy fires gun at Yankee
By EESHA WILLIAMS
Brattleboro, VT, Reformer Staff
Thursday, October 03, 2002
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102%7E8860%7E899551,00.html
VERNON -- A Windham County sheriff's deputy fired his gun Wednesday while working at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant here, according to spokesmen for Entergy Corp., the company that owns the plant, and the sheriff's department. No one was injured by the bullet.
"He was not unstable, it was inadvertent," said Sheriff Henry Farnum.
"He is a mature, seasoned, part-time officer," Farnum said of the deputy, who he refused to name. "He has been temporarily removed from duty, pending completion of an internal investigation."
The investigation will be completed and made public today, Farnum said. It will include the type of weapon the officer fired, which was not one of the large, .50-caliber weapons in use at Yankee, Farnum added.
No criminal charges have been filed, Farnum said.
A sheriff's deputy who stood guard in a light rain outside Vermont Yankee's entrance gate Wednesday night refused to name the deputy who fired his weapon there earlier in the day.
"We're always concerned when there is a discharge of a weapon," said Entergy spokesman Larry Gottleib. "But we are committed to making Vermont Yankee safe."
Entergy notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- the federal agency that has sole responsibility for safety at the nation's 103 nuclear plants -- "as a courtesy," said Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams. "It was not required," he added.
NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said the shooting was not in the core area of the plant and therefore was not under its jurisdiction.
But spokesmen for two local citizens groups said that technicality didn't reassure them.
"One has to wonder how effective the NRC's inspection program is when an incident can happen days after the NRC made an on-site evaluation of security at Vermont Yankee," said Jonathan Block of Putney, an attorney for the Citizens Awareness Network.
Vermont Yankee received the worst security rating of any nuclear plant in the nation in August 2001. Last week a team of three NRC inspectors were back at the plant to determine if it had improved, Screnci said. Results of last week's inspection have not yet been released.
Raymond Shadis, of the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition, said this was not the first illegal incident involving a gun and an inadequately trained guard at an Entergy nuclear plant.
In February, Michael Dahlia, a guard at an Entergy nuclear plant in New York state, pointed his gun at a colleague's head, apparently as a joke. He was charged by state police with second-degree menacing, a misdemeanor.
Last month the NRC announced it was investigating the disappearance of a semiautomatic handgun from the same plant.
Block said Vermont Yankee has hired employees "of questionable character" in the past, including one man who later shot four people to death.
"Nuclear plants need federal security, like airport baggage screeners," Shadis said.
On Friday, security guards at Vermont Yankee who are employed by the Florida-based Wackenhut Corp., unanimously rejected a new employment contract, citing low benefits and excessively long hours.
Guards at some nuclear plants are required to work up to six consecutive days of 12-hour shifts, according to a report released last month by the non-profit Project On Government Oversight in Washington. At least six nuclear plants pay their security guards $1 to $4 less per hour than custodians or janitors at the plants, the report said.
Entergy pays the sheriff's department $34 per hour, per deputy, for security at Vermont Yankee, Farnum said. He refused to say how many deputies work at the plant, citing security concerns.
Sheila Prue, who was a sergeant in the Brattleboro Police Department for 14 years before last month winning the Democratic primary to challenge Farnum in the November general election, said she was concerned that the quality and quantity of training deputies receive may be inadequate.
"It's possible this incident was related to the lack of training," Prue said Wednesday evening.
-------- washington
Hanford's glassification project price tag likely to be $5.6 billion
Thu, Oct 3, 2002
By John Stang
Tri-Valley Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2002/1003-2.html
A $5.6 billion price tag appears likely to build and test run Hanford's tank waste glassification complex.
In an apples-to-apples comparison, that figure is about $800 million more than DOE wanted to spend on the project a few months ago.
The estimate still has to be scrubbed by a team of outside experts before Roy Schepens, manager of the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection, presents it to DOE's cleanup czar Jesse Roberson on Oct. 17.
Schepens still wants to see if that target could be trimmed before then.
What Hanford would get for that price, Schepens said, would be a glassification complex operating at full speed by 2009 and all of Hanford's 53 million gallons of radioactive tank waste glassified or otherwise neutralized by 2028.
"My plan all along is to beat that (2028 target)," Schepens said Wednesday.
Right now, the Tri-Party Agreement sets a 2011 deadline to get the glassification complex fully operational and finish glassification by 2028. DOE originally had expected to finish glassification by 2048. But it changed that target to 2028 earlier this year as part of a massive nationwide acceleration of its nuclear cleanup efforts.
Originally, DOE planned to spend almost $4 billion in basic costs plus several hundred million dollars in fees and contingency funds to build and ramp up the glassification equipment by 2011.
But last spring, glassification contractor Bechtel National began saying that the basic costs to speed up the project would be greater than $4 billion. Meanwhile, figures began to crystallize for Bechtel's fees and for the project's contingency allocations to handle unexpected costs.
In May, Schepens' predecessor Harry Boston told Roberson that the total price tag might reach $5.3 billion. In June, Roberson told Boston that $5.3 billion was too high.
Then last month, an independent panel told DOE that the total price tag would be $5.6 billion to $5.8 billion, including contingency money and Bechtel's fees.
DOE's latest $5.6 billion estimate consists of $4.8 billion for the basic cost and the rest to cover contingency money and Bechtel's fees.
Acceleration efforts, more complete designs and discovery of some omissions and errors in previous plans all contributed to the latest cost estimate, Schepens said.
He plans to renegotiate Bechtel's contract soon to encourage the company to accomplish its tasks for less.
The $5.6 billion estimate would put two high-level radioactive waste melters and two low-activity waste melters into operation by 2009. Plus it would prepare the complex to get some yet-to-be-selected ways running by 2010 to neutralize wastes without conventional melters. Those supplemental methods are being studied to see if time and costs could be trimmed through 2028.
The new estimate and accelerated schedule can still get under way with the $690 million that DOE has sought for the glassification project in fiscal 2003, which began Sept. 24. However, budget increases in subsequent years appear likely, Schepens said.
Right now, DOE, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House appear to agree to allocate $690 million to the glassification project in fiscal 2003.
But Washington, D.C., budget battles on other topics have stalled congressional approval of that budget.
Also, the federal Office of Management and Budget has not said yet if it support DOE's request for some extra Hanford money, which might affect the $690 million earmarked for the glassification project in 2003.
----
Fluor almost done moving spent fuel out of 300 Area
Thu, Oct 3, 2002
By John Stang
Tri-Valley Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2002/1003-1.html
Fluor Hanford is entering the final stage of moving some leftover highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel out of the 300 Area just north of Richland.
The fifth of six fuel shipments was to leave Hanford's 324 Building on Wednesday evening. The fuel is being moved to storage on a pad outside the central Hanford underground vault that holds spent fuel removed from the K Basins.
Fluor hopes to move the sixth and final cask of spent fuel by Nov. 20, which would be four months ahead of the Department of Energy's internal timetable to accomplish the task, said Tim Erickson, Fluor's manager for the 324 Building spent fuel project.
The 324 Building, slightly more than one mile north of Richland, had been the most contaminated spot in the 300 Area.
It was used as a lab to experiment with commercial nuclear fuel and for radioactive waste glassification tests.
The building's main work area consisted of four "hot cells" clustered around a huge airlock. Scientists and technicians used remote-controlled devices to perform tests inside the cells.
The biggest chamber -- the three-story-tall B Cell -- at one time was so radioactive that an unprotected person walking inside would get a fatal dose of radiation in less than two seconds.
Even today, chances of a worker catching a dose of radiation are greater in the 324 Building than at most places at Hanford.
The cleanup of the B Cell and moving the spent fuel are the hardest parts of the 324 Building cleanup, said Mal Wright, director of the 324 Building programs for Fluor.
Work remaining includes cleaning up radioactive crusts in eight tanks beneath the hot cell area that held high-level and low-activity radioactive wastes. And workers must remove the radioactive residue on the concrete inside the four hot cells.
One reason Fluor wants to remove all the fuel pins by November is that's the month when DOE is expected to announce its new lead contractor for Hanford's river shore cleanup.
Responsibility for the 300 Area, including Building 324, will transfer to the new river shore corridor contractor.
Fluor is on one of three teams bidding for that contract.
-------- us politics
Congress's war dissenters strive to be heard
The fast pace of events puts more obstacles in the way of efforts to delay or avert military action.
By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer
The Christian Science Monitor,
October 03, 2002
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1003/p03s01-uspo.html
MITCHELL, S.D,. AND WASHINGTON - George McGovern may have lost the presidency in 1972 by one of the widest margins in American history, but it hasn't dented his conviction in voicing contrarian viewpoints to a nation on war footing.
In 1972 it was Vietnam. Today he says that the United States has no business getting involved in a war in Iraq.
"What have they done to hurt us? Nothing. No attacks on a person or property. No evidence that Iraq is involved in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Is it against the law to build weapons of mass destruction?... There are nine members of the nuclear club and we don't go to war with them," says the former senator in a wide-ranging interview in his home in Mitchell, S.D.
A prairie preacher's son, Mr. McGovern was the most eloquent spokesman of his generation against the war in Vietnam. He was also a World War II hero, flying 35 combat missions as a B-24 bomber pilot, including once landing a disabled plane on one wheel - for which he won the Distinguished Flying Cross. In a September 1970 speech to overflowing galleries, he railed against the Congress for allowing the "cruelest, the most barbaric, and the most stupid war in our national history" to continue.
"And every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave," he said. The Sept. 1 vote to end the war failed, but some scholars call it the beginning of the end of that war.
Today, he wonders why the antiwar movement in Congress appears so feeble.
IT'S a question not so much of parallel situations - thousands of Americans had died in Vietnam by 1970 - as of national memory. When Congress debated launching the Gulf War in 1991, the perils of that war were relatively fresh in memory, and many lawmakers opposed war. Today, America's quick successes from Operation Desert Storm through the recent campaign in Afghanistan have eclipsed some of Vietnam's trauma.
Still, a small but growing number of current lawmakers, many of whom came into politics in the McGovern era, are differing with President Bush.
As Congress moves toward agreement on a resolution to use force in Iraq, dissenters are struggling to rally some form of opposition. In the House, some 40 members of the Iraq Working Group are trying to avert military action altogether. Meanwhile, 73 have signed a petition asking for the vote to be delayed until after the election.
But they acknowledge that the agreement reached yesterday between Mr. Bush and House leaders makes even the goal of winning more time for debate unlikely. They hope that a credible opposition could at least pressure the White House into more aggressive diplomatic efforts to build an international consensus on how to proceed. "The biggest mistake we could make is trying to do this alone," says Rep. Jim McDermott (D) of Washington, who just returned from a "humanitarian mission" to Iraq with Reps. David Bonior (D) of Michigan and Mike Thompson (D) of California. The three Democrats said that the purpose of their trip was to convince Saddam Hussein to comply with UN inspectors.
They returned to harsh criticism from GOP leaders, as well as many political commentators who dubbed the three Democrats everything from "useful idiots for Saddam" to traitors.
"At a time when America is fighting a war on terror, talk like this only helps enemies of freedom.... It's one thing to have a civil discourse on the merits of a preemptive strike or war. It's another to fly to Iraq and take the word of a tyrant over the American president and the American people," says Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts (R) of Oklahoma.
But Congressman McDermott - who recently won his primary race in his liberal district of Seattle with 77 percent of the vote - says the issue is worth the heat. As a former Navy psychiatrist who treated Vietnam veterans, he says that "dealing with the casualties of Vietnam" compels him to look at any future commitment of troops with great care.
His Democratic colleagues also saw service during the Vietnam era. Mr. Bonior served in the Air Force stateside, while Mike Thompson served in the Army in Vietnam and earned a purple heart. While McDermott and Thompson's district are solidly Democratic, Mr. Bonior's stance on the war put him at risk in a suburban Detroit district that often votes Republican. He recently lost a primary bid for governor.
In fact, a war record is emerging as one of the key credentials in the emerging congressional debate. Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel's Vietnam record has also amplified his voice as a GOP moderate urging a multilateral approach on Iraq.
"America alone cannot defeat this scourge of mankind. We will require partners," he said in a speech Monday. It's a view George McGovern could support.
----
Clinton Warns Bush of Consequences of Attack on Iraq
Former President Advises Seeking U.N. Approval
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33802-2002Oct2?language=printer
BLACKPOOL, England, Oct. 2--Former president Bill Clinton today warned his successor, President Bush, that he could face "unwelcome consequences" if he launched preemptive military action against Iraq. Addressing the British Labor Party's annual conference here, he sharply criticized the administration's foreign policy while endorsing the goal of compelling Iraq to disarm.
Clinton said that "a preemptive action today, however justified, may come back with unwelcome consequences in the future." And he urged Bush to continue to seek U.N. Security Council approval before sending in U.S. forces.
While his tone was generally milder than the attack issued a week ago by former vice president Al Gore, Clinton suggested that the administration's first priority should be to eliminate the al Qaeda terrorist network. "Our most pressing challenge is to finish the job," he said.
He criticized the Bush administration for rejecting the 1997 Kyoto accord on global warming, the new International Criminal Court to try alleged war criminals and the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Those policies, he said, had understandably made Britons and others wary of conservatives in the administration and more inclined not to trust them on Iraq, he said.
"I have a world of disagreements with them," he said of the conservatives. "But we can't lose sight of the bigger issue."
Even when praising British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his ideological soulmate and friend, Clinton was indirectly critical of Bush. He praised Blair for working to unite world opinion in favor of unconditional U.N. weapons inspections. "If he weren't there to do this," said Clinton, "I doubt if anyone else could."
Although he did not mention them by name, Clinton attacked previous Republican administrations for supplying Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with materials that he said Iraq may have used in making biological weapons, for issuing "hardly a peep" when Iraqi forces gassed Kurdish civilians in 1988 and for urging Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq to rebel against the government in 1991. After that, he said, U.S. officials "cruelly abandoned them to their fate."
"We cannot walk away from this," he told the notably receptive audience, "but we can't forget we are not blameless in the misery under which they suffered."
The speech was welcomed by both ardent supporters of Blair and those who have criticized the prime minister's enthusiastic endorsement of American policy. "He was more forthright in his criticisms [of the Bush administration] than our own leaders," said Alan Simpson, a Labor member of Parliament who leads a parliamentary committee opposed to military action. "I'm surprised because I expected him to come and bang the war drum. I didn't expect him to bang the peace drum."
----
'The president is authorized to use Armed Forces'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 3, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021003-3440664.htm or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34886-or2002Oct2?language=printer
Text of a resolution agreed upon yesterday by President Bush and House leaders:
Joint Resolution to Authorize the use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;
Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;
Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;
Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;
Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in "material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations" and urged the president "to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235);
Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;
Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;
Whereas members of al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;
Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;
Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;
Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949;
Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the president "to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677";
Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1)," that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and "constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region," and that Congress, "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution."
Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;
Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to "work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge" posed by Iraq and to "work for the necessary resolutions," while also making clear that "the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable";
Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;
Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the president to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such persons or organizations;
Whereas the president and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;
Whereas the president has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and
Whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region;
Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SEC. 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq".
SEC. 2. SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS
The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the president to
(a) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq and encourages him in those efforts; and
(b) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions.
SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION. The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.
(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.
In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the president shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the president pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
(c) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION. Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS. Nothing in this resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
SEC. 4. REPORTS TO CONGRESS
(a) The president shall, at least once every 60 days, submit to the Congress a report on matters relevant to this joint resolution, including actions taken pursuant to the exercise of authority granted in section 2 and the status of planning for efforts that are expected to be required after such actions are completed, including those actions described in section 7 of Public Law 105-338 (the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998).
(b) To the extent that the submission of any report described in subsection (a) coincides with the submission of any other report on matters relevant to this joint resolution otherwise required to be submitted to Congress pursuant to the reporting requirements of Public Law 93-148 (the War Powers Resolution), all such reports may be submitted as a single consolidated report to the Congress.
(c) To the extent that the information required by section 3 of Public Law 102-1 is included in the report required by this section, such report shall be considered as meeting the requirements of section 3 of Public Law 102-1.
-------- MILITARY
-------- balkans
Ex-Bosnian Serb Leader Enters Guilty Plea to The Hague
New York Times
October 3, 2002
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/international/europe/03HAGU.html
THE HAGUE, Oct. 2 - A Bosnian Serb leader today became the first high official to plead guilty of crimes against humanity and to express remorse publicly for the war and bloodshed in the Balkans.
The decision by the official, Biljana Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb president, opens the door for her potentially crucial testimony against Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, or other leaders involved in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
As part of the plea agreement, all other charges against Mrs. Plavsic, who was not in court for her plea, will be dropped, including genocide. Immediately after her guilty plea, her lawyer at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague said that no deal had been made involving her sentence or testimony. But under court rules, Mrs. Plavsic can be compelled to testify.
Eugene O'Sullivan, co-counsel to Mrs. Plavsic, said in a statement that "by accepting responsibility and expressing her remorse fully and unconditionally," she hoped to offer some consolation to the victims of the Bosnian war, Muslim, Croat and Serb. Many thousands were killed or imprisoned and uncounted others were driven from their homes. He added that she understood "that she is subjecting herself to a possible sentence of life imprisonment."
The unexpected guilty plea compounded the day's exceptional events at the tribunal. Indeed, it seemed timed to take advantage of the unusually large presence in The Hague of reporters and television crews from the former Yugoslavia to watch the duel of two aging Balkan leaders.
For earlier, in the same courtroom, Mr. Milosevic, the jailed former Serbian strongman, and Stjepan Mesic, the current Croatian president, spent the morning sparring.
Today it was Mr. Milosevic's turn to cross-examine Mr. Mesic, a day after Mr. Mesic testified against Mr. Milosevic, repeatedly accusing him of blocking all political solutions and provoking the wars that broke up Yugoslavia.
Some lawyers said they were impressed by the sight of the two leaders arguing in an international criminal court, if only because it had seemed unthinkable until recently. For a long time, the tribunal created in 1993 to deal with the Balkan conflicts of the 1990's had only few and low-ranking defendants on trial.
The Croatian president, a sharp debater, seemed unperturbed by Mr. Milosevic's relentless questioning. He even addressed him scathingly as "Mr. Accused."
Mr. Milosevic started off questioning Mr. Mesic about his time in prison and about political killings in Croatia, asking him if he had been involved in any of them. Mr. Mesic replied, "I had as much to do with that as I had with Lincoln's assassination." Several times, Mr. Milosevic's questions backfired, allowing Mr. Mesic to add further possibly detrimental information.
As the old adversaries traded accusations and broadsides, they often set off laughter in the public gallery, which was packed with observers from Serbia and Croatia. Observers can be seen but not heard in the court, which is shielded with thick bulletproof glass.
The presiding judge, Richard May, often stepped in to bring Mr. Milosevic, and sometimes both men, back to order. At one point, after Mr. Mesic told Mr. Milosevic that he was talking nonsense, Judge May said, "We are not going to continue in this way."
Then, as the two men quibbled about the inflammatory writings of a 19th-century Croatian politician, Mr. May wryly intervened. "The trial chamber is not assisted by the exchange of abuse," he said, "particularly abuse of 100 years ago."
The judge also warned Mr. Milosevic that he was not using his time to his advantage by repeatedly straying off the subject, making speeches and accusing Mr. Mesic of crimes, rather than questioning his evidence.
"Mr. Milosevic, what you must understand is that attacking others is not a form of defense," Judge May said. "It is of no relevance."
As for Mrs. Plavsic, her guilty plea took most court watchers by surprise.
"Here you have a main player in the war facing the truth," Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for the prosecutor, told reporters after the plea. "We hope others will accept their responsibility for the past events. It's the first time a high-level Serb leader expresses remorse and reaches out to the victims."
Sentencing hearings for Mrs. Plavsic, a 72-year-old former professor of biology, will take place in December. She spoke today by video link from an undisclosed location in the Balkans, where she is free on provisional release. Judges informed her today that she could remain at liberty for security reasons until the December hearings.
Court officials said her guilty plea, apparently proposed by the prosecution, came after long negotiations by lawyers on both sides. Seven other defendants have pleaded guilty before the tribunal, but none of them are as high-ranking as Mrs. Plavsic.
Her case has been special from the beginning. The only woman publicly accused by the tribunal of war crimes, she surrendered to the court in January 2001. At first, she pleaded not guilty to eight counts of war crimes, including genocide, related to her role as the vice president of the Bosnian Serbs during the war. She was close to Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian leader, whom she succeeded after the war.
Both Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the military leader, have been indicted twice for similar charges by the tribunal, but they remain at large.
When she surrendered, an official from the prosecutor's office described her as such a key figure during the Bosnia war that "there is much that she can tell us, even about Milosevic."
Prosecutors also hoped that she would provide valuable information about Momcilo Krajisnik, her co-defendant and the right-hand man to Dr. Karadzic in the war.
Among lawyers monitoring the court, some looked beyond her possible role as a future witness.
"It's critically important for someone at such a high level to say they did wrong," said Judith Armatta, a lawyer and trial observer for the Coalition for International Justice, a tribunal support group based in Washington. "There is the possibility of a snowball effect. And it will help the truth process in the region."
Ms. Hartmann, the prosecutor's spokeswoman, said she believed that "expressing remorse is a big step in the process of reconciliation," adding, "To deny what people went through is like a second death for victims."
-------- business
Boeing reviving work on nuclear converter
From the Science & Technology Desk
10/3/2002
by Irene Brown, UPI Science News, at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021003-061206-9804r
CANOGA PARK, Calif., Oct. 3 (UPI) -- With new funding from NASA, Boeing is poised to restart development of a proposed nuclear-powered electrical converter the agency is eyeing for future robotic probes and human spacecraft, company officials said Thursday.
"With nuclear power, you're moving all the time and you can slow down when you want, achieve orbit and have tens of kilowatts of power to do science," Richard Rovang, with Boeing's Rocketdyne division, told United Press International.
"You could stay in orbit around another planet for tens of years or you could do a tour of a number of different bodies," he said.
The Boeing proposal is being developed in an elaborate partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, as well as Honeywell Aerospace of Phoenix, Swales Aerospace of Beltsville, Md., Auburn University of Montgomery, Ala., and Texas A&M University of College Station. Also, the Department of Energy is overseeing development of nuclear reactors for space systems, while NASA is looking at electrical power converters and propulsion systems.
The Boeing project is among three power conversion systems that will be receiving NASA funds as soon as federal budget issues are resolved for fiscal year 2003, which began Oct. 1.
"There are several different technologies for power conversion," said project manager Steven Johnson, with the Glenn Research Center. For example, last year NASA unveiled plans to restart nuclear research to power spacecraft dispatched beyond Earth for scientific studies. Not only would the spacecraft have more power and shave off years of travel time, but nuclear-powered craft can be maneuvered more easily to handle a variety of missions, said Johnson.
NASA officials said the agency has no plans to develop nuclear-powered launch systems, however. That possibility is being avoided because nuclear power has been controversial on Earth for decades, with critics questioning the safety of the systems. Nuclear's role in space also is questionable, particularly regarding the subject of military systems.
Boeing's project, which is based on a technology called the Brayton Power Conversion System, originally was designed in the late 1980s under the first Bush administration, which launched a program called the Space Exploration Initiative. That program was aborted and the converter mothballed until this year.
"Using BPCS technology as a baseline concept will satisfy all design requirements and minimize cost, development time and risk to the program," said Rovang.
Key features of the technology already have been demonstrated in jet aircraft and terrestrial power plants. Among the challenges the team faces is designing a system that is small and lightweight, yet able to operate at temperatures that surpass 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
The overall value of the contract is $7 million, with initial funding of $1 million for a six-month study, said Rovang. Separate contracts also will be awarded to teams led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said Johnson.
-------- colombia
U.S., Bogota to Resume Aerial Drug Interdiction
Associated Press
Thursday, October 3, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35663-2002Oct2?language=printer
BOGOTA, Colombia, Oct. 2 -- Eighteen months after an American missionary plane was mistakenly shot down, the United States plans to resume a campaign to help Colombia track and force down drug flights, officials from both countries said today.
The program was suspended in April 2001 in Colombia and Peru after a Peruvian warplane shot down the missionary flight over the Amazon, killing an American and her infant daughter.
Colombian warplanes will intercept drug flights based on intelligence from the United States, Gen. Hector Velasco, the air force commander, said today.
Officials expect operations to resume this month.
To help prevent erroneous shoot-downs, Colombian ground and air crews and pilots are receiving safety training in Oklahoma City, said Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman of the U.S. Army.
The State Department will be the lead U.S. agency handling the program.
Members of Congress had recommended that the CIA no longer manage it.
U.S. officials have said illicit drug flights from the Andes to the United States increased following the suspension of the U.S. program.
The American missionary plane was shot down after a CIA surveillance plane spotted what it considered a suspicious aircraft and called in a Peruvian jet to intercept it.
The U.S. crew later realized that the flight was innocent, but was unable to dissuade the Peruvians from firing.
--------
Aggressive Colombian Drug Spraying Pleases U.S.
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombia-usa.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia's new government is stepping up its U.S.-backed campaign to spray cocaine crops, pleasing U.S. officials previously frustrated by delays caused by fears of peasant unrest.
President Alvaro Uribe, whose hard line against leftist rebels also enthuses Washington, is authorizing spraying of all drug crops, whereas his predecessor Andres Pastrana restricted action against small lots and peasants who signed eradication pledges, U.S. government officials said on Thursday.
``This government is clearly very determined to pursue the spraying program and make it successful,'' one U.S. official said, adding, ``The previous government was less determined than this one.''
Uribe took office in August promising to boost military spending and expand social programs to tackle the poverty that feeds a 38-year-old war and has led perhaps 100,000 families to grow coca -- the raw material for cocaine.
He says he will offer peasants the chance to participate in government-funded reforestation programs as an alternative to coca but has dropped Pastrana's attempts to persuade peasants to agree to rip up their crops themselves in return for aid.
As a result, U.S.-backed coca spraying has accelerated in the lawless border region of Putumayo, where the Pastrana government had grounded crop dusters for fear of peasant protests.
``If you've got coca, you're subject to spraying. If you don't get sprayed you got lucky,'' said another U.S. official, characterizing the more aggressive Uribe approach.
At the new, busy rate of fumigation, U.S. officials hope the amount of land planted with coca in Colombia -- by far the world's largest producer of cocaine -- will tumble to a third or less of present levels by 2004 or 2005.
SQUEEZE COCAINE, SMASH THE GUERRILLAS
Smashing the cocaine trade is key to the combined U.S. and Colombian strategy for smashing the country's Marxist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, who use drug money to pay for a war which claims thousands of mainly civilian lives a year.
The Uribe government has been coy about admitting changes to its spraying policies, which have worried some European governments concerned about peasant welfare.
Uribe has also been criticized by human rights groups for declaring a state of emergency, allowing arrests without warrants and authorizing the military to restrict movements in conflict zones.
Long criticized for throwing billions of dollars into fighting drugs with little noticeable effect on supply on U.S. streets, American officials earlier this year took heart at United Nations figures showing Colombian coca area fell for the first time in 2001. While CIA figures showed a small rise in coca area, most U.S. government agencies say they trust the United Nations.
In another major policy change earlier this year, the United States decided to authorize the Colombian government to use its military aid directly against Marxist rebels and far-right paramilitaries. This aid, as well as key intelligence assistance, had previously been restricted to anti-drug operations.
Colombia has received more than $1.5 billion in mainly military U.S. aid in the past few years. The U.S. government has also helped Uribe obtain big loans from multilateral lenders and has granted many Colombian exports tariff-free access to the United States.
--------
U.S. Forces to Train Colombia Army
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Army-Trainers.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- U.S. special forces will begin training a new Colombian army commando unit this month to attack outlawed armed groups, U.S. officials said Thursday.
The officials, speaking on condition they not be further identified, told journalists the Colombia soldiers would be trained at an army base near the capital and would then form a new special forces commando battalion.
``It's similar to commando battalions in different armies around the world that do direct action raids,'' one of the officials said.
Critics of U.S. military assistance to Colombia have warned Washington of mission creep, in which traditional counternarcotics assistance evolves into broader military aid -- with the United States eventually being sucked directly into a 38-year civil war.
The U.S. officials insisted that the training of the new commando battalion is part of the war on drugs, known as Plan Colombia. They said approval from U.S. Congress for the training of the commando battalion was not needed.
``They will be focused on counternarcotics operations and narcoterrorist organizations,'' one of the officials said at the briefing. Washington and the Colombian government consider all three of Colombia's outlawed armed groups -- two leftist rebel armies and a right-wing paramilitary outfit -- drug trafficking terrorist organizations.
U.S. special forces troops have already trained a 2,000-member Colombian army counternarcotics brigade. Its task is to wipe out cocaine and heroin-producing crops which rebels and their paramilitary foes ``tax,'' earning huge profits.
The U.S. Congress recently authorized the U.S. military to begin training a Colombian army brigade, which will try to prevent rebel attacks on the Cano-Limon pipeline, which runs across northern Colombia and carries oil belonging to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.
Julia Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said she was not surprised by news that the United States would now be training Colombian army commandos.
``They've been paving the way for this kind of announcement,'' Sweig said in a telephone interview. She said she believed that word of the imminent training was kept quiet ``to avoid 'the sky is falling,' Salvador, Vietnam, fears.''
The U.S. official said at the briefing Thursday that candidates for the new special forces commando battalion would be picked from the Colombian army's Rapid Deployment Force who have undergone background checks to determine they have not been involved in human rights abuses.
Colombia's war kills some 3,500 people each year, and pits the rebels against the Colombian military and the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.
AP reporter Susannah A. Nesmith contributed to this report.
-------- europe
Europeans say no to war on Iraq: Poll
AFP,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 03, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=23994868
PARIS: As world powers squabble over how to resolve the stand-off over Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his suspected weapons of mass destruction, the European public is saying a loud "no" to war.
From Oslo to Moscow, opinion polls show a majority of Europeans are against military action against Baghdad and hundreds of thousands of people have voted with their feet at anti-war marches in several capital cities.
"No War Mister Bush," thundered a headline in the Swiss tabloid Blick over a survey showing that four out of five people in the staunchly neutral country were opposed to US President George W. Bush's hard line on Iraq.
Washington, which is openly seeking Saddam's downfall, wants a tough new UN resolution that would authorise military action if Iraq fails to meet tighter conditions on weapons inspections.
But it has failed to win over fellow permanent Security Council members China and Russia, which remain deeply opposed to such a course of action, and surveys show that even the American people are hesistant to support a military strike without the backing of Washington's allies.
Across Europe, opposition to an attack is mounting, while a poll pubished in Singapore has shown Asians are not convinced that the evidence released so far by Britain and the United States is sufficient to mount a war.
In Italy, a poll published in the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana on Wednesday showed nearly 90 per cent of 1,000 surveyed opposed war against Iraq.
It also surveyed another 17,000 readers on the issue of Italy providing military support in any proposed conflict. Close to 95 per cent of those surveyed, declared their opposition to any Italian participation.
In Britain, whose Prime Minister Tony Blair is the staunchest supporter of Bush's stance, tens of thousands of people last weekend joined what organisers called the country's biggest ever peace demonstration.
Speaker after speaker at the London rally called Bush a "dictator" and Blair -- who last week published a dossier of allegations about Saddam's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons capability -- his "poodle."
And a series of polls have suggested that the British public is reluctant to support military action against Saddam without at least a firm mandate from the United Nations.
"It may be that Britain will go to war in a matter of weeks," veteran Labour Party leftwinger Tony Benn said at the weekend. "But nothing can take the British people into a war they do not accept."
The most recent survey published in the Guardian newspaper Tuesday showed that British support for a possible war on Iraq had dropped to 33 per cent while opposition was running at 44 per cent.
Demonstrations were also held at the weekend in Madrid, Rome and Washington.
"Dick Cheney, dinosaur, we don't want your oil war!" chanted groups of protesters in the US capital.
Germans are almost unanimous in backing the position of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose vehement opposition to an Iraq attack and a minister's reported comparison of Bush's methods to those of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler has "poisoned" relations with the United States, according to US officials.
A poll conducted by the Hamburg Gewis institute for a television magazine found 97 per cent against any German participation in a war on Iraq, while three-quarters of those surveyed believed Bush was trying to disguise the reasons for an attack.
Nearly two-thirds of French people are also opposed to their country becoming involved in a military strike even if it had UN support, according to a poll published in a Sunday newspaper.
President Jacques Chirac has made clear his opposition to any unilateral US strike but has put forward a two-stage plan that could eventually see the Security Council authorize an international operation against Saddam, in which Paris could participate.
In Moscow, a poll last month showed 53 per cent of Russians opposed to a US-led military operation and 57 per cent said Russia should maintain relations with Iraq, Iran and North Korea, three countries Bush says form an "axis of evil."
More than 82 per cent of Swiss believe a military attack against Iraq without a mandate from the United Nations would be wrong, while three out of four Norwegians are against any US-led operation to oust Saddam, latest polls show.
And in Ireland -- which currently has a seat on the 15-member Security Council -- the public oppose military action by the United States without UN approval by a margin of almost three to one, a survey said Tuesday.
-------- india/pakistan
Militants kill 30 on bloodiest day of Kashmir polls
By Phil Reeves
03 October 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=338995
Separatist militants pressed forward with their latest offensive in Indian-controlled Kashmir, bringing the death toll to almost 30 within a 24-hour period.
Eleven people were killed yesterday, adding to the 18 who died on Tuesday in a wave of bombings and shootings that marked the third round of polling. It was the bloodiest day since the four-stage elections began last month.
Five border guards were killed in a land-mine explosion 28 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian-controlled part of the divided province. In the frontier district of Kupwara, three party workers were killed, becoming another statistic on a list of an estimated 600 deaths that followed the announcement of the election in early August. And there was another bomb attack on a bus, killing two civilians - coming only a day after eight were killed by men armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades.
A policemen was also killed yesterday in a landmine explosion in the southern Doda district, which goes to the polls in the final round on Tuesday.
India blames Pakistan for sponsoring the militant groups that are responsible for the attacks in Kashmir, which has a Muslim majority.
Yesterday the Indian Deputy Prime Minister, L K Advani, who has a reputation as a hardline Hindu nationalist, spelt out his government's ire over the latest bloodshed, by accusing Islamabad of being influenced by Islamic "religious extremism" of its own making. Addressing an anti-terrorism conference organised by his Hindu nationalist BJP party, he said: "Whosoever created the Frankenstein is bound to be affected by the monster."
India has been pressing the United States - whose envoy Christina Rocca met the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, on Tuesday - to put pressure on Pakistan to rein in the militants. But Mr Advani indicated that India's position was clear. "We do not have to wait for any other country to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. We are already waging a war," he said.
India insists that the elections in Jammu and Kashmir - which it seeks to portray as an endorsement of its rule - are proving a success, citing a turn-out of more than 40 per cent. Pakistan dismisses the figures as bogus, a view echoed in Islamabad yesterday by Kashmir's main separatist groups, which are calling for a plebiscite on whether to stay with India, join Pakistan or seek total independence.
-------- iraq
The Generals Speak
by ELIZABETH L. CLINE & MOSI SECRET,
October 3, 2002
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021021&s=secret
Recent remarks on Iraq by retired military officers, most with combat experience in the Persian Gulf.
"There are people in this city that believe that the military campaign against Iraq will not be difficult, especially because of the enormous advances in technology and the willingness of some groups in Iraq to revolt once the campaign has begun. I am not as certain that a campaign of this nature will take this course. I certainly hope so.... The nightmare scenario is that six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions, reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft artillery pieces, defend the city of Baghdad. The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community."
--Gen. Joseph Hoar, Senate Armed Services Committee, September 23
--
"Well, first of all, you have to understand that the Iraqi military is 400,000 active-duty people. Probably 300,000 of them you can discount, but you can't discount the 100,000 Republican Guard and Palace Guard. And not only are they a good military force, but they also have a lot of good equipment behind them. They're going to have over 8,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers, a large amount of artillery. It's not going to be an easy battle. And certainly I think that we will prevail, but I think it would be much more effective if we didn't have to do it alone.... During the Gulf War we had an international force. We had troops from many, many different nations involved, and that gave us a great deal of strength. I think that we would be lacking if we went alone at this time."
--Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Meet the Press, August 18
--
"The United States could certainly defeat the Iraqi military and destroy Saddam's regime. But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive...and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses."
--Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Wall Street Journal, August 15
--
"It's a question of what's the sense of urgency here.... There is nothing that indicates that in the immediate, next hours, next days, that there's going to be nuclear-tipped missiles put on launch pads to go against our forces or our allies in the region."
--Gen. Wesley Clark, Senate Armed Services Committee, September 23
--
"Attacking Iraq now will cause a lot of problems.... It might be interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and are really hellbent to go to war see it a different way. That's usually the way it is in history."
--Gen. Anthony Zinni, Speech to Economic Club of Florida, August 23
----
[The most intelligent idea proposed yet. et]
Official Suggests a U.S.-Iraq Duel
By Sameer N. Yacoub
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 3, 2002; 2:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38658-2002Oct3?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An Iraqi vice president offered an unusual suggestion Thursday for solving the U.S.-Iraq standoff: Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush should fight a duel to settle their differences and spare their people the ravages of war.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would be the referee for the duel, which should be held on neutral territory, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told Associated Press Television Network in an interview.
Ramadan, wearing a green uniform and a black beret, made his remarks without giving any outward sign he was joking, although reporters who were present detected a note of irony in his voice.
"Bush wants to attack the whole (of) Iraq, the army and the infrastructure," Ramadan said.
"The American president should specify a group, and we will specify a group and choose neutral ground, with Kofi Annan as referee, and use one weapon, with a president against a president, a vice president against a vice president, and a minister against a minister in a duel," Ramadan said. "In this way we are saving the American and the Iraqi people."
Iraq has two vice presidents. Ramadan did not say whether he or Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf might take on Dick Cheney.
In Washington, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the Iraqi offer was irresponsible and did not warrant a "serious response."
"I just want to point out that, in the past when Iraq had disputes, it invaded its neighbors. There were no duels, there were invasions. There was use of weapons of mass destruction and the military; that's how Iraq settles its disputes," Fleischer said.
Bush says he wants Saddam toppled and accuses the Iraqi leader of stockpiling nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and harboring terrorists. Disarm or face attack, is Bush's message to Saddam.
Ramadan told APTN that Iraq was neither concerned with nor surprised by U.S. lawmakers' support of a congressional resolution that would authorize Bush to use force against Iraq.
"We pay no attention to this issue," he said, adding that approving such a resolution "makes no difference" to Iraq.
The congressional resolution would support Bush's efforts to seek Iraqi compliance through the United Nations and requires the president to report to Congress, within 48 hours of commencing an attack, that further diplomatic means would not protect U.S. security interests and that military action against Iraq would not detract from the war on terrorism.
The agreement on the resolution specifies that authorization applies only to relevant U.N. resolutions regarding Iraq and not to establishing regional security.
Ramadan criticized U.S. efforts to delay the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq until the U.N. Security Council adopts tougher measures that would give the inspectors broad new powers to hunt for weapons of mass destruction and provide them with military backing to carry out the search.
Iraq and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix reached a deal in Vienna on Tuesday under which Baghdad agreed to an unconditional return of the inspectors under existing U.N. Security Council resolutions and a 1998 agreement that put the so-called presidential sites off limits to the inspectors.
Meanwhile, allied warplanes dropped thousands of leaflets over southern Iraq on Thursday, warning Iraqi forces against firing on British and U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone.
Iraqi forces fired on the plane that was delivering the leaflets and allied forces bombed an air defense operations center in response, officials at the U.S. Central Command said.
In Baghdad, a military spokesman said Thursday that five people were killed and 11 injured when U.S. and British warplanes bombed civilian targets in an area 218 miles south of Baghdad.
----
A Case Not Closed
Did Saddam Hussein really order the assassination of George H.W. Bush?
by Seymour M. Hersh
October 3, 2002
New Yorker
http://newyorker.com/printable/?archive/020930fr_archive02
The confrontation between the United States and Iraq has revived interest in a decade-old charge-that Saddam Hussein ordered the assassination of President George H. W. Bush. This alleged plot has been cited in recent days by the current President Bush as one of the U.S.'s grievances against Hussein. In this article, from 1993, Seymour M. Hersh investigates the assassination story.
On Saturday, June 26, 1993, twenty-three Tomahawk guided missiles, each loaded with a thousand pounds of high explosives, were fired from American Navy warships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea at the headquarters complex of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, in downtown Baghdad. The attack was in response to an American determination that Iraqi intelligence, under the command of President Saddam Hussein, had plotted to assassinate former President George Bush during Bush's ceremonial visit to Kuwait in mid-April. It was President Bill Clinton's first act of war.
Three of the million-dollar missiles missed their target and landed on nearby homes, killing eight civilians, including Layla al-Attar, one of Iraq's most gifted artists. The death toll was considered acceptable by the White House; after all, scores of civilians had been killed in the Reagan Administration's F-111 bombing attack on Muammar Qaddafi's housing-and-office complex in Tripoli, Libya, in 1986. Clinton Administration officials acknowledged that they had been "lucky," as one national-security aide put it, in that only three of the computer-guided missiles went off course. Nearly three hundred Tomahawks had been fired during the Gulf War, with a higher rate of inaccuracy.
The media and a majority of the American public saw the American raid on Baghdad as a success, and as evidence that the struggling new President had finally demonstrated toughness when toughness was needed. Public-opinion polls showed that Clinton's approval rating climbed by eleven percentage points on June 27th, the day after the attack; more than two-thirds of those polled approved of the bombing.
President Clinton and those aides who supported his decision may have been right: the Iraqi intelligence service may have developed and put in motion a plot to assassinate George Bush during his triumphant visit to Kuwait to celebrate the Gulf War victory over Iraq. And if such a plot did exist Saddam Hussein may have known of it, or should have known, and thus would have been personally responsible for not preventing it. But my own investigations have uncovered circumstantial evidence, at least as compelling as the Administration's, that suggests that the American government's case against Iraq-as it has been outlined in public, anyway-is seriously flawed.
The Administration, with its well-meaning but floundering leadership, spent two months investigating and debating the alleged assassination attempt, and then ordered the bombing just one day after receiving a written intelligence report on it. That report, delivered on June 24th by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, provided what the President and his advisers concluded was compelling evidence of Iraqi complicity at the top.
A senior White House official recently told me that one of the seemingly most persuasive elements of the report had been overstated and was essentially incorrect. And none of the Clinton Administration officials I interviewed over a ten-week period this summer claimed that there was any empirical evidence-a "smoking gun"-directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt. The case against Iraq was, and remains, circumstantial. Nonetheless, on June 24th the F.B.I.'s intelligence report was accepted at face value by the President and his senior aides, and some of those aides told me that the mere existence of the report and the expectation that it would be leaked to the press were what drove the President to act. "We had to move quickly," one diplomat said, with rancor. "Bill Safire obviously would have the report for a weekend column." Safire, the Times columnist and a frequent critic of Clinton policy, had bedevilled the White House that spring with his ability to obtain restricted information from the Justice Department.
The last-minute Presidential concern over press leaks was valid, for throughout the two months of internal debate over the alleged assassination attempt the White House policymakers were constantly bombarded-and eventually persuaded, perhaps-by news leaks about the evidence against Iraq. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post were among the many newspapers that praised the President's firm leadership in the aftermath of the bombing of Baghdad and his willingness to send potential adversaries a message of American resolve. "Mr. Clinton is learning on the job," the Journal said. The newspaper was not reflecting the reality of White House decision-making, however, but merely praising a decision that it and other newspapers had been manipulated to help bring about.
As it happened, the policy was driven not by Bill Clinton and his senior staff but by those men and women in the bureaucracy who from the outset viewed the alleged assassination plot as imposing a responsibility to strike hard at the hated Saddam while also providing a quick fix for the President, who was then mired in controversy over his failure to use force against the Serbs in Bosnia. These aides told everyone in Washington who would listen that bombing Baghdad would improve Clinton's political standing at home and his diplomatic standing in the Middle East. Among the officials making such arguments were two key members of the White House staff-Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger, the deputy assistant to the President for national-security affairs, and Martin Indyk, senior director of the National Security Council Division of Near East and South Asian Affairs. Both men were privately asserting by early May-long before the delivery of the official F.B.I. report-that the intelligence implicating Iraq in the assassination attempt was overwhelming; both men remained strong advocates of the use of force.
The crisis had its beginnings in the last few days of April, when the Kuwaiti government announced that it had arrested a group of seventeen Iraqis and Kuwaitis on charges of "destabilizing" Kuwait; that one Iraqi had confessed, under interrogation, to having been sent by Iraqi intelligence to assassinate George Bush; and that a powerful bomb, weighing nearly two hundred pounds and capable of killing everyone within four hundred yards, had been found hidden in a car that had been driven across the border from Iraq to Kuwait.
The announcement produced little reaction in Washington or anywhere in Europe, essentially because the Kuwaiti government was known for making self-serving pronouncements about its adversaries. Three years ago, during Iraq's six-month occupation of Kuwait, there had been an outcry when a teen-age Kuwaiti girl testified eloquently and effectively before Congress about Iraqi atrocities involving newborn infants. The girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Washington, Sheikh Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and her account of Iraqi soldiers flinging babies out of incubators was challenged as exaggerated both by journalists and by human-rights groups. (Sheikh Saud was subsequently named Minister of Information in Kuwait, and he was the government official in charge of briefing the international press on the alleged assassination attempt against George Bush.) In a second incident, in August of 1991, Kuwait provoked a special session of the United Nations Security Council by claiming that twelve Iraqi vessels, including a speedboat, had been involved in an attempt to assault Bubiyan Island, long-disputed territory that was then under Kuwaiti control. The Security Council eventually concluded that, while the Iraqis had been provocative, there had been no Iraqi military raid, and that the Kuwaiti government knew there hadn't. What did take place was nothing more than a smuggler-versus-smuggler dispute over war booty in a nearby demilitarized zone that had emerged, after the Gulf War, as an illegal marketplace for alcohol, ammunition, and livestock.
This year, leaks about Iraqi interference in Kuwait's doings began in early May. On Saturday, May 8th, the Washington Post quoted Administration officials and others as saying that there was credible evidence linking the Iraqi government to the assassination attempt. The officials, who were not named, provided the newspaper with three elements of that evidence. One key fact, the Post said, was the ease with which the alleged Iraqi assassination team had crossed the border area between Iraq and Kuwait: "U.S. officials said the transit of . . . explosives . . . would have been difficult without official sanction." The newspaper also quoted an official as explaining that the bombs and the detonator recovered in the Iraqi-owned car were "way too sophisticated, involving things too sophisticated, to be just some crazies with a complaint against the president." Finally, the newspaper quoted Clinton Administration officials as saying that they were in the process of tracing the explosives in question "to the source." To further buttress its story, which was splashed across the front page in a banner headline, the Post quoted Mohammed Sabah al-Sabah, the new Kuwaiti Ambassador to Washington, as saying that one of the arrested Iraqis had confessed to being "a colonel in the Iraqi secret intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, stationed in Basra." Each of those assertions has now been shown to be factually incorrect.
The Post article named Berger and two other high-level Clinton Administration officials-R. James Woolsey, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Frank G. Wisner, now an Under-Secretary of Defense-as being among those who advocated "direct retribution" against Iraq. By this time, too, Martin Indyk was hard at work, telling selected journalists, "We've got it"-that is, highly reliable intelligence tying Iraq to a plot against Bush. Indyk also said that Saudi Arabia, which had been the most important American and Kuwaiti ally in the Gulf War, was pressuring the Administration to take harsh action. The Saudi argument to the Clinton Administration, as it was relayed by Indyk, was that "if people think they can get away with this, you'll have no credibility" in the Middle East.
A significant factor in the campaign against Saddam Hussein was simple animosity, stemming from the Iraqi leader's occupation of Kuwait in August of 1990 and his near-suicidal defiance of American pressure, which resulted in the brutal and disastrous Gulf War in early 1991. A former American ambassador in the Middle East recalled his surprise when a colleague, who holds a high post in the Clinton Administration, told him that he had started arguing for retaliation on the day after the first reports of an assassination attempt reached Washington from Kuwait. "I was shocked, because I view him as a normally very responsible and sober person, who understands about power and how to use it," the former ambassador said. "He just hates Saddam-a visceral hatred." Another former senior official said that many officials in the Pentagon and the State Department had become increasingly angry with Iraq in the early months of the Clinton Administration, feeling that Saddam Hussein had been "getting away with things" because of Washington's preoccupation with events in the former Yugoslavia.
The May 8th Washington Post story inevitably led to congressional pressure on the White House. Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, went on NBC's "Meet the Press" on the morning of Sunday, May 9th, and said that the United States "should retaliate" if the evidence cited by the Post was determined to be valid. "We cannot tolerate that kind of an action against a former President of the United States," Hamilton, a political moderate, said. "It's just outrageous."
The official White House view was articulated by Thomas S. Foley, the Democratic Speaker of the House, also on "Face the Nation." Foley urged restraint and caution until there was clear evidence that an assassination attempt had taken place and had been sponsored by Iraq. "It isn't, at least in the public sphere, clear that the evidence is overwhelming or without any ambiguity," he said.
A number of senior White House aides, supporting Foley's view, told me that the President was anything but eager to plunge into a military operation against Iraq without receiving hard evidence and without carefully reviewing his options. "He always wants to see the good and the bad sides of everything," one close associate said. Like any well-trained attorney, the associate added, Clinton wanted to understand "the prosecution case and the defense case." Another Presidential observer, discussing the President's attitude toward the Kuwaiti allegations, noted, "Clinton is always looking at the downside. He's a pol-a domestic-policy wonk, who does not get off on foreign policy. He was worried about what could go wrong." Clinton's approach was reflected in the official White House response to the Washington Post disclosures. "We're still in the middle of the investigation," George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, told reporters.
The President was not alone in his caution. Janet Reno, the Attorney General, also had her doubts. "The A.G. remains skeptical of certain aspects of the case," a senior Justice Department official told me in late July, a month after the bombs were dropped on Baghdad. Ms. Reno had, however, approved the F.B.I. report sent to the White House on June 24th.
Two days after Stephanopoulos made his statement, the President's instinct for caution and deliberateness was challenged by a further leak-this time to the Washington bureau of the Times. On Tuesday, May 11th, the Times, citing "American officials," reported that there was "powerful evidence" pointing to Iraqi sponsorship of the assassination attempt. According to the Times report, federal investigators who had travelled to Kuwait found that components of the car bomb discovered by the Kuwaiti police were "almost exactly the same" as those of Iraqi car bombs recovered by American intelligence during the Gulf War. That assertion, too, was incorrect.
Two weeks later, what amounted to open warfare broke out among various factions in the government on the issue of who had done what in Kuwait. Someone gave a Boston Globe reporter access to a classified C.I.A. study that was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims of an Iraqi assassination attempt. The study, prepared by the C.I.A.'s Counter Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait might have "cooked the books" on the alleged plot in an effort to play up the "continuing Iraqi threat" to Western interests in the Persian Gulf. Neither the Times nor the Post made any significant mention of the Globe dispatch, which had been written by a Washington correspondent named Paul Quinn-Judge, although the story cited specific paragraphs from the C.I.A. assessment. The two major American newspapers had been driven by their sources to the other side of the debate.
Also in late May, the Post obtained a copy of a speech that Martin Indyk delivered before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in which he said that the Clinton Administration's conclusion was that the leadership of Iraq would remain hostile to American interests and aims for the foreseeable future. The Administration does not "seek or expect a reconciliation with Saddam Hussein's regime," Indyk said. Before joining the White House, Indyk had served as executive director of the institute, which was established in 1985, with financial backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This organization is considered the strongest pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
On June 10th, the Post returned anew to the alleged Iraqi plot, reporting once again that "the Clinton Administration has found evidence implicating the Iraqi government in a plot to assassinate former President George Bush." The Post further quoted its sources, described as American officials and senior intelligence analysts, as saying that, despite the consensus on Iraqi involvement, no final judgment would be issued by the government until after the trial of the alleged assassination plotters, which had begun on June 5th in Kuwait.
By late June, the White House had lost any semblance of control over the media debate, and it was widely known among Washington journalists that the F.B.I.'s final report would conclude that Iraq and Saddam Hussein himself were directly involved in the assassination attempt. "FOR THE PRESIDENT, IT'S DECISION TIME ON ATTACKING IRAQ," a Wall Street Journal headline announced on June 23rd. The story stated, correctly, "Within the next few days, a confidential report will hit President Clinton's desk, pushing him toward one of the toughest decisions of his young presidency: whether to order new military action against Iraq." In discussing the President's options, the article noted, "There are few actions against Iraq that would arouse strong domestic opposition, and little reason to think Iraqi air defenses yet pose much of a deterrent." The Times weighed in on the eve of the bombing, with Thomas L. Friedman, its expert on the Middle East, writing that a plot against George Bush and the arrest of Muslim militants accused of plotting terrorist attacks in New York City "are beginning to pose a serious foreign policy question for President Clinton: How long can his Administration get by with responding to these incidents by saying, 'We're looking into it.' "
When Clinton finally acted, on the afternoon of Saturday, June 26th, he was not leading the nation, as was widely assumed and reported, but merely following the path of least bureaucratic and political resistance. He had authorized the bombing the day before, barely twenty-four hours after the well-publicized F.B.I. report arrived in the White House. The President, who had served as Attorney General in Arkansas, and his aides, many of whom were experienced attorneys and experts at evaluating evidence, took the F.B.I.'s assessment at face value, although it was that agency's planning and intelligence which had given the Presidency its worst public moments in the aftermath of the ill-conceived F.B.I. tear-gas assault on the redoubt of the cult leader David Koresh, in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of eighty-six cult members, including twenty-four children.
In a televised speech to the nation on Saturday night, Clinton explained that he had been presented with "compelling evidence that there was in fact a plot to assassinate former President Bush. And that this plot . . . was directed and pursued by the Iraqi intelligence service." The President strongly suggested that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible: "Saddam has repeatedly violated the will and conscience of the international community, but this attempt at revenge by a tyrant against the leader of the world coalition that defeated him in war is particularly loathsome and cowardly. . . . The Iraqi attack against President Bush was an attack against our country and against all Americans."
Clinton's staff, seeking, not unnaturally, to maximize any possible political advantage from the bombing, treated the Tomahawk attack on Baghdad as a personal triumph for the President. Aides told reporters that the President, having made his address and received early damage-assessment reports, watched a movie with his wife, Hillary, and then got a solid eight hours of sleep. The President was said to be "relaxed and calm." On his way to church services the next morning, he expressed regret over the loss of life but added, "I feel quite good about what transpired. I think the American people should feel good." The White House also found cause for celebration in the fact that the Saturday-night bombing had come as a surprise to the media. "ADMINISTRATION FINDS JUST KEEPING A SECRET CAN BE A TRIUMPH," one headline proclaimed. There was, the article said, "a near-defiant sense of pride" among the President's staff, and a "buoyant mood." W. Anthony Lake, the President's national-security adviser, and Sandy Berger, Lake's deputy, were warmly praised for their handling of the operation.
At a background briefing in the White House late on Saturday night, Lake explained that the President had concluded that the failed assassination attempt in Kuwait, though it had taken place in mid-April-two months earlier-amounted to "a real and present danger," and that "if we failed to act and act now, the Iraqis might continue attempting such acts of state-sponsored terrorism." The American missile launchings were initiated, he said, under the self-defense provisions of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which give member nations the right to respond in self-defense to armed attacks. (Lake did not say, however, that most legal authorities note that the threat must be instant and overwhelming and leave no moment for deliberation.) Lake also said that the President had ordered the attack without intending "to pass individual judgment" on the Kuwaitis and Iraqis then being tried for the alleged assassination attempt. He did not try to explain how a Presidential determination that Iraq was guilty of ordering the assassination of George Bush, and the subsequent bombing of Baghdad, could fail to escape the notice of judicial officials in Kuwait.
As the briefing continued, the national-security adviser, accompanied by Philip Heymann, deputy attorney general, and Admiral William Studeman, deputy director of the C.I.A., outlined the "compelling evidence" that sealed the government's case against Iraq. And much of the material provided that night to the press was dramatically made public the next day at the United Nations by Madeleine Albright, the American Ambassador to the U.N.
Lake and his colleagues spoke first about what they said was forensic evidence tying crucial components of the bomb recovered in Kuwait, including its remote-control detonator, to bombs previously recovered by the American intelligence community and known to have been put together by the Iraqi intelligence service. Here Lake was essentially restating what the Times had reported in its May 11th story-that there was unmistakable evidence showing that the components recovered in Kuwait had been built by the same person or persons who built the Iraqi bombs. In other words, the soldering techniques and modifications in the Kuwaiti car bomb-a characteristic way of twisting wires, for example-amounted to a "signature" linking it to a specific designer or technician who had also worked on Iraqi bombs.
Lake and his colleagues then discussed what they said was the second key category of evidence-the suspects themselves. Early in the inquiry, the F.B.I. had sent a team of agents to Kuwait to interview the fourteen Iraqi and Kuwaiti citizens who had been formally charged in the case, and there had been at least one more follow-up visit. The F.B.I. eventually concluded that none of the defendants, including the Iraqi who confessed to having been ordered by Iraqi intelligence agents to kill Bush, had been beaten or in any other way coerced to give evidence. No physical evidence of torture was found.
In an interview in early August at the White House, a senior official told me, "When you listen to them all"-the various defendants-"it clearly establishes that the car went from Basra to Kuwait when Bush was there. I think it is beyond a reasonable doubt that the intent was to kill Bush." Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, is a hundred miles from Kuwait City.
However, other knowledgeable officials in the Clinton Administration, as well as current and former members of the intelligence community, had provided me with information that challenged the official's confident assessment. My examination of what is known about the recovered car bombs and of the F.B.I.'s interviews with the alleged assassins in Kuwait raises fundamental questions concerning the validity of the government's evidence, how prudently and objectively it was handled, and how the President and the men around him-experienced as many of them were in making legal judgments-reached their standard of "reasonable doubt."
The most glaring weakness of the Administration's case is its assertion that the remote-control firing device found in the Kuwaiti car bomb has the same "signature" as previously recovered Iraqi bombs. In making its case, the Administration released a series of color photographs comparing, among other things, the circuit boards of the radio-controlled firing device seized in Kuwait and the circuit boards of what was said to be a similar Iraqi device. The photographs were made public by Ambassador Albright. "Even an untrained eye can see that these are identical except for the serial numbers," she said, holding up one of the photographs of the two devices. "Next, we have a similar comparison of the insides of the two firing devices. . . . As you can see, the selection of the components and the construction techniques in the two devices-including soldering, the use of connectors, and the wiring techniques, et cetera-are also identical."
The Iraqi government heatedly denied the Administration's allegations, but most reporters-and the public-found the photographs, with their obvious similarity, convincing. One notable exception was the editorial page of the Times, which raised questions about the "compelling evidence" cited by Clinton and also about Albright's assurances that it was the "firm judgment" of the C.I.A. that Iraqi intelligence was involved in the alleged assassination attempt. The information Ms. Albright presented "was not conclusive enough for a reasonable citizen to join her in being 'highly confident' that force-rather than criminal trials and diplomatic measures-was the wisest course," the Times noted, and it went on, "Let's hear the evidence, rather than assertions of officials who say they have it."
The Times editorial led to no reassessment by the public or by the newspaper's Washington bureau, whose staff had so avidly reported the firm judgment of some members of the Administration that Iraq had sought to kill former President Bush. There is no published evidence known to me of any effort by the Times to verify independently the Administration's specific claims against Iraq. No reporter, for example, has written of getting in touch with any of the many independent experts in electrical engineering and bomb forensics to ask what they thought of the photographs released by the White House.
When I asked seven such experts about those photographs last summer, they all told me essentially the same thing: the remote-control devices shown in the White House photographs were mass-produced items, commonly used for walkie-talkies and model airplanes and cars, and had not been modified in any significant way. The experts, who included former police and government contract employees and also professors of electrical engineering, agreed, too, that the two devices had no "signatures." They said there was no conceivable way that the Clinton Administration, given the materials made public at the United Nations, could assert that the remote-control devices had been put together by the same Iraqi technician.
The fact that the two devices were similar is simply not that significant, I was told by Donald L. Hansen, a twenty-eight-year veteran of the bomb squad of the San Francisco Police Department. Hansen, who has served as the director of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators, is now an instructor at the State Department's school for foreign police officers, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is widely considered to be one of the top forensics experts in the field. "They're very generic devices," he told me, after analyzing the photographs of the electronic circuit boards. "To establish a signature, you've got to find unique characteristics. It's not the equipment itself-there are millions of them. You can buy instruction manuals"-for the construction of the devices-"in New York and Chicago, and the instructions could be exactly the same. But that doesn't mean that the two were built by the same man. There are no signs of modification. If these circuit boards are what they're hanging their signature issue on, they're really stretching the envelope. All they can say is there's a strong similarity."
Another expert, Paul A. Eden, who is an electrical engineer at the University of Miami, estimated that individual components of the devices were manufactured no later than 1983. He concluded that both mechanisms were mass-produced, most likely in Taiwan, or Japan, or South Korea, and were of a type sold all over the world. "I saw nothing that would make them any different from anything bought off the shelf from any electronics store," he said. "The design is used by everybody in the world. All it does is receive a signal and decode a tone. I can't see anything that would make it say, 'Yes, this was done by the same person.' " Eden, who has nearly forty years of experience in electronics and now runs a satellite field station for the university, suggested that the Clinton Administration had been "grasping at straws" in its presentation at the United Nations. He also said that he objected to the White House's notion, repeatedly expressed by Anthony Lake and others in their briefings and public statements, that the car bomb found in Kuwait was extremely sophisticated. "Anybody with half an ounce of electronics training could have done what they did and make something go boom."
A third expert, Robert H. Shaw, who has worked as a computer engineer and a systems analyst in the "black," or classified, community in Washington, expressed disappointment that the Administration had relied on "signature" to justify the bombing of Iraq. "There's no signature," Shaw told me. "Just a close coincidence that worked real bad for Saddam. You couldn't make a case," he said, referring to the legal implications of a signature finding. "I wouldn't take this to the World Court. They might throw it out and make you pay court costs. I would have just said, 'We got one, and the other guy's looked like it. They're similar enough, so goodbye Saddam.' "
In interviews with me in late July, however, two law-enforcement officials who played important roles in assembling the government's case against Iraq stated emphatically that the standards used for assessing the evidence were the same as those used in criminal investigations and prosecutions. "We had a hands-on examination by our bomb expert," said Neil Gallagher, chief of the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism section, and he went on to say that the bureau had held the expert to the standards that would be used "if he were to testify in court." Similarly, Mark Richard, a deputy assistant attorney general, told me that "the F.B.I. presented its case to Justice as if it were in front of a very skeptical A.U.S.A."-assistant United States attorney.
The problem with such statements is that the investigative findings of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department ended up being exposed only to a political process, with senior White House planners who were worried about domestic reaction, press spin, and international reaction, and were also subjected to pressure from selective leaks to the news media. The far more rigorous procedures associated with the federal-court process-trial by jury and questioning by opposing counsel-were not used. If they had been, the outcome might have been different. In one recent bomb-signature case in which federal bomb experts testified, the results were disastrous for the government's witnesses.
This happened on July 19th, when the signature issue was the focus of a hearing held, with the jury excluded, in the United States District Court trial, in Boston, of Thomas A. Shay, who was accused of conspiring in 1991 to plant a car bomb in an attempt to kill his father; a Boston policeman had been killed while attempting to defuse the device. Shay's co-defendant, Alfred W. Trenkler, had been charged with unlawful possession of an explosive connected with a bombing in 1986. A federal bomb expert from the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testified that he had been able to match the signature of the bomb that Shay was alleged to have planted to the 1986 bomb that Trenkler was alleged to have built. A second A.T.F. witness claimed that a computer analysis of more than fourteen thousand bomb incidents had further established the link between the 1986 and 1991 devices. The defense witness for Shay was Donald Hansen, the former San Francisco bomb-squad officer, and he repeatedly made the point that the A.T.F. forensic experts had emphasized only the similarities between the two devices, ignoring the many differences. Hansen told the court that there were only generic similarities between the two bombs-that his examination found "no particular method of twisting wires or no real distinct technique employed."
In a bench ruling the next morning, Judge Rya W. Zobel said that the government could not put forward any testimony in an attempt to link the 1986 and 1991 bombings. The two devices were similar, "without question, but I am not persuaded that they are identical," Judge Zobel concluded. "That is, I do not think, and find, that it is not so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature."
When I spoke with Nancy Gertner, Shay's attorney, this summer, she recalled that before the judge's ruling there had repeatedly been newspaper stories citing federal officials as saying "that these were signature bombs." She added, "It's very, very frightening that foreign policy is being made on this."
In the spring and summer, I had a series of background conversations with an old friend who is now serving as an intelligence analyst inside the government. The analyst, who has seen much of the classified reporting on the alleged assassination attempt, conceded in our most recent talk that a stringent cross-examination of the F.B.I.'s experts would have uncovered a number of distinctions between the two bombs, the most significant being that the two-hundred-pound car bomb carefully hidden in Kuwait was dramatically different in appearance from all previously known Iraqi car bombs. Most Iraqi car bombs that have been recovered by the American intelligence community are extremely primitive devices-essentially, the analyst said, "sticks of dynamite wrapped together, with a timer and a detonator." The bomb found in Kuwait, he added, used a state-of-the-art plastic explosive that, while safer than dynamite to handle, was far more powerful.
The analyst told me that, nonetheless, he was convinced that the bomb in Kuwait was of the same manufacture as the Iraqi bombs, because they all had the same components. "Why get into signature?" he asked rhetorically. "It's a technical issue, and the people handling it in the White House didn't have the expertise. It's like you and me talking about nuclear physics. We know just enough to endanger ourselves. The White House oversold the signature issue"-in its press briefings. "They didn't understand what they were selling."
I relayed the analyst's complaints to a senior White House official in a telephone conversation in late July, and, during an extended interview a few weeks later, the official acknowledged that he had raised the signature issue anew with the F.B.I. He was subsequently informed, he went on, that "you could not judge signature on the basis of the pictures" that the White House released after the bombing.
"I'm not a forensics expert," the official went on, with a shrug. "At some point, you have to rely on the F.B.I.'s technical expertise. You have to push them hard and probe them about anything that seems to be unclear or uncertain. By the end of their investigation, there was no question in their minds that this car bomb came from Iraqi intelligence." He believed the F.B.I., the official said, and he added that there were aspects of the car bomb and its trigger mechanism that were not made public. When I asked why not, he said, "We're not going to show what parts of their bomb make it similar to bombs coming from Iraqi intelligence. Why let Iraq know where the thumbprint is?"
The F.B.I.'s Neil Gallagher had told me, similarly, "What was made public was not the best case. There are other photographs." He refused to describe the additional evidence, and said that it would be impossible to permit outsiders to view the unpublished photographs or other data.
In subsequent interviews, officials sought to explain Gallagher's cryptic comment by revealing that some of the Iraqi bombs and detonators used in the F.B.I.'s analysis of the Kuwaiti car bomb had not been obtained in Iraq, as had been widely assumed and reported; they had been retrieved by the American intelligence community during a clandestine entry into an Iraqi Embassy in the Middle East during the Gulf War. In addition, the F.B.I. had access to components from other suspected Iraqi bombs that had been recovered in recent years from the Philippines, after an explosion at an American cultural center in Manila, and from Indonesia, where an unexploded bomb was found in a flower pot at the residence of the American Ambassador in Jakarta. The detonators in those devices and in the Kuwaiti car bomb were "put together the same way," one American official said.
Of course, the fact that the Iraqi bombs were clandestinely recovered does not alter the possibility that the various components were similar because they were similarly mass-produced, or rule out the possibility that the car bomb and detonator found in Kuwait were planted there by Kuwaitis. (Iraqi-manufactured bombs and detonators surely were abandoned in large quantities, along with tanks and weapons, after the American liberation of Kuwait in early 1991.) Nor does it have any bearing on the "smoking gun" issue of the bombing of Baghdad.
In fact, an American diplomat who was involved in the discussions of Saddam's role told me in an interview this summer that the linking of high officials in the Iraqi intelligence service to the events in Kuwait was simply "a political judgment," based, in large measure, on the pattern of behavior of the men arrested in the incident. "I don't think Saddam ordered it," the diplomat said, "but it was an Iraqi-intelligence-service attempt to assassinate an American President." Mark Richard also acknowledged, in an interview, that I was in possession of "ninety-nine per cent of the facts." Richard, a distinguished career Justice Department official, who has been assigned to many of the government's most difficult international criminal cases, explained that the final determination of Iraqi complicity in the alleged assassination attempt was a result of "process"-the careful analysis of possible scenarios-and did not stem from any specific information.
Moreover, other current and former high-ranking officials with access to intelligence, whose information has been extremely reliable in the past, specifically told me that the National Security Agency, which is responsible for electronic intelligence, had produced no significant high-level intercepts from Iraq in years. American intelligence experts have concluded that the Reagan Administration's policy of providing satellite and communications intelligence to Iraq in the mid-nineteen-eighties had an unwelcome side effect: the Iraqi intelligence service learned how to hide its important communications from the N.S.A.'s many sensors.
Finally, my old friend inside the intelligence community has repeatedly expressed his amazement at the notion, suggested by the White House, that the F.B.I.'s final report to the President on June 24th contained new and definitive information. "There's a big mystery as to why we finally went Saturday," he said a few days after the bombing. "It's not as if we suddenly had more intelligence driving it. There was nothing else. What we knew Saturday night we knew two months ago."
In essence, the Clinton Administration, by its suggestion of still secret intelligence, is saying "Trust me" in response to the lingering questions and doubts about the forensic evidence linking the Kuwaiti car bomb to Iraq. The Administration is also saying "Trust me" in its assurances that the account provided by the Kuwaiti government was accurate. Fourteen men are now on trial in Kuwait, at least ten of them facing possible death sentences, for their role in the alleged assassination attempt. In late July, the trial proceedings were suspended until the end of October.
There is now, in fact, critical information that is known to the F.B.I. and the White House and has not been made public: that there was a crucial four-day gap between the arrest of the alleged assassins and their first mention of a car bomb and a plot to kill an American President.
The key members of the alleged Iraqi assassination team were seized while they were walking in the desert on the evening of Thursday, April 15th, one day before George Bush concluded his visit to Kuwait. Some of them had spent as many as three days roaming through Kuwait City, and had spent their nights in different apartments. The suspects had smuggled whiskey across the border, and there had evidently been much drinking during that time. No alcohol is sold legally in Kuwait, a Muslim state, and there is a booming black market between Iraq and Kuwait; there is also a steady flow of people and vehicles-all illicit-between Basra and Kuwait City. At least six of the seventeen men initially arrested had simply been ferried across the border, for a fee, and were en route to visit friends and relatives in Kuwait. Such trips were routine before the Gulf War. Four days after the men were jailed, according to their defense attorneys, one of them, Wali al-Ghazali, told the Kuwaiti authorities that he had been sent into Kuwait by Iraqi intelligence to kill Bush. A second prisoner, Ra'ad al-Assadi, testified that he knew that their car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, had been carrying a bomb. It was only at that point that the Kuwaiti authorities searched the Land Cruiser, which was in police custody, and found the bomb. Clinton Administration officials acknowledged that the long delay between the arrests and the recovery of the bomb lent weight to the possibility of Kuwaiti duplicity-something that had been encountered more than once in the past. "It'd be foolish to suggest that these were issues that didn't occur to us," Mark Richard said. "We played it against all scenarios: Did Kuwait do it? Make it up? Did Saddam do it? Was it some rogue operation? This was not a rush to judgment." In the end, it was decided that Kuwait had more to lose by falsifying an assassination plot-and being exposed in doing so-than Saddam Hussein did by sending in a team of amateurs who might succeed or might not.
Saddam has repeatedly made moves against his best interests-his decision to invade Kuwait was one of them-and nothing can be ruled out. Yet the White House, in working through its scenarios, apparently did not include the fact that by mid-April Saddam was engaged in desperate negotiations with the United Nations concerning the U.N. ban on importing Iraqi oil. The Saddam regime was bankrupt, and could not feed its people without hard currency and credits obtained from foreign oil sales.
Another factor, also ignored in the White House deliberations, was President-elect Clinton's assertion, made shortly before he took office, that he-unlike George Bush-was not "obsessed" with Saddam Hussein. In an interview on January 13th with the Times, Clinton said that he could imagine maintaining a normal diplomatic relationship with the Iraqi leader. "All he has to do is change his behavior," Clinton said. He subsequently disavowed his statements, but the C.I.A.'s Counter Terrorism Center, in its debunking of the alleged assassination attempt, reported, nonetheless, that the Kuwaiti government had expressed "frustration" because of the failure of the Clinton Administration and its European allies to take a tougher line against Iraq. The Kuwaiti leadership also feared, the C.I.A. concluded, as cited in the Boston Globe, that Clinton might abandon Kuwait in favor of better relations with Saddam Hussein. Kuwait, the report said, "has a clear incentive to play up the continuing Iraqi threat."
Also open to question is the F.B.I.'s conclusion that none of the defendants were beaten or coerced after their arrest. The F.B.I. rested its case on the fact that its agents did not personally see any signs of mistreatment. No medical examinations of the men were conducted, officials conceded, nor were lie-detector tests used. The F.B.I.'s assessment may be correct, but it has to be weighed against other evidence.
On July 3rd, the fourth day of the trial in Kuwait City, Ali Khdair Baddai, who, at seventy-three, was the oldest defendant, testified that he had been severely beaten after his arrest, according to the German news agency D.P.A. In a dispatch filed with D.P.A., a freelance journalist named Miriam Amie, the only American reporter who has attended the trial regularly thus far, quoted Baddai as stating that when he was arrested the police "hit me in the head and on my side," and going on to say, "I was bleeding over my eyes. They beat me and somebody kicked me in the side." On being asked by the presiding judge why he had not complained earlier about the beatings, Baddai responded, according to Amie, "Every day I wanted to complain to you. But then I said no." Asked by the judge why he had confessed to smuggling, he said, "Since the police beat me, I told them to write anything and I would sign it." Despite his signed guilty plea, he publicly proclaimed his innocence from the witness stand. In a subsequent interview, Amie told me that Wali al-Ghazali, who has repeatedly told the court and the F.B.I. that he was ordered by Iraqi intelligence to assassinate Bush, showed up on the first day of the trial, in June, with "a fresh scar on his forehead and a blackened nail on his thumb," and she added, "No one could talk to him." Ra'ad al-Assadi, one of the two major defendants in the case (the other being al-Ghazali), told the media after Baddai's testimony that he, too, had been beaten.
The defendants' claims were repeated by Najeeb I. al-Waqayan, the attorney for two of them. "Definitely they were beaten," al-Waqayan told me during an interview in Kuwait in July. "This is the way of the Kuwaiti police." Al-Waqayan, who studied law at San Diego State University and is one of three privately retained defense attorneys in the case (the other lawyers were retained by the state), also said that he had been unable to confer privately with his clients until the first day of the trial.
Questions about the use of torture in Kuwaiti prisons and fair trials in Kuwaiti courts have been raised often since the end of the Gulf War by two of the world's leading human-rights groups-Amnesty International, whose headquarters are in London, and Human Rights Watch, of New York. In November of 1991, Amnesty International issued a statement saying that it had "received reports that many of the people being detained by the Kuwaiti authorities had been ill-treated and tortured," and adding, "Amnesty International delegates had personally interviewed and medically examined prisoners who bore signs of torture." The group has issued a number of special reports about the trial of the alleged assassins, noting that if they are convicted "twelve of the defendants may be sentenced to death," and that "the organization is also concerned that the necessary measures to protect the defendants from torture or ill-treatment during interrogation may not have been taken, and that 'confessions' extracted under duress may later be used to convict them." Similarly, Human Rights Watch, in its World Report roundup for 1992, concluded that "arbitrary arrest and detention are still prevalent" in Kuwait, and "torture remains common."
Finally, in interviews, former American diplomatic officials and intelligence officers who had served in the Middle East expressed amusement and amazement at the F.B.I.'s categorical assurances that none of the defendants were tortured. "Either the investigators were idiots or they were lying," said James E. Akins, a former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who is now a consultant in the Middle East and elsewhere. "It boggles the imagination. There's no way the Kuwaitis would not have tortured them. That's the way the Kuwaitis are, as anybody who knows the Kuwaitis or the Middle East can tell you."
Precisely what did happen in Kuwait during George Bush's ceremonial visit remains in dispute, with senior officials in the White House, the Justice Department, and the F.B.I. acknowledging that the assassination plot had something of an Abbott-and-Costello quality. "You could say these guys were really not that well trained," one counterintelligence official told me, with a laugh. "Not exactly like Chuck Norris coming across the border. More like 'The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.' "
The story begins with Wali al-Ghazali, a male nurse from the Iraqi holy city of An Najaf, who testified in the trial that he had been approached in early April-roughly a week before the scheduled Bush visit-by an Iraqi intelligence agent while at work and pressured to take part in the assassination mission against Bush. The next day, he was taken to a garage and given a briefing on the car bomb and its remote-control components, and was also provided with a suicide belt and a photograph of a building at Kuwait University where Bush was expected to make an appearance. In case all else failed, al-Ghazali said, he was to put on the belt, get as close to Bush as possible, and detonate it-blowing up both the former President and himself.
His chief collaborator, al-Ghazali testified, was Ra'ad al-Assadi, who was the owner of a coffee shop in Basra and an acknowledged longtime smuggler of alcohol, arms, and other goods into Kuwait City. Al-Assadi was also one of many people in the Basra area who operated what amounted to an informal bus service across the surprisingly open border between Iraq and Kuwait. A round trip-usually for a weekend-cost each passenger about three hundred dollars. Being a smuggler, al-Assadi, not unexpectedly, knew many Iraqi police and intelligence officials, and he testified that he was paid about four hundred and twenty dollars in advance and given merchandise-five cases of whiskey and six kilos of what he was told was hashish-in return for participation in the al-Ghazali mission. (Kuwaiti police later determined that the "hashish" was of dubious quality and had no resale value.) Al-Assadi testified that he had met with Mohammed Jawad, an Iraqi intelligence agent, in his coffee shop, and had been provided with ten sticks of explosives and a bag of weapons and detonators. The bombs, Jawad told him, were to be used against targets of opportunity in Kuwait City-automobile showrooms, marketplaces, and the like-in an attempt to disrupt the Bush visit and embarrass the Kuwaiti government. Al-Assadi further testified that Jawad had offered him an American-made four-wheel-drive Jeep for the mission, but that he rejected it as substandard. Instead, he drove his own car, an eight-passenger van, into Kuwait. The van turned out to have been stolen from Kuwait City during the Iraqi occupation, and had Kuwaiti tags.
Al-Assadi and al-Ghazali were the only defendants to plead guilty in connection with the alleged plot; the two men were named in a six-hundred-page indictment, along with twelve others, that accused them of car theft and of working with the Iraqi regime, entering Kuwait illegally, transporting weapons and alcohol, and plotting to kill former President Bush. The other defendants in the case have consistently denied any knowledge of or connection with the alleged plot.
There remains a serious conflict between the testimony of the Kuwaiti-and American-government's two star witnesses. Al-Ghazali claimed, in his confession, that al-Assadi knew everything there was to know at the outset; before taking off for Kuwait, the two men had met in a parking lot in Basra to talk over the plan to murder George Bush. But al-Assadi, in his testimony, insisted that no such information had been shared with him. He knew nothing of any plan to assassinate Bush. "I am a smuggler," he said.
The account gets much murkier at this point: there is no evidence that any of the alleged assassins took any overt steps to deploy any bombs. Sometime before dawn on April 13th, al-Ghazali and al-Assadi, accompanied by two Iraqi accomplices and six paying passengers, took off for Kuwait in al-Assadi's van and in al-Ghazali's Toyota Land Cruiser, which was then allegedly carrying the Iraqi-made car bomb. They crossed the border near Salmi, where Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia meet. The tristate-border area is the site of a flourishing black market. Al-Assadi claimed that once he was across the border he buried some of the bombs in the sand and threw away the bag of detonators and weapons.
At some point, al-Assadi and al-Ghazali decided to leave their paying passengers, who included al-Assadi's uncle and a cousin by marriage, and parked the van in the desert. The uncle refused to stay behind and came along with al-Assadi and al-Ghazali and the accomplices as they drove off in the Land Cruiser to look for sleeping accommodations. They made their way to the sheep farm of Bader al-Shimmari, a known smuggler, with a police record, and hid the whiskey, some weapons, and their vehicle in a sheep pen. Other members of the al-Shimmari family showed up, along with the passengers left in the van, and two days and nights of smoking, drinking, womanizing, driving around, and telephoning ensued. (Everyone in Kuwait has a car telephone, it appears.) According to al-Ghazali's account, he spent one of those nights in the apartment of a friend in Kuwait City, twenty miles to the east, watched a television report about Bush's planned visit to Kuwait University, and asked to be taken there. No one offered to take him, and Bush never went to the main campus of the university anyway. That act-asking for help in casing the joint-was as close as anyone came to an overt act aimed at assassinating Bush. There was also no attempt to plant a bomb in an auto showroom, a marketplace, or anywhere else in Kuwait during the Bush visit. Al-Ghazali testified that he did not even know the location of Kuwait University-allegedly the main target of opportunity in the Bush assassination plot. Al-Assadi, he told the court, "was supposed to show me how to get there."
The al-Shimmari farm-long suspected of being a depot for smugglers and their goods-was under round-the-clock surveillance by the Kuwaiti police. The police waited less than a day before seizing the two vehicles parked there-one of which, they would later learn, contained the car bomb. At some point, according to the testimony of al-Ghazali, he got rid of his suicide belt in the desert. Al-Ghazali, al-Assadi, and at least two other Iraqis, unable to get to their cars and whiskey in the surrounded sheep pen, stole a white Mercedes, apparently thinking that it would eventually get them back to Basra. They filled the car's tank with the wrong fuel, and it broke down, forcing the men to begin walking toward the Iraqi border. They were spotted by Kuwaiti citizens-walking in the desert is highly unusual-and the police were notified. The police did nothing. More citizens made calls, and the police finally began tracking the Iraqis, who were seized without a struggle on April 15th. Eleven others, including five members of the al-Shimmari family, had been arrested a day earlier. The Kuwaiti government-to the acute embarrassment of police officials-later handed out cash awards to those citizens who reported the intruders.
Complicating the basic confusion of the various stories, in which defendant contradicted defendant, was a claim by the Kuwaiti government that it had known of the assassination attempt for more than a month. That claim was made on the second day of the trial, by Police Colonel Abdul Samad al-Shatti. He told the court that the police had learned in mid-March, from "a secret source inside Iraq," that some Iraqi "terrorists" were plotting to infiltrate Kuwait and plant bombs. No evidence to support that claim has been made public, and no warnings were given by Kuwait at the time either to George Bush or to the Clinton Administration. Furthermore, a former high-ranking Kuwaiti military officer assured me during an interview in Kuwait that there had been no significant penetration of Iraqi intelligence before the Bush visit. Colonel al-Shatti's testimony, the Kuwaiti officer explained, had been concocted out of embarrassment, after public criticism of the inept performance of the police in arresting the alleged plotters.
The C.I.A., in the Counter Terrorism Center report obtained by the Boston Globe, noted that its investigators had been informed by Kuwaiti security officials of the infiltration of a smuggling ring-clearly tied to the al-Shimmari family-that had been transporting weapons and other goods from Iraq to Kuwait early in the year. C.I.A. analysts, in attempting to explain the origins of the alleged assassination plot, theorized that the Kuwaiti government "may have then decided to claim this [smuggling] operation was directed against Bush."
One American counterintelligence official, on being asked about the abject performance of the alleged assassination team, conceded, "I don't think their heart was in what they were doing. So it might not have been the crack front-line Republican Guard"-Iraq's best-trained military force-"but their mission was to try and get a car bomb as close as possible to kill Bush. They weren't highly motivated, and they weren't real careful, and I think they performed their duty like the White House staff performs its."
Other officials, including members of the White House staff and the Justice Department's Mark Richard, have repeatedly pointed out that Wali al-Ghazali, in private interviews with the F.B.I., continued to maintain that he was recruited by Iraqi intelligence and sent into Kuwait to kill George Bush. They have further asserted that C.I.A. analysts have been able to verify al-Ghazali's descriptions of Iraqi intelligence facilities in Basra, and have apparently corroborated his identification of some known Iraqi intelligence personnel. But these officials have also acknowledged that, since al-Ghazali is facing a death sentence, he could obviously testify-as one intelligence official put it-"to being the Pope." And they concede that the Kuwaiti officials have been unable to recover the suicide belt that al-Ghazali claimed he discarded in the desert. The bombs, detonators, and weapons allegedly thrown away by al-Assadi have not been found, either. "Yes, some elements are extremely amateurish," Mark Richard says. "But others are not." He argues that Iraqi intelligence had "nothing to lose" by using the al-Ghazali group. "It's a win-win situation. What are these guys going to give up"-if they're captured. "The operations of the Iraqi intelligence service in Basra? They don't know it." Anyway, Richard says, the operation was obviously set up to kill al-Ghazali and the other members of the assassination team who carried out their orders and detonated the bomb.
In interviews over the summer, many past and present American intelligence officials expressed little surprise that the Clinton Administration had predicated the bombing of Baghdad on such conflicting and dubious evidence. One C.I.A. analyst explained, "Of course nobody wants to say, 'There's nothing to it, Mr. President,' especially when other guys are pushing it. The President asks the intelligence analysts for the bottom line: Is this for real or not? You can't really lose by saying yes." That hard-line attitude-"hanging tough" in a crisis-has marked many of America's intelligence failures since the beginning of the Cold War.
Thus, on a Saturday in June, the President and his advisers could not resist proving their toughness in the international arena. If they had truly had full confidence in what they were telling the press and the public about Saddam Hussein's involvement in a plot to kill George Bush, they would almost certainly have ordered a far fiercer response than they did. As it was, confronted with evidence too weak to be conclusive but, in their view, perhaps not weak enough to be dismissed, they chose to fire missiles at night at an intelligence center in the middle of a large and populous city.
"What you're trying to do is go after the people responsible," Secretary of Defense Les Aspin told reporters at a Pentagon briefing after the bombing. There was no chance that Saddam Hussein would be inside the intelligence complex at the time of the attack, he said, "but it's like any intelligence building." He went on, "You've got people who are there twenty-four hours watching communications. You presumably might have some people in there who are involved in maintenance, and cleanup crews of one kind or another. I wouldn't want to guess a number."
Anthony Lake, in his briefing that night, explained, in language eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam War, that the bombing of Baghdad "is an action, I hope, that will potentially save many Muslim as well as non-Muslim lives, both in the Middle East and elsewhere." It is no longer quite permissible to speak of destroying villages in order to save them, but maintenance men and cleanup crews had better beware.
----
US hardline on Iraq leaves full-scale invasion a 'hair-trigger' away
Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill, and Ian Black in Brussels
Thursday October 3, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,803471,00.html
Washington last night revealed its intention to use UN weapons inspections as a possible first step towards a military occupation of Iraq by sending in troops, sealing off "exclusion zones" and creating secure corridors throughout the country.
In a leaked proposal for a UN resolution drafted by the US with help from British officials, the Bush administration is seeking to transform the inspections process into a coercive operation. The resolution would place a full-scale invasion of Iraq on a hair trigger, authorising UN member states "to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security" if Iraq does so much as make an omission in the weapons inventories it presents to the security council.
Weapons inspectors would operate out of bases inside Iraq, where they would be under the protection of UN troops. UN forces or the forces of a member state would enforce no-fly and no-drive zones around a suspected weapons site, preventing anything being removed before inspection.
Diplomats at the UN said there was no doubt that US troops would play a leading role in any such enforcement, allowing the Pentagon to deploy forces inside Iraq even before hostilities got under way.
The release of the draft helped Washington regain momentum in security council talks a day after Iraq took the initiative by agreeing to inspections under existing UN guidelines. That agreement was welcomed by France and Russia, but dismissed as empty by the US and Britain. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, called the existing guidelines "defective".
The resolution will be debated over the next few days among the permanent five security council members. President George Bush's negotiating position was bolstered yesterday when the House of Representatives agreed to a war powers resolution handing him open-ended authority to take military action against Iraq.
The Senate, where there was tougher opposition to such a blanket authorisation, was reported to be moving towards support of the White House line.
Under the US draft, security council member states could send their own inspectors into Iraq to operate alongside the official UN teams and these extra inspectors would have the "same rights and protections accorded other members of the team". Member states could also "recommend" to the UN teams which sites to search and how to do it. Iraqi officials could be taken out of the country, along with their families, for questioning, in order to remove the fear of Iraqi government reprisals.
The Iraqi deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, said there was no need for a new resolution and that the existing resolutions were good enough for inspectors to do their job.
John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington military thinktank, said the resolution was worded in such a way that Iraq was almost certain to reject it, even if the alternative was invasion.
"I could never imagine Iraq agreeing to this. If you're going to be invaded you might as well make the invading force shoot their way in. It's the sort of proposal meant to be rejected," Mr Pike said.
British officials said the draft represented more of a discussion paper for the five permanent members than a formal document to be circulated within the full security council. British experts worked alongside their US counterparts at the state department in the early stages of its drafting, but it was then handed to the White House and the Pentagon, who added some of its tougher elements.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "We are not going to comment until final resolutions are published."
But it was clear that London was uneasy with some items in the draft, particularly the use of troops to quarantine suspect sites and to guard the inspectors' routes to the sites. One British official pointed out that it was put within square brackets and could be jettisoned later.
The intention behind the clause, the official said, was to avoid the situation under earlier inspection regimes whereby "inspectors were coming in the front door and kit was moving out the back."
Further anxiety about the US position came from Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for external relations. In a speech in Chicago today hewill say: "If the US were to fall prey to the temptation to act alone and outside the framework of international order, even for the best of motives, it would be setting off down a very dangerous path."
Diplomats in New York and Washington said it was clear there was a split between the state department and the Bush administration's hawks over how far the US should compromise, particularly over the threat of force.
The French have proposed an alternative resolution, which would make inspections tougher, but omits the authorisation of military action in the event of Iraqi intransigence or evasion, deferring such a decision to a later resolution.
Resolution main points:
· The US (as a permanent member of the UN security council) can ask to be present in any inspection team and thus gain access to any part of the country
· The inspectors can set up bases throughout the country. They will be accompanied at those bases by soldiers under the UN banner sufficient to protect them
· The UN will have the right to declare no-fly, no-drive and exclusion zones, ground and air transit corridors, to be enforced either by the UN or by member states which could include the US
· Iraq must agree to free and unrestricted landing of aircraft, including unmanned spy planes
· The UN can take anyone it wishes to interview out of Iraq, along with his or her family
· Any false information provided by Iraq or any failure to comply with the resolution would automatically entitle member states to use all necessary means to restore international peace
----
US Strikes Southern Iraq Air Defense Center-Military
Reuters
Thursday, October 3, 2002; 10:21 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37403-2002Oct3?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and British warplanes patrolling a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq attacked an Iraqi military air defense center southeast of Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
The strike was launched at 4:30 a.m. EDT and at 12:30 p.m. in Iraq against an air defense and operations center near Tallil, about 160 miles southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. Central Command said in a release from its Tampa, Florida, headquarters.
The command said the strike was in response to attempts to shoot down the warplanes with both anti-aircraft missiles and artillery.
A Pentagon spokesman said the target was a military communications hub for radar surveillance and anti-aircraft missile sites in the southern no-fly zone.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last week that he had ordered U.S. aircraft to strike at more "fixed" air defense targets such as buildings and command and control centers in response to attempts to shoot down the patrolling American and British jets.
There have now been 46 strikes this year by U.S. and British aircraft policing two no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq set up after the 1991 Gulf War. Thirty-six of those have come in the southern zone.
The frequency of the air strikes against Iraq has fluctuated over the decade since the Gulf War, but they have increased sharply in recent months as speculation has grown that President Bush might order an invasion to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.
The no-fly zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were imposed to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from possible attacks by the Iraqi government.
"Today's strike came after Iraqi air defenses fired anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at Coalition aircraft in the Southern No-Fly Zone," the Florida-based Central Command said in a statement.
"Coalition strikes in the no-fly zones are executed as a self-defense measure in response to Iraqi hostile threats and acts against coalition forces and their aircraft."
The last strike in the southern no-fly zone was against a military mobile radar near Al Kut on Tuesday.
------
What We Don't Know . . .
By Christine Gosden and Mike Amitay
Thursday, October 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35621-2002Oct2?language=printer
The serious and immediate risks posed by Iraq's chemical and biological weapons are largely being ignored in the debate over the use of military force to change the regime in Iraq. U.S. officials are not preparing for the lethal mix of agents that Saddam Hussein has used and might use again; they are not taking into account his interest in causing long-term harm as well as short-term lethality. Iraq's past use of such weapons has not been adequately studied, and potential victims among the local population are not being offered even the simplest measures of protection.
President Bush, in his Sept. 12 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, said that the Iraqi regime attacked 40 Iraqi villages, as well as Iranian troops, with chemical weapons. In fact, colleagues in Iraqi Kurdistan have documented more than 200 separate attacks from April 1987 to October 1988. Hundreds of thousands of people were directly exposed to unconventional weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents delivered by aerial bombs, artillery shells and rockets. In addition to direct exposure, civilians without protective means were further damaged through contact with contaminated food, milk, water and environment.
Currently, preparedness exercises for weapons of mass destruction depict single, easily identifiable weapons, counteracted by rapid, effective responses that minimize immediate deaths from infections, nerve agents or radiation poisoning. The predicted aftermath of exposure is a rapid return to normality without serious long-term health consequences. But Iraq's strategy, as revealed by the use of weapons against Kurds and Iranians and in stockpiled weapons found by the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), has been far more complex than the "one weapon-one attack" scenario. Using mixtures of weapons is a powerful conflict strategy against both civilian and military populations, as toxic nerve agents (VX, sarin) can cause immediate death while genomic damage caused by agents such as aflatoxin (a powerful DNA-altering mutagen) can cause cancers and birth defects long after original exposure. When UNSCOM identified Scud payloads with VX mixed with aflatoxin, its officials questioned why Iraq would weaponize an agent that "will not kill on the battlefield, but will prevent a lieutenant from becoming a colonel." UNSCOM also reported Iraq's development in 1987 of radiological weapons with short half-lives calculated to contaminate large areas and cause long-term genetic damage yet be virtually undetectable after a few months. Mixtures of weapons of mass destruction increase the risk of serious medical effects, complicate detection and make it difficult to protect against all the immediate and long-term medical effects of attacks. They also increase the difficulties of decontaminating people, clothing, environment, food and water and make it difficult for detection systems to identify levels of danger.
The ability of such weapons to cause long-term genetic effects (genocide) may appear to be a secondary outcome to direct killing and terror, yet both were highly desirable to the Iraqi regime. The majority of those exposed have not died, but survivors are at risk of cancers and effects on the central nervous, cardiac and reproductive systems, depending on the agent and route of exposure. The million victims of mustard agent in World War I and the many thousands involved in the manufacture of poison gas in World War II suffered severe health effects because of the failure to recognize and treat long-term health problems resulting from exposure.
Hardly a news cycle passes without the phrase "Saddam Hussein gassed his own people" being used to justify the change of an evil regime. Yet little attention has been paid to those people's health problems. The result undermines humanitarian principles and neglects the protection of our own people. Critical questions remain: Which populations are at risk from Iraqi weapons threats? Who is at risk after exposure to these weapons? Who dies? Who survives? How can civilian and military populations best be protected from exposure or have exposures minimized to aid survival?
It remains unclear whether the Iraqi attacks were intended to test newly developed chemical, biological and radiological weapons on defenseless Kurdish civilians, to exact revenge against sympathizers with Iran, or as a genocidal means of ethnic cleansing. It seems incomprehensible that information derived from environmental studies and research on the consequences to human populations of exposure to unconventional weapons has not been factored into our assessments of the risks of conflict involving Iraq.
The 22 million people of Iraq, whom the U.S. and British governments seek to enlist as allies against Saddam Hussein, are among the populations at greatest risk of Iraq's current weapons threats. Military action against Iraq, without providing prior protection, puts people at great risk. The immediacy with which resources in the United States can be mobilized to distinguish between indigenous West Nile virus and malaria and diseases resulting from bioweapons threats is in marked contrast to the lack of scientific resources for those in closest proximity to Hussein's weapons. So why not respond positively to requests from Kurdish officials seeking protective means for their vulnerable communities? Substantial protection could be provided through relatively low-cost investments in public education campaigns, protective clothing, vaccines, antibiotics, bleach distribution, health and environmental monitoring, resources for testing and relevant training.
The Kurdish people are witnesses to what the world can expect from the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons despite international conventions and treaties meant to prevent such misdeeds. They have had chemical and biological weapons used against them both covertly and in open aggression. They have experienced deaths, long-term suffering, vicious cancers and birth defects. Yet their experiences and suffering have for the most part been ignored, and their plight has gone unheeded. Novel methods of deploying weapons of mass destruction, including land mines, hand grenades, aerial spray tanks and clandestine delivery, make everyone more vulnerable. It is immoral as well as self-defeating to identify a population at risk, cite its exposure to unconventional weapons as a reason for military intervention and not take steps to treat and protect these people.
Christine Gosden is a professor of medical genetics at the University of Liverpool in England. Mike Amitay is executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli official denies report that Mossad followed 9/11 terrorists
By Agencies and Ha'aretz Service
03/10/2002
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=215843&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon on Thursday rejected a report published by the German newspaper Die Zeit, according to which Israeli Mossad agents tracked the perpetrators of the September 11 terror attacks for an extended period of time, and passed over information on them to the CIA and the U.S. administration.
Ayalon said in an interview on Army Radio that there were no Mossad agents operating in the United States.
According to the Die Zeit report, which is to be published Friday, the CIA ignored the information on the terrorists and deported the Mossad agents.
The agents rented an apartment in Florida in December 2000, close to the apartments of Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi, both of whom were aboard the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.
According to the paper, the agents followed Atta and al Shehhi, discovered that they were taking flying lessons at the Florida Airman flight school and passed the information on to the U.S. administration.
----
An Israeli's Sorrowful Rule Over a Sullen Nablus
New York Times
October 3, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/international/middleeast/03MIDE.html
NABLUS, West Bank, Oct. 2 - The Israeli colonel, the new master of this bruised Palestinian city, ordered his jeep to the curb today and leapt out to intercept two Palestinian teenagers walking by. He wanted to know where they were coming from, what they had in their book bags, what their identification cards revealed.
"These are two innocent boys coming home from school," he reported, climbing back into the jeep. "How will you know if you don't check them? How will they not hate you if you check them?"
"This," he continued, "is the daily dilemma, not of a brigade commander, but of a soldier. There is no solution."
Lacking a solution to that dilemma, the colonel, the commander of the infantry brigade that is now warden to this city of 200,000, summed up the high price he is demanding of all Nablus for any violence planned by some of its residents: "They will suffer until they understand," he said, arguing that the society itself was complicit in terrorism. "My job is to stop suicide bombers."
It has been just over 100 days since Israel, after a suicide bomber killed 19 people on a Jerusalem bus, seized control of Nablus, along with most of the rest of the West Bank not already under its command. It acted under a new policy of taking back Palestinian-controlled territory "as long as terror continues."
Israeli officials say that suicide bombers and bad Palestinian leadership have left them no choice. "When they will say `enough,' they can live in peace and quiet," the colonel said. Palestinians say that Israel is provoking violence and seeking to destroy their governing institutions, economy, and dream of nationhood.
Nowhere has the new military control been more stringent than here, the Palestinian financial capital, which Israeli officials now call the center of Palestinian terrorism. A dismal status quo has settled over Nablus. "Life here is miserable," the colonel said. "This is the price. They went back more than 20 years."
In an effort to explain its mission in Nablus, the Israeli Army invited three foreign journalists, including an American, to accompany the colonel today on a tour. It asked at the end of the tour that the commander not be identified by name.
No successful Palestinian attack has originated here in two months, the colonel said, a record he attributes to the pervasive Israeli military presence rather than to a collapse in militant motivation. He said his men had stopped more than 15 suicide bombers and uncovered five weapons laboratories.
At times, the commander, a lean 40-year-old with a shaved head and wraparound sunglasses, seemed to suggest that motivation may have increased, so far. "When you look at this through Palestinian eyes, you can understand why they hate us so much," he said, watching other schoolchildren pick their way around a tank and soldiers in battle gear.
Asked how he thought continued military pressure would change that attitude, the commander, a recent graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, spoke of long-term social shifts, of a new Palestinian generation educated for peace, not violence.
For now, the army has cut Nablus off from the surrounding villages, and it has sliced the city itself in half, throwing up head-high berms and placing patrols of soldiers and armored vehicles across the main roads. Most days, the city is under curfew. The army enforces the curfew intermittently, unexpectedly, abruptly sending tanks storming downtown. Commerce has resumed, at an irregular trickle; schooling was conducted furtively, in home, until the army permitted most schools to reopen a few days ago.
Palestinians call the situation worse than before the Oslo peace accords, which prompted Israel over the last decade to cede control of some areas, like Nablus, to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Before Oslo, the Israelis also bore responsibility for education and other aspects of civil administration, tasks it now leaves to a patchwork of nonprofit organizations and staggering Palestinian institutions.
In the Balata refugee camp in Nablus early this evening, hours after the Israeli army tour ended, dozens of men and boys rushed up to scan a list stretching across 11 pages, taped to a storefront. Posted by a United Nations relief agency, it showed who was eligible for how much relief for damage done to their homes or livelihoods by the latest Israeli incursions into the camp. The amounts were generally $50 to $60, sometimes as high as $200 - never enough, one man grumbled.
Ghassan W. Shakah, the city's mayor, is praised by Israeli officials as a "positive" force. He said he opposed suicide bombing. But he scoffed at the idea that making life miserable would put a stop to it.
"We have to think about the logic," he said. "The people like me, who are 50 to 60 years old, when you put pressure on them, they use their minds. But when you put pressure on 17-, 18-year-old boys, you create bitterness and anger."
"I don't believe this is pressure to calm down," he said. "This is pressure to build a bomb and commit suicide." That view was echoed by young people interviewed here today.
To the mayor, the source of Palestinian violence was Israeli occupation, embodied in the new military presence and in the settlements spreading over the nearby hills.
Mayor Shakah, who dreamed just three years ago that his ancient home, built by Romans by the remains of a Canaanite city, would rank with Paris, London or Washington, says he now spends his time negotiating with the army to permit utility workers to move about to fix power lines or to permit trucks to pick up the tons of garbage generated here each day.
He said he was cutting taxes and utility fees by 30 percent across the board in hope that more people would pay them. "It's a disaster," he said of the Israeli operation. "Our society is destroyed."
Two 10-year-old boys were killed by Israeli gunfire in separate incidents on Monday, and an Israeli soldier was shot dead by Palestinians. Yet there has been little armed resistance to this Israeli operation, compared to the fierce gun battles that marked an incursion here this spring. Then, in about a month, 81 Palestinians died. So far in this operation, the mayor said, 10 or 11 Palestinians have been killed.
Along garbage-strewn streets, their surfaces scored or crushed by tank treads, relentless life is finding its way back, through the chinks, to the surface. With the tanks and soldiers out of sight, shopkeepers roll up their shutters and trade resumes. Muhammad Saed, 69, a barber, said he had managed 3 haircuts today at about $3 apiece, compared with 12 to 20 before, when villagers could still reach Nablus. Several of his mirrors had been shattered or holed by gunfire.
Some taxis ply the streets, dropping passengers to walk around the berms and catch another ride on the far side. Some trucks are permitted past the checkpoint into the city, then are repeatedly stopped and checked again once inside.
The Israeli colonel said that even as he worked to make life hard here, he was also softening the blows by letting schools and factories reopen.
He described a four-part strategy to choke what he called terrorism's "bottlenecks": stopping money from reaching terrorist groups; blocking potential ingredients for weapons, including agricultural products like fertilizer; pressuring the families of those suspected of planning attacks by visiting them at night, arresting some members and threatening destruction of homes; and pressuring the entire society.
"Just like any other war, this is not a clean war," he said. "This is a dirty war. You cannot judge it in humanitarian terms."
At times, the colonel sounded regretful, as when he watched a group of schoolgirls scurry away across a blasted, rubble-strewn landscape. "You see those girls - they are frightened to death," he said. "See how they run. They can't go home because I'm standing here." He said he would not ask his troops to check them, to avoid raising the tension here, and he quickly climbed back into his jeep and moved on.
But the commander envisioned no prompt end to the struggle. "We're in the middle of a hundred-years' war," he said. "That's what I tell my soldiers."
--------
Israeli Troops Rehearse Arafat Expulsion
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-arafat-exile.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops have rehearsed a military operation to expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat by air to a distant country, an Israeli newspaper said Thursday.
Israeli security sources confirmed to Reuters that a mock operation took place several weeks ago, but did not give details.
Palestinian officials said the report showed Israel's true intentions for exiling the Palestinian leader who was once a partner to peace negotiations and is now largely confined to his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The daily Maariv said the operation called for whisking Arafat by helicopter to a ``distant and isolated location.'' Local television reports said the country could be Libya, or another Arab state with which Israel has no ties.
Israel's politicians concluded it would not be possible for diplomatic reasons to spirit Arafat across the border to neighboring Jordan, while Lebanon and European countries were ruled out also, the report said.
``This is an evil idea and just reflects the true intentions of the Israeli government...to destroy the peace process,'' chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters.
He urged the international community ``to intervene immediately to reveal exactly what the Israeli government is planning to do.''
The possible expulsion of Arafat was last discussed by the Israeli Cabinet on Sept. 19 at a special session following a suicide attack on a Tel Aviv bus which killed seven people.
Israel holds Arafat responsible for attacks on Israelis in the two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence. Palestinians deny that their leadership takes an active role in the violence.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has encountered fierce opposition to an expulsion plan from the United States and left-wing members of his coalition government. Instead, Israel has laid siege to Arafat in his West Bank offices on several occasions, aiming to isolate the Palestinian leader.
Israeli army marksmen continue to surround his compound, largely destroyed in the latest 10-day siege which ended last week.
-------- mideast
U.S. forces in region
The Associated Press
Thu, Oct. 03, 2002
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/4200931.htm
A look at the U.S. forces in the region which could be used in an attack on Iraq:
KUWAIT
About 9,000 U.S. military permanently stationed in the country liberated from Iraqi invasion in 1991. Two Army and one Air Force base built or upgraded by the United States. At least two Patriot anti-missile batteries.
An armored brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry from Fort Stewart, Ga., is arriving for exercises in Kuwait, replacing a similar brigade from Fort Benning, Ga. Each brigade has about 3,000 combat troops.
The U.S. military has pre-positioned enough equipment for two heavy armored brigades in Kuwait, which include about 115 M-1A1 Abrams tanks, 60 M-2A2 Bradley fighting vehicles and other equipment, ammunition and fuel.
BAHRAIN
This island nation in the Persian Gulf is headquarters for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. About 4,200 military personnel are stationed there. Bahrain also has pre-positioned equipment stocks and an air base.
QATAR
About 3,300 U.S. soldiers are stationed here. The U.S. has recently upgraded the al-Udeid air base with the region's longest runway and other high-tech features. About 600 top officials from the U.S. Central Command plan to come here in al-Udeid in November, and the Pentagon says the base probably will become a forward command center.
The U.S. also has pre-positioned equipment for at least one heavy armored brigade here.
SAUDI ARABIA
About 6,000 U.S. troops are stationed here. While Saudi Arabia has expressed opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, that opposition has softened in recent weeks.
Besides pre-positioned equipment, Saudi Arabia is home to a command center at the Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, where U.S. commanders ran the Persian Gulf War.
OMAN
About 2,400 U.S. troops are here, mostly Air Force personnel at bases in this Gulf nation.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
About 500 U.S. forces, mostly Air Force personnel.
TURKEY
About 1,700 U.S. military forces are stationed in Turkey, mostly at the air base in Incirlik, where planes patrolling Iraq's northern no-fly zone are based.
DJIBOUTI
This small nation on Africa's Red Sea coast has been home to about 800 U.S. special operations troops since April.
AT SEA
The USS Abraham Lincoln and its battle group are in the northern Arabian Sea and are expected to patrol in the Persian Gulf. The Lincoln is carrying the first overseas deployment of the new F/A-18 Super Hornet, which has longer range and better weapons than older F/A-18 warplanes.
The USS George Washington, which will remain in striking range of Iraq as it returns to its base in Virginia, also is available. Its replacement, the USS Harry Truman, is due in the area in late November.
----
Iran, Kuwait Sign Military Accord
WORLD In Brief
Reuters
Thursday, October 3, 2002
Washington Post; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35674-2002Oct2?language=printer
TEHRAN -- Iran signed an accord with Kuwait aimed at establishing military cooperation between the Islamic Republic and a pro-Western Arab state on the Persian Gulf for the first time since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iran's defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, and his Kuwaiti counterpart signed the memorandum of understanding in Tehran, Iran's state television said. Shamkhani later said the accord called for the exchange of military experts, training cooperation and other exchanges on security matters.
"God willing, there will be an exchange of [military] hardware," he said. "This is the first step . . . and a suitable model to be followed in cooperation between Iran and regional countries."
--------
Kuwait Tests Sirens, Gas Masks, Chemical Drills
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-kuwait.html
KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait is to test war sirens, distribute gas masks and practice emergency procedures as it braces a worried population for a possible Iraqi chemical weapons attack.
The government has gone out of its way in recent days to assure residents that, unlike in 1990 when Iraqi forces seized Kuwait in a few hours, it has taken adequate measures and can cope even with a worst-case scenario.
Iraq's 1990 invasion of oil-rich Kuwait prompted the 1991 Gulf War in which U.S.-led forces smashed Iraq's army, liberated Kuwait and ushered in an era of tough U.N. sanctions on Baghdad.
But MPs and ordinary citizens alike are doubtful of official statements seeking to calm a stock market hit by new war jitters, and are astonished by warnings that Iraq could fire chemical arms at them.
``This is really amazing,'' former oil minister and activist lawyer Ali al-Baghli commented in Thursday's Arab Times.
``I am now wondering if we are going to take them to task for terrifying us about the dangers of chemical weapons,'' he said of the government, which was blamed for dismissing as a ``summer cloud'' the crisis with Iraq prior to its 1990 invasion.
Acting Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah has tried to ease the concern after his chemical attack warning took the local bourse down almost six percent this week, a decline of 16 percent since the jitters hit the booming market in July.
Kuwait says it is not party to the latest standoff with Iraq over its alleged development of mass destruction weapons and that it has no information from close ally the United States if and when a strike against Iraq could take place.
But it has told Washington it can use Kuwaiti facilities only if military action is sanctioned by a U.N. resolution.
Kuwait's cabinet has said it is importing some two million gas masks for the entire population which is 65 percent foreign.
On Saturday, it will run television ads detailing steps to take in case of an emergency while nation-wide emergency sirens will be tested next week.
Several Western embassies have already started updating lists of citizens in Kuwait and reviewing evacuation plans.
Interior Minister Sheikh Mohammad Khaled al-Sabah called on Wednesday evening for volunteers ``seeking to show their love for this land'' to step forward and stressed that, in case of war, Iraqi refugees will not be allowed to enter Kuwait.
Fearing a flood of refugees, the sheikh said they would be kept on the Iraqi side of the border within a six mile demilitarized zone and supplied with food and medicine.
Over the next few weeks, the U.S. embassy told Reuters, joint Kuwaiti exercises with U.S., German and Czech chemical warfare units will take place. The U.S. military has maintained a strong presence in Kuwait since leading the 1991 war which ended the seven-month Iraqi occupation.
Sheikh Sabah said Kuwait now has 10 U.S.-built Patriot anti-missile batteries deployed, compared to four in Israel.
-------- nato
NATO's Robertson Sounds Alarm on World Security
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nato-robertson.html
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO Secretary General George Robertson predicted Thursday the world would face more instability, more terrorism, more failed states and more proliferation of weapons in the decade ahead.
Painting a bleak picture of what he described as a ``guaranteed supply chain of instability,'' Robertson said NATO must revamp its military capability, reach out for new allies and join hands with Russia against security challenges.
His remarks, prepared for delivery at a conference on the alliance's future, covered familiar ground but sounded an unusual note of urgency on the risk of failing to act.
Robertson did not mention Iraq, but he has urged allies in recent days to take the danger of ``criminal states'' seriously and called for threats to be smashed when deterrence fails.
``The Caucasus, Central Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East all offer a rich current and potential cocktail of instability,'' Robertson said.
``All of these regions are going through political and economic transitions of historic dimensions ... but only the most blinkered optimist would argue that this process of change will happen without major convulsions.''
He said the September 11 attacks on the United States had revealed ``a special breed of terrorism ... driven not by political aims, but by fanatical extremism and the urge to kill.''
``It is difficult to imagine how one could return this cruel genie to its pre-9/11 bottle,'' he said.
The Brussels conference was billed as a curtain-raiser for next month's NATO summit in Prague, when the 19-nation defense alliance is expected to invite up to seven new members from behind the old Iron Curtain and agree on a strategy to refit its military toolbox for post-September 11 security threats.
NATO's relevance to the post-Cold War world has been thrown into doubt since the September 11 attacks.
The alliance invoked its ``all-for-one and one-for-all'' mutual defense clause for the first time after the attacks, but Washington took its military response to Afghanistan without seeking its help and no one expects it to be called on if there is a military strike on Iraq.
Part of the problem is the yawning gap in military capabilities between the United States and its European allies: last year Washington spent 85 percent more on defense than the other 18 members of NATO combined.
``Military capability is the crucial underpinning of our safety and security,'' Robertson said. ``... in the real world, the more military capabilities you have, the less you may need to use them.''
-------- spy agencies
C.I.A. Rejects Request for Report on Preparations for War in Iraq
By JAMES RISEN
October 3, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/politics/03INTE.html?ei=1&en=7b79c9a3cfbd2058&ex=1034613201&pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to provide Congress a comprehensive report on its role in a possible American campaign against Iraq, setting off a bitter dispute between the agency and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Congressional leaders said today.
In a contentious, closed-door Senate hearing today, agency officials refused to comply with a request from the committee for a broad review of how the intelligence community's clandestine role against the government of Saddam Hussein would be coordinated with the diplomatic and military actions that the Bush administration is planning.
Lawmakers said they were further incensed because the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who had been expected to testify about the Iraq report, did not appear at the classified hearing. A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet was meeting with President Bush. Instead, the agency was represented by the deputy director, John McLaughlin, and Robert Walpole, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.
The agency rejected the committee's request for a report. After the rejection, Congressional leaders accused the administration of not providing the information out of fear of revealing divisions among the State Department, C.I.A., Pentagon and other agencies over the Bush administration's Iraq strategy.
Government officials said that the agency's response also strongly suggested that Mr. Bush had already made important decisions on how to use the C.I.A. in a potential war with Iraq. One senior government official said it appeared that the C.I.A. did not want to issue an assessment of the Bush strategy that might appear to be "second-guessing" of the president's plans.
The dispute was the latest of several confrontations between the C.I.A. and Congress over access to information about a range of domestic and foreign policy matters. Just last week, lawyers for the General Accounting Office and Vice President Dick Cheney argued in federal court over whether the White House must turn over confidential information on the energy policy task force that Mr. Cheney headed last year.
The C.I.A,'s rejection of the Congressional request, which some lawmakers contend was heavily influenced by the White House, comes as relations between the agency and Congress have badly deteriorated. The relations have soured over the ongoing investigation by a joint House-Senate inquiry - composed of members of the Senate and House intelligence committees - into the missed signals before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Tenet in particular has been a target of lawmakers. Last Friday, Mr. Tenet, a former Senate staffer himself, wrote a scathing letter to the leaders of the joint Congressional inquiry, denouncing the panel for writing a briefing paper that questioned the honesty of a senior C.I.A. official before he even testified.
A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet's absence at the hearing today was unavoidable, and that no slight was intended. The official said that he missed the hearing because he was at the White House with Mr. Bush, helping to brief other Congressional leaders on Iraq. The official said Mr. Tenet had advised the committee staff several days ago that he would not be able to attend. Mr. Tenet has promised to testify about the matter in another classified hearing on Friday, officials said.
One Congressional official said that the incident has badly damaged Mr. Tenet's relations with Congress, something that Mr. Tenet had always worked hard to cultivate.
"I hope we aren't seeing some schoolyard level of petulance," by the C.I.A., the official said.
While the House and Senate intelligence oversight committee have received classified information about planned covert operations against Iraq, the C.I.A. has not told lawmakers how the agency and the Bush administration see those operations fitting into the larger war on Iraq, or the global war on terrorism, Congressional officials said.
"What they haven't told us is how does the intelligence piece fit into the larger offensive against Iraq, or how do these extra demands on our intelligence capabilities effect our commitment to the war on terrorism in Afghanistan," said one official.
Congressional leaders complained that they have been left in the dark on how the intelligence community will be used just as they are about to debate a resolution to support war with Iraq.
Congressional leaders said the decision to fight the Congressional request may stem from a fear of exposing divisions within the intelligence community over the administration's Iraq strategy, perhaps including a debate between the agency and the Pentagon over the military's role in intelligence operations in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been moving to strengthen his control over the military's intelligence apparatus, potentially setting up a turf war for dominance among American intelligence officials. Mr. Rumsfeld has also been pushing to expand the role of American Special Operations Forces into covert operations, including activities that have traditionally been the preserve of the C.I.A.
Congressional leaders asked for the report in July, and expressed particular discontent that the C.I.A. did not respond for two months. Lawmakers had asked that the report be provided in the form of a national intelligence estimate, a formal document that is supposed to provide a consensus judgment by the several intelligence agencies.
The committee wanted to see whether analysts at different agencies, including the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the State Department, have sharply differing views about the proper role of the intelligence community in Iraq.
But intelligence officials say that a national intelligence estimate is designed to assess the policies of foreign countries - not those of the United States. "They were asking for an assessment of U.S. policy, and that falls outside the realm of the N.I.E., and it gets into the purview of the commander in chief," an intelligence official said.
Committee members have also expressed anger that the C.I.A. refused to fully comply with a separate request for another national intelligence estimate, one that would have provided an overview of the intelligence community's latest assessment on Iraq. Instead, the C.I.A. provided a narrower report, dealing specifically with Iraq's program to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Lawmakers said that Mr. Tenet had assured the committee in early September that intelligence officials were in the midst of producing an updated national intelligence estimate on Iraq, and that the committee would receive it as soon as it was completed.
Instead, the Senate panel received the national intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program after 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, too late for members to read it before Wednesday's hearing.
The committee had "set out an explicit set of requests" for what was to be included in the Iraq national intelligence estimate, said one official. Those requirements were not met. "We wanted to know what the intelligence community's assessment of the effect on a war in Iraq on neighboring states, and they did not answer that question," the official said.
A senior intelligence official said the 100-page report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program was completed in three weeks under very tight Congressional deadlines, and the writing had to be coordinated with several agencies.
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Senators Say CIA Withholding Info
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the latest dispute between intelligence agencies and Congress, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday the CIA has been withholding information it requested on U.S. military action in Iraq.
The CIA said it is cooperating, and some Republicans on the committee said they are satisfied with the information they have received.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Thursday that information provided by CIA officials at a meeting Wednesday was unacceptable at a time that Congress is considering a resolution on the use of military force in Iraq.
``We're trying to carry out a very important responsibility and given the nature of this classified information, we are the only means by which the intelligence community can communicate to the legislative branch of government,'' he said.
He later had what he called a ``frank and candid'' meeting with CIA Director George J. Tenet. He said Tenet addressed several of his concerns, but declined to elaborate. CIA officials also said it was an excellent meeting.
Tenet is scheduled to meet with the committee Friday. Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for Tenet, said he believes it is important to keep up good relations with Congress and appreciates the committee's oversight role.
The dispute comes as the committee and its House counterpart are conducting an inquiry examining intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks. Lawmakers have complained about a lack of cooperation from intelligence agencies; the Bush administration has complained about leaks from Congress.
Inquiry staff have pointed to a series of missed clues which, if agencies had pieced them together, might have pointed to the attacks. CIA officials have suggested those clues were obvious only in hindsight. They said their personnel did the best they could with limited resources.
Last week, Tenet denounced inquiry staff for suggesting in a memorandum that a CIA official would give misleading responses if asked certain questions.
The senators' complaints Thursday involve classified National Intelligence Estimates that Congress wanted. The estimates are prepared, usually over several months, by the National Intelligence Council, a group of analysts who are not part of the CIA, but report directly to Tenet.
Graham said lawmakers had requested an estimate on Iraq in July, but the request was denied.
Late Tuesday, intelligence officials gave lawmakers another estimate, dealing in part with the capabilities of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Graham said that estimate was presented too late to allow senators to read it before a Wednesday morning briefing.
One Senate staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the report gave only limited information on Iraq, and only enough to back the administration's case for military action.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., accused the CIA of ``dragging its feet'' on the estimate. He had requested the estimate three weeks ago, saying he was stunned one hadn't already been completed.
But the panel's top Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, said CIA cooperation on Iraq ``has been pretty good.''
``Now is it perfect? Have they been timely about everything? Have they told us everything we want to know? I'm not sure about that,'' said Shelby, a frequent critic of the CIA.
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CIA takes editorial to task
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 3, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021003-4538522.htm#3
I have read a lot of flawed, uninformed editorials in my life, but Tuesday's "The spymasters" takes the cake.
While the CIA recognizes the importance of a diverse work force to meet current and future intelligence challenges - challenges that threaten the security of our nation - the notion that the agency has lowered its standards for clandestine service is just plain wrong.
Specifically, the editorial suggests that in an effort to "meet politically correct recruitment quotas," the CIA's written tests to qualify for the agency's clandestine service training program have been "dumbed down." That's not true. The tests have gotten harder and applicants are tested on foreign affairs matters throughout the screening process.
The editorial also states that the CIA's foreign language aptitude test is "gone." This is also untrue. Foreign language aptitude testing continues to be a key part of the applicant screening process, and about 70 percent of the students in our incoming clandestine service training classes speak a foreign language.
The editorial is critical of the current CIA's deputy director for operations (DDO), who is cited by his name, claiming that he "lacks the depth of knowledge and imagination to steer the revitalized clandestine service." Yet, The Washington Times demonstrates its own dearth of knowledge and lack of resourcefulness by incorrectly identifying the DDO as "John Plavitch." That is not the name of the DDO (both the first and last names are wrong) nor is it the name of anyone else at the agency. If the editorial writer had taken the time to consult the CIA's public Web site, he would not have misinformed your readers, at least on that point.
These are just some of the glaring inaccuracies in this editorial. But if The Times does not even know the name of the DDO, how can its criticisms of him be taken seriously?
The editorial did have one fact right, however. It said "today's recruits are not the same caliber that the CIA employed in its pre-Church Committee and pre-Pike Report heyday." That's true. They were very good then, but they are of an even higher caliber now. And they must be. Every day, they match their wits - and risk their lives - against terrorists, hostile regimes, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and others who seek to harm America.
BILL HARLOW Director of public affairs CIA Washington
[Editor's Note: The editor of this page admits to misreading his notes and thus misspelling the name of the DDO at CIA. The correct spelling of his name is Pavitt, not Pavitch (first name Jim). Other than that, we stand by our editorial, and then some.
Mr. Harlow's claim that today's CIA case officer-trainees are superior brings to mind the grade inflation at Harvard University, where, like Lake Woebegone, everyone appears to be above average. Yet, as Lynne Cheney has amply documented, today's Ivy League graduates are woefully inadequate in their knowledge of U.S. and world history. Like the Foreign Service, the CIA has adjusted to this societal lowering of academic standards by revising its tests. In the past, CIA written entrance exams contained a higher percentage of multiple choice questions specifically regarding an applicant's knowledge of key events, dates, and treaties concerning world history, international organizations, and foreign governments than they do today. This trend is called "dumbing down," and the CIA, like other institutions throughout government and academia, is guilty of lowering its standards in order to produce more high-scoring applicants.
One area in which the CIA has not lost its edge is disinformation. Mr. Harlow says that foreign language aptitude remains important, but the fact is the CIA no longer tests applicants' aptitude for learning new languages. It is true that the CIA evaluates an applicant's claim to language proficiency. An applicant claiming to speak fluent Urdu, for example, will be given a multiple choice exam, followed by a session with native Urdu speakers, and then assigned a language proficiency score from zero to five.
But this testing measures only how well an applicant has already learned a particular language; it does not test the applicant's aptitude for learning a new language. Many people speak one or more languages because they grew up in bilingual homes or in countries where they acquired another language in infancy. Mere bilingualism is not a measure of the ability to pick up new languages. The multiple-choice language aptitude test, which measured such an ability, was dropped from the CIA's entrance exam by 1990.
Mr. Harlow maintains that foreign affairs knowledge is measured throughout the overall "screening process." Let us be clear about this process. It begins when applicants take written tests at sites around the country, usually on Saturdays at college campuses. Those who pass then complete and submit job application packets for review. Some are then asked to come to Washington for further processing, which involves physical exams and psychological screening, polygraph testing, and interviews with current CIA case officers. The interviews feature discussion of the applicant's background, the working life of a spymaster, and the applicant's motivations. If the applicant claims specific foreign language ability, tests to evaluate the degree of proficiency are taken at this time.
At the end of this process, the applicants are assigned scores. As with law school admissions at the University of Michigan, the rankings in the applicant pool are then conformed to the CIA's diversity standards for recruiting. Those who pass the CIA's security background checks will be offered admission to a class.
The observation that the new officers don't measure up, or that the CIA now resembles the Agriculture Department more than the elite spy agency it once was, isn't original to The Washington Times. It is the view of senior CIA insiders intimately familiar with past and current standards, as expressed to The Washington Times. The statement that a high-achieving case officer was kept in grade and passed over for promotion because of "diversity requirements" is not ours; it comes from a CIA station chief.
If, as Mr. Harlow suggests, today's CIA is so superior to that of the past, why is it now necessary for the CIA to reconsider its compensation policies in order to improve employee performance and motivate officers to learn new languages? Clearly, the CIA recognizes it has human resource problems. It is laudable for the agency to attempt to remediate them, but the best way to improve the performance of the agency is to recruit better people in the first place instead of trying to solve the problem after the fact through employee incentives.
We agree with Mr. Harlow's characterization of the patriotism and dedication of today's CIA officers, and with the hazards they face on our behalf in dealing with terrorist organizations and hostile foreign powers. For these very reasons, we believe that the nation can afford nothing but the best and the brightest at the CIA. We dispute that current recruiting, employment and promotion policies yield that result.]
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Homeland espionage
EDITORIAL •
October 3, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021003-5251080.htm
When it is eventually created, the Department of Homeland Security will have to employ intelligence to protect America. Never again can we go through the pre-September 11, Keystone Cop tragi-comic performance of our law-enforcement and intelligence agencies having so many pieces of a puzzle without being able to work together to assemble it. The homeland intelligence czar must become the top intelligence officer of the land; he must be the chief coordinator, conduit, and collector of intelligence regarding the safety of Americans at home.
The man who is likely to assume this post is John Gannon. He is a career professional who serves as chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. He will need every ounce of his experience to deal with the bureaucratic battles he will have to wage in Washington to forge a program that produces actionable intelligence and early warning to protect the country.
The task is Herculean. After the excesses of police-intelligence units during the height of Vietnam War protests, many Americans are rightly suspicious that domestic intelligence collection infringes on vital civil liberties like freedom of speech and the right to petition government. To the left, homeland intelligence raises the spectre of the COINTELPRO operation. On the right, there are reasonable fears that the "jackbooted thugs" of Ruby Ridge and Waco were just the beginning of a draconian federal government. Mr. Gannon will have to work hard to foster trust, while creating a system that respects the Constitution even as it takes vigorous measures to defend it against internal and external enemies whose only purpose in coming to our shores is to destroy freedom. His first role must be that of coordinator. He must join together the information from 22 separate federal agencies, each leery of protecting its own turf. The president and the new secretary of homeland security need "one-stop" shopping to assess the threat level, the credibility of terrorist threats and the actions to be taken in response.
Mr. Gannon's second role is to become the conduit of information to the people who will need it most urgently in a crisis - fire departments, police stations, public-safety officials, emergency medical personnel, the so-called first responders who are the earliest to arrive at the scene of a terrorist attack. As September 11 demonstrated, these first responders bear the greatest risk of dying while trying to protect their fellow Americans. They need up-to-date threat information that will enable them to defend and serve their local communities, and they deserve to be able to get it from a single, authoritative source in the federal government. The homeland intelligence czar must fill that void.
Mr. Gannon's most controversial role will be that of collector of information. Civil libertarians will fear the potential abuse of power; bureaucratic rivals will resent intrusions into their turf and seek to reduce the homeland intelligence czar into a mere reader of their reports. The homeland intelligence role requires the ability to task federal and local resources like the FBI and state bureaus of investigation to carry out investigations and acquire information where pieces of the puzzle are missing. This is not the same as a home-grown Gestapo. But the need for a single federal official with the authority to order such collection has become clear, in view of the well-documented failures of the FBI hierarchy to respond appropriately to their New York, Arizona and Minnesota field offices, where special agents requested permission to probe suspicious activities and individuals before the September 11 attacks. Mr. Gannon also needs the power to reach deep into multi-layered bureaucracies like the FBI or the INS, so that he can receive information unfiltered by headquarters staff-- whose competence has been rightly called into question by recent disclosures - circumventing recalcitrant supervisors and managers whenever necessary.
Intelligence sharing has improved since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Back then, CIA restrictions on the dissemination of information in practice meant a 24-hour delay between the time when a cable reporting a terrorist threat arrived at headquarters and when the necessary written authorizations could be obtained to release the information. Intelligence agencies are fiercely protective of their own "sources and methods," usually for legitimate reasons, but also to protect their bureaucratic interests.
This resistance must yield to the realities of the conflict we face. Mr. Gannon must show how flexible intelligence can be in "shading the source" to protect human and technical assets, while still providing the timely flow of information needed to protect the homeland. If intelligence cannot be used to save the lives of ordinary Americans here at home, why do we bother to spend $37 billion a year to collect it?
[Editor's note: This is the third in a series of editorials addressing needed reforms within the intelligence community.]
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Iraq Arms Experts Probably Spied - Swede Inspector
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-inspection-spies.html
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Some United Nations inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the 1990s probably spied on behalf of their governments, a Swede who worked as an inspector said on Thursday.
``There were episodes you could sense were strange. One team member made too many copies of documents. Then there were those who went to their embassies at night although they were not really allowed to do so,'' Ake Sellstrom told Swedish public service SVT television news.
Sellstrom was employed by the U.N. weapons inspection organization UNSCOM led by American Scott Ritter, whom Baghdad repeatedly accused of spying. The inspectors were forced to leave Iraq in December 1998.
A divided U.N. Security Council is currently debating whether a new team of inspectors, now called UNMOVIC and led by Swede Hans Blix, should travel to Iraq and begin a new search for Baghdad's alleged stockpiles of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons.
Sellstrom said information obtained by means of electronic surveillance of Iraqi security forces' communications had clearly fallen into wrong hands -- such as the U.S. and Israeli military -- during his time with UNSCOM.
Some targets checked out by the weapons inspectors were bombed by the United States and its allies just a week later, Sellstrom said.
Jean Pascal Zanders, head of chemical and biological warfare studies at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told a news conference earlier on Thursday that new Iraqi weapons inspections would be extremely difficult to carry out.
``If they don't come up with something in one or two months, then the United States will say 'This shows that inspections don't work' while Iraq will say 'You see, we don't have any weapons'.''
``We need inspections over a large timeframe,'' Zanders said.
SIPRI researcher John Hart said Iraq had managed to keep its biological weapons program secret for four years after the inspections began in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
Pointing out that ``chemical and biological weapons leave very small footprints that cannot be picked up by satellites,'' Zanders said it was vital that UNMOVIC's inspectors get unfettered access to all areas in Iraq.
Discrepancies between information provided by Iraq and data gathered by UNSCOM by the time the inspectors had to leave suggested Baghdad may have had more than 20,000 pieces of munitions and 1.5 tons of VX nerve gas by the end of 1998, he said.
U.N. arms inspectors made clear on Thursday they would delay their initial inspections in Iraq until the U.N. Security Council completed work on a new resolution the United States and Britain have drafted.
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UN Inspector Briefs Split Security Council on Iraq
October 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he believed there was a basis for U.N. arms inspectors to go to Iraq soon but awaited a decision from a divided Security Council.
He spoke to reporters shortly before he met chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix, who was in New York to brief the 15-member council on his talks with Iraqi officials in Vienna this week on arrangements for resuming inspections.
The United States and Britain want Blix to hold off until the council gives him a new mandate and Iraq gives an account of any programs it has to make weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denies it has such programs.
Other council members say existing resolutions allow Blix to send advance teams.
``I think from the discussions Mr. Blix had in Vienna, there is a basis to go forward,'' Annan said.
``But the council is discussing whether or not the regime should not be tightened and strengthened to ensure that we don't repeat the weaknesses of the past,'' he added.
Blix has said that the first inspectors could be on the ground later this month under the existing arrangements.
But State Department officials warned that Washington would go into a ``thwart mode'' if he moves before the United Nations adopts a tough new resolution threatening the use of force if Baghdad does not fully comply.
Blix and Mohammed Elbaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plan to meet U.S. officials in Washington on Friday.
A new draft resolution drawn up by the United States and Britain faces opposition from France, Russia and China. They object particularly to a provision that allows a U.N. member, such as the United States, to determine if Iraq has violated U.N. demands and follow up with military action.
French President Jacques Chirac, after meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Paris, told reporters on Wednesday evening, ``We are totally opposed to any resolution that gave as of now an automatic character to military intervention.''
France, which has circulated proposals informally among council members, has threatened to push its own resolution if Washington introduces its current draft without any changes, diplomats said.
France favors a two-stage approach, the first offering Iraq a chance to cooperate but saying the council would consider ``any measure'' if Baghdad failed to comply with its obligations. The second resolution, would threaten force, if necessary.
Under the U.S. draft, approved by Britain, Iraq has 30 days ``prior to the beginning of inspections'' to provide ``an acceptable and currently accurate'' declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic weapons.
Any ``false statements or omissions'' in Iraq's declaration would constitute a further ``material breach'' of its obligations and any U.N. member could use ``all necessary means'' against Baghdad -- a diplomatic euphemism for military action.
The U.S. draft says the inspectors can interview anyone they wish, such as scientists and government officials, and evacuate them and their families out of the country, if necessary. They can inspect all places, including Saddam Hussein's palace compounds without advance notice.
It allows any of the five council members to join an inspection team and recommend sites to be inspected. The teams can be guarded at their bases by U.N. security forces or other unnamed troops.
Inspectors would have the right to declare no-fly and no-drive by exclusion zones on the ground or in air transit corridors.
The U.S. draft also says Iraq must accept the new terms for inspection within seven days after the resolution is adopted.
-------- us
Operation Endless Deployment
by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, FRIDA BERRIGAN & MICHELLE CIARROCCA
The Nation
October 3, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021021&s=hartung
The Bush Administration's march toward war in Iraq is dangerous in its own right, and should be opposed as such. But the preparations for "Gulf War II" are also part of a larger plan to promote the most significant expansion of US global military presence since the end of the cold war. The Pentagon is determined to maintain access to the rapidly growing network of military facilities it has built or refurbished in the Caucasus, South Asia and the Persian Gulf for decades to come, long after George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein have passed from the global stage.
In the fall of 1999, in his first major campaign speech on foreign policy, Bush criticized the Clinton Administration for sending US troops off on "aimless and endless deployments" that allegedly detracted from their core mission of fighting and winning wars. Bush was primarily referring to US peacekeeping missions in places like Kosovo, but he gave the impression that he was planning to reduce the overall US military presence overseas as well. Three years later, Bush's pledge to seek a more streamlined US global military presence has been cast aside under the guise of fighting "terrorists and tyrants" of Washington's choosing.
Since September 2001 US forces have built, upgraded or expanded military facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan; authorized extended training missions or open-ended troop deployments in Djibouti, the Philippines and the former Soviet republic of Georgia; negotiated access to airfields in Kazakhstan; and engaged in major military exercises, involving thousands of US personnel, in Jordan, Kuwait and India. Thousands of tons of military equipment have been added to stockpiles already pre-positioned in Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf states, including Israel, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar. And discussions are still under way with Yemen about increasing American access to facilities there and establishing an intelligence-gathering installation aimed at monitoring activities in Sudan and Somalia.
These forward bases, many of which have been arranged through secretive, ad hoc arrangements, currently house an estimated 60,000 US military personnel. This includes 20,000-25,000 troops in the Persian Gulf, poised to serve as the opening wave of a US invasion of Iraq.
Funds for training and military aid, which are often used to grease the wheels of US access to overseas military facilities, have been increased substantially since the start of the Administration's war on terrorism. The budget request for training foreign military personnel is up by 27 percent in the fiscal-year 2003 budget, while funding for the government's largest military aid program, Foreign Military Financing, is slated to top $4 billion. The bulk of this additional funding is going to countries like Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India, which had previously been under restrictions on what they could receive from the United States because of records of systematic human rights abuses, antidemocratic practices or development of nuclear weapons. Now these same nations are viewed as indispensable allies in the Administration's war on terrorism.
The new global buildup represents not so much a return to the cold war, when the United States had many more troops stationed overseas than it does today, but rather an elaboration of a new, more flexible infrastructure for intervening in--or initiating--"hot wars" from the Middle East to the Caucasus to East Asia.
Military analyst William Arkin has noted that in the first four months after the September 11 attacks, thirteen military tent cities were hastily assembled to shelter US personnel in nine different countries. Many of the sites include "expeditionary airfields" that were built or upgraded on short notice to facilitate their use by US combat and transport planes.
Despite protestations to the contrary by Pentagon officials, there are questions about how many of the new US forward bases will in fact be temporary. The US Central Command has long been seeking alternatives to Saudi Arabia to use as springboards for future interventions in the Persian Gulf, as well as access to facilities in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been purposely vague about the length of the US stay at any of the new facilities, Air Force Col. Billy Montgomery, who headed a team that expanded an air base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for use by US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told the Washington Post, "I think it's fair to say there will be a long-term presence here well beyond the end of hostilities."
In a mid-August briefing, Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command, suggested that the length of the US military presence in Afghanistan could end up rivaling the fifty-year US presence in South Korea. And if the Bush Administration is not dissuaded from moving full-speed ahead with its plans to invade Iraq, several independent military experts have suggested that an occupying force of 75,000-100,000 troops may be needed to stabilize that country, giving rise to the need for additional formal or informal bases to house US troops.
Growing US Military Presence Since 9/11/01
Qatar: With 600 war planners from the US Central Command scheduled to arrive in November for an "exercise" that could turn into a long-term deployment, it is widely believed that Qatar will serve as the principal base for coordinating US intervention in Iraq. The Pentagon began pouring additional personnel and funding into Qatar's Al Udeid air base in November 2001 in hopes of using it as an alternative to Saudi bases in the event of military action against Iraq. The facility now has a command center with satellite links that will enable it to coordinate thousands of airstrikes daily. The base, which has one of the longest runways in the Middle East, is currently home to roughly 3,000 US personnel and fifty aircraft, including fighters, bombers and reconnaissance and refueling aircraft. There are also 600 US personnel stationed at an air logistics base in Qatar--referred to by Army officials as "Camp Snoopy"--at which C-5 and C-17 cargo planes routinely come and go, bringing supplies for US forces in Afghanistan and the Gulf. Qatar and Kuwait (see below) are also host to more than three dozen 60,000-square-foot warehouses that contain hundreds of US military vehicles, ranging from M-1 tanks and armored personnel carriers to 155-millimeter howitzers.
Jordan: Despite public pronouncements by Jordanian officials that their nation will not serve as a launching pad for a US attack on Iraq, US-Jordanian military cooperation has been increasing. During August, 2,200 personnel of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit were in Jordan for "Operation Infinite Moonlight," which several analysts believe was used as a cover to pre-position additional US military equipment in the Persian Gulf in preparation for war with Iraq. Recent press reports indicate that US forces also have regular access to Jordanian air bases at Ruwayshid and Wadi-al Murbah, both of which are close to the Iraqi border.
Kuwait: Camp Doha is home to 5,000 US Army personnel, plus thousands more that come for regular military exercises in Kuwait. Counting troops in-country for extended exercises and air crews involved in flying F-16 and F-15 aircraft on surveillance missions over southern Iraq, there are now estimated to be more than 9,000 US military personnel in Kuwait. As of the first week of September, 2,000 US troops were en route to Kuwait for "Operation Desert Spring," an exercise slated to last several months. More than sixty military vehicles are being shipped to Kuwait as part of the exercise, apparently in an effort to bulk up the US arsenal there in anticipation of a war against Iraq.
Saudi Arabia: As a tacit side agreement to the controversial 1981 sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia, US contractors built an unparalleled network of air, naval and communications bases in Saudi Arabia that served as the main base of operations for US forces in the Gulf War. The most important of these facilities is the Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, which has served as the coordinating center for air operations over Iraq and Afghanistan. After initially stating that Saudi bases could not be used for a US strike against Iraq, Saudi officials have now stated that the facilities will be available, provided that the intervention is sanctioned by the UN Security Council. There are currently more than 6,000 US Air Force and Army personnel in Saudi Arabia.
Oman: The United States is upgrading an airfield at Musnana for use as an air base that will house everything from fighter aircraft to B-52 bombers. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the United States has used three other bases in Oman to launch airstrikes against Afghanistan. A base at Masirah hosts US P-3 Orion antisubmarine aircraft and AC-130 gunships. Oman is also a major pre-positioning site for the US Air Force, with enough equipment and fuel stored to support three bases and 26,000 support personnel.
Bahrain: The US Fifth Fleet, which coordinates all US combat ships in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean areas, has its headquarters at Manama, Bahrain. Twenty miles south of Manama, Shaikh Isa Air Base hosts US bomber and fighter aircraft, and is expected to serve as the home for a US Air Force expeditionary wing of forty-two aircraft in the near future. Total US personnel in Bahrain number 4,000 or more, most of them in the Navy or Marines.
United Arab Emirates: The United States has no ongoing military presence in the UAE, but the government allows US reconnaissance and refueling aircraft to use its air bases, and there is some US equipment pre-positioned there for use in contingencies like the Bush Administration's planned intervention in Iraq.
Diego Garcia: In August the Pentagon awarded a contract to a Norfolk, Virginia, shipping company to operate eight large "roll-on, roll-off" cargo ships in and around the US base at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. B-52s based there are likely to come into play in any air war against Iraq; the island may also serve as a stopover point and distribution center for US personnel and equipment headed to the Gulf.
Yemen: The Pentagon is exploring the possibility of building a signals intelligence base on the Yemeni island of Socotra that would be used to conduct surveillance on Somalia and the Horn of Africa. This past June, a US team arrived in Yemen to begin installation of a computerized surveillance system designed to link the capital of Sanaa with data flowing from major seas, airports and border crossings.
Djibouti: In mid-September it was revealed that 800 US personnel, most of them Special Operations forces, have been deployed in the East African nation of Djibouti, poised for deployment in Yemen, Somalia or Sudan in pursuit of alleged Al Qaeda operatives. The Special Forces deployment is backed up by the stationing nearby of the Belleau Wood, an amphibious assault ship with helicopters and Harrier jump jets that can be used to transport US personnel in Djibouti into battle in neighboring nations.
Turkey: Turkey's Incirlik air base, which has served as the launching ground for US airstrikes and surveillance missions over northern Iraq for more than a decade, is home to an estimated four dozen US surveillance and strike aircraft (the exact number is classified). The Pentagon hopes to use Incirlik as a major staging ground in its planned air war against Iraq, and has been courting Ankara with major arms sales, including transfers of Seahawk antisubmarine helicopters, two fully outfitted combat frigates and a pledge to cancel a substantial portion of Turkey's multibillion-dollar military debt to the United States.
Georgia: As part of a two-year, $64 million "train and equip" mission, US Special Forces will be deployed to Georgia to train a 2,000-person antiterrorist force designed to patrol the Pankisi Gorge, an alleged refuge for Chechen rebels and Al Qaeda fighters. Barracks and other facilities for the US trainers will be built in cooperation with the Kellogg Brown & Root division of Halliburton industries.
Afghanistan: The two main US bases in Afghanistan are at Bagram, where the headquarters for US military operations in the country is based, along with roughly 5,000 US personnel; and in Kandahar, where 3,000-4,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division are based, along with a detention facility for Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
Pakistan: Pursuant to an agreement struck with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last December, US forces have taken over an air base at Jacobabad, in southwestern Pakistan, and are building air-conditioned barracks and a higher security wall. American forces will also continue to use airfields at Pasni and Dalbandin for the foreseeable future, as part of what one Pakistani source predicts will become a "semipermanent presence" of US forces in Pakistan.
Uzbekistan: Roughly 1,500 US troops are stationed at Khanabad, a former Soviet facility that is the largest air base in Central Asia. The US Air Force is scouting sites to set up a more permanent facility in Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan: The Manas air base, also known as the Peter J. Ganci base in honor of a New York City fireman who died in the World Trade Center rescue effort, is home to 2,000 troops--1,000 American and 1,000 from coalition partners Australia, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and Spain. American officials claim that the base will be closed after the war in Afghanistan is over, but sources familiar with the extensive infrastructure that has been built, including a central power plant, a hospital and two industrial-size kitchens, expect US forces to be stationed there for years to come.
Kazakhstan: This past July the United States and Kazakhstan signed an agreement to allow US military aircraft to make emergency landings--for a fee--at Kazakhstan's largest civilian airport, in Almaty. In addition, the Bush Administration has requested $5 million in military aid in the fiscal-year 2003 budget to refurbish an air base in order to establish "a US-interoperable base along the oil-rich Caspian."
Tajikistan: After the September 11 attacks, Tajikistan was one of the first Central Asian states to offer the Pentagon access to bases, overflight rights and the use of its territory by US military personnel. Bases at Khujand, Kulyab and Kurgan-Tyube are available to US forces as needed, but unlike the larger bases in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, they have yet to become a major focus of activity.
Philippines: More than 1,300 US troops were involved in "counterterrorism training" in the Philippines from February through July of this year, assisting local military forces in their efforts to wipe out the remnants of the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla movement, which Philippine security officials claim forged ties with Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s. In parallel to the training mission, US military aid to the Philippines was increased tenfold, from $1.9 million to $19 million. A cadre of 100 US military personnel remained in the Philippines after the larger contingent withdrew in July. The Pentagon plans several other major training missions in the Philippines in the next year.
Sources: Center for Defense Information; GlobalSecurity.org; David Isenberg, "By Infinite Moonlight, US Readies for War," Asia Times, August 29, 2002; US Defense Department; and numerous news stories from the Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and William Arkin's "Dot.mil" column in the Washington Post Online.
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The U.S. Military: learning from its mistakes
Keep goofing up at this rate and you'll have a Pentagon Mensa meeting in no time
Molly Ivins,
Creators Syndicate,
October 3, 2002
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=13880
AUSTIN, Texas -- One thing I have always admired about the U.S. military services is their ability to learn from their mistakes. They have institutionalized this ability in the form of remarkable After Action Reviews, which include rigorous dissection of every aspect of whatever operation they were last required to take.
These AARs are both unsparing and illuminating -- I recall the particularly trenchant review of the opera bouffe episode in which they were required to invade Grenada, an exercise so stunningly silly that it is beneath comment. They should have sent a Texas Ranger.
Of course, the military spent years poring over Vietnam, the one it lost. Even now, the feelings of many are still so tender on that one that I feel obliged to point out they didn't actually lose it -- they were sent into an unwinnable situation.
One result of all that study and re-study of Vietnam is that the military is now considerably more cautious when asked by politicians to take on some dubious enterprise for some dubious geopolitical purpose. We saw that instinct toward caution both before the Persian Gulf War and again today. It has nothing to do with lack of courage, but with an institutional memory of who pays the price when politicians and their advisers are dead wrong.
Sometimes, the military learns lessons one would prefer it had not. After Vietnam, there was some bitter blaming of the press for having reported that the sucker was hopeless. The consequence is that American military action is now accompanied by an ungodly, Orwellian degree of media management, which does not, I think, serve the country well.
I have never thought the military was well-served by its civilian eyes and ears -- specifically, the CIA. It is now a matter of public record that the CIA vastly overestimated Soviet capabilities throughout the Cold War, as well as engaging in follies too numerous to mention. Lewis Lapham once hilariously nailed the Muffie-and-Skippy-III quality of that outfit.
Other times, the military's lack of information seems inexplicable. As Mark Bowden wrote in "Black Hawk Down," his superb account of our action in Somalia, a street map would have saved lives -- along with the realization that all you need to take down a zillion-dollar chopper is an RPG. Hitting the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the time we took out a civilian Iranian airliner, and the sub that surfaced under a Japanese trawler seem to fall in the category of "Huh?" But as I say, the military has shown it learns from its mistakes.
As an institution, it is most frequently criticized for its utterly bizarre capacity to eat money. Getting the Pentagon to spend money sensibly, or even keep track of it -- one day it announced it couldn't account for $7 billion -- is apparently a task beyond human resource. For generations, we've been sending beady-eyed bean-counters like Robert McNamara into the Pentagon to straighten things out, and they all stagger out years later with a dazed look about them.
Granted, the really monumental wastes of money are usually political follies -- the eccentric history of Reagan's Star Wars detailed by Frances Fitzgerald in "Way Out There in the Blue" being one of the most memorable. The cost is now at $100 billion and rising -- there is not an unemployment office or a children's health program in the country run with such insanely loose accounting.
Some critics have fingered the built-in redundancy of inter-service rivalry as the culprit, but no one seems able to explain such surreal incidents as the $400 hammer and the $800 toilet seat. This summer's scandal over the Pentagon charge cards used at strip clubs, and to buy fine china, cigars, a trip to Vegas, two pictures of Elvis, etc., was in that vein. The current issue of The Nation has an eyebrow-raising account of a military country club in the Alps that supposedly teaches East European slugs the beauties of democracy. This would be funnier if I did not know Mexican-American taxpayers who sweat in the sun all day and have never seen a ski slope.
What got me started on the military is the case of Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, the no-bull Marine who commanded the Red forces in last summer's war games. Van Riper played the unnamed evil dictator of Red, a rogue state in the Persian Gulf. Thirteen thousand troops were involved and $250 million spent on the rehearsal, according to numerous print sources.
Blue attacked, and the wily Van Riper, using low-tech to foil high-tech, sank most of the Blue fleet. Whereupon, they called the whole thing off. The sunken fleet rose from the depths, dead soldiers came back to life, and Red was ordered to look the other way and turn off its air defense while Blue made amphibious landings. Van Riper continued to harry Blue until he realized his subordinates had been ordered not to listen to him anymore. He sat out the rest of the exercise, making mordant comments from the sidelines.
Van Riper told The Guardian: "Nothing was learned from this. A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future."
Institutions can rot from within.
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C.I.A. Rejects Request for Report on Preparations for War in Iraq
New York Times
October 3, 2002
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/politics/03INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to provide Congress a comprehensive report on its role in a possible American campaign against Iraq, setting off a bitter dispute between the agency and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Congressional leaders said today.
In a contentious, closed-door Senate hearing today, agency officials refused to comply with a request from the committee for a broad review of how the intelligence community's clandestine role against the government of Saddam Hussein would be coordinated with the diplomatic and military actions that the Bush administration is planning.
Lawmakers said they were further incensed because the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who had been expected to testify about the Iraq report, did not appear at the classified hearing. A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet was meeting with President Bush. Instead, the agency was represented by the deputy director, John McLaughlin, and Robert Walpole, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.
The agency rejected the committee's request for a report. After the rejection, Congressional leaders accused the administration of not providing the information out of fear of revealing divisions among the State Department, C.I.A., Pentagon and other agencies over the Bush administration's Iraq strategy.
Government officials said that the agency's response also strongly suggested that Mr. Bush had already made important decisions on how to use the C.I.A. in a potential war with Iraq. One senior government official said it appeared that the C.I.A. did not want to issue an assessment of the Bush strategy that might appear to be "second-guessing" of the president's plans.
The dispute was the latest of several confrontations between the C.I.A. and Congress over access to information about a range of domestic and foreign policy matters. Just last week, lawyers for the General Accounting Office and Vice President Dick Cheney argued in federal court over whether the White House must turn over confidential information on the energy policy task force that Mr. Cheney headed last year.
The C.I.A,'s rejection of the Congressional request, which some lawmakers contend was heavily influenced by the White House, comes as relations between the agency and Congress have badly deteriorated. The relations have soured over the ongoing investigation by a joint House-Senate inquiry - composed of members of the Senate and House intelligence committees - into the missed signals before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Tenet in particular has been a target of lawmakers. Last Friday, Mr. Tenet, a former Senate staffer himself, wrote a scathing letter to the leaders of the joint Congressional inquiry, denouncing the panel for writing a briefing paper that questioned the honesty of a senior C.I.A. official before he even testified.
A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet's absence at the hearing today was unavoidable, and that no slight was intended. The official said that he missed the hearing because he was at the White House with Mr. Bush, helping to brief other Congressional leaders on Iraq. The official said Mr. Tenet had advised the committee staff several days ago that he would not be able to attend. Mr. Tenet has promised to testify about the matter in another classified hearing on Friday, officials said.
One Congressional official said that the incident has badly damaged Mr. Tenet's relations with Congress, something that Mr. Tenet had always worked hard to cultivate.
"I hope we aren't seeing some schoolyard level of petulance," by the C.I.A., the official said.
While the House and Senate intelligence oversight committee have received classified information about planned covert operations against Iraq, the C.I.A. has not told lawmakers how the agency and the Bush administration see those operations fitting into the larger war on Iraq, or the global war on terrorism, Congressional officials said.
"What they haven't told us is how does the intelligence piece fit into the larger offensive against Iraq, or how do these extra demands on our intelligence capabilities effect our commitment to the war on terrorism in Afghanistan," said one official.
Congressional leaders complained that they have been left in the dark on how the intelligence community will be used just as they are about to debate a resolution to support war with Iraq.
Congressional leaders said the decision to fight the Congressional request may stem from a fear of exposing divisions within the intelligence community over the administration's Iraq strategy, perhaps including a debate between the agency and the Pentagon over the military's role in intelligence operations in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been moving to strengthen his control over the military's intelligence apparatus, potentially setting up a turf war for dominance among American intelligence officials. Mr. Rumsfeld has also been pushing to expand the role of American Special Operations Forces into covert operations, including activities that have traditionally been the preserve of the C.I.A.
Congressional leaders asked for the report in July, and expressed particular discontent that the C.I.A. did not respond for two months. Lawmakers had asked that the report be provided in the form of a national intelligence estimate, a formal document that is supposed to provide a consensus judgment by the several intelligence agencies.
The committee wanted to see whether analysts at different agencies, including the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the State Department, have sharply differing views about the proper role of the intelligence community in Iraq.
But intelligence officials say that a national intelligence estimate is designed to assess the policies of foreign countries - not those of the United States. "They were asking for an assessment of U.S. policy, and that falls outside the realm of the N.I.E., and it gets into the purview of the commander in chief," an intelligence official said.
Committee members have also expressed anger that the C.I.A. refused to fully comply with a separate request for another national intelligence estimate, one that would have provided an overview of the intelligence community's latest assessment on Iraq. Instead, the C.I.A. provided a narrower report, dealing specifically with Iraq's program to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Lawmakers said that Mr. Tenet had assured the committee in early September that intelligence officials were in the midst of producing an updated national intelligence estimate on Iraq, and that the committee would receive it as soon as it was completed.
Instead, the Senate panel received the national intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program after 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, too late for members to read it before Wednesday's hearing.
The committee had "set out an explicit set of requests" for what was to be included in the Iraq national intelligence estimate, said one official. Those requirements were not met. "We wanted to know what the intelligence community's assessment of the effect on a war in Iraq on neighboring states, and they did not answer that question," the official said.
A senior intelligence official said the 100-page report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program was completed in three weeks under very tight Congressional deadlines, and the writing had to be coordinated with several agencies.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
EPA Passes on Chemical Security Responsibility
October 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-03-09.asp#anchor3
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to rely on voluntary measures to improve security at the nation's chemical manufacturing plants.
In the agency's homeland security plan, released Wednesday, the EPA proposes voluntary security actions by the chemical industry. The issue of the vulnerability of chemical plants and storage sites to terrorist attacks has gained urgency since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Prior to the plan's release, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge had both supported new EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act to increase chemical plant security.
Whitman said Wednesday that the EPA will back homeland security legislation that would give oversight of chemical industry security to the new Department of Homeland Security. Bills to form that department are now stalled in the U.S. Senate.
The Chemical Security Act (S 1602), introduced by Senator Jon Corzine, would require new, mandatory measures to increase security at chemical plants. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bill unanimously in July.
But the bill is opposed by the industry groups including the American Chemistry Council and the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS).
"In our judgment, this is a badly flawed proposal that actually would undermine security preparedness at factories, chemical facilities and other industrial sites, and we urge Congress to reject it in its entirety," wrote Jack Lichtenstein, director of government affairs and public policy at ASIS, in a letter to Congress opposing S 1602. Lichenstein said one of the reasons ASIS would not support S 1602 was the role it would give the EPA in overseeing chemical industry security, an area in which the EPA has no "background or expertise," he wrote.
But a number of public interest groups had hoped that the EPA would seek a strong role in protecting the public for terrorist attacks on the nation's chemical plants.
"EPA's strategy amounts to little more than pleading for industry's voluntary efforts and hoping for the best," wrote the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Apparently, EPA plans to 'work with' industry associations to encourage them to implement security enhancements, and to develop guidance for corporations to consider in deciding how, if at all, to address their vulnerabilities to terror attack. Entirely missing is any requirement that at risk facilities actually do something to secure themselves and reduce their attractiveness as a potential target."
EPA data shows that there are 123 chemical plants around the country that could each endanger a million or more people if attacked, and many more that could threaten thousands of people. A report by the Army Surgeon General ranked an attack on a chemical plant second only to a widespread biological attack in terms of the hazard to the public.
Investigative reports by newspapers around the countries have shown that many chemical facilities have lax security, with reporters able to anonymously access many sites.
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EPA Drops Chemical Security Effort
Agency Lacks Power to Impose Anti-Terror Standards, Lawyers Decide
By a Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 3, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35214-2002Oct2?language=printer
The Bush administration has abandoned efforts to impose tough new security regulations on the chemical industry to protect against possible terrorist attacks, following months of intense internal fighting within the administration and resistance from the industry.
The decision marks a victory for major chemical manufacturers who have argued they can improve security without regulatory intervention.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who confirmed the decision yesterday, said the administration now intends to support bipartisan legislation to address continuing security problems in the industry -- possibly a plan being drafted by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would give chief oversight responsibility to a new Department of Homeland Security.
But administration officials have scrapped efforts to give the EPA tough new regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act to force chemical plants to identify and rectify serious security problems in producing and storing hazardous materials.
"It's a question of which [approach] is more effective," Whitman said at a news conference yesterday, announcing new EPA homeland security strategies. While Whitman and Tom Ridge, the White House homeland security director, had strongly favored the regulatory approach to speed up the process, lawyers in other agencies prevailed in arguing that the EPA lacked the legal authority and would be "pushing the envelope," Whitman said.
She said there is still time this year for Congress to pass legislation to regulate chemical industry security. However, President Bush and Senate Democrats are deadlocked over legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security, and House leaders would be reluctant to act on chemical industry security this year even if the Senate were able to agree on a measure.
Anti-terrorism experts, environmentalists and some lawmakers say there is little doubt that plants storing large amounts of chlorine and other toxic chemicals are potential terrorist targets. Internal administration documents disclosed this summer warn of at least 30 plants near heavily populated areas that require immediate government attention.
"The administration's decision not to put forward their own chemical security plan and instead wait for some ambiguous, bipartisan bill later looks like political stalling that is likely to lead to further delay on public safety," said Jeremiah Baumann of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Rick Hind, a toxic chemicals expert with Greenpeace, called the administration's approach "an unbelievable nothing-burger."
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in late July approved a bipartisan bill drafted by Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) that would have required plants to identify vulnerabilities in their operations and develop plans to correct them, subject to EPA approval.
Corzine had hoped to attach his bill to the homeland security department legislation, but his plan has encountered stiff resistance from the American Chemistry Council -- representing the largest chemical manufacturers -- and an array of other manufacturing and agriculture groups. Yesterday, Corzine said: "Chemical plant vulnerability remains a pressing homeland security concern. Federal standards are the only way to ensure that this threat is addressed adequately and consistently across the country."
Industry lobbyists said many companies already have done all that is necessary, including building fences, hiring more guards and eliminating stockpiles of deadly liquid chlorine. They said there were serious legal questions about whether the EPA could invoke the Clean Air Act to impose anti-terrorism standards on chemical plants.
Chris VandenHeuvel, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, said that while the industry "supports a federal role" in protecting chemical plants, "we just don't think it belongs at EPA."
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D.C. police to take on crime before it occurs
By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 3, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20021003-56041300.htm
The Metropolitan Police Department is trying a new approach to law enforcement, using a conflict resolution team of individuals and groups intended to stop crime before it starts.
The police department is assembling gang specialists, community activists, street-level intelligence gatherers, pastors, mental health specialists, and other government and private-sector groups to share information and work together.
The proposed conflict resolution team, which is awaiting approval by police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, has been spearheaded and will be overseen by the D.C. Office of Youth Violence Prevention.
In an orientation meeting earlier this month at Shiloh Baptist Church in Northwest, team members talked about the District's gang culture and discussed some of the practical ways they will try to prevent crime.
"There's a need for this in the community," said Officer Sean Dennis of the Office of Youth Violence Prevention, who helped create the conflict resolution team. "We got hit real hard this summer, as far as violence" is concerned.
There were 74 homicides in the District in June, July and August. July was especially bloody, with 33 homicides. Through Sept. 30, there have been 181 homicides in the District this year, a 15 percent increase over last year.
Janice Sullivan, deputy director of youth violence prevention, will oversee operations along with police Inspector Robin Hoey, director of youth violence prevention.
"This is a new approach," Mrs. Sullivan said. "In the District government, every agency has their own priorities, and although we try to work together, a lot of times things fall through the cracks. What we're trying to do is coordinate the services and pool our resources."
She said this is not just another initiative of big words and little action.
"It's unprecedented that we have such a level of commitment without any additional funding," Mrs. Sullivan said. "We have a group of people here that are just committed to the cause. They have nothing to gain other than being able to help."
The Fairfax County Police Department has implemented a similar strategy to combat gang violence, as The Washington Times reported in September.
The District's anti-crime team includes the Alliance of Concerned Men, as well as the Rev. Anthony Motley of Redemption Ministries and the Rev. Donald Isaac, executive director of the East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership.
Mr. Motley said the crime resolution team is in part the result of momentum started with the Clergy Police Partnership about three years ago. The D.C. government is realizing that the faith community has to play a part in helping reduce and solve the city's crime problem, he said.
"We're finding out that our government is run by people, and it's run by people who have faith," Mr. Motley said. "They understand the role of faith in the lives of people."
The conflict resolution team will be divided into three regional operation commands - one for the 3rd and 4th police districts; one for the 1st, 2nd and 5th police districts; and one for the 6th and 7th police districts.
Each regional operation command will be run by a police officer who will be assisted by four to six residents in providing information and resolving conflicts in schools and neighborhoods.
The police department also has created a database that not only will keep track of troublesome people and long-standing conflicts, but will also record agreements that are reached between rival gangs, Mr. Dennis said.
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Detainees Attempt Suicide at Guantanamo
October 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Guantanamo-Suicide-Attempts.html
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- More suicide attempts have been reported among detainees at Guantanamo Bay after four tried to kill themselves in July and August, U.S. military officials said.
The attempts occurred since August, but officials declined to say how many more there had been, when they occurred, or whether any detainee has tried to kill himself more than once.
``There have been additional suicide attempts but we will not discuss that,'' mission spokesman Lt. Col. Joe Hoey said Wednesday, referring all other questions to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.
Southern Command spokesman Sgt. Ray Sarracino also declined to give details, but said guards had ``intervened.''
The previous attempts involved four men who all tried to hang themselves with ``comfort items'' in their cells, such as towels or sheets. One of the men also tried to cut his wrist with a plastic utensil, officials said last month.
None of the 598 detainees from 43 countries held on the remote outpost in eastern Cuba have been charged but they are accused of links to the fallen Taliban regime of Afghanistan or al-Qaida terror network. They have not been allowed access to lawyers.
Some launched hunger strikes shortly after they first were brought to Guantanamo in January. Recently, some have sent postcards to their families describing depression over the uncertainty of their fate and said they will ``see them in heaven,'' according to Najeeb al-Nauimi, a lawyer and former Qatari justice minister who argues the detainees should be returned to their home countries.
Capt. Al Shimkus, in charge of the detention hospital, said between 3 and 5 percent of the detainees suffer from mental illness and many were sick when they arrived in Guantanamo.
``None (of the suicide attempts) have been successful,'' Shimkus said, declining to give details.
A full-time psychiatrist and psychologist and mental health workers are assigned to help the detainees.
About 26 detainees were being given either antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs or anti-psychotic medication. Last month, 30 detainees were receiving the same types of medications.
Officials refuse to say whether any of those who tried to kill themselves were taking medication.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Spain's Endesa plans experimental renewables plant
REUTERS SPAIN:
October 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18014/story.htm
MADRID - Spanish power utility Endesa said yesterday it plans to start using the world's first system for producing hydrogen and non-drinking water by 2006 in an experimental project to produce renewable energy.
The European Commission will finance half of the 6.1 million euro ($5.99 million) budget for the plant, which will be built on Spain's Canary Islands.
The plant will be self-sufficient and will produce electricity, heat and non-drinking water and will also include a water desalination plant, Endesa said in a statement.
During periods of low demand, surplus energy will be used to produce hydrogen, which can then be stored in fuel cells for periods of high demand.
Wind power will be used to power the plant until natural gas is installed on the Canary Islands, Endesa said.
----
Germany set to boost its offshore wind energy sector
Story by Vera Eckert
REUTERS GERMANY:
October 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18021/story.htm
FRANKFURT - Germany is set to boost its offshore wind energy sector with the approval this month of a second North Sea wind farm, officials close to the decision say.
Already the world's leading onshore wind energy producer with 10,000 megawatt (MW) of capacity, Germany has plans to add 25,000 MW to offshore capacity by 2030 from a current zero.
An official at BSH, the authority handling planning applications, told Reuters that out of 30 pending applications, the 240 megawatt (MW) Butendieck North Sea wind park planned to be built from 2005 had made the quickest progress.
"There'll be another discussion in October on this project," said Christian Dahlke, lawyer at BSH, the Hamburg-based national Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency.
"Without wanting to pre-empt the outcome I can say that if there are no major objections, we could soon make a decision."
The Butendieck wind park would be 30 kilometres off the north-west German coast near Denmark, owned by a pool of private investors and split into 80 turbines of three MW each.
BSH gave building permission last November for the 1,000 MW Borkum-West project 45 kilometres off the German/Dutch North Sea coast, where construction is due to start next year.
Local engineering firm elexyr said many technical and commercial firms would be encouraged by Butendieck approval.
"It would show that the political will is there, the industry crucially depends on official approval," said elexyr's managing director Klaus-Peter Lehmann.
"Only with this official backing can we clarify financial and insurance questions, which are the preconditions for further steps and for the actual realisation of projects," he said.
SUPPORT, CHALLENGES
Germany's newly re-elected Social-Democrat-Green coalition favours the rapid expansion of wind power to bring down greenhouse gases emissions, which many scientists say contribute to damaging global warming.
The sector, which already employs 40,000, benefits from higher revenue guarantees for its input into the general electricity grid than those earned from conventional power.
These costs are borne pro rata by all German utilities, then passed on to consumers.
BSH's Dahlke said that apart from Butendieck, another four out of the 30 North Sea and Baltic Sea long-term applications for a total 60,000 MW had made encouraging progress.
But elexyr's Lehmann said the next major challenge was to secure financing for the projects in an untested industry.
"Financing volumes can be up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.48 billion) for the new projects with hundreds of 3-5 MW turbines each (the biggest onshore ones so far have 2.5 MW)," he said.
A study issued by elexyr jointly with consultancy Oevermoehle C&M said several key issues needed to be resolved before financing could be drawn in.
There was only limited experience with the construction and running of deep sea turbines far offshore. Operators needed to gauge environmental costs and sort out efficient sea cables and grid connections on land, the study said.
The sector also needed to ensure it did not run into conflicts with other users of the sea - shipping, fisheries, oil and gas exploration, the military and tourism.
-------- environment
Kuwait sees heavier Gulf War environmental damage
Story by Stephanie Nebehay
REUTERS SWITZERLAND:
October 3, 2002
GENEVA - Kuwait said yesterday that oil well fires set by Iraqi troops in the 1991 Gulf War, and measures taken to extinguish them, had caused greater environmental damage than previously thought.
Khaled Ahmed al-Mudhaf, chairman of Kuwait's Public Authority for Assessment of Compensation for Damages Resulting from the Iraqi Aggression, was reporting the first results from U.N.-financed studies into environmental damage.
In his report to the U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC), whose Governing Council began a three-day meeting yesterday, he cited extensive harm to fresh water supplies and the soil.
Al-Mudhaf gave no figures. But U.N. officials said that the findings could swell a $17 billion claim already submitted by Kuwait for environmental damage during Iraq's August 1990 invasion and seven-month occupation of the emirate.
The Kuwaiti official said that hydrocarbons from the sabotaged oil wells and salt from seawater used to douse the fires were "steadily and irreversibly infiltrating into these (fresh groundwater) aquifers and rendering the water completely unsuitable for human consumption unless treated".
A hardened layer of sand and oil, caused by the bursting oil wells, covered 350 sq km (135 sq mile), rather than the 210 sq km (80 sq mile) stated in Kuwait's pending claim, according to al-Mudhaf.
HUGE ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS
Kuwait has already received $16.5 billion in compensation through the fund for lost oil and the cost of putting out wellhead fires.
Kuwait, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria account for most of the $50 billion in environmental claims against Iraq - the last and biggest category being considered for payment by the reparations fund, due to wrap up work at the end of 2004.
The UNCC has so far received overall claims valued at $300 billion and has approved $42.6 billion in claims by individuals, companies and governments.
On Thursday, the UNCC's Governing Body is due to approve a payment of nearly $700 million to Kuwait for damage caused by Iraqi troops who left mines and ordnance as they fled a U.S.-led alliance, according to diplomats and U.N. sources.
But Iraq charged that the claim filed by the Kuwaiti Defence Ministry, Kuwait Petroleum Company (KPC) and Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) was "exaggerated".
"They are asking for $700 million to demine an area which is very small compared to Afghanistan, where $130 million is being spent," Iraq's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Samir al-Nima, told Reuters.
The UNCC currently receives 25 percent of its income from the U.N.'s oil-for-food programme, which allows Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil. The balance of its funds come from Iraqi assets seized abroad and donations from various governments.
The Governing Body, composed of the same 15 members as the U.N. Security Council, is also due to approve payment of some $67 million to Iran and $8.2 million to Saudi Arabia this week for proven environmental damage, according to diplomats.
----
Biodiversity Hotspots Detailed in New Website
October 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-03-09.asp#anchor9
WASHINGTON, DC, The Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) at Conservation International (CI) has launched a new website, "Biodiversity Hotspots."
The site - http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org - is intended to provide comprehensive, up to date information on the world's biologically richest and most threatened ecosystems. The website, funded by Intel Corporation, will be a resource for conservationists, regional planners and government policy makers.
The website showcases extensive information about each of the 25 hotspots including a rich array of photographs, ecosystem descriptions, as well as the unique species, threats and impacts and conservation actions in each area. An interactive map allows visitors to find information geographically and features downloadable maps and lists of threatened species. A glossary of terms explains biological and conservation terminology.
"The site will assist decision makers in government agencies, non-profit organizations, academic institutions and the conservation community in making informed decisions in the hotspots," said Carlos Galindo-Leal, senior director of the State of the Hotspots Program at CABS. "The site is dynamic and will be updated regularly with data gathered by experts working in these imperiled ecosystems."
The biodiversity hotspots are 25 biodiverse areas around the world that cover just 1.4 percent of Earth's land surface, but contain more than 60 percent of all terrestrial species. The hotspots are all threatened, many of them with less than 10 percent of their original habitat remaining.
"Conservation International focuses its work on biodiversity hotspots where the need is greatest and we can have the most impact," said Gustavo Fonseca, CI's senior vice president for science and executive director for CABS. "The collection, analysis and integration of hotspots data enable us to design the most effective strategies to avoid species extinctions, protect critical areas within the hotspots and ensure biodiversity survival over time."
Since the hotspots are dynamic places with political, social and biological changes taking place, they require continual assessment and monitoring. Monitoring the hotspots provides an opportunity to predict trends or anticipate threats before they occur.
This is the essence of an early warning system being developed by CABS that would enable the conservation community to take proactive measures. The site is a product of an ongoing initiative by CABS to gather, analyze and synthesize data on biological diversity, threats and conservation responses in these 25 ecosystems.
"We are proud to be a part of CI's effort to save global biodiversity for future generations," said Terry McManus of Intel Corporation's environmental health and safety division. "The 'Biodiversity Hotspots' web project is part of a larger initiative by CI and Intel to use computer and Internet technology to advance conservation science around the world."
Intel is also supporting the development of a network of scientists and institutions in the Philippines to monitor trends in biodiversity and socio-economic pressures in the hotspot.
The "Biodiversity Hotspots" site is the latest addition to CI's family of websites about biodiversity conservation with topics for many different audiences. To see all of the sites, visit: http://www.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/about/fastfacts.xml. To learn more about the state of the hotspots, visit: http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org
-------- ACTIVISTS
UN E-mail addresses
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002
From: Kalynda - Kalynda@Shundahai.org
I did some digging around an found ALL the UN delegate addresses. Here they are. Please share.
Afghanistan - afghanistan@un.int
Albania - albania@un.int
Algeria - algeria@un.int
Andorra - andorra@un.int
Angola - angola@un.int
Antigua and Barbuda - antigua@un.int
Argentina - argentina@un.int
Armenia - armenia@un.int
Australia - australia@un.int
Austria - austria@un.int
Azerbaijan - azerbaijan@un.int
The Bahamas - bahamas@un.int
Bahrain - bahrain@un.int
Bangladesh - bangladesh@un.int
Barbados - barbados@un.int
Belarus - belarus@un.int
Belgium - belgium@un.int
Belize - belize@un.int
Benin - benin@un.int
Bhutan - bhutan@un.int
Bolivia - bolivia@un.int
Bosnia and Herzegovina - bosnia@un.int
Botswana - botswana@un.int
Brazil - braun@delbrasonu.org
Brunei Darussalam - brunei@un.int
Bulgaria - bulgaria@un.int
Burkina Faso - burkinafaso@un.int
Burundi - burundi@un.int
Cambodia - cambodia@un.int
Cameroon - cameroon@un.int
Canada - canada@un.int
Cape Verde - capeverde@un.int
The Central African Republic - caf@un.int
Chad - chad@un.int
Chile - chile@un.int
China - china@un.int
Colombia - colombia@un.int
Comoros - comoros@un.int
Congo - congo@un.int
Costa Rica - costarica@un.int
Cote d'Ivoire - ivorycoast@un.int
Croatia - croatia@un.int
Cuba - cuba@un.int
Cyprus - cyprus@un.int
The Czech Republic - czechrepublic@un.int
The Democratic Republic of Congo - drcongo@un.int
Denmark - denmark@un.int
Djibouti - djibouti@nyct.net
Dominica - dominica@un.int
The Dominican Republic - dr@un.int
Ecuador - ecuador@un.int
Egypt - egypt@un.int
El Salvador - elsalvador@un.int
Equatorial Guinea - eqguinea@un.int
Eritrea - eritrea@un.int
Estonia - estonia@un.int
Ethiopia - ethiopia@un.int
Fiji - fiji@un.int
Finland - finland@un.int
France - france@un.int
Gabon - gabon@un.int
Gambia - gambia@un.int
Georgia - georgia@un.int
Germany - germany@un.int
Ghana - ghana@un.int
Greece - greece@un.int
Grenada - grenada@un.int
Guatemala - guatemala@un.int
Guinea - guinea@un.int
Guinea-Bissau - guinea-bissau@un.int
Guyana - guyana@un.int
Haiti - haiti@un.int
Honduras - honduras@un.int
Hungary - hungary@un.int
Iceland - iceland@un.int
India - india@un.int
Indonesia - indonesia@un.int
Iran - iran@un.int
Iraq - iraq@un.int
Ireland - ireland@un.int
Israel - israel@un.int
Italy - italy@un.int
Jamaica - jamaica@un.int
Japan - japan@un.int
Jordan - jordan@un.int
Kazakhstan - kazakhstan@un.int
Kenya - kenya@un.int
The Dem. People's Republic of Korea - dprk@un.int
Republic of Korea - korea@un.int
Kuwait - kuwait@un.int
Kyrgyzstan - kyrgyzstan@un.int
Lao P. Dem. Republic - laos@un.int
Latvia - latvia@un.int
Lebanon - lebanon@un.int
Lesotho - lesotho@un.int
Liberia - liberia@un.int
Libya - libya@un.int
Liechtenstein - liechtenstein@un.int
Lithuania - lithuania@un.int
Luxembourg - luxembourg@un.int
The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - macedonia@un.int
Madagascar - madagascar@un.int
Malawi - malawi@un.int
Malaysia - malaysia@un.int
Maldives - maldives@un.int
Mali - mali@un.int
Malta - malta@un.int
Marshall Islands - marshallislands@un.int
Mauritania - mauritania@un.int
Mauritius - mauritius@un.int
Mission of Mexico - mexico@un.int
The Federated States of Micronesia - micronesia@un.int
Moldova - moldova@un.int
Monaco - monaco@un.int
Mongolia - mongolia@un.int
Morocco - morocco@un.int
Mozambique - mozambique@un.int
Myanmar - myanmar@un.int
Namibia - namibia@un.int
Nepal - nepal@un.int
Netherlands - netherlands@un.int
New Zealand - newzealand@un.int
Nicaragua - nicaragua@un.int
Niger - niger@un.int
Nigeria - nigeria@un.int
Norway - delun@mfa.no
Oman - oman@un.int
Pakistan - pakistan@un.int
Palau - palau@un.int
Panama - panama@un.int
Papua New Guinea - png@un.int
Paraguay - paraguay@un.int
Peru - peru@un.int
Philippines - philippines@un.int
Poland - poland@un.int
Portugal - portugal@un.int
Qatar - qatar@un.int
Romania - romania@un.int
Rwanda - rwanda@un.int
The Russian Federation - rusun@un.int
Samoa - samoa@un.int
Marino - sanmarino@un.int
Sao Tome and Principe - stp@un.int
Saudi Arabia - saudiarabia@un.int
Senegal - senegal@un.int
Seychelles - seychelles@un.int
Sierra Leone - sierraleone@un.int
Singapore - singapore@un.int
Slovakia - slovakia@un.int
Slovenia - slovenia@un.int
Solomon Islands - solomonislands@un.int
Somalia - somalia@un.int
South Africa - southafrica@un.int
Spain - spain@un.int
Sri Lanka - srilanka@un.int
St. Kitts and Nevis - stkn@un.int
St. Lucia - stlucia@un.int
St. Vincent & the Grenadines - stvg@un.int
Sudan - sudan@un.int
Suriname - suriname@un.int
Swaziland - swaziland@un.int
Sweden - sweden@un.int
Syrian Arab Republic - syria@un.int
Tajikistan - tajikistan@un.int
Thailand - thailand@un.int
Togo - togo@un.int
Trinidad and Tobago - tto@un.int
Tunisia - tunisia@un.int
Turkey - turkey@un.int
Turkmenistan - turkmenistan@un.int
Uganda - uganda@un.int
Ukraine - ukraine@un.int
United Arab Emirates - uae@un.int
United Republic of Tanzania - tanzania@un.int
The United Kingdom - uk@un.int
The United States of America - usa@un.int
Uruguay - uruguay@un.int
Uzbekistan - uzbekistan@un.int
Vanuatu - vanuatu@un.int
Venezuela - venezuela@un.int
Viet Nam - vietnam@un.int
Yemen - yemen@un.int
Yugoslavia - yugoslavia@un.int
Zambia - zambia@un.int
Zimbabwe - zimbabwe@un.int
READY TO CUT AND PASTE: afghanistan@un.in, albania@un.int, algeria@un.int, andorra@un.int, angola@un.int, antigua@un.int, argentina@un.int, armenia@un.int, australia@un.int, austria@un.int, azerbaijan@un.int, bahamas@un.int, bahrain@un.int, bangladesh@un.int, barbados@un.int, belarus@un.int, belgium@un.int, belize@un.int, benin@un.int, bhutan@un.int, bolivia@un.int, bosnia@un.int, botswana@un.int, braun@delbrasonu.org, brunei@un.int, bulgaria@un.in, t burkinafaso@un.int, burundi@un.int, cambodia@un.int, cameroon@un.int, canada@un.int, capeverde@un.int, caf@un.int, chad@un.int, chile@un.int, china@un.int, colombia@un.int, comoros@un.int, congo@un.int, costarica@un.int, ivorycoast@un.int, croatia@un.int, cuba@un.int, cyprus@un.int, czechrepublic@un.int, drcongo@un.int, denmark@un.int, djibouti@nyct.net, dominica@un.int, dr@un.int, ecuador@un.int, egypt@un.int, elsalvador@un.int, eqguinea@un.int, eritrea@un.int, estonia@un.int, ethiopia@un.int, fiji@un.int, finland@un.int, france@un.int, gabon@un.int, gambia@un.int, georgia@un.int, germany@un.int, ghana@un.int, greece@un.int, grenada@un.int, guatemala@un.int, guinea@un.int, guinea-bissau@un.int, guyana@un.int, haiti@un.int, honduras@un.int, hungary@un.int, iceland@un.int, india@un.int, indonesia@un.int, iran@un.int, iraq@un.int, ireland@un.int, israel@un.int, italy@un.int, jamaica@un.int, japan@un.int, jordan@un.int, kazakhstan@un.int, kenya@un.int, dprk@un.int, korea@un.int, kuwait@un.int, kyrgyzstan@un.int, laos@un.int, latvia@un.int, lebanon@un.int, lesotho@un.int, liberia@un.int, libya@un.int, liechtenstein@un.int, lithuania@un.int, luxembourg@un.int, macedonia@un.int, madagascar@un.int, malawi@un.int, malaysia@un.int, maldives@un.int, mali@un.int, malta@un.int, marshallislands@un.int, mauritania@un.int, mauritius@un.int, mexico@un.int, micronesia@un.int, moldova@un.int, monaco@un.int, mongolia@un.int, morocco@un.int, mozambique@un.int, myanmar@un.int, namibia@un.int, nepal@un.int, netherlands@un.int, newzealand@un.int, nicaragua@un.int, niger@un.int, nigeria@un.int, delun@mfa.no, oman@un.int, pakistan@un.int, palau@un.int, panama@un.int, png@un.int, paraguay@un.int, peru@un.int, philippines@un.int, poland@un.int, portugal@un.int, qatar@un.int, romania@un.int, rwanda@un.int, rusun@un.int, samoa@un.int, sanmarino@un.int, stp@un.int, saudiarabia@un.int, senegal@un.int, seychelles@un.int, sierraleone@un.int, singapore@un.int, slovakia@un.int, slovenia@un.int, solomonislands@un.int, somalia@un.int, southafrica@un.int, spain@un.int, srilanka@un.int, stkn@un.int, stlucia@un.int, stvg@un.int, sudan@un.int, suriname@un.int, swaziland@un.int, sweden@un.int, syria@un.int, tajikistan@un.int, thailand@un.int, togo@un.int, tto@un.int, tunisia@un.int, turkey@un.int, turkmenistan@un.int, uganda@un.int, ukraine@un.int, uae@un.int, tanzania@un.int, uk@un.int, uruguay@un.int, uzbekistan@un.int, vanuatu@un.int, venezuela@un.int, vietnam@un.int, yemen@un.int, yugoslavia@un.int, zambia@un.int, zimbabwe@un.int
----
War foes get word out to Congress
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 3, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021003-851543.htm
House and Senate members say their constituent mail is running overwhelmingly against a unilateral attack on Iraq, although several Republicans say that has started to change.
"It's overwhelming numbers, something like 300 to 29," said Sen. Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island Republican.
Others reported even more lopsided responses opposed to war, and said phone calls seemed to be genuine outpourings from constituents, not a concerted drive by war opponents to flood offices.
"This is not orchestrated. People overwhelmingly want it done multilaterally," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, whose office had received more than 20,000 contacts, of which about 300 were supportive of unilateral military action.
Still, public polls are running in favor of using force against Saddam Hussein and in support of President Bush.
An ABC News-Washington Post poll released Friday found 58 percent of respondents approved of the president's handling of Iraq. Furthermore, 61 percent favored the use of U.S. military forces to remove Saddam from power. Of those, more than three-fourths said they would feel that way even if U.S. allies opposed such action.
"I think what they are saying is they would like to see the problems with Iraq resolved, but they would like to see it worked out without war," said Rep. Michael N. Castle, Delaware Republican.
Several senators and staffers said part of the reason the calls don't match the polls is that someone who is in favor of war is much less likely to call to express their opinion.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico Republican, said he had met with 13 constituents and took an informal poll of the three men and 10 women. All supported the president's stance on Iraq, he said.
Some lawmakers said part of the discrepancy may be because the president's full-court press on the issue gives his opponents a rallying point.
That could explain the e-mails and phone calls to the office of Rep. Jim McDermott, Washington Democrat, who traveled to Iraq last week.
Spokesman John Larmett said calls went from about 80-to-1 opposed to war before the trip to about 50-50 during and after the trip. Many of those new calls in support of the president came from outside Mr. McDermott's Seattle district. Mr. Larmett said calls of support within the district still comprised about 85 percent of communications.
Michigan Democrat Rep. David E. Bonior, who traveled with Mr. McDermott, saw a boost in support for his position.
Communications to his office "tipped dramatically more toward the pro-'our position,'" spokesman Bob Allison said.
Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, said the messages from letters and calls to his office were running opposed to war, but that reversed after former Vice President Al Gore questioned the president's Iraq policy and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, accused the president of politicizing national security.
"The week before last, they were solidly opposed to war. After the Gore speech and the Daschle speech, it definitely turned around," Mr. Brownback said.
----
House defeats effort to allow tax-free politics in churches
October 3, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021003-36760510.htm
The House yesterday rejected a bill that would have let religious leaders talk freely about politics without endangering their organizations' tax-exempt status.
The bill, which caused splits in the religious community and inside the Republican Party, was defeated on a 239-178 vote. The bill's main proponent, Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., North Carolina Republican, told lawmakers that he would try again next year.
"Today we took a very important step toward bringing freedom of speech back to our pulpits," Mr. Jones said. "From the first day of the 108th Congress, I will continue this fight because I believe this battle can be won and will be won. Congress must return First Amendment rights to our houses of worship."
The bill would have given religious leaders the right to talk about politics and make endorsements, effectively lifting the Internal Revenue Service's ban on political activity at churches, synagogues and mosques.
The issue divided lawmakers during debate Tuesday night.
Rep. Christopher Shays, Connecticut Republican, said the bill would "erode the separation of church and state, a bedrock value of our nation" and probably would enable big donors to funnel money through churches.
Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat, said, "If this legislation is allowed to pass or stand, you could have a minister coming into a pulpit and saying, 'Vote for so and so because God told me.'"
The bill was supported by the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council and the Association of Christian Schools International, but opposed by other religious organizations.
"Most Americans do not want their churches turned into smoke-filled rooms where political deals are cut and partisan politics replaces worship," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "When people put their money in the collection plate, they don't expect it to be used for candidates' campaign literature and attack ads."
The prohibition on political activity was imposed in 1954 by Congress on all 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations under an amendment offered by Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson. Before that, religious leaders were involved freely in political debate.
Religious groups and the government have locked horns over the years when it comes to politics and the Constitution's guarantees of both free speech and freedom of religion. After a decade-long battle, for example, the IRS concluded in 1999 that the Christian Coalition should not be tax-exempt because of its distribution of voter guides in churches.
----
Peace visit to Iraq had outside help
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 3, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021003-7659706.htm
The trip that three Democratic congressmen made to Baghdad last week was jointly funded by two private organizations - a religious group and a charity, both of which oppose a war with Iraq.
The costs were shared by the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq, a project of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, and a charity in Southfield, Mich., called Life for Relief and Development (LIFE), which provides humanitarian aid to Iraq.
"We definitely want a peaceful solution," LIFE spokesman Mohammed Alomari said in an interview.
He added: "We're working together on the humanitarian aspects [of Iraq´s problems] with the Church Council of Greater Seattle. They, too, have concerns and are trying to avoid a war. They want to see what kind of political settlement can be made."
Seattle is the home of Rep. Jim McDermott, Washington Democrat, while Michigan is the home state of Democratic Rep. David E. Bonior, two of the three lawmakers who visited Iraq on a peace mission. The congressmen caused a stir by urging an end to economic sanctions, a return of United Nations weapons inspectors into Iraq and by questioning President Bush's honesty about the need for war.
In appearances on Sunday news talk shows, Mr. McDermott and Mr. Bonior spoke of Iraqi officials' cooperation and said top Iraqi leaders had promised arms inspectors would have unconditional access to suspected weapons sites.
The third Democratic congressman who went to Baghdad - Rep. Mike Thompson of California - noted the suffering of the Iraqi people brought on by their leader, Saddam Hussein. The lawmakers returned to Washington late Tuesday night.
The congressmen were criticized by Republican lawmakers. Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma derided them, saying on ABC's "This Week" that they sounded like "spokespersons for the Iraqi government."
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said the congressmen "should come home," after Mr. McDermott challenged the administration's attempts to link Iraq to the al Qaeda terrorist network and suggested Mr. Bush would lie to bring about military conflict.
"What happened to separation of church and state, which Democrats usually insist on?" asked a Bethesda woman, who called Mr. McDermott's Capitol Hill office Tuesday and was shocked to find out that a "private religious group" helped pay for the congressmen's trip.
Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist action committee for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which he describes as a "watchdog of [protestant] mainline churches," said it's "interesting but not surprising" that the Church Council of Greater Seattle sent the lawmakers to Iraq to speak out against military action.
"Leaders of almost all the mainline churches have spoken out against a war with Iraq and mainline churches in Seattle, Wash., which are among the most liberal, have been among the most outspoken," Mr. Tooley said in an interview.
Alice Woldt, acting executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, said in an interview yesterday: "Yes, we sponsored the trip. If we designated money, it was designated for travel expenses. But none of this came out of our general fund."
An aide to Mr. McDermott, speaking on the condition of anonymity, insisted it's "terribly common" for members of Congress to go on trips financed by religious organizations.
Mr. Alomari said yesterday that LIFE is not a political advocacy group, but a "charitable organization that's strictly concerned with humanitarian issues."
Mr. Alomari said the delegation that went to Baghdad consisted of about 10 people. It included the three congressmen, some representatives of the Church Council of Greater Seattle and Muthanna Al-Hancoli, president of Michigan-based Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations.
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