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NUCLEAR
In North Korea and Pakistan, Deep Roots of Nuclear Barter
Afghanistan UMRC Report
Pakistan Dismisses N.Korea Arms Deal Report
Iraq Says U.N. Plan Is Pretext for War
N Korea calls for South's help to fight US pressure
Yucca Mountain Project workers say site problems kept quiet
Energy Dept. Contractors Due for More Scrutiny
Snoopers With Blind Spots
MILITARY
Stability of Africa Is Threatened as AIDS Infects Armies
Gaza security agency denies arms charges
Yugoslavian officials 'sold chemical weapons to Iraq'
U.S. Warship Docks in China in Show Ties on Course
Dead Man's Bluff
Kuwait May Be Key in Iraq Invasion
US forces told to destroy supply lines of terror
The Military's New War of Words
Military Recruiting Law Puts Burden on Parents
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Material Witness Law Has Many In Limbo
Proposal to Enlist Citizen Spies Was Doomed From Start
Lawmakers say FBI is being soft on Saudi terror link
In the Name of Security
Native Americans flex vote muscle
Justice Dept. Seeks to Use New Power in Terror Inquiries
L.A. 'Skid Row' Sweeps Spark Debate
Osama issues new call to arms
OTHER
Why Millions in Drugs Get Flushed Away
ACTIVISTS
Pentagon Papers' Ellsberg Sees Deja Vu in Iraq
Scott Ritter's Iraq Complex
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
In North Korea and Pakistan, Deep Roots of Nuclear Barter
November 24, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/international/asia/24KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 21 - Last July, American intelligence agencies tracked a Pakistani cargo aircraft as it landed at a North Korean airfield and took on a secret payload: ballistic missile parts, the chief export of North Korea's military.
The shipment was brazen enough, in full view of American spy satellites. But intelligence officials who described the incident say even the mode of transport seemed a subtle slap at Washington: the Pakistani plane was an American-built C-130.
It was part of the military force that President Pervez Musharraf had told President Bush last year would be devoted to hunting down the terrorists of Al Qaeda, one reason the administration was hailing its new cooperation with a country that only a year before it had labeled a rogue state.
But several times since that new alliance was cemented, American intelligence agencies watched silently as Pakistan's air fleet conducted a deadly barter with North Korea. In transactions intelligence agencies are still unraveling, the North provided General Musharraf with missile parts he needs to build a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching every strategic site in India.
In a perfect marriage of interests, Pakistan provided the North with many of the designs for gas centrifuges and much of the machinery it needs to make highly enriched uranium for the country's latest nuclear weapons project, one intended to put at risk South Korea, Japan and 100,000 American troops in Northeast Asia.
The Central Intelligence Agency told members of Congress this week that North Korea's uranium enrichment program, which it discovered only this summer, will produce enough material to produce weapons in two to three years. Previously it has estimated that North Korea probably extracted enough plutonium from a nuclear reactor to build one or two weapons, until that program was halted in 1994 in a confrontation with the United States.
Yet the C.I.A. report - at least the unclassified version - made no mention of how one of the world's poorest and most isolated nations put together its new, complex uranium project.
In interviews over the past three weeks, officials and experts in Washington, Pakistan and here in the capital of South Korea described a relationship between North Korea and Pakistan than now appears much deeper and more dangerous than the United States and its Asian allies first suspected.
The accounts raise disturbing questions about the nature of the uneasy American alliance with General Musharraf's government. The officials and experts described how, even after Mr. Musharraf sided with the United States in ousting the Taliban and hunting down Qaeda leaders, Pakistan's secretive A. Q. Khan Nuclear Research Laboratories continued its murky relationship with the North Korean military. It was a partnership linking an insecure Islamic nation and a failing Communist one, each in need of the other's expertise.
Pakistan was desperate to counter India's superior military force, but encountered years of American-imposed sanctions, so it turned to North Korea. For its part, North Korea, increasingly cut off from Russia and China, tried to replicate Pakistan's success in developing a nuclear weapons based on uranium, one of the few commodities that North Korea has in plentiful supply.
Yet while the United States has put tremendous diplomatic pressure on North Korea in the past two months to abandon the project, and has cut off oil supplies to the country, it has never publicly discussed the role of Pakistan or other nations in supplying that effort.
American and South Korean officials, when speaking anonymously, say the reason is obvious: the Bush administration has determined that Pakistan's cooperation in the search for Al Qaeda is so critical - especially with new evidence suggesting that Osama bin Laden is still alive, perhaps on Pakistani soil.
So far, the White House has ignored federal statutes that require President Bush to impose stiff economic penalties on any country involved in nuclear proliferation, or, alternatively, to issue a public waiver of those penalties in the interest of national security. Mr. Bush last year removed penalties that were imposed on Pakistan after it set off a series of nuclear tests in 1998.
White House officials would not comment on the record for this article, saying that discussing Pakistan's role could compromise classified intelligence. Instead, they noted that General Musharraf, after first denying Pakistani involvement in North Korea's nuclear effort, has assured Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that no such trade will occur in the future.
"He said, `Four hundred percent assurance that there is no such interchange taking place now,' " Secretary Powell said in a briefing late last month. Pressed about Pakistan's contributions to the nuclear program that North Korea admitted to last month, Secretary Powell smiled tightly and said, "We didn't talk about the past."
Intelligence officials say they have seen no evidence of exchanges since Washington protested the July missile shipment. Even in that incident, they cannot determine if the C-130 that picked up missile up missile parts in North Korea brought nuclear-related goods to North Korea.
But American and Asian officials are far from certain that Pakistan has cut off the relationship, or even whether General Musharraf is in control of the transactions.
Yet in the words of one American official who has reviewed the intelligence, North Korea's drive in the past year to begin full-scale enrichment of uranium uses technology that "has `Made in Pakistan' stamped all over it." They doubt that North Korea will end its effort even if Pakistan cuts off its supplies.
"In Kim Jong Il's view, what's the difference between North Korea and Iraq?" asked one senior American official with long experience dealing with North Korea. "Saddam doesn't have one, and look what's happening to him."
A Meeting of Minds in 1993
Pakistan's military ties to North Korea go back to the 1970's. But they took a decisive turn in 1993, just as the United States was forcing the North to open up its huge nuclear reactor facilities at Yongbyon. Yongbyon was clearly a factory for producing bomb-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
When North Korea refused to allow in inspectors headed by Hans Blix, the man now leading the inspections in Iraq, President Bill Clinton went to the United Nations to press penalties and the Pentagon drew up contingency plans for a strike against the plant in case North Korea removed the fuel rods to begin making bomb-grade plutonium.
In the midst of that face-off, Benazir Bhutto, then the prime minister of Pakistan, arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. It was the end of December, freezing cold, and yet the North Korean government arranged for tens of thousands of the city's well-trained citizens to greet her on the streets. At a state dinner, Ms. Bhutto complained about the American penalties imposed on her country and North Korea.
"Pakistan is committed to nuclear nonproliferation," she said, according to a transcript issued at the time. However, she added, states still have "their right to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, geared to their economic and social developments."
Ms. Bhutto's delegation left with plans for North Korea's Nodong missile, according to former and current Pakistani officials.
The Pakistani military had long coveted the plans, and by April 1998, it successfully tested a version of the Nodong, renamed the Ghauri. Its flight range of about 1,000 miles put much of India within reach of Pakistan's nuclear warheads.
A former senior Pakistani official recalled in an interview that the Bhutto government planned to pay North Korea "from the invisible account" for covert programs. But events intervened.
Months after Ms. Bhutto's visit, the Clinton administration and North Korea reached a deal that froze all nuclear activity at Yongbyon, where international inspectors still live year-round.
In return, the United States and its allies promised North Korea a steady flow of fuel oil and the eventual delivery of two proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors to produce electric power. That was important in a country so lacking in power that, from satellite images taken at night, it appears like a black hole compared to the blazing lights of South Korea.
But within three years, Kim Jong Il grew disenchanted with the accord and feared the nuclear power plants would never be delivered. He never allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin the wide-ranging inspections required before the critical parts of the plants could be delivered.
By 1997 or 1998, American intelligence has now concluded, he was searching for an alternative way to build a bomb, without detection. He found part of the answer in Pakistan, which along with Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Egypt was now a regular customer for North Korean missile parts, American military officials said.
A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who had years ago stolen the engineering plans for gas centrifuges from the Netherlands, visited North Korea several times. The visits were always cloaked in secrecy.
But several things are now clear. Pakistan was running out of hard currency to pay the North Koreans, who were in worse shape. North Korea feared that without a nuclear weapon it would eventually be absorbed by the economic might of the South, or squeezed by the military might of the United States.
In 1997 or 1998, Kim Jong Il and his generals decided to begin a development project for a bomb based on highly enriched uranium, a slow and difficult process, but relatively easy to hide.
They did so even while sporadically pursuing a better relationship with Washington. In the last days of the Clinton administration, the North negotiated with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright for a deal to restrict North Korean missile exports in return for a removal of economic penalties, a de-listing from the State Department's account of countries that sponsor terrorism and talks about diplomatic recognition. The deal was never reached.
President Bill Clinton even considered an end-of-term trip to North Korea, but was talked out of it by aides who feared the North was not ready to make real concessions. The nuclear revelations of the past few weeks suggest those aides saved Mr. Clinton from embarrassment.
"Lamentably, North Korea never really changed," said one senior Western official here with long experience in the topic. "They came to the conclusion that the nuclear card was their one ace in the hole, and they couldn't give it up."
Caves and Clues
American intelligence agencies, meanwhile, suspected that North Korea was restarting a secret program. In 1998, satellites were focused on a huge underground site where the C.I.A. believed Kim Jong Il was trying to build a second plutonium-reprocessing center. But they were looking in the wrong place: after American officials negotiated access to the suspect site, they found only a series of man-made caves with no nuclear-related equipment, and no apparent purpose.
"World's largest underground parking lot," one American intelligence official joked at the time.
Rumors of a secret enriched-uranium project persisted, however. The C.I.A. and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee evaluated the evidence but reached no firm conclusion.
But there were hints. One Western diplomat who visited North Korea in May 1998, just as world attention focused on Pakistan, which had responded to India's underground nuclear tests by setting off six of its own, recalled witnessing an odd celebration. "I was in the Foreign Ministry," the official recalled last week. "About 10 minutes into our meeting, the North Korean diplomat we were seeing broke into a big smile and pointed with pride to these tests. They were all elated.
"Here was a model of a poor state getting away with developing a nuclear weapon."
When the Clinton administration raised the rumors of a Pakistan-North Korea link with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who succeeded Ms. Bhutto, he denied them. It was only after General Musharraf overthrew Mr. Sharif's government, and after Mr. Bush took office, that South Korean intelligence agencies picked up strong evidence that North Korea was buying components for an enriched-uranium program.
The agencies passed the evidence along to Washington, according to South Korean and American officials. It looked suspiciously similar to the gas centrifuge technology used in Pakistan. "My guess is that Pakistan was the only available partner," said Lee Hong Koo, a former South Korean prime minister and unification minister.
A. H. Nayya, a physics professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, who has no role in the country's nuclear program, agreed: "The clearest possibility is that the Pakistanis gave them the blueprint. `Here it is. You make it on your own.' "
Under American pressure, Dr. Khan was removed from the operational side of the Pakistani nuclear program. He was made an "adviser to the president" on nuclear technology.
Here in Seoul, nuclear experts working for the government of President Kim Dae Jung say they were subtly discouraged from publicly writing or speculating about the North's secret programs because the Korean government feared it would derail President Kim's legacy: the "sunshine policy" of engagement with North Korea and encouraging investment there.
By this summer, however, the C.I.A. concluded that the North had moved from research to production. The intelligence agency took the evidence to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, who asked for a review by all American intelligence agencies.
Such a request is usually a prescription for conflicting interpretations. Instead, the agencies came back with a unanimous opinion: the North Korean program was well under way, and had to be stopped.
Confronting North Korea
After sending senior officials to Japan and South Korea in August to present the new evidence, Mr. Bush decided to confront the North Koreans. On Oct. 4, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was in North Korea and told his counterparts that the United States had detailed information about the enriched-uranium program.
"We wanted to make it clear to them that they were busted," a senior administration official said.
The North Koreans initially denied the accusation, but the next day, after what they told the American visitors was an all-night discussion, they admitted that they were pursuing the secret weapons program, several officials said.
"We need nuclear weapons," Kang Sok Joo, the North Korean senior foreign policy official, said, arguing that the program was the result of the Bush administration's hostility.
Mr. Kelly responded that the program began at least four years ago, when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas. The Americans left after one North Korean official declared that dialogue on the subject was worthless and said, "We will meet sword with sword."
Since then, the North Koreans have been more circumspect. They have talked publicly about having the right to a nuclear weapon, even though they have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and an agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has been uncharacteristically restrained. President Bush led the push for an oil cutoff, but also issued a statement on Nov. 15 stating that the United States had no intention of invading North Korea. His aides hoped this would give Kim Jong Il the kind of security guarantee he had long demanded - and a face-saving way to end the nuclear program.
Mr. Bush's aides say the way to deal with North Korea, in contrast to their approach to Iraq, is to exploit its economic vulnerabilities and offer carrots, essentially the strategy the Clinton administration used. Many here in Seoul believe it may work this time.
"The North Koreans are a lot more dependent on us, and on the West, than they were in the 1994 nuclear crisis," said Han Sung Joo, who served as South Korea's foreign minister then.
But the reality, officials acknowledged, is that Mr. Bush has little choice but to pursue a diplomatic solution with North Korea.
Kim Jong Il has 11,000 artillery tubes dug in around the demilitarized zone, all aimed at Seoul. In the opening hours of a war, tens of thousands of people could die, military officials here say.
"Here's the strategy," one American official said. "Tell the North Koreans, quite publicly, that they can't get away with it. And say the same thing to Pakistan, but privately, quietly."
-------- depleted uranium
Afghanistan UMRC Report
From: "Piotr Bein" <piotr.bein@imag.net>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002
Excerpt from Dr Durakovic'c paper to The Third GCC Conference of Military Medicine and Protection Against Weapons of Mass Destruction, Doha, Qatar, October 20th-23rd, 2002:
"Our current data of biological samples from Kandahar, Kabul, and Jalalabad obtained by state of the art mass spectrometry analysis confirm over 100 times higher concentration of uranium isotopes in the biological specimens as compared with the control group. The several thousand hard target guided weapons used in Afghanistan and in the Iraq "no fly zones" should be addressed by the UN general assembly before any further use in future military conflicts."
Quotes from Afghanistan Field Team's Trip Report:
"The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by Uranium."
"They (the bombs) combined significant explosive force with hard-target penetration features. These weapons punched through three or more layers composed of steel reinforced roofs and two or more concrete walls without detonating. They then passed through the concrete floor/foundation slabs, to bury 3 to 4 meters in the earth before exploding."
www.umrc.net
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Dismisses N.Korea Arms Deal Report
November 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-nkorea-arms.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan on Sunday strongly denied a report that it had helped North Korea develop its nuclear weapons program in return for missile technology that would strengthen its hand against India.
``There is no truth in these reports whatsoever,'' said presidential spokesman Major-General Rashid Qureshi.
``I do not know where the New York Times gets its information from. I am convinced that they need to update their intelligence gathering system,'' he told Reuters.
The newspaper said in a report on its Web site on Saturday that the relationship between North Korea and Pakistan ``now appears much deeper and more dangerous than the United States and its Asian allies first suspected.''
Quoting unnamed sources in Washington, Pakistan and South Korea, it reported Pyongyang had provided Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with missile parts allowing him to build a nuclear arsenal able to reach ``every strategic site in India.''
In return Islamabad provided North Korea with designs for gas centrifuges and machinery needed to make highly enriched uranium for the country's latest nuclear weapons project.
``If the country has cooperated (with North Korea on nuclear weaponry) we would have known,'' Qureshi said.
``When these reports first came out I spoke to the president, so it is not as if we do not know about them.''
General Musharraf, who has just formally handed power to a civilian government in Pakistan after three years at the helm, is a key ally of President Bush in his campaign against the Taliban, al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.
Musharraf backed the U.S. military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington last year.
He has also allowed U.S. forces to operate out of an air base in Pakistan and there are U.S. military and intelligence personnel hunting al Qaeda and Taliban operatives inside Pakistan, close to the Afghan border.
-------- inspections
Iraq Says U.N. Plan Is Pretext for War
November 24, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Inspectors.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- In a point-by-point protest, the Iraqi government complained to the United Nations Sunday that the small print behind the weapons inspections beginning this week will give Washington a pretext to attack.
The new U.N. resolution on the inspections could turn ``inaccurate statements (among) thousands of pages'' of required Iraqi reports into a supposed justification for military action, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
``There is premeditation to target Iraq, whatever the pretext,'' Sabri said.
His lengthy letter, a detailed commentary on the Security Council resolution, was not expected to affect the inspections, which resume Wednesday after a four-year suspension. Iraq had accepted the resolution in a Nov. 13 letter from Sabri to Annan.
Preparations moved steadily ahead on Baghdad's outskirts Sunday, where technicians at the U.N. inspection center worked to establish a ``hot line'' with liaisons in the Iraqi government.
The first working group of 18 inspectors arrives Monday on a flight from a U.N. rear base in Cyprus. Their numbers are expected to swell by year-end to between 80 and 100 at a time in Iraq.
In seven years' work after the 1991 Gulf War, U.N. experts destroyed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons and longer-range missiles forbidden to Iraq by U.N. resolutions, and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program before it could build a bomb. The inspections were suspended amid disputes over U.N. access to Iraqi sites and Iraqi complaints the United States inserted spies in the inspection teams.
A new focus on Iraq by the Bush administration led to adoption of Resolution 1441 and the dispatch of inspectors back to Iraq with greater powers of unrestricted access to suspected weapons sites. Washington alleges Iraq retains some prohibited weapons and may be producing others.
The resolution, adopted unanimously Nov. 7, demands the Iraqis give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or face ``serious consequences.''
It requires Iraq to submit an accounting by Dec. 8 of its weapons programs, as well as of chemical, biological and nuclear programs it claims are peaceful. Any ``false statements or omissions'' in that declaration could contribute to a finding it had committed a ``material breach'' of the resolution -- a finding that might lead to military action.
The Bush administration has threatened war to enforce Iraqi disarmament, with or without U.N. sanction. But other governments, including France, Russia and China, say that decision can be made only by the Security Council.
Sabri's letter, dated Saturday and released Sunday, complained that a key passage on providing documentation is unjust, ``because it considers the giving of inaccurate statements -- taking into consideration that there are thousands of pages to be presented in those statements -- is a material breach.''
Sabri wrote that the aim was clear: ``to provide pretexts ... to be used in aggressive acts against Iraq.''
After talks with the Iraqis last week, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said they had expressed ``particular concern'' about what was expected of them in reporting on their chemical industry, a complex area in which many toxic products can be diverted to military use.
The foreign minister's letter disputed the allegations that his government retained chemical or biological weapons and rebuilt weapons programs. ``The United States and Britain failed to give one credible proof on this matter,'' Sabri wrote.
Sabri also complained that the resolution gives the inspectors ``unjust power'' like ``conducting interviews with citizens inside the country without the presence of a representative of their government or asking them to leave their country with their families for interviews or demanding lists of the names of all scientists and researchers and removing equipment without notifying the Iraqi government.''
Sabri complained of what he called arbitrary powers being granted to inspectors, including ``meeting people inside their country without the presence of a representative of their government, or asking them to leave the country with their families to meet (for interviews) abroad.''
In notifying Annan of Iraq's acceptance of Resolution 1441, Sabri had advised the U.N. chief he would follow with this second letter commenting on supposed violations of international law and other problems with the resolution.
The Iraqi official urged that Security Council member nations ensure that the weapons inspectors are committed ``to their obligations according to the U.N. charter and ... the United Nations' goals.'' If they do so, he wrote, they will ``uncover the false U.S. accusations.''
The U.N. experts' first missions are expected to be visits to Iraqi sites previously inspected in the 1990s, where they will check on cameras and other monitoring equipment left behind in many cases by earlier inspectors.
A top priority was establishing operational security at the U.N. offices, to maintain secrecy surrounding the targets of the inspectors' surprise visits.
``We are still testing our communications equipment to make sure we have secure lines,'' said Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, UNMOVIC.
-------- korea
N Korea calls for South's help to fight US pressure
AFP
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=29264789
SEOUL: Stalinist North Korea has appealed for help from South Korea to resist pressure from the United States over the country's suspected nuclear weapons programme.
The appeal was issued on Saturday by the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland through the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The committee called for a concerted campaign to quell "the US nuclear hysteria intended to bring disasters" to the Korean peninsula, insisting a non-aggression accord should be signed between Pyongyang and Washington.
The committee said all Koreans should "turn out in the nation-wide struggle to force the United States to conclude the treaty."
"At a time when the destiny of the nation is at stake the South Korean authorities should lodge a legitimate protest with the US against its infringement upon the fundamental interests of the nation and confidently advance along the road of cooperation between compatriots," it said.
On Sunday, Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's ruling Workers Party, described the non-aggression treaty as "a prerequisite and master key to solving the nuclear issue."
"In order to prevent this crisis it is necessary to conclude a non-aggression treaty between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US," it said.
Rodong said the treaty would "free both sides from each other's threat, put an end to their hostile and belligerent relations and provide a legal and institutional mechanism for durable peace" on the Korean peninsula.
"Then, this would help find a smooth solution to the delicate nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US and clear the US of its security concern," it added.
Washington has accused Pyongyang of violating the deal and pronouncing it "nullified" while North Korea says the United States destroyed the accord.
The United States said last month that Pyongyang had admitted that it was developing nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 arms control agreement.
Under the accord, Pyongyang pledged to freeze its atomic ambitions in return for the construction by an international consortium of two light-water reactors and the delivery of 500,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil a year.
To punish Pyongyang, the consortium building the reactors decided to suspend fuel oil deliveries from December until the North pledged to dismantle its nuclear programme.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Yucca Mountain Project workers say site problems kept quiet
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 24, 2002
Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2002/nov/24/112410627.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Some workers at the Yucca Mountain Project said there were flaws in the process scientists used to determine whether the site was suitable for disposing the nation's nuclear waste.
At least two workers claim they were either fired or transferred after raising concerns about the project's safety, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in its Sunday editions.
Robert Clark and Jim Mattimoe, both quality assurance specialists, said they were shoved aside so lingering problems would remain silent at Yucca.
U.S. Labor Department records show the men might have been mistreated because they believed the project was cutting corners to meet looming deadlines.
The Department of Energy earlier this year recommended that more than 77,000 tons of the nation's deadliest nuclear waste be buried at Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
President Bush and Congress have since approved plans to build a repository at Yucca Mountain. The first shipment of nuclear waste could arrive in 2010.
Mattimoe, 52, said he was fired after he made allegations of wrongdoing and corruption to Lake Barrett. At the time, Barrett was in charge of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which oversaw the Yucca Mountain Project.
Barrett declined to comment on Mattimoe's termination or Clark's transfer other than to say, "I'm personally satisfied with the actions that I took."
Mattimore said wrongdoing included withholding evidence and attributing statements to people who had never been interviewed about concerns with the project.
"The concerns program, which is much like an internal affairs division in a police department, is chartered to perform unbiased, independent investigations into any type of concern that could impact the safety of the project and the public," he said.
"I identified that the concerns program was corrupt and thereby raised questions about the credibility of all investigations for a period of nearly 10 years," Mattimoe said.
Mattimoe was fired by Navarro Research and Engineering, a quality assurance contractor hired by DOE.
A Labor Department investigator later determined that part of the reason Navarro fired Mattimoe was it had been urged to do so by Barrett. The inspector described Barrett's actions as "extraordinarily egregious."
In a Sept. 13 report, the Labor Department ordered Navarro to reinstate Mattimoe, expunge his personnel file and reimburse him for costs incurred.
The report states that Susana Navarro, president of Navarro Research and Engineering, was motivated to fire Mattimoe "at least in part to her fear that she might not receive future extensions or contracts with DOE unless she took this action."
Navarro is appealing the Labor Department ruling. Mattimoe now is working at the Los Alamos, N.M., national laboratory.
Susana Navarro said an audit by a prominent law firm found "among other things, that Mr. Mattimoe's conduct as a program manager for SAIC (the previous contractor) was inconsistent with a safety conscious work environment.
"I based my decision on the findings of this report, and I really believe that I did the right thing," she wrote.
But the Labor Department report says the law firm's audit is nothing more than a "sophisticated recitation of anonymous charges."
Some of the federal documents cited by the Review-Journal were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
------- us nuc waste
Energy Dept. Contractors Due for More Scrutiny
November 24, 2002
New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/politics/24CONT.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 - When the Bush administration announced this month that it intended to turn about half of the federal government's civilian jobs over to contractors, some officials at the Department of Energy reacted with rueful shakes of the head.
Since it was founded 35 years ago, the department has relied on contractors for almost everything it does. More than 90 percent of its budget is paid to 100,000 outside workers.
Next month, the Energy Department will field the first employees whose job is to supervise the contractors' work because, its leaders acknowledge, it has a dismal record of contract management. The department's experience serves as a sobering counterpoint to the White House proposal.
In particular, an internal Energy Department report this year concluded that the agency's largest program, which pays contractors to clean up the waste left by the nation's nuclear weapons programs, has been fundamentally mismanaged since its founding 13 years ago, and much of the $60 billion it has spent over that time was wasted.
The internal report's denunciation of agency practices and its prescriptions for changes echoed findings by outside auditors dating to 1990 - conclusions that are repeated in reports by auditors published in September, October and this month.
What astonished agency employees, officials said, was that the department had finally acknowledged its problems. The office in question is the department's Environmental Management Program, formed in 1989 to clean up the radioactive waste left from cold war nuclear development programs at 114 sites nationwide. For years it has been criticized for cost overruns and delays projected to last decades.
In one of the Energy Department's most infamous examples, which is far from unique, it began a program in 1985 to clean radioactive waste from 34 million gallons of liquids in storage in South Carolina. The project was to take three years and cost $32 million. Fourteen years later the department abandoned the project, saying it was unworkable because of mismanagement. By then, $500 million had been spent.
Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, said: "I have been embarrassed by our lack of progress. We owe the taxpayers more."
Ms. Roberson and the department's other leaders say they are now addressing the problems. The agency says it is scrutinizing contracts more closely and training 200 people to be project supervisors. Today, no one at the department actively supervises multibillion-dollar cleanup projects that are let out to contractors.
This month, department leaders also made public a plan to shorten the time by which contractors will have cleaned up all the radioactive sites nationwide - to 2030 from 2070. Ms. Roberson, who has been with the agency or one of its contractors for 21 years, acknowledges that most administrations come in with "plans for some new initiative or program to fix the problems."
The environmental management program engenders extraordinary criticism from within the government. The White House, in a current budget document, says the program "is less focused on cleaning up sites and has instead turned into a local jobs program." A senior Office of Management and Budget official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in an interview, "They have spent a lot of money, but producing results seems to be an alien concept over there."
Since 1990, the General Accounting Office has classified the Energy Department's contract management as "high risk." It is one of just six agencies whose procurement practices were judged dysfunctional.
In the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Office of Management and Budget has described the department as among the dozen or so most troubled in government.
A General Accounting Office audit published in September found that, even as agency officials spoke of change and reform, problems were actually worsening. Auditors examined a sample of 16 projects costing $200 million or more and said, "We found no indication of improved performance." The number of projects for which cost estimates had at least doubled in five years and completion deadlines had slipped by at least five years had increased to 38 percent.
An Energy Department inspector general's report published last month said one current cleanup project, in which price has escalated to $214 million from $64 million, had "problems with project plans, cost estimates and project oversight."
Ms. Roberson observed that critical audits like that quickly lose their sting and in a perverse way even encourage agencies to stick with the offending practices. "There has been a learned pattern of co-dependency between the department and the G.A.O and the inspector general," she said. "When they identify problems, our job is to stand firm and explain the problems away. And with that posture, the problems don't get better over time. The debate could go on forever."
When Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham took office last year, he ordered three of the department's major divisions - energy efficiency, fossil fuels and environmental management - to examine their operations closely. But former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and others had also ordered tough reviews.
Environmental Management's review was the first one published, in February. It found that "there is a systemic problem with the way Environmental Management has conducted its activities."
The program had estimated that cleaning up all the nuclear weapons sites would ultimately cost $300 billion and be completed in 2070. But, the internal report said, "it is clear that on the current path, the cost of the program will continue to increase and increase, with the real possibility that the ultimate cleanup and closure goal will never be met."
"I think people were actually quite surprised that we said all this ourselves because we had denied and defended for so long," said Ms. Roberson, who was on the review team.
Bruce M. Carnes, the department's chief financial officer, said it had decided "that to obtain results in 70 or 75 years is not satisfactory." The White House agrees.
The internal report and other audits this year show that the agency awards contracts to clean up radioactive sites without actually examining the property to see what the work will entail.
Once a contract is awarded, the department seldom checks back. The department "has virtually abdicated its role of owner in project oversight," the National Research Council said in a report last year that had been requested by Congress. That report found that half the money the department spends on contracts each year - more than $17 billion in the last fiscal year - is wasted and called Energy "one of the most inefficient organizations in the federal government."
The agency's leaders all vow that the changes they are making are real and will bring results. Early this year Secretary Abraham said, "We will no longer give contractors a license for unending cleanup and open-ended budgets."
In an interview, Mr. Carnes said: "We are serious. We are changing the tires on this car while it's driving 60 miles an hour. And this is not something that comes and goes. It's rock bottom truth."
But the senior O.M.B. official complained, "So far, we've had more discussions about what they are planning to do than anything they have actually done."
-------- us politics
Snoopers With Blind Spots
By Mary McGrory,
Washington Post
Sunday, November 24, 2002; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28342-2002Nov22?language=printer
As far as I can make out, Adm. John M. Poindexter wants to know everything about me. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is curious too, but he has limits: He draws the line at my gun purchases.
The thought of me armed with an assault weapon strikes terror in the hearts of those who know me and have watched my struggles with a can opener; it shatters the security they are supposed to derive from passage of the homeland security bill, which George W. Bush said was as essential as oxygen for him.
Poindexter, whom I remember from the Iran-contra hearings, is welcome to paw through my records -- I hope he can make better sense out of them than I can. As I understand it, he wants to check my credit card charges and telephone records.
But I am afraid the phone bills would be a disappointment to him -- most of my outgoing calls are to lost-and-found departments of airports, banquet halls, restaurants and other public places where I may have dropped my keys, glasses, notebook or speech text. If absent-mindedness is a crime, I could get life -- or even death -- from this crowd.
Of course, it is flattering to have an admiral sniffing through your stuff, and I suppose he thinks he is defending the homeland while heading up the Information Awareness Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Its acronym, DARPA, may sound like a ballet troupe, but to him it could be an aircraft carrier steaming toward Iraq. I don't especially like the idea of someone who barely escaped the slammer on charges of lying to Congress about the Iran-contra scandal passing judgment on us. I mean, it's okay for him to know that I like Jane Austen and chunky peanut butter, but if we're going much further than that I have to say I have reservations.
The admiral's emergence from obscurity bothers the administration not at all, because it's the kind of in-your-faceness that delights the right-wing constituency Bush so prizes. The wingers probably think the admiral should be secretary of the Navy and that his confederate, Oliver North, should be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As I say, John Ashcroft, author of the infamous "TIPS" (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) scheme -- which sought to convert truckers, plumbers and others pretending to serve you into James Bonds -- seems almost moderate by comparison. But his TIPS proposal was too much even for the crazy House of Representatives.
Ashcroft may have been a cheerleader for secret detentions, secret court hearings and other undemocratic practices that he justifies in the name of fighting terrorism, but he is a stickler for privacy in one respect: Gun purchases are sacred. So says the National Rifle Association. So says he. If Ashcroft finds out you have bought an assault weapon, and is shown the bill, he will avert his eyes and reprimand the aide who brought to him this forbidden fruit of domestic surveillance.
The way for me to test this liberalism on Ashcroft's part is to buy an assault weapon. The dealer might mistake me for a terrorist -- several airport screeners have made me take my shoes off. On the other hand, the homeland security bill authorizes the arming of airline pilots, and they might think that, late in life, I am aspiring to a second career.
Ashcroft says it's none of the government's business. The FBI differs; the G-men thought it would be helpful to trace bulk purchases of assault weapons, that such a check might lead to terrorists. But according to a recent report on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Ashcroft "stopped them in their tracks." The FBI was forbidden to see the gun purchasers' background check records.
Why? Because, said Ashcroft piously, "The only permissible use for the National Instant Check System is to audit the maintenance of that system. And the Department of Justice is committed to following the law in that respect."
At a Senate hearing, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) expressed the general bewilderment: "I can't understand the logic, frankly, particularly when you have him [Ashcroft] talking about the unremitting effort that they are waging against terrorism, and then there's this blind spot about the NRA and guns and lists of people who buy them."
But instead of asking senators, who wrote the law, what their intent was, Ashcroft said sternly, "I intend to enforce the law as it has been written."
The hullabaloo over homeland security shows us again the GOP's solicitude for its big givers and high rollers -- and its ambivalence about government. Government is the enemy, the problem, the damper on free enterprise, the stumbling block to unfettered capitalism. It is, paradoxically, a fragile damsel that has to be protected from a treacherous, mischief-making citizenry that needs to be investigated, spied upon, wiretapped and hounded to do right. The attorney general will tell you what that is.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Stability of Africa Is Threatened as AIDS Infects Armies
November 24, 2002
New York Times
By HENRI E. CAUVIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/international/africa/24ANGO.html
LUANDA, Angola - First Sgt. Domingos Leiria may be the future of the Angolan Armed Forces.
Like thousands of other soldiers in Angola, and thousands more across Africa, Sergeant Leiria has H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
Struggling to stay fit for duty, he is fighting a battle he does not expect to win. But the war is one that the armed forces of Africa, already the epicenter of the epidemic, cannot afford to lose.
For better or worse, no institution is more central to the stability of many African nations than the military, and few institutions in Africa are more threatened by AIDS.
At Angola's central military hospital here in the capital, AIDS has surpassed malaria as the leading cause of death, and after the long civil war, the situation will almost certainly worsen.
"With the end of the war, we expect there will be an explosion in numbers," Dr. Francisco Ernesto, the commander of the military health service, said in an interview.
But leaders here are not the only ones who have reason to be alarmed. Africa is figuring in American foreign policy more than at any other time since the end of the cold war, both in terms of economic security and military strategy.
The United States is importing more and more oil from West Africa, particularly Angola and Nigeria, to reduce its reliance on the volatile Middle East. On the other side of the continent, the United States is establishing an antiterrorist command center in the tiny nation of Djibouti and stepping up contacts with Ethiopia and Kenya, all in an effort to build alliances in a region where Al Qaeda has been active, especially in Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
AIDS in the military will undermine such efforts, and that helps explain why the Pentagon is spending several million dollars this year to help Angola and 20 other African countries begin dealing with the crisis. A new Central Intelligence Agency report on AIDS cites Nigeria and Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's two most populous countries, as crucial American security concerns, and the rising toll on their armed forces is part of the reason.
"A key ingredient of regional cooperation is national militaries that are capable and competent and not dying off because of AIDS," Theresa Whelan, director of the Defense Department's office of Africa policy, said in a telephone interview from Washington.
Angola's civil war made travel around the country difficult and dangerous, and that kept H.I.V. from spreading as much as it has in the rest of southern Africa.
But the war ended this year, after nearly three decades of fighting, and millions of Angolans are on the move, making their way back to villages and towns they abandoned long ago. H.I.V., now estimated to infect 5.5 percent of adults in Angola, will not be far behind, experts say. "People couldn't move," said Dr. Eric Bing, an assistant professor at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and the civilian coordinator of the Defense Department project here. "That's about to change."
Soldiers are already among the sick. Some, infected on missions in foreign capitals like Kinshasa and Brazzaville, will carry the virus to their home villages, passing it on to wives and girlfriends. Others risk being infected as the cycle of transmission gathers pace, and prostitutes and truckers also spread the virus as they ply their trades in areas that had long been inaccessible.
Angola has only to look around the continent, to countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa; they are all at peace after long periods of upheaval, and like Angola, all aspire to influence and power on the continent. Yet the stability they are trying to entrench and the ambitions they are trying to realize are threatened by AIDS.
In Nigeria, at least 6 percent of adults are H.I.V.-positive, with the spread fueled by many factors, among them the Nigerian military's emerging role as regional peacemaker.
In Ethiopia, at least 10 percent of the adult population has H.I.V., and the number has been climbing, driven in part by the demobilization of tens of thousands of soldiers after the country's long civil war and more recently after the war against Eritrea.
In South Africa, which has more H.I.V.-positive people than any other country, roughly one in four soldiers are infected, the Ministry of Defense says.
Sergeant Leiria, a 31-year-old commando, has been an Angolan soldier since 1990. Along with missions around the country, he has been sent to Congo and the Congo Republic, countries where Angola has been instrumental in shoring up embattled governments.
These days, he is fighting for his own survival.
He seems fit enough, but he is not. He suffers from thrush, a fungal infection that makes swallowing difficult. He has fought off tuberculosis. He endures debilitating headaches and diarrhea. He is dogged by fever that gives way to chills.
"Usually, from 4 o'clock, I feel too cold," he says. "Even at the moment, I am too cold." Asked how he contracted H.I.V., he says he does not know. It might have been from shaving with a fellow soldier's razor or perhaps from a battlefield blood transfusion, he says.
What about sex? he is asked.
Sent away from home for long stretches, soldiers strike up relationships with local women or prostitutes, though like Sergeant Leiria they often have wives at home. Such liaisons have long spread sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, and now H.I.V.
"I think it s possible," Sergeant Leiria said. "I cannot lie to you. I walked a lot of places."
Indeed, many soldiers do. The sex is cheap, and in war, life itself seems cheap. Fatalism creeps into their thinking. "People used to say we should enjoy life," Sergeant Leiria said. "If we get it, we get it."
Slowly, though, he and others in the military say, reckless behavior is waning, but too late for Sergeant Leiria.
Sitting in a quiet corner of a downtown hotel, he was dressed in gray jeans, a dark T-shirt and calf-high combat boots that were the only obvious hint of his work. Soon, he said, he will be shedding the uniform altogether.
"I want to be demobilized, because of the AIDS, because I need to rest," he said. "I fought a lot and I didn't manage to do almost anything with my life. Now I want to do something in my life. I have children. I have a wife."
It is a painful decision for a man who has known little besides a soldier's life. When he tested positive in 2000, horrified relatives turned their back on him, and he contemplated killing himself.
Since then, he and some of his relatives have come to accept his fate, helped by an AIDS support organization. None of that has helped to arrest the march of the disease. Without consistent access to the anti-retroviral drugs that have made the disease manageable for many people in the West, Sergeant Leiria has little hope. "If I was like other people who have a lot of money - they go abroad to buy medicines, they go to South Africa for treatment - then I could continue," he said.
While Angola is a long way from wielding the broad influence of South Africa or Nigeria, it has fashioned itself into a regional power, and its military, as the fulcrum of power in the country, will remain for now an important engine of the country's aspirations - and a crucial component in the fight against AIDS.
Like other countries, Angola does not know exactly how many soldiers are H.I.V.-positive, and so it is planning a survey with the help of Dr. Bing and other specialists.
The United States military does not enlist anyone who has tested positive for H.I.V., but does not discharge people solely on the basis of infection with the virus unless the symptoms of AIDS render them physically unfit to serve.
Experts say the survey is likely to show that the prevalence is higher than the current estimate of 5.5 percent of adults, and likely to increase. The question is whether Angola will contain the surge. Like many African countries, Angola is too poor to think about providing treatment for most of its H.I.V.-positive people, so for now the efforts focus on prevention.
On the main military base here in the capital, 18 young soldiers were training to teach their colleagues to defend themselves against H.I.V. This is the military's new war, symbolized by the soldier depicted in the class manual, his old weapon - a gun - in one hand, his new weapon - a condom - in the other.
Maj. Fernando Paxião Damião, the doctor in charge of the training, wants to think that his efforts will do some good, but on the future of the armed forces sees little to be cheerful about. "We're going to have an army of sick people," he said.
-------- arms sales
Gaza security agency denies arms charges
By SAUD ABU RAMADAN
From the International Desk
11/24/2002 6:27 PM
(UPI)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021124-062623-1929r
GAZA, -- Security officials in the Gaza Strip Sunday denied Israeli media reports that the security service had built a clandestine factory to produce weapons and explosives for use by terrorists.
A high-ranking official of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security agency, who asked not to be identified, blasted reports that the organization was linked to the alleged bomb-making factory as grossly "untrue accusations."
"It is not true at all," he declared to United Press International. "The Israeli accusations are made by high-ranking Israeli officials inside the right-wing government against Preventive Security. It is a plan to undermine our security apparatus."
The Preventive Security group was established in 1994, a year after the Palestinian Authority was formed by the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
The agency was quite active even before the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, and has boasted over the years of apprehending dozens of Palestinian militants bent on carrying out suicide bomb attacks in Israel.
"After the Israelis failed to carry out the same accomplishments that Preventive Security was doing, they are putting their failures on us, and want to destroy this strong security apparatus," the official pointed out.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz said earlier Sunday that Preventive Security had set up a factory for producing large quantities of nitric acid, a key chemical ingredient used in making explosives.
The paper had said the information about the alleged factory came from a secret PA document seized in an Israeli army raid last week carried out on the Preventive Security headquarters.
The latest controversy came as the Israeli army intensified its military operations in the West Bank and Gaza, and has reoccupied most of the towns on the West Bank, with the exception of Jericho.
In Gaza, the Israeli army enforced a curfew on the beaches and prevented dozens of fishermen from going out to sea after two Islamic Jihad militants blew up an Israeli patrol boat north of the Gaza Strip. Four Israeli troops were injured and the two guerrillas were killed in the Friday night attack.
Meanwhile, an elderly Palestinian was killed Sunday night after being hit by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell in the outskirts of the West Bank town of Nablus, which is under curfew, Palestinian sources told UPI.
The sources said that Ahmed Eshtaya, 70, from the village of Salem, was killed as he was heading past Nablus to visit his daughter who lived in a neighboring village.
------- chemical weapons
Yugoslavian officials 'sold chemical weapons to Iraq'
Sunday Herald -
24 November 2002
http://www.sundayherald.com/print29454
A new report finds the Yugoslavian government has helpedSaddam Hussein build up a terrifying arsenal. Russ Baker in Belgrade reports
High-level military and civilian officials of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) have clearly known about, and therefore been implicitly involved in, a massive arms-for-cash trade with Iraq that has continued in the last two years, in violation of international agreements and explicit promises to American and European authorities. The assistance to Iraq, illegal under UN sanctions imposed in 1990 , could end up being used against allied forces should military action be launched against Iraq .
The extent of this Yugo-Iraqi axis is the subject of a detailed report, Arming Saddam: The Yugoslav Connection, from the non-profit international research and advocacy organisation, The International Crisis Group (ICG).
By asserting the large-scale sale of weapons to Saddam Hussein could not, and apparently did not, proceed without the approval of top military brass and key figures in the FRY's civilian leadership, the ICG report, to be released tomorrow, is likely to cause tumult on Capitol Hill and in European capitals. One outcome might be a serious re-evaluation of Western policy towards Yugoslavia, which involves hundreds of million of dollars in aid to the purportedly reformist post-Milosevic government, as well as fast-track efforts to ease the country back into the international community. The country, a federation of Serbia and Montenegro, is struggling to recover from war and sanctions.
The ICG report makes clear the illicit Yugoslav arms trade with Iraq is not the result of unauthorised, 'rogue' operations, as previously claimed by FRY leaders, but a steady pipeline that has generated hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars for state-run and private companies with ties to political parties and military and civilian leaders -- monies believed to have largely migrated to illegal offshore bank accounts.
The report, a final draft of which was obtained by the Sunday Herald, is based on an analysis of internal Yugoslav government documents, local and inter national news reports, scholarly and technical journals and ICG's extensive interviews with high-ranking Yugoslav government and military officials, defence experts, munitions industry figures and sources within the US government and international community.
ICG was founded in 1995 after concerns over an inadequate international response to crises in Rwanda, the Balkans and elsewhere. The report's main author is James Lyon, director of the ICG's Serbia Project, who has a PhD in Balkan history and is known for his high-level contacts . Shortly after the report was filed, he left the region over concerns for his safety.
The report exposes a rift between the Yugoslav leadership and the country's foreign ministry, which repeatedly warned the FRY government about the illegality of the arms trade to Iraq. Each time such warnings were issued, says the report, officials made cosmetic changes, but the trade continued unabated.
The report concludes that despite recent statements of disavowal from top officials, including the Yugoslav president and Serbian premier, internal documents indicate they must have had prior knowledge of the Iraqi trade. 'Top Yugoslav authorities, including President Kostunica ... knew about the sales, some of them at least as early as July of 2001, and did nothing to halt them.'
The report raises the question of the continuing influence of the Yugoslav old guard in the new government. The report explores the transfer not only of weapons and technology from such entities as Jugoimport-SDPR, (a state- controlled company whose role in sending jet engines and spare parts to Iraq was revealed when international peacekeeping troops in Bosnia seized incriminating documents in October) but also from the stocks of the Yugoslav military. It lays out the procedures and approvals required for the goods and personnel to move from their origin via third countries (chiefly Syria) to Iraq, and focuses on Velimir Radojevic, federal defence minister.
'It is ... inconceivable that Radojevic -- on the basis of his position as defence minister, board member of Jugoimport-SPDR, and his close ties inside the military -- was unaware of the ongoing plunder of VJ [Yugoslav Army] stocks, the arms sales to Iraq, the use of VJ ports, or the travel of VJ officers and military scientists to Iraq. It is inconceivable that he did not inform the federal president, interior minister, foreign minister, Army chief of staff and KOS [military counter- intelligence] of these activities.'
It notes that 'it is inconceivable' that the chief of the KOS, General Aco Tomic, did not know about the weapons sales or inform Kostunica or other key officials 'given the size and sophistication of his intelligence network, as well as his legal responsibility to sign off on weapons exports'.
ICG cites high-level sources in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, the ruling government coalition, as affirming that the deliberately mislabled cargoes were escorted to the Montenegrin ports of Bar and Tivat by the Serbian, Montenegrin and Yugoslav federal interior ministries.
Although the federal government in October fired key officials in the wake of the Jugoimport revelations, the report lays out the contradictory statements by top leaders and the connections of those men and their parties to people involved with the arms trade. It notes that the general who headed Jugoimport was not fired, but reassigned as a special advisor to the man who replaced him, until US pressure forced his departure. It notes obstructionism by members of a government-appointed commission appointed to look into the allegations -- a body that includes Radojevic, one of those whose approval would have been necessary .
The report spells out some of the potential consequences of Yugo-Iraqi arms trade. 'Over the past two years, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia appears to have sold cruise and ballistic missile and pilotless vehicle technology to Iraq. Chemical and biological weapons and possibly their manufacturing technology and equipment also appear to have been sold. Yugoslavia appears to have sold Iraq anti-aircraft systems, artillery, munitions, and constructed underground bunker complexes inside Iraq. The combination of technologies provided by Yugoslavia could enable the Iraqi government to create an inexpensive cruise missile with weapons of mass destruction.'
If true, Yugoslavia would have been one of Iraq's key suppliers of weaponry and human assistance, including the building and revamping of military facilities. Among the examples of Iraq dealings described in the report:
- Cites 'reliable sources with connections to Kostunica's cabinet' and military counter-intelligence as telling ICG that, beyond the sale to Iraq within the past two years of 'biological and chemical equipment', as reported in the Belgrade press, chemical weapons have been sold. Bilateral co-operation in this area dates to the 1980s, when Yugoslavia assisted Iraq in building a chemical manufacturing compound. Other sources allege the manufacture, during the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, of the gas sarin.
- Asserts that a delegation from the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), the political organisation of federal President Kostunica, attended a conference in Baghdad in November 2001 'intended to create a counterweight to the US and globalisation'. The head of the delegation is a key figure in a web of trading companies implicated in the arms traffic, a consortium owned by a man who is also a key financier of the DSS.
- Cites a Yugoslav foreign ministry letter noting that as of January this year, Yugoslavia had construction contracts with Iraq, mostly for bunkers and other defense-related purposes, worth in excess of $120 million.
- Quotes a 'technical source' in Belgrade asserting that Yugoslav scientists 'have -- at the very least -- developed a model of a turbojet engine with a diameter that could fit in a cruise missile'.
ICG paints a picture of almost unavoidable temptation, with politicians and military figures who are mortal enemies dividing the spoils of a spectacularly lucrative opportunity. Most of the companies involved in such weapons production are aligned with competing political parties and politicians and it is nearly impossible to track the ultimate recipients of the profits .
Jugoimport, despite tremendous sales volume, claimed 2001 profits of only two million dinars (roughly $33,000). According to a January 2002 foreign ministry letter, one company, EnergoProjekt, may alone have had over $120m in construction contracts with Iraq.
Officials at the Yugoslav foreign ministry and the US Embassy in Belgrade are known to have viewed advance copies of the ICG document. Embassy officials, who were last week hosting a delegation of US arms investigators looking into the trading issue, would not comment, nor would foreign ministry officials.
Zoran Zivkovic, federal interior minister, a member of the federal inquiry panel on the arms transfers -- who was a Jugoimport board member -- declined to respond , but questioned the motivations of ICG, which is known to be a tough critic of the pace of reforms in the country.
'I don't care about their opinion, especially given what I know about their associates in Yugoslavia,' Zivkovic said.
-------- china
U.S. Warship Docks in China in Show Ties on Course
November 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-usa-navy.html
QINGDAO (Reuters) - A U.S. naval destroyer docked smoothly on China's eastern coast on Sunday, displaying how well ties fractured by a mid-air plane collision and discord over Taiwan have healed during the war on terror.
The USS Paul Foster nudged into a naval pier in Qingdao, headquarters of China's Northern Fleet, after a Chinese destroyer greeted it at sea by flying maritime flags for the letters ``W,'' ``T'' and ``C'' -- meaning ``Welcome To China.''
Some 340 black-uniformed crew stood at attention along the guardrails of the American warship, face to face with blue-suited Chinese sailors striking similar poses along the dock.
A local navy brass band hailed the arrival of the American warship, the first to pull into a mainland port since an April, 2001, mid-air collision between a U.S. plane and a Chinese fighter off China's southern shore.
The port call came a month after a summit between Presidents George W. Bush and Jiang Zemin in Crawford, Texas, where China's Foreign Ministry says the two reached agreement to resume full military exchanges and consultations.
Military officials from the U.S. embassy in Beijing said this stop was finalized around that time but planned months in advance.
Two U.S. carriers with around 12,000 sailors dropped anchor in Hong Kong two days ago in another sign of military ties on the mend.
The captain of the Paul F. Foster, Commander Chuck Nygaard, was met with a handshake from Guo Shouqian, deputy chief of staff of China's Northern Fleet, at the end of a red-carpeted gangplank.
``I know that there has been some turbulence'' in relations, said Nygaard, who last visited China aboard the USS Blue Ridge, which docked in Shanghai weeks before the spy plane incident.
``We are a part of renewed relations and improved relations between our two countries,'' he told an audience of reporters and Chinese military brass.
Guo stressed Jiang's latest visit with Bush. Jiang stepped down as boss of the Communist Party this month but stayed on as head of the military and made clear he would continue to play a highly influential role in policy.
COOL HEADS
A wave of crises, from terrorism to Iraq and North Korea, have pushed Beijing and Washington closer over the past year, despite obstacles like weapons proliferation and Taiwan.
U.S. navy Vice-admiral Paul Gaffney II met China's defense minister Chi Haotian in Beijing last month, the highest American military man to visit since the spy plane incident.
``Our two very powerful navies can do so much for stability in the region,'' said Nygaard.
His late 1970s-era destroyer -- carrying ground and surface-to-air missiles, two five-inch guns and a helicopter -- had sailed in from Yokosuka, Japan and after a half-year tour in places like India, Indonesia and Hong Kong.
On the other side of the pier was the destroyer Qingdao, which returned home two months ago after what was billed as the Chinese navy's first circumnavigation of the globe, a four-month foreign relations tour and show of military might.
And just a few miles along the coast of the former German treaty port, China's flotilla of nuclear submarines is stationed underwater.
They sit on watch over Taiwan, the island China regards as a rebel province and has threatened with force, if necessary, to return it to the fold. Bush has pledged to do whatever it takes to help the island protect itself.
But heads were cool on both sides during Sunday's port call, the United States' sixth in Qingdao, right down to the rank-and-file.
``Since September 11, the United States has become more realistic toward China,'' said Major Liu Qinggang, 30, as he watched the U.S. ship drift in. ``They seek the truth from facts, and they know now where their overall interests lie.''
``Just because China's a rising power doesn't mean it's going to be a threat like in the Cold War,'' said American Christian Trexel, 20, a fire control technician who works on Tomahawk missiles.
``We're here. And hopefully there will be more after us.'
-------- colombia
Dead Man's Bluff
By Steven Dudley
Sunday, November 24, 2002
Washington Post; Page W10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11783-2002Nov19?language=printer
Was Colombia's most feared paramilitary chieftain really killed in the jungles of his war-torn country eight years ago? Or did Fidel Castano simply disappear, leaving his brother responsible
The rain came down in sheets the night Carlos Castano returned to his older brother Fidel's grave in the jungles of northern Colombia.
Carlos and two of his cousins dug furiously into the muddy terrain on the edge of one of his brother's many cattle ranches. But the hole that held the legendary paramilitary chieftain's body kept filling with water, which turned an eerie white.
Carlos didn't want to move Fidel's body, but the hastily dug grave was eroding. The stench from the grave site made him double over and vomit, he recounted last year in his authorized biography, My Confession. His cousins looked at him in consternation and kept digging until they uncovered Fidel's casket with their shovels. The rudimentary wooden box was so waterlogged they couldn't move it.
Carlos and his cousins reached in to retrieve the body, but the bones came apart in their hands. Carlos was left holding the skull. The exhumation was almost more than he could handle. He fell into a trance, he told his biographer, and watched aimlessly as his cousins finished the job.
He thought about abandoning the decades-old civil war that had left his father and now his brother dead. He thought about the randomness of battle, the way some died and others lived. He thought about the burden of taking his brother's place, of leading the struggle against leftist insurgents that had splintered the country. Then Carlos helped his cousins rebury his brother on the side of a nearby mountain, for what he prayed would be the last time.
Colombians were aghast and delighted at Carlos's tale (and bought his book in record numbers). This is, after all, the land of magical realism, an Andean country where myths flourish and stories about larger-than-life figures like Fidel Castano grow more powerful over time.
For almost 15 years, Fidel was at the center of Colombia's chaos, enmeshed in its massacres, land grabs and cocaine deals. He was the founding father of the country's right-wing paramilitaries, which financed their fierce war against the leftists with drug money. He was a self-made millionaire, amassing a cattle empire and trafficking in illegal drugs and stolen art. He was the man who had taken on one of the world's most fearsome drug lords, Pablo Escobar, and helped snuff him out.
Then, on January 6, 1994, it all came to an end, Carlos told his biographer, with a single bullet to the heart near a guerrilla roadblock. With that shot, Fidel Castano was dead at 45.
Or was he? It was hard to believe, even for those who read Carlos's book cover to cover. Carlos maintains he learned of his brother's death immediately, but hid the news from the country for months while he consolidated his control of the Castano empire. When rumors began circulating in newspapers that Fidel was dead, Carlos was tight-lipped about what had happened. What's more, there was no corpse, no fingerprints, no eyewitness testimony, no death certificate. For years, there were only rumors of his whereabouts, not his grave. He was living in Portugal. He had an apartment in Paris. He ran a kibbutz in Israel. He was spotted in Monteria, at an inauguration of a military battalion in central Colombia, on a balcony in Madrid. The stories came from lawyers, politicians, shop owners, peasant farmers, fishermen and taxi drivers. People talked about Fidel in the present tense. Even the government didn't buy Fidel's death. Prosecutors continued to charge him with crimes long after his disappearance.
Why were so many Colombians convinced that his death had been staged? Was it possible that he was still operating from the shadows, still contributing to Colombia's tumult and reaping profits from its travails? I decided to find out more about what had happened to Fidel--and to the forces he'd unleashed on his country.
I started by poking around a lonely village called Valencia, where Fidel owned land and had spent most of the last years of his public life. Valencia is in the province of Cordoba, at the base of the Sinu Valley, a vast wetlands that stretches from the mountains in the south to the coast in the north. Aside from cattle ranchers like Fidel, the area is dirt poor. The town itself has a few dozen one-story houses and no paved roads. The local government was just putting in a sewer system. A few donkeys roamed freely in the town market, and peasants walked the streets with the plodding pace of poverty. Occasionally, the local bus passed by, kicking up dust in their faces.
To get to the village, I had to cross the torrential Sinu River on a crude ferry that maintained its course by attaching itself to two reinforced steel wires that stretched across the fast-moving muddy water. Fidel used to swim the river for exercise. A visiting professor once saw him dive into whirlpools that would suck the life from most. Fidel, of course, came up some 20 yards away and swam freestyle for another hour. He often complemented his swims with long jogs. And he was an avid chess player.
"He was always attacking, never on the defensive," said one old compatriot who played with Fidel frequently. "And when he was waiting for me to move, he used to just sit there and say, 'I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you,' and tap the pieces on the table and whistle."
The two would play until Fidel had outmaneuvered his opponent in a sufficient number of matches. "Sometimes we'd play until 8 or 9 in the morning. He never lost."
The few townspeople in Valencia who would speak to me remembered Fidel as an "uncomplicated" person, a man of the countryside. He owned a big ranch outside of town, they said, but he dressed like them: a pair of jeans, boots and a cowboy hat. He was tall and fit, built like a soldier, with wide shoulders and a firm torso. He had a stern, serious face, but soft eyes that charmed. He greeted everyone he saw with a smile and a strong handshake, remembering their names and asking after their wives, their children, their businesses. They called him "Tio Fidel," or Uncle Fidel. "Whatever you need, you just come by the house," he would urge at the end of conversations.
As I traveled through the countryside around Valencia, I passed dozens of ranches with hundreds of Cebu cattle grazing behind the wooden fences. Much of the land belongs to the Castano family. Following his move to Valencia, Fidel bought two large farms, which added to his holdings in the neighboring provinces of Choco and Antioquia. His timing was impeccable. The neighbors were fleeing increasingly aggressive and brash guerrilla forces. Two rebel groups--one Maoist, the other Marxist--had extorted the region to death, and the cattle ranchers were looking to sell at any price.
Sensing opportunity, Fidel bought more tracts of land, many of them in rebel-held territory. Then he went to work. By Carlos's account, Fidel recruited a fighting force of close to 100 men and trained them on his farm, Las Tangas. The "Tangueros," as Fidel's army became known, eliminated suspected guerrillas and their supporters with startling efficiency. People began calling him Rambo. The nickname fit perfectly. Like the Sylvester Stallone antihero, Fidel was a loner who fought battles that the government couldn't or wouldn't. In one particularly brutal massacre, one of his men told investigators, the Tangueros dragged some 40 people from a neighboring village back to Las Tangas. There they tortured them all night with crude instruments before shooting some and burying others alive.
Valencia, once an area teeming with rebels, was "liberated" in months. The land values shot up, and the shrewd Fidel started to sell. It was a pattern he would repeat wherever he went. Others, particularly drug traffickers, did the same in different parts of the country.
While Fidel grew fabulously rich, he also gave away large tracts of land and set up a school, which I visited while I was in the Valencia area. An administrator named Lola Martinez showed me around the one-story building, where teachers were holding physics, chemistry and English classes. Martinez said they tried to teach the kids values, and each classroom had a slogan like "Tolerance" or "Respect" pasted above the door.
"I should say that I had the honor to meet Fidel," Martinez told me as we walked into the library. "He was a great man, an intellectual. He was very nice and gave his life to humanitarian causes. He was one of those people who had a certain charisma."
And it was apparently every bit as potent as his ruthlessness.
After Fidel was gone, his mantle fell to Carlos, who didn't speak publicly about his brother's death until 1996. At that time, he told Semana magazine that Fidel disappeared as he traveled with a five-man entourage toward the Darien Gap, a thick canopy of trees and undergrowth that runs along the Panama-Colombia border.
"The jungle swallowed him," Carlos was quoted as saying, comparing his brother to the main character of a popular novel who suffered a similar fate. He said nothing more until the publication of My Confession. By then, his account of Fidel's death had grown far more detailed and dramatic, with his brother felled by a single bullet to the heart. Not surprisingly, Carlos didn't like being pressed about the contradictions in his stories. "I don't lie," he growled during one interview. The reporter backed off.
When I flew to Valencia to see Carlos, one of his paramilitary commanders gave me a lift in a two-seat airplane from the banana-growing region along the northern coast. The plane skimmed the tops of banana trees, then skirted some mountains and entered into cattle country. We touched down on a grassy 500-foot airstrip on the edge of a dirt road. Two paramilitary guards in a jeep drove me to a small village: a dozen houses clustered around a run-down basketball court that functioned as a park. There I met my guide, Commander 04, a towering, mustachioed figure who walked with a limp and grunted short answers to questions.
How did you injure yourself? I asked.
"Hurt my hip in battle," he muttered.
As we bounced down the road toward our destination, I dragged out of him that he'd joined Fidel Castano's troops in the late 1980s.
"A great man, great commander," he said.
How did Fidel die? I ventured.
04 paused. "Don't know," he finally mumbled.
As we pulled into camp, Carlos was yelling at 20 paramilitary soldiers dressed in camouflage and lined up in two rows. Spit flew from his mouth as he barked at them. He was sweating when he entered the tent where I was waiting.
"I'm Carlos Castano," he said in a thick, hoarse voice. He took off his camouflage baseball hat to reveal a dark-haired crew cut atop a handsome, stubbled face. He exuded authority, and it was easy to see why he'd emerged as one of the country's most visible paramilitary leaders after Fidel was gone.
"In our war, the enemy is difficult to see," he began explaining to me once we sat down. "It's like a snake; it comes from the bushes, it comes out of a bunker. It attacks and then disappears into the shade without anyone knowing where it is."
For the last several years, Carlos, now 37, has had close to 10,000 troops under his command as head of the loosely knit United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is a greatly expanded version of the Tangueros, and many believe it's the only thing keeping the powerful leftist guerrillas from overrunning more of Colombia's countryside. But the group, which has long operated with the tacit approval and at times direct support of the Colombian government, is also responsible for killing thousands of civilians suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas. And it has enlisted the country's most powerful drug traffickers to help finance its war.
The United States has spent nearly $2 billion in the last three years trying to help Colombia break the grip of its drug traffickers. It considers the AUC a terrorist organization. And it considers Carlos Castano a criminal. In September, he was one of three paramilitary leaders indicted in Washington on charges of bringing more than 17 tons of cocaine into the United States and Europe over the past five years. The United States is seeking his extradition.
In a recent interview, Carlos acknowledged that he "taxes" traffickers to finance his war, but denied profiting from the drug trade himself. When he took over the paramilitaries from his brother, he wanted to shake their image as cocaine-enriched mercenaries. He thought of himself as an intellectual and frequently invited professors to stay with him for weeks at a time. Carlos once told reporters that he wanted to study sociology in the United States when the conflict in Colombia was over. Now, in the wake of the indictment, he was holed up in a jungle hideout, struggling to maintain his grip on the AUC and giving mixed signals about whether he would surrender to U.S. authorities. His greatest fear, he said, is of being thrown into a U.S. jail "without any light, without any access to anyone." It is a fate his brother was determined to avoid.
Carlos was just 14 in 1979 when Marxist guerrillas from the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, kidnapped his father, Jesus, from a cattle farm his father and Fidel owned together in the province of Antioquia. Fidel paid two ransoms. The guerrillas demanded more. But Fidel, believing his father was already dead, balked.
"Even if I had the money," he wrote back, "I would use it to fight you." Jesus Castano's body was never found. In his book, Carlos said the guerrillas shot his father between the shoulder blades because they thought the army was closing in on them.
"For me, the death of my father was a tragedy that affects me even today," Carlos told me during our meeting at his camp. "It ended my childhood."
Carlos was much closer to his father than Fidel was--a point of tension between the brothers. There were other differences. Fidel was a shadowy, secretive figure far more focused on protecting his ever-growing assets than on rescuing Colombia from the guerrillas' grip. It was Carlos who transformed the paramilitaries into a large army and stepped forward as its public leader in recent years. And it was Carlos who relished the limelight, granting interviews, posing for photos and writing a bestseller.
Carlos acknowledged some differences, describing himself as fiery and impulsive and his brother as colder and more calculating, but he dismissed reports that he hated Fidel. "We were always the most united in the house," Carlos said. "He was like my father. The union was absolute."
The Castanos didn't start out as wealthy landowners. Jesus owned a modest farm with about 200 cattle and made his children work just as hard as the hired hands, Carlos said. As a teenager, Fidel rebelled against his father's authoritarian ways, and set off for Venezuela and Guyana, where he made a fortune in smuggled diamonds and other contraband. Carlos stayed behind, tending cattle for Jesus, the man he would later call his hero.
After their father's death, Fidel "got us together," Carlos said. "And he said, 'They're going to continue killing us,' if we don't fight back."
Thus began the Castano war against the guerrillas. Carlos, Fidel and a handful of brothers and cousins became guides for the Colombian army. But when they located suspected guerrillas or collaborators, the army seemed to have little power to arrest or punish them. So, Carlos explained, "we would get on our civilian clothes, grab our rifles or whatever, and--tan! tan! tan!--we would kill them." The Castano cadre was relentless. The first to fall were Jesus's kidnappers, but the Castanos didn't stop there. One witness reported a week-long killing spree in a neighboring province by men "dressed in ponchos, white hats and carrying new machetes, rifles, knives, pistols and grenades." Dozens were killed, including women and children.
"The first year after they kidnapped my father, all I wanted was revenge," Carlos explained. "I wanted to destroy everything. At that time, the border between justice and vengeance was very difficult to decipher, very vague . . . We killed a lot of civilians."
My paramilitary guide, Commander 04, took me on a tour of the area under AUC control. We drove past some more large cattle ranches and through a few small towns. There were men with radios on bicycles, at vending booths and in doorways. The paramilitaries maintain close contact with one another and the local authorities to keep the rebels out of their domain.
The ties between the military and the paramilitaries go back to the time of Fidel. Although the army denies it, there is a mountain of evidence that officials have provided the paramilitaries with intelligence, and given them free passage past checkpoints and protection from the rebels. These days, by Carlos's own admission, the AUC and government forces split up regions, but the paramilitaries still do most of the dirty work. I found a few AUC radio-men drinking beer in a cantina one day in the poor village where I'd met 04. I tried to get them talking about Fidel, but they were as reluctant as 04.
"One day he was gone," one finally said. "Like he went on vacation. It was like the Bermuda Triangle."
Another man, who called himself "Churoto," said Fidel was a real leader, challenging people to defy the guerrillas: " 'I need 150 men,' he would say. And sure enough, 150 men would arrive. Old men, teenagers, husbands, workers. They all came ready to fight."
Without Fidel, who knew where the country would be now? "There should be a monument to Fidel," insisted Churoto, who was less voluble on the subject of Fidel's fate.
Is Fidel dead? I pressed.
"Yeah, he's dying," Churoto told me with a smile. "He's dying of laughter."
Yet as I sped down the road leading out of the area, my new paramilitary guide, nicknamed "the Russian," assured me that Fidel was indeed dead and pointed to the area along the road where Carlos, in My Confession, said he'd been shot.
"Didn't you read the book?" he asked.
The Russian--who was called that because he'd lost part of his face to a grenade and spoke with a slur--had started out as a teen assassin for Pablo Escobar before joining the "House of Castano," as Carlos likes to call it.
Escobar and Fidel were close for years, according to Carlos, respecting and using one another. Escobar frequently brought Fidel to his ranch to show others that he had Rambo's muscle behind him. Fidel made loads of money from his association with Escobar. But Carlos stopped trusting Escobar because of the kingpin's increasingly aggressive attacks on the government. Like Carlos today, Escobar feared spending the rest of his life in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking. And the government was threatening extradition. In response, the drug kingpin launched a campaign of terror, using bombs and assassinations to gain political leverage and negotiate his way out. Escobar was widely considered responsible for placing a bomb on a commercial jetliner that exploded in midair, killing 110 people in 1989.
That same year, Carlos said in his biography, he began working as an anonymous informant for the government without his brother's knowledge. He was waiting, he said, for the right moment to bring Fidel into the fight. When Escobar killed several of his own closest allies for allegedly withholding money from him, Carlos convinced Fidel he might be next. Soon the war was on. Working with a former bodyguard of an Escobar victim, Carlos and Fidel formed the Pepes, or Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar).
By then, Escobar was holding the government hostage, detonating car bombs in the middle of major cities and kidnapping prominent Colombians. The United States was calling for a war without quarter, and the vigilante group began waging it. The Pepes bombed Escobar's houses and burned his relatives' and associates' offices; they threatened, harassed and assassinated dozens of Escobar's friends, relatives and business partners. Escobar hit back with more terror, but Fidel and Carlos thwarted some of the attacks and led authorities to safe houses, and drug and weapons depots. They acted as chiefs and guardians for the police. On one particular raid, several policemen fell into a river they were crossing. Fidel jumped into the rapids and pulled one of the officers to safety. Two others died, but Fidel's allegiance to them--and theirs to him--had become as unquestioned as his leadership.
The U.S. government knew all about the Pepes' dirty war against Escobar. Both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the CIA worked closely with the police in the Escobar manhunt. A 1993 memo written by the U.S. ambassador shows that the agencies knew the Pepes were running the show. Another government document indicates that the DEA had at least one direct contact with close associates of the Castano brothers. The agencies couldn't claim ignorance about whom they were dealing with. A May 1990 U.S. Embassy memo reads: "Authorities now believe that [Fidel] Castano was responsible for many of the most notorious of the massacres of rural inhabitants which have plagued Colombia over the past several years." Other memos detailed Fidel Castano's role in assassinations, massacres and mass graves throughout the north of the country. But the U.S. agents didn't complain. They wanted Escobar too much.
The chase continued for months. Escobar deftly eluded authorities, but his associates kept falling, and his scramble to find a safe place to hide his family from the Pepes kept drawing him into the open. By now, the Pepes had destroyed Escobar's organization, leaving him desperate and isolated. On December 2, 1993, Colombian government agents tracked Escobar to one of his Medellin safe houses. He was fleeing across the tin roofs of some ramshackle houses when police gunfire cut through his beefy body. Fidel didn't pull the trigger, but there was no doubt that he and the Pepes played a crucial role in bringing Escobar down.
The campaign against Escobar was Fidel's last public battle. He was tired of war, but he was even more tired of not getting his due. Like Rambo, he believed he'd fought all the dirty wars without the recognition he deserved from the government or anyone else. Nothing irked him more.
"I don't need forgiveness from anyone," Fidel told some guests on his farm once. "I saved this country from communism." He also saved it from Escobar, he thought. But neither victory seemed to bring him any closer to what he really wanted: a way out of the war without fear of prosecution.
Fidel was under investigation by the Colombian government for multiple assassinations, massacres and his involvement with the Pepes. In the early 1990s, other paramilitaries had made deals with the government to avoid being prosecuted as drug traffickers and murderers. Instead they'd managed to win some of the same legal protections as the guerrillas, who were treated as political combatants rather than common criminals. Now Fidel, too, wanted political recognition, which could eventually lead to amnesty. He sent letters to Colombian officials, but they were mute. The government had stopped talking about deals for paramilitaries; it was talking about jail.
"If I can't resolve my legal situation," he told his guests, "I can live in Europe or Israel. I'm not bound to this land."
Fidel already owned a posh apartment in Paris, where he traveled frequently on art-hunting expeditions. He'd become quite a connoisseur since the late 1980s. Expensive black market paintings and sculptures were even more lucrative than dealing cocaine, he told one acquaintance. He acquired only pieces he thought he could sell for at least a $50,000 profit and peddled them to drug traffickers longing for social acceptance. Fidel became their main supplier. He traveled to galleries in New York and Paris. He had photographs of himself with Salvador Dali, had his portrait painted by Ecuadorean artist Oswaldo Guayasamin, and was said to own dozens of Fernando Botero's depictions of corpulent Colombians.
He learned English and French, stayed in five-star hotels, bought the finest clothes and dined at the best restaurants. It was a life far removed from Colombia's ruthless power struggles--one that Fidel seemed eager to embrace permanently.
More than a month after Escobar was gunned down, Fidel vanished. But the rumors and sightings of him have yet to die away.
In May 1994, five months after Carlos says Fidel died, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research produced a dossier titled "Profile of Fidel Castano, Super Drug-Thug" that treated its subject as very much alive.
In Colombia, the attorney general's office continued to charge Fidel with crimes long after he disappeared. In 1998, four years after "the shot right to the heart," as Carlos described it in his book, the office indicted him and his brother for the 1997 murder of two human rights activists, one of them a former Jesuit priest, in Bogota.
One ex-government investigator told me he had good reason to believe Fidel was living in Medellin as late as 1997. That impression was reinforced by a later encounter with a paramilitary assassin, who told the investigator that "Professor Yarumo," one of Fidel's aliases, had sent him to kill the ex-priest in Bogota. An internal investigation by the attorney general's office in 1997 said Fidel was running the paramilitaries in the province of Antioquia.
Other leads continue to come in. A London source told me Fidel lives in Israel, where he bought some land. A former Colombian security agent said that Fidel was in Portugal, buying and selling black market art. Sightings also include Madrid and Paris, his old stomping grounds. In Cordoba Province, a security agent told me that high-level politicians talk openly about Fidel as if he were alive. And few in Valencia believe he's dead.
"If the guerrillas had really killed him," an elderly shop owner asked me incredulously, "don't you think they would have said something?"
When I asked Carlos why so many people believed Fidel was still alive, he offered an intriguing answer: "Fidel always said, 'When we kill Escobar, I'm going to disappear, and you're never going to know anything more about me . . .' " Otherwise, Fidel believed, he risked becoming the most wanted man in Colombia--in effect, Escobar's successor.
It sounded like a more plausible explanation for Fidel's disappearance than a ravenous jungle or a single bullet to the heart. But only Carlos knows what is fact and what is fiction. And only Carlos knows whether, in the end, he will be the one to take responsibility for the sins of the House of Castano.
Steven Dudley, a journalist living in Bogota, is writing a book about Colombia to be published next fall by Routledge.
-------- mideast
Kuwait May Be Key in Iraq Invasion
November 24, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq-Staging-Troops.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even without the use of Saudi Arabia's vast desert expanses to launch a ground invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military would have plenty of room to operate from tiny Kuwait and elsewhere, defense experts say.
There already are more than 12,000 U.S. forces in Kuwait -- mostly Army soldiers -- training in desert warfare. At least another 14,000 are in other Persian Gulf nations, and the Navy has an aircraft carrier, the USS Lincoln, in the northern Persian Gulf with more than 5,500 sailors and dozens of warplanes aboard.
If President Bush decided to go to war, thousands more forces would flow into the area.
Saudi Arabia was the key to assembling the massive allied force used in the 1991 Gulf War, starting shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. By February 1991, about a quarter-million combat troops were ready to push into occupied Kuwait and southern Iraq, and the fighting was declared over in 100 hours. Those combat troops were backed by a similar number of support forces, mostly at bases in Saudi Arabia.
This time Saudi Arabia almost certainly will not permit a buildup of U.S. ground forces or strike aircraft on its territory.
Ideally, the United States would position its ground troops on Iraq's perimeter in every direction, said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But political realities -- especially the rising tide of anti-Americanism in the region -- have forced the Pentagon to assume from the start of its war planning early this year that no ground forces will operate from Saudi soil.
``Planning has always been based on Kuwait as the primary point of access,'' Cordesman said.
Kuwait remains indispensable as a staging ground, despite shootings there that killed one Marine and wounded another on Oct. 8 during a training exercise, and wounded two Army soldiers on Thursday.
It remains possible that the Saudis will allow U.S. support aircraft such as aerial refuelers and surveillance planes to fly from Saudi bases, or at least permit U.S. attack planes to fly through Saudi airspace.
Kuwait, an oil-rich desert state slightly smaller than New Jersey, has hosted a virtually permanent U.S. Army presence since the Gulf War ended. This time it would be the key launching pad for invading ground forces, should President Bush decide force is required to disarm the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government.
Already there are more than 7,000 Army soldiers training for war at Kuwait's Camp Doha, a large base about 35 miles from the Iraqi border, and thousands more could be positioned in that area. The Kuwaiti government has condoned off the western part of the country to accommodate American military exercises.
``Kuwait allows you access for heavy forces to Iraq's western desert,'' Cordesman said. Iraq's own armored forces could not move into position to try to stop the onslaught without risking attack by U.S. planes.
In all, there are about 12,000 U.S. military personnel in Kuwait. The Air Force flies from two Kuwaiti bases: Ali Salem air base about 43 miles northwest of Kuwait City, and Ahmed Al Jaber air base, 47 miles west of the capital.
The Pentagon's current plan for attacking Iraq calls for up to 250,000 troops -- land, sea and air, but an invasion might begin with a much smaller force -- perhaps 50,000 -- from a wide range of bases in the Persian Gulf. The Marines, for example, might stage from Bahrain, headquarters for the Navy's 5th Fleet, and the Air Force would have more bases to operate from elsewhere in the Gulf than it did during the 1991 War.
Jordan, which borders Iraq on the west, is unlikely to allow a buildup of U.S. ground forces on its territory. There has been speculation that U.S. and perhaps British special operations forces are prepared to slip across the Jordanian border to sabotage or destroy Iraqi Scud missile batteries that might be aimed at Israel.
A contingent of U.S. special operations forces conducted a little-publicized exercise in Jordan in October.
To the north of Iraq, Turkey has at least a few air bases that would be useful to U.S. forces. American and British fighter and support planes already fly regularly from Incirlik air base in south-central Turkey. There are no U.S. ground forces in Turkey, although it could be a staging area for special forces.
Bill Arkin, an independent military analyst who studied the U.S. military campaign in 1991, said it is likely that U.S. forces would establish forward air bases inside Iraq, perhaps in areas of the north that are controlled by independence-minded Kurds, and perhaps in the south and the extreme west. Army airborne forces, perhaps, would secure such bases after an initial wave of intense airstrikes elsewhere by U.S. fighters and bombers.
The United States has forces stationed in other countries within striking distance of Iraq -- Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, for example -- that it did not have in 1991. It also has built up its presence in key Gulf states like Oman; Air Force B-1 bombers operated from an Omani base portions of the air war in Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of U.S. forces would operate from aircraft carriers and Marine amphibious groups in the Gulf.
On the Net:
The Defense Department at http://www.defenselink.mil
-------- us
US forces told to destroy supply lines of terror
By Charles Laurence in New York, David Wastell, and Jack Fairweather in Kuwait
24/11/2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/24/wiraq24.xml/
American special forces commandos have been ordered to launch covert operations against arms supply lines to terrorists and the three rogue nations referred to by President George W. Bush as the "axis of evil".
George W Bush: gave the order last month
Mr Bush has signed a classified executive order giving special forces unprecedented authority to combat and, if necessary, destroy arms suppliers who aid terrorism and any attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Last night the Pentagon confirmed that Mr Bush gave the order last month, shortly after the White House confronted North Korea with evidence that it was secretly buying nuclear technology.
His move followed a debate within the administration over the wisdom of allowing military special forces to operate clandestinely in countries where America is not openly at war, and where in some cases the local government may not even be aware of their presence.
Earlier this month, the Central Intelligence Agency used a remote-controlled Predator aircraft to launch a missile at suspected al-Qaeda members in Yemen, killing six. America considers al-Qaeda members to be military targets, "combatants" under international law.
However, the United Nations charter forbids a nation to intervene in the internal affairs of a country with which it is not at war.
The new Pentagon-led operations will be directed at shipments to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and at terrorist groups including al-Qaeda, wherever they are based. The targets include arms and any scientific equipment suspected of having a "dual use" for the manufacture of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Mr Bush's decision comes as United Nations weapons inspectors prepare to make the first checks on suspected Iraqi weapons sites for four years, beginning on Wednesday. Iraq is suspected of attempting to import materials for its weapons programmes by covert routes.
As American officials continued to threaten military action at the first sign of Iraqi deception or obstruction, Jacques Baute, the chief nuclear weapons inspector, urged Western governments to be patient.
He also took aim at hawks within the Bush administration, who have questioned the ability of inspectors to unravel Saddam's weapons programmes. "The inspectors should be given a chance," Mr Baute told The Sunday Telegraph. "It's easy to criticise us in advance, but now we can start to explore the real stance of Iraq in terms of co-operation.
"Weeks and even months will demonstrate that both sides can do a very professional and useful job . . . Undermining the inspections right now will not help solve the problems we have."
Even if Iraq co-operated fully it would take "several months to a year" before inspectors could be "reassured" that Saddam was not trying to make nuclear weapons.
Saddam has been given a deadline of December 8 to produce a list of all his weapons stocks and production lines which could be used to make weapons.
The growing threat of American-led military action in the region is stirring Islamic extremism and anti-American violence even in countries thought to be staunch allies.
In Kuwait, likely to be at the forefront of military operations against Iraq, officials last night announced the extradition from Saudi Arabia of a Kuwaiti policeman accused of shooting at and seriously injuring two American soldiers, the latest in a series of attacks against Americans which have raised serious questions about Washington's crucial ally.
Other violence has left one marine dead and three soldiers injured in the past six weeks. One Kuwaiti defence official said the attacks were part of "a worrying new trend". The real threat, he said, is to be found not in the mosques or religious schools but in the pool halls and cyber cafes frequented by young, wealthy and disaffected Kuwaitis.
Noah is one such Kuwaiti, a self-styled terrorist who shoots pool all night long, describes Osama bin Laden as a hero and claims to be in regular contact with al-Qaeda operatives on the internet
"I see what the Americans are doing in Palestine, hear that they are threatening war with Iraq and it fills me with anger," he said. "I want to get the Americans out of this whole region, by any means."
He claimed to know the 17-year-old boy who last month tried to attack a residential complex housing Western businessmen - known as the Twin Towers of Kuwait - with 10 molotov cocktails.
But such a clearly amateurish attempt, and the bravado of Noah and others like him, should not disguise the fact that they are prime recruiting material for al-Qaeda networks operating in the Gulf region.
Kuwaiti authorities last weekend announced the arrest of Mohsen Fadhli, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a 21-year-old "graduate" of the cyber cafes and pool halls, who confessed to trying to raise funds for a terrorist atrocity in Yemen.
The linking of Kuwaiti money with Yemen, already a hotbed of terrorist activity and as The Telegraph revealed last week, the possible refuge of Osama bin Laden, has also raised grave concerns.
-------- propaganda wars
The Military's New War of Words
November 24, 2002
Los Angeles Times
By William M. Arkin E-mail: warkin@igc.org.
http://www.latimes.com/la-op-arkin24nov24001455,0,4926254.story
DEFENSE STRATEGY
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- It was California's own Hiram Johnson who said, in a speech on the Senate floor in 1917, that "the first casualty, when war comes, is truth."
What would he make of the Bush administration?
In a policy shift that reaches across all the armed services, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior aides are revising missions and creating new agencies to make "information warfare" a central element of any U.S. war. Some hope it will eventually rank with bombs and artillery shells as an instrument of destruction.
What is disturbing about Rumsfeld's vision of information warfare is that it has a way of folding together two kinds of wartime activity involving communications that have traditionally been separated by a firewall of principle.
The first is purely military. It includes attacks on the radar, communications and other "information systems" an enemy depends on to guide its war-making capabilities. This category also includes traditional psychological warfare, such as dropping leaflets or broadcasting propaganda to enemy troops.
The second is not directly military. It is the dissemination of public information that the American people need in order to understand what is happening in a war, and to decide what they think about it. This information is supposed to be true.
Increasingly, the administration's new policy -- along with the steps senior commanders are taking to implement it -- blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare, on the other. And, while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate.
One of Rumsfeld's first steps into this minefield occurred last year with the creation of the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence. Part of its stated mission was to generate disinformation and propaganda that would help the United States counter Islamic extremists and pursue the war on terrorism.
The office's nominal target was the foreign media, especially in the Middle East and Asia. As critics soon pointed out, however, there was no way -- in an age of instant global communications -- that Washington could propagandize abroad without that same propaganda spreading to the home front.
Faced with a public outcry, Rumsfeld declared it had all been a big misunderstanding. The Pentagon would never lie to Americans. The Office of Strategic Influence was shut down. But the impulse to control public information and bend it to the service of government objectives did not go away.
This fall, Rumsfeld created a new position of deputy undersecretary for "special plans," a euphemism for deception operations. The special plans policy czar will sit atop a huge new infrastructure being created in the name of information warfare.
On Oct. 1, in a little-noticed but major reorganization, U.S. Strategic Command took over all responsibilities for global information attacks. The Omaha-based successor to the Strategic Air Command has solely focused up to now on nuclear weapons.
Similarly, the country's most venerable and historic bombing command, the 8th Air Force, which carried the air war to Germany in World War II, has been directed to transfer its bomber and fighter aircraft to other commands so that it can focus exclusively on worldwide information attacks.
The Navy, meanwhile, has consolidated its efforts in a newly formed Naval Network Warfare Command. And the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, or JSCP, prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now declares information to be just as important in war as diplomatic, military or economic factors.
The strategic capabilities plan is the central war-fighting directive for the U.S. military. It establishes what are called "Informational Flexible Deterrent Options" for global wars, such as the war on terrorism, and separate plans written for individual theaters of war, such as Iraq.
To a large extent, these documents and the organizational shifts behind them are focused on such missions as jamming or deceiving enemy radar systems and disrupting command and control networks. Such activities only carry forward efforts that have been part of U.S. military tactics for decades or longer.
But a summary of the strategic capabilities plan and a raft of other Pentagon and armed forces documents made available to The Times make it clear that the new approach now includes other elements as well: the management of public information, efforts to control news media sources and manipulation of public opinion.
The plan summary, for instance, talks of "strategic" deception and "influence operations" as basic tools in future wars. According to another Defense Department directive on information warfare policy, military leaders should use information "operations" to "heighten public awareness; promote national and coalition policies, aims, and objectives ... [and] counter adversary propaganda and disinformation in the news."
Both the Air Force and the Navy now list deception as one of five missions for information warfare, along with electronic attack, electronic protection, psychological . attacks and public affairs. A September draft of a new Air Force policy describes information warfare's goals as "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation." These goals are referred to collectively as "D5E."
In order to do a better job of deception, the joint chiefs have issued a "Joint Policy for Military Deception" that directs the individual services to work on the task in peacetime as well as wartime. Specifically, it orders the Air Force to develop better doctrine and techniques for incorporating deception into war plans.
The Air Force, in response, now defines military deception as action that "misleads adversaries, causing them to act in accordance with" U.S. objectives. And, like the other services, it is increasingly folding its "public affairs" apparatus -- that is, the open world of media relations -- into the information warfare team.
"Gaining and maintaining the information initiative in a conflict can be a powerful weapon to defeat propaganda," the Air Force said in its January doctrine.
That echoes a statement by Navy Rear Adm. John Cryer III, who worked on information warfare in the Combined Air Operations Center in Saudi Arabia during the Afghanistan war: "It was our belief ... we were losing the information war early when we watched Al Jazeera," Cryer said at an October conference, meaning that the U.S. perspective was inadequately represented on the Arab world's equivalent of CNN. "We came around, but it took a lot longer than it should have."
Of course there is nothing wrong with making sure the U.S. point of view gets represented in the news media, both abroad and at home. Done properly, that is a prescription for more openness and less unnecessary secrecy.
The problem is that Rumsfeld's vision of information warfare seems to push beyond the notion that American ideas and information should compete with the enemy's on a level playing field. And Rumsfeld's vision, with its melding of public information and deception, is taking root in the armed services.
The new Air Force doctrine, for example, declares that the news media can be used not only to convey "the leadership's concern with [an] issue," but also to avoid "the media going to other sources [such as an adversary or critic of U.S. policy] for information." In other words, information warfare now includes controlling as much as possible what the American public sees and reads.
The disinformation campaign being constructed goes against even the military's own stated mission. Truthfulness, the Air Force says, is a key to defeating adversaries. Accordingly, the service branch adds, "U.S. and friendly forces must strive to become the favored source of information."
The potential for mischief is magnified by the fact that so much of what the U.S. military does these days falls into the category of covert operations. Americans are now operating out of secret bases in places like Uzbekistan and the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq; Special Forces units are said to be inside western Iraq as well. In the meantime, the armed forces are making use of facilities in the Arab states along the Persian Gulf.
In all these cases and more, the U.S. and other western news media depend on the military for information. Since reporters cannot travel into parts of Iraq and other places in the region without military escort, what they report is generally what they've been told.
And when the information that military officers provide to the public is part of a process that generates propaganda and places a high value on deceit, deception and denial, then truth is indeed likely to be high on the casualty list.
That is bad news for the American public. In the end, it may be even worse news for the Bush administration -- and for a U.S. military that has spent more than 25 years climbing out of the credibility trap called Vietnam.
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion.
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Military Recruiting Law Puts Burden on Parents
By Elaine Rivera
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 24, 2002; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31807-2002Nov23?language=printer
Christopher Schmitt is careful to protect his son from companies that want to give the teenager credit cards or sell him sneakers. So at this year's parents night at his son's Fairfax County high school, Schmitt was dismayed to see a new form in the usual stack of permission slips and reminders.
This one invited him to sign if he wanted his son's name, address and telephone number withheld from the Pentagon. Otherwise, the information would be included in a directory of the school's juniors and seniors that will be given upon request to military recruiters.
Schmitt signed the form -- quickly.
"Most people probably missed [the form], and it'll probably be too late," Schmitt said. "There is a commodity with your consumer history. With the military, the commodity happens to be your children's information. . . . Once there's a point of entry, you don't know where the information is going to go."
High schools across the nation must provide the directory -- what one school official called "a gold mine of a list" -- under a sleeper provision in the new No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted this year. Military officials pushed for it to counter a steady decline in the number of people who inquire about enlisting.
Many schools already allow military recruiters on campus, sponsor ROTC programs or provide student information to the Pentagon if parents give permission. But many school officials say the mandatory provision -- which puts the burden on parents to opt out rather than in -- has them in an uncomfortable position.
Part of their role as educators, they say, is to minimize intrusions so students can learn. Now, they risk losing federal funds if they don't hand over students' names to recruiters who, in the words of Chantilly High School Principal Tammy Turner, "want to capitalize on our captive audience."
Michael Carr, spokesman for the 38,000-member National Association of Secondary School Principals, said: "Student privacy is a big, big issue with schools. There are a lot of people trying to get identities of students -- to get to that market."
There has been no uprising against the provision. Many parents and teachers see the armed forces as a possible career path and say that recruiters should have a chance to make their pitch.
"There are great opportunities for these kids in the military," said Donna Geren, a retired Navy commander whose son, Kyle, is a senior at West Potomac High School in Fairfax. "A lot of times, kids don't find out about the scholarships they offer if schools are not allowed to share this information. I don't see any downside to this."
Fairfax School Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech said that few parents have returned opt-out forms, but he thinks it may reflect a lack of attention rather than lack of opposition. "It makes me believe parents basically glossed over it," he said. "I'm sure I'll start getting calls from parents when they hear from the recruiters."
Although the number of military enlistees has remained fairly constant, the pool of prospective recruits continues to shrink, according to William Carr, director of military personnel policy for the Defense Department.
More students are going to college, and in the 1990s, the tech boom created plenty of jobs, so the military was no longer the employer of last resort. Even students who express an interest say their parents don't approve, especially as talk of war with Iraq escalates.
In the past decade, the number of high school graduates who said they intended to join the military dropped from 32 percent to 25 percent, Carr said. At the same time, one-third of the nation's 22,000 high schools refused recruiters' requests for students' names or access to campus, and the cost of recruiting one person rose from $6,000 to $12,000.
After the military took its complaints to Congress, Rep. David Vitter (R-La.) sponsored an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping federal measure passed last year that makes schools accountable for student achievement. Vitter said that military recruiters, who offer scholarships and jobs, deserved to be on par with college recruiters.
The student directories will be used to contact students by phone and mail, William Carr said. The recruitment effort should not be compared to telemarketing in any way, he said, and it would be illegal to use the data for any purpose other than recruiting.
"You cannot equate military readiness to a free baseball cap," Carr said. "There's a considerable difference."
The provision isn't a perfect solution for recruiters, said Charles Moskos, a professor and military recruiting expert at Northwestern University, but it is more realistic than trying to persuade Jenna Bush -- or, better yet, rap star Eminem -- to join the Marines.
"That would change people's minds," said Moskos, who was in the Army in 1958 when photographs of a newly drafted Elvis Presley in uniform gave the military a Cold War boost. When he asks recruiters whether they would rather have their advertising budget tripled or see Chelsea Clinton enlist, he said, "they unanimously choose the Chelsea option."
The directory, Moskos said, is partly aimed at improving the quality of enlistees, seeking to attract students who stay in school and h