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NUCLEAR
UAE bans scrap metal imports over nuclear fears
U.S. Predicts Cancer Deaths at Proposed Plutonium Plant
U.S. Sees Urgency for Nuclear Monitoring
Irish Sellafield Suit Thrown Into Disarray
Afghanistan and Iraq - Bush's Vietnam
Weapons of Mass Pride: India's Nuclear Embrace
European Leaders Back U.S. on Iran Nuclear Inspections
Russia Says IAEA Meet Solves U.S. Worries Over Iran
nuclear find indicates Baghdad did not restart weapons program
Iraqi Provides Pre-'91 Nuke Program Items
CIA finds papers, parts in Iraq for enriching uranium
Iraqi Scientist Turns Over Nuclear Plans, Parts
U.S. MOVES TOWARD COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL ON BPI
The Perfect Nuclear Storm is Brewing
Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act of 2003
Ky. Uranium Plant Workers OK Contract
Nebraska ousted from waste commission
Bush warns Iran to keep no-nukes vow
Bush gives Europe his US policy wish list
KUCINICH DEMANDS PROBE OF CHENEY'S ROLE
MILITARY
India and China announce new pact
Indonesian Army's Upper Hand
Blair vows to stay course in Iraq
No Protection Policy For Overseas Contractors
Fearing a 'Buy American' Law
Ex-Boeing Workers Charged Over Lockheed Documents
Ex-Boeing Execs Face Trade Secret Charges
Defense Work in County Surges
Colombian Fighters' Drug Trade Is Detailed
Iran exile warns of killings by regime
Iraqis struggle over Baath purge
Iraqi Mob Killed Britons
The Baathists' Blundering Guerrilla War
Iraq raids are 'ugly business'
1200 troops, 300 police for the Solomons
Kashmir dispute - Musharraf seeks Bush's involvement
Interview: 27-Year CIA Veteran
Britain tries to weaken UN deal on cluster bombs
Iraq Aid Is Tied to U.S. Pledges on Oil Funds
U.S. May Press U.N. on Terror Arms Interdiction
UN sees no links between Iraq and al Qaeda
New law on terrorism raises spectre of agency abuse
British Government Takes Gloves Off in BBC Battle
Media walk on Ashcroft's leash
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
New Graduate Course at GMU to Focus on Biodefense
Al Qaeda Remains a Global Threat, U.N. Report Says
Torture, deportation and imprisonment without trial
The invisible
Missing presumed guilty: where terror suspects are being held
ENERGY AND OTHER
Power switch
Hormones may speed breast cancer
ACTIVISTS
I Never Promised You a Ruse Garden
Iranian Exiles Sow Change Via Satellite
Protesters bring Iraqi nuclear powder to US forces
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
UAE bans scrap metal imports over nuclear fears
REUTERS UAE:
June 26, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21295/newsDate/26-Jun-2003/story.htm
DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates banned the import of scrap metal for two years to keep out any radioactive materials looted from Iraq's nuclear complex, the official WAM news agency reported yesterday.
It said the cabinet approved a proposal to stop radioactive materials from reaching the UAE in the form of scrap.
"As a precautionary measure against potential radioactive contamination, the ministry of electricity and water recommended the two-year ban," WAM said.
The UAE was a main trading partner with Iraq before U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein's government in April.
Looters plundered the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, about 25 km (16 miles) south of Baghdad, in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam's fall. Radioactive and toxic material is now scattered around the area, experts say.
The United States and its allies invaded Iraq in March citing the imminent danger posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons programme. They have so far failed to find any weapons of mass destruction.
----
U.S. Predicts Cancer Deaths at Proposed Plutonium Plant
June 26, 2003
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/national/26NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, June 25 - The radiation doses that the Energy Department estimates for workers at a new plutonium factory that it wants to build would cause about one fatal case of cancer for each four and a half years the plant operates, according to the draft environmental impact statement.
The number could be larger or smaller depending on the production level. The design is for the plant to run for 40 years, implying a total of about nine fatal cancers.
The estimate is given on the fourth page of an eight-page table, in the third chapter of an 11-chapter first volume of the environmental impact statement for the plant, the Modern Pit Facility. The Energy Department is considering building the plant to make smaller nuclear bombs and bombs to replace old ones that it says may become unreliable.
The department is about a year from deciding whether to build the plant, a spokesman said.
The estimate was pointed out by Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a group that specializes in analyzing environmental and safety problems in producing nuclear weapons. Mr. Makhijani said it was "unconscionable to build such a risky and unneeded facility."
A spokesman for the Energy Department, Anson Franklin, said the calculation of nine deaths over 40 years was "a statistical contortion that should not obscure the fact that that's a very conservative standard for radiation exposure." The average annual dose to an individual worker would be about 10 percent of the limit used at civilian power reactors and other radiation environments, according to the report. Mr. Franklin said the number was not that far above natural background radiation that an average person would receive.
The department estimate states the risk several ways. It puts the annual risk of a single fatal cancer case at 22 percent, and it says the collective dose to the worker population would be 560 rem. A rem is a standard unit of radiation, and the Energy Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Administration and other agencies use a formula that predicts one cancer death for each 2,500 rem exposure to the population.
The narrative section of the environmental statement also predicts that a worker would have to have a 4,900-year career at the plant before developing cancer. The plant would employ 1,800 workers, of whom about 1,100 would be exposed to radiation. Hundreds would be expected to die of cancer no matter their occupations.
The Energy Department has not announced the site. But the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., is a leading candidate.
The department's weapons complex, parts of which date from the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to build the first nuclear bombs, has a legacy of pollution and disregard for workers' health. Nearly all its major plants were built before the era of environmental impact statements.
Early in 2000, the department acknowledged for the first time that workers had been made sick or died because of their occupational exposures. It said at the time that many of the worst abuses were committed in World War II and the cold war.
Opponents argue that the Modern Pit Facility would serve no useful purpose. The department has argued that plutonium, the material at the heart of nuclear bombs, deteriorates over time, and thus the hollow plutonium spheres at the heart of the bombs, the "pits," have to be replaced.
Mr. Makhijani said, "There isn't a weapon in the current arsenal that's ever had an aging reliability problem."
Other critics question developing smaller weapons. Some military strategists say they would be useful for destroying subterranean military factories or command bunkers. Other critics fear that it would make the United States more likely to cross the nuclear threshold and use weapons in war, opening the door for the wider use of nuclear bombs.
--------
U.S. Sees Urgency for Nuclear Monitoring
June 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Rice.html
LONDON (AP) -- The world must help the United States stop Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons if it wants to avoid military action like in Iraq, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
``We don't ever want to have to deal with the proliferation issue again the way we dealt with Iraq,'' Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
``If you don't want a made-in-America solution, then let's find out how to resolve the North Korean case and the Iranian case.''
The United States fears Iran and North Korea are using civilian nuclear power programs as cover for building atomic bombs. Last year, President Bush named both countries, along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as being part of an ``axis of evil.''
Bush has called for strong action -- including ``active interdiction'' of suspicious cargoes -- to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Some fear that, in the wake of the war on Iraq, the U.S. administration plans military attacks on other countries it suspects of possessing such weapons.
Rice did not rule out armed action against North Korea.
``I don't think we can speculate about where an interdiction initiative should lead, but it's extremely important that countries like North Korea recognize that if they are going to flaunt their international obligations, there will be a cost for it,'' she said.
``The North Koreans have to be stopped and the world has to stop them. How far it will go, I think none of us can predict.''
Rice said reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran's nuclear program were ``at the very least disturbing.'' She said Iran should allow inspectors unfettered access to verify it was not developing nuclear weapons.
Iran has said it will continue to limit the operations of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
``The United States cannot face up to this alone,'' Rice said. ``This is something the international community must do.''
In an address to journalists, politicians and foreign-affairs analysts, Rice said the world had nothing to fear from a ``unipolar'' world with the United States as sole superpower.
Rice said the United States, European nations and other ``freedom-loving countries,'' united by a ``confluence of common interests and common values,'' should work together to fight terrorism, rebuild Iraq and ease tensions in the Middle East. She is heading to the region later this week for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Some countries have questioned the U.S. administration's commitment to multilateralism.
When the United Nations refused to authorize force to disarm Saddam earlier this year, the United States did so unilaterally, supported by what Bush called a ``coalition of the willing.'' American leaders said more than 30 countries participated, but only Britain and Australia provided substantial military forces.
Rice said the United States was committed to exercising its power with ``humility, not hubris.''
``We want multilateral solutions, but we want solutions,'' she said. ``Post 9/11, the sense of urgency in the United States to have solutions to these problems has grown.''
-------- britain
Irish Sellafield Suit Thrown Into Disarray
June 26, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-26-04.asp
LONDON, UK, An international tribunal has delivered a setback to Irish efforts to stop nuclear fuel manufacturing at the Sellafield nuclear plant in the UK. It has emerged that Ireland could face legal action from the European Commission for having brought the case in the first place.
The Sellafield MOX Plant on the Irish Sea manufactures mixed oxide fuel from uranium and plutonium for use in foreign nuclear power stations. Ireland alleges that the UK has failed to protect the marine environment from radiation resulting from the manufacture of MOX fuel and requested the establishment of an arbital tribunal under the dispute resolution provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The arbitral tribunal, rejected demands for "provisional measures" that would effectively have required the MOX plant's closure. Ireland had failed to show an "urgent and serious risk of irreparable harm," it said.
Ireland sought provisional measures after the tribunal, in mid-June, suspended the main case until December citing doubts over its jurisdiction.
During the proceedings it was noticed that the European Commission had indicated in May in answer to a question from MEP Proinsias de Rossa that it was considering infringement action against Ireland for having bypassed the EU legal framework.
Britain's Energy Ministry welcomed what it called the tribunal's "comprehensive rejection" of Ireland's demand for provisional measures, which it said had "no scientific basis" and "went far beyond protection of any rights Ireland might have."
UK Energy Minister Stephen Timms called for more constructive engagement on Sellafield. "Even on Ireland's own evidence, there is no scientific basis to the accusations Ireland has made about pollution and no justification for taking such extraordinary legal action," said Timms.
The tribunal's order points out that, "The Attorney General for Ireland, in opening the case, accepted that "the level of discharges from the MOX plant ... is not of a significant magnitude."
The tribunal said Ireland has not established that "serious" harm would be caused to the marine environment by operation of the MOX plant.
The Irish Environment Ministry focused instead on the tribunal's decision to maintain an order made in 2001 for the UK to cooperate fully with Ireland. "This order recognises that the UK has failed to give us the cooperation we need to protect ourselves from the potential threats from Sellafield," it said.
The United Kingdom must now agree a mechanism for cooperation with Ireland on issues of nuclear safety, and both parties must report on progress made in implementing the original order and the new decision, the Irish Environment Ministry said.
The first of these progress reports must be submitted to the Tribunal by September 12, 2004. The tribunal will keep under review the reports and information provided under these orders and will examine the possible need for further measures.
The tribunal ordered the parties to ensure that no actions are taken which might aggravate the situation. This means that the UK must abide by the commitments given to Ireland on June 13 that no decision to authorize further reprocessing the MOX facility without prior consultation involving Ireland.
Irish Environment Minister Martin Cullen said, "I welcome today's Order of the Tribunal. The establishment of a proper mechanism in which to extract important information about nuclear safety from the British government is an important new development. This Order recognizes that the UK has failed to give us the cooperation we need to protect ourselves from the potential threats from Sellafield."
"We now have a UN referee overseeing the implementation of Britain's obligations. The Tribunal has set a tight deadline for co-operation, which is a positive development and should prevent the kind of prevarication we have seen in the past."
Cullen said, "It is clear for many years now that radioactive discharges from Sellafield result in contamination of the Irish marine environment. The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) carries out a regular program of radioactivity monitoring of Ireland's marine environment, the objective of which is to assess the exposure of the Irish population resulting from radioactive contamination of the marine environment and to estimate the risks to health."
"While the RPII view is that the doses received by the Irish public through the consumption of seafood do not constitute a significant health risk, the fact that such radioactive discharges to the Irish Sea are continuing is a matter of serious concern to the Irish government."
Timms pointed out that on Monday the British government published draft legislation to enable the establishment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority as proposed in the July 2002 policy paper on "Managing the Nuclear Legacy."
"We are, of course, seeking Ireland's views on the draft bill and hope they will engage with us fully over this important area of work," Timms said.
"However vehemently people might choose to demand that Sellafield be shut down, there are real challenges to be faced and the work to clean up the site cannot be completed overnight," said Timms. "It is time to start working together."
-------- depleted uranium
Afghanistan and Iraq - Bush's Vietnam
By John Pilger
Courtesy New Statesman,
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-6-2003_pg4_12
America's two "great victories" since 11 September 2001 are unravelling. In Afghanistan, the regime of Hamid Karzai has virtually no authority and no money, and would collapse without American guns. Al Qaeda has not been defeated, and the Taliban are re-emerging. Regardless of showcase improvements, the situation of women and children remains desperate. The token woman in Karzai's cabinet, the courageous physician Sima Samar, has been forced out of government and is now in constant fear of her life, with an armed guard outside her office door and another at her gate. Murder, rape and child abuse are committed with impunity by the private armies of America's "friends", the warlords whom Washington has bribed with millions of dollars, cash in hand, to give the pretence of stability.
"We are in a combat zone the moment we leave this base," an American colonel told me at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. "We are shot at every day, several times a day." When I said that surely he had come to liberate and protect the people, he belly-laughed. American troops are rarely seen in Afghanistan's towns. They escort US officials at high speed in armoured vans with blackened windows and military vehicles, mounted with machine-guns, in front and behind. Even the vast Bagram base was considered too insecure for the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during his recent, fleeting visit. So nervous are the Americans that a few weeks ago they "accidentally" shot dead four government soldiers in the centre of Kabul, igniting the second major street protest against their presence in a week.
On the day I left Kabul, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing four German soldiers, members of the international security force Isaf. The Germans' bus was lifted into the air; human flesh lay on the roadside. When British soldiers arrived to "seal off" the area, they were watched by a silent crowd, squinting into the heat and dust, across a divide as wide as that which separated British troops from Afghans in the 19th century, and the French from Algerians and Americans from Vietnamese. In Iraq, scene of the second "great victory", there are two open secrets. The first is that the "terrorists" now besieging the American occupation force represent an armed resistance that is almost certainly supported by the majority of Iraqis who, contrary to pre-war propaganda, opposed their enforced "liberation". The second secret is that there is emerging evidence of the true scale of the Anglo-American killing, pointing to the bloodbath Bush and Blair have always denied.
Comparisons with Vietnam have been made so often over the years that I hesitate to draw another. However, the similarities are striking: for example, the return of expressions such as "sucked into a quagmire". This suggests, once again, that the Americans are victims, not invaders: the approved Hollywood version when a rapacious adventure goes wrong. Since Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled almost three months ago, more Americans have been killed than during the war. Ten have been killed and 25 wounded in classic guerrilla attacks on roadblocks and checkpoints which may number as many as a dozen a day.
The Americans call the guerrillas "Saddam loyalists" and "Ba'athist fighters", in the same way they used to dismiss the Vietnamese as "communists". Recently, in Falluja, in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, it was clearly not the presence of Ba'athists or Saddamists, but the brutal behaviour of the occupiers, who fired point-blank at a crowd, that inspired the resistance. The American tanks gunning down a family of shepherds is reminiscent of the gunning down of a shepherd, his family and sheep by "coalition" aircraft in a "no-fly zone" four years ago, whose aftermath I filmed and which evoked, for me, the murderous games American aircraft used to play in Vietnam, gunning down farmers in their fields, children on their buffaloes.
On 12 June, a large American force attacked a "terrorist base" north of Baghdad and left more than 100 dead, according to a US spokesman. The term "terrorist" is important, because it implies that the likes of Al Qaeda are attacking the liberators, and so the connection between Iraq and 11 September is made, which in pre-war propaganda was never made.
More than 400 prisoners were taken in this operation. The majority have reportedly joined thousands of Iraqis in a "holding facility" at Baghdad airport: a concentration camp along the lines of Bagram, from where people are shipped to Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, the Americans pick up taxi drivers and send them into oblivion, via Bagram. Like Pinochet's boys in Chile, they are making their perceived enemies "disappear".
"Search and destroy", the scorched-earth tactic from Vietnam, is back. In the arid south-eastern plains of Afghanistan, the village of Niazi Qala no longer stands. American airborne troops swept down before dawn on 30 December 2001 and slaughtered, among others, a wedding party. Villagers said that women and children ran towards a dried pond, seeking protection from the gunfire, and were shot as they ran. After two hours, the aircraft and the attackers left. According to a United Nations investigation, 52 people were killed, including 25 children. "We identified it as a military target," says the Pentagon, echoing its initial response to the My Lai massacre 35 years ago.
The targeting of civilians has long been a journalistic taboo in the west. Accredited monsters did that, never "us". The civilian death toll of the 1991 Gulf war was wildly underestimated. Almost a year later, a comprehensive study by the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqis had died during and immediately after the war, as a direct or indirect consequence of attacks on civilian infrastructure. The report was all but ignored. This month, Iraq Body Count, a group of American and British academics and researchers, estimated that up to 10,000 civilians may have been killed in Iraq, including 2,356 civilians in the attack on Baghdad alone. And this is likely to be an extremely conservative figure.
In Afghanistan, there has been similar carnage. In May last year, Jonathan Steele extrapolated all the available field evidence of the human cost of the US bombing and concluded that as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the bombing, many of them drought victims denied relief.
This "hidden" effect is hardly new. A recent study at Columbia University in New York has found that the spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam was up to four times as great as previously estimated. Agent Orange contained dioxin, one of the deadliest poisons known. In what they first called Operation Hades, then changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, the Americans in Vietnam destroyed, in some 10,000 "missions" to spray Agent Orange, almost half the forests of southern Vietnam, and countless human lives. It was the most insidious and perhaps the most devastating use of a chemical weapon of mass destruction ever. Today, Vietnamese children continue to be born with a range of deformities, or they are stillborn, or the foetuses are aborted.
The use of uranium-tipped munitions evokes the catastrophe of Agent Orange. In the first Gulf war in 1991, the Americans and British used 350 tonnes of depleted uranium. According to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, quoting an international study, 50 tonnes of DU, if inhaled or ingested, would cause 500,000 deaths. Most of the victims are civilians in southern Iraq. It is estimated that 2,000 tonnes were used during the latest attack.
In a remarkable series of reports for the Christian Science Monitor, the investigative reporter Scott Peterson has described radiated bullets in the streets of Baghdad and radiation-contaminated tanks, where children play without warning. Belatedly, a few signs in Arabic have appeared: "Danger - Get away from this area". At the same time, in Afghanistan, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, based in Canada, has made two field studies, with the results described as "shocking". "Without exception," it reported, "at every bomb site investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."
An official map distributed to non-government agencies in Iraq shows that the American and British military have plastered urban areas with cluster bombs, many of which will have failed to detonate on impact. These usually lie unnoticed until children pick them up, then they explode.
In the centre of Kabul, I found two ragged notices warning people that the rubble of their homes, and streets, contained unexploded cluster bombs "made in USA". Who reads them? Small children? The day I watched children skipping through what might have been an urban minefield, I saw Tony Blair on CNN in the lobby of my hotel. He was in Iraq, in Basra, lifting a child into his arms, in a school that had been painted for his visit, and where lunch had been prepared in his honour, in a city where basic services such as education, food and water remain a shambles under the British occupation.
It was in Basra three years ago that I filmed hundreds of children ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair. Now here he was - shirt open, with that fixed grin, a man of the troops if not of the people - lifting a toddler into his arms for the cameras.
When I returned to London, I read "After Lunch", by Harold Pinter, from a new collection of his called War (Faber & Faber).
And after noon the well-dressed creatures come to sniff among the dead and have their lunch
And all the many well-dressed creatures pluck the swollen avocados from the dust and stir the minestrone with stray bones
And after lunch they loll and lounge about Decanting claret in convenient skulls.
-------- india / pakistan
MOVIE REVIEW | 'WAR AND PEACE'
Weapons of Mass Pride: India's Nuclear Embrace
June 26, 2003
The New York Times
By ELVIS MITCHELL
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/movies/26WAR.html
The government is like a mother," an Indian villager living near a nuclear test site says in the adamant antiwar documentary "War and Peace." "If a mother feeds poison to its own child, what is the child to do?"
"War and Peace," which opens today at Anthology Film Archives, is the Indian director Anand Patwardhan's solemn, stirring perspective on the competitive chauvinism between India and Pakistan, which manifests itself in the nuclear arms race between them. With the controversy surrounding possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there might not be a better time than the present for this documentary.
The film gets going with a formative incident in both the director's life and his country's: powerful black-and-white film of the events surrounding Mohandas Gandhi's assassination.
"The grief of this moment never really went away," Mr. Patwardhan says with quiet determination. "The child in me never stopped asking, `Who could've done this?' "
Nor does he stop wondering what impels a country to stockpile arms. With his potent opening, Mr. Patwardhan sets up both a historical and a philosophical foundation for the film, showing how the aftermath of Gandhi's death led to wars with China and Pakistan.
"Pacifism became known as the ideal that failed," he says in soft but assertive tones. As nuclear competition ratchets up between the Soviet Union and the United States, India becomes involved, too, exploding a nuclear device in 1974. "War and Peace" shows a stunning, worshipful re-creation of this explosion that ends with the horrifying words "The Buddha smiled." A masterstroke of cunning, it gives the event the weight of folklore. Dr. Raja Ramanna, credited in the movie as the "father" of the nuclear test, shakes his head and says: "I would never have used the Buddha's name. I have such great respect for him."
In addition to using religious messages, the leading party in India's current government, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, commissioned a pro-arms music video, "We Are Indian," best described as "We Are the World" with a half-life.
Indians absorb the grim and effective intention of this message and others that have obviously come before it. One man signs his name in blood to a petition, his agreement taking on the kind of grimly cheap irony that happens only in real life. "Those who clash with us will be ground to dust," the translation of his words reads. Later in the film schoolchildren read essays of belligerent, hollow fealty to the cause: the mythmaking starts early and runs deep.
Because Mr. Patwardhan is so measured in making his impressive, unrelenting case, "War and Peace" is all the more disturbing. There's no need for hysteria when he can find villagers as articulate as the man who compared his government to a vicious parent, while cancer rates rise in his homeland.
"They told us it was to extract kerosene," he says of the 1974 test.
Dr. Ramanna betrays his own pride with a slight smile, saying secrecy about the test was maintained because nothing was put on paper. The lack of a paper trail, though, didn't extend to the pride in nuclear munitions that now pervades both India and Pakistan, which, as the film notes, responded to India's nuclear efforts with its own.
Mr. Patwardhan has located so much information and found so many willing interview subjects that his "War and Peace" has a riveting intelligence all its own and earns its epic title.
WAR AND PEACE
Produced, directed and edited by Anand Patwardhan; in Hindi and Urdu, with English subtitles; director of photography, Mr. Patwardhan; music by Natthu Khan, Kalu Ram, the girls from Lahore Grammar School, Pratap Singh Bhodhade and Party, Salman, Ali and Brian of Junoon, and Kazamichi Terai at Gensuikin Rally; released by First Run/Icarus Films. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village. Running time: 136 minutes. This film is not rated.
-------- iran / inpections
European Leaders Back U.S. on Iran Nuclear Inspections
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33301-2003Jun25?language=printer
European leaders yesterday joined President Bush in demanding stronger international inspections of Iran's nuclear program, and said they would act to intercept "illegal shipments" of materials that can be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.
A joint statement issued at the end of an annual U.S.-European Union summit pledged to use "all means available" to halt the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It singled out North Korea and Iran as the most significant proliferation threats facing the world.
At a White House news conference after the meeting, Bush said the "free world" expected Iran to comply with demands that it agree to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. "Iran must comply," he told reporters. "If they don't, we'll deal with that when they don't."
U.S. suspicions that Iran is developing nuclear weapons have been strengthened over the past few weeks by a recent IAEA report describing a range of efforts by Tehran to produce fissile materials that could be used for the construction of a nuclear weapon. The Iranian government insists that its nuclear research program is for peaceful purposes only, but has failed to explain why it needs nuclear power when it has plentiful supplies of oil and natural gas.
For the time being, the Bush administration has settled on a strategy of attempting to mobilize international opinion against the Tehran government, and working through multilateral institutions to put a stop to the suspected Iranian nuclear weapons program. Bush's comments yesterday suggested that he could be prepared to consider tougher measures if Iran fails to cooperate with the IAEA.
One option under consideration in Washington is to enforce international regulations prohibiting trade in weapons of mass destruction by intercepting ships and planes suspected of carrying illegal cargoes. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton flew to Madrid this month for a meeting with representatives of a dozen other countries, including Spain, Britain, Australia and Poland, to consider ways of strengthening "interdiction" efforts.
In December, Spain cooperated with the United States in the boarding of a ship chartered by North Korea to deliver Scud missiles to Yemen. Protests by Yemen's government, which has cooperated with the U.S. war on terrorism, quickly resulted in the release of the cargo. Despite that decision, U.S. officials point to the successful interception as a model for future efforts.
An administration official described as "encouraging" the willingness of European leaders to sign a statement on behalf of the European Union endorsing the evolving U.S. strategy on interdiction. "I don't want to oversell this, but we have something we can work with," said one official. "It was the first time they used the word 'interdiction.' "
In addition to a pledge to "share information" on the illegal weapons trade, the statement also promised to "strengthen identification, control and interdiction of illegal shipments."
"When Europe and the United States are united, no problem and no enemy can stand against us," said Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, at a joint news conference with Bush. "If we fail to unite, every problem may become a crisis and every enemy a gigantic monster."
U.S. and European officials also signed updated extradition and legal assistance agreements at a ceremony at the Justice Department, authorizing joint investigative teams and simplified legal procedures for extraditing suspects. Officials said that the show of unity was designed in part to heal the divisions caused by the war with Iraq, which was opposed by many European governments.
--------
Russia Says IAEA Meet Solves U.S. Worries Over Iran
June 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran-russia.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday a June meeting of U.N. nuclear officials had cleared up international concerns over its nuclear cooperation with Iran and denied there were disagreements over the issue with the United States.
Russia is helping Iran build its first nuclear power station. U.S. officials have criticized the project and accused Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
``After the IAEA board of governors meeting on June 16, this theme is no longer topical,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told reporters. ``But I will again say that if anyone has any concerns we are prepared to continue dialogue. We have an open, transparent position.''
The IAEA's board of governors last week criticized Iran's failure to comply with agreements designed to prevent the use of civilian nuclear resources to make weapons. But its statement fell short of the damning resolution Washington had hoped for.
``We support the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all our cooperation with Iran abides by our international obligations,'' Yakovenko said. ``So there can be no disagreements with the U.S. or other countries when discussing Iran.''
The reactor, in the southwestern port of Bushehr, is to be completed later this year, with the plant due to come on stream next year. Iran insists its nuclear energy program is designed to produce electricity only.
-------- iraq / inspections
UN agency says nuclear find indicates Baghdad did not restart weapons program
Canadian Press
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.canada.com/news/story.asp?id=B7E04EA8-FFAF-4989-87B3-8CF010973C31
VIENNA (AP) - Indirectly challenging a U.S. argument for war on Iraq, the UN atomic agency said Thursday that a find of parts from Baghdad's original nuclear weapons program appears to back its stance that the project had never been reactivated.
The comments reflected the ongoing dispute between the United Nations and Washington over whether outsted president Saddam Hussein was trying to make weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. administration argued such programs existed in going to war against Baghdad, while UN inspectors said their searches on the ground turned up no evidence of such programs.
A U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday that American authorities were examining parts and documents from an Iraqi weapons program run in the early 1990s that were handed over by a former Iraqi nuclear scientist.
The scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, was quoted as saying he had kept the parts buried in his Baghdad garden on the orders of Saddam Hussein's government. Once sanctions against Iraq ended, the material was to be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon, Obeidi claimed to U.S. officials.
The intelligence official acknowledged the find was not the "smoking gun" that U.S. authorities are seeking to prove U.S. claims that Iraq had an active program to develop a nuclear weapon.
In Vienna Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency went even further, suggesting the revelations tended to back its arguments that there was no evidence of such revived programs.
"The findings and comments of Obeidi appear to confirm that there has been no post-1991 nuclear weapons program in Iraq and are consistent with our reports to the Security Council," said agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.
The IAEA has long monitored Iraq's nuclear programs and has questioned U.S. claims that Saddam had been reviving his nuclear weapons program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, said early on there was no evidence to support Washington's claims. Other UN inspectors found no signs of biological or chemical weapons.
Since the war, U.S. teams looking for evidence of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been chasing leads and tips from Iraqis who stand to win reward money offered for evidence. So far no weapons have been found.
Before the second Gulf War, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies said they had evidence that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, although some of that evidence has since been debunked.
Before the 1991 Gulf War, Obeidi headed Iraq's program to make centrifuges that would enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the official said. Most or all of that program was dismantled after UN inspections in the early 1990s.
Details of Obeidi's activities during the past decade were not immediately available, although he was interviewed often by IAEA inspectors in 2002, the U.S. intelligence official said.
Obeidi turned over a stack of documents that includes detailed designs for centrifuges, intelligence officials said. He told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge.
Assembled, the components would not be useful in making much uranium. Hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to make enough to construct a nuclear weapon in such programs.
In Vienna, Gwozdecky, the agency spokesman, said the IAEA had "regularly" reported that Iraq had "successfully tested a single centrifuge prior to 1991."
On the Net:
IAEA: www.iaea.org/worldatom
----
Iraqi Provides Pre-'91 Nuke Program Items
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
Jun 26, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_CENTRIFUGE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former Iraqi nuclear scientist has provided American authorities parts and documents from Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program he claims to have buried more than 12 years ago, a U.S. intelligence official says.
The scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, said he acted on the orders of Saddam's government, according to the intelligence official, who spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
Once sanctions against Iraq ended, the material in the garden of his Baghdad home was to be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon, Obeidi told U.S. officials.
U.S. authorities believe Obeidi's statements are credible, and regard them as evidence made an effort to hide parts of its original programs from U.N. inspectors.
Still, the intelligence official acknowledged the find was not the "smoking gun" U.S. authorities are seeking to prove the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had an active program to develop a nuclear weapon.
Before the 1991 Gulf War, Obeidi headed Iraq's program to make centrifuges that would enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the official said. Most or all of that program was dismantled after U.N. inspections in the early 1990s.
Details of Obeidi's activities during the past decade were not immediately available, although he was interviewed often by inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency in 2002, the official said.
Obeidi turned over a two-foot-tall stack of documents that includes detailed designs for centrifuges, intelligence officials said. Obeidi told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge.
Assembled, the components would not be useful in making much uranium. Hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to make enough to construct a nuclear weapon in such programs.
Obeidi and his family have left Iraq, the intelligence official said.
Since the war, U.S. teams looking for evidence of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been pursuing leads and tips from Iraqis who stand to win reward money offered for evidence. So far no weapons have been found.
Before the second Gulf War, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies said they had evidence that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, although some of that evidence has since been debunked.
Other evidence, such as reports that Iraq tried to import precision-made tubes for centrifuges, was hotly debated, with some experts saying those tubes were for conventional weapons.
Earlier this year, the U.N. agency said there was no new evidence or indications that Iraq was working to revive the program.
----
CIA finds papers, parts in Iraq for enriching uranium
June 26, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030625-102141-6927r.htm
The CIA has uncovered components of a gas centrifuge used to enrich weapons-grade uranium, and a stack of nuclear arms documents in the back yard of an Iraqi scientist, an indication Baghdad was hiding its arms program for future use, a U.S. intelligence official said yesterday.
Iraqi scientist Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, who came forward with the documents and components in late May, hid the items in his back yard under a rosebush 12 years ago, said an official familiar with details of the discovery. Officials confirmed the discovery after it was first reported by CNN.
"These documents and components were deliberately hidden at the direction of Iraq's senior leadership with the aim of preserving the regime's capacity to resume construction of a centrifuge that at some point could be used to enrich uranium for a nuclear device," the intelligence official said.
The official said that the discovery was "not a smoking gun" indicating that Iraq had nuclear weapons, only that it planned to develop them once United Nations sanctions barring Iraq from operating a nuclear-weapons program were lifted. The sanctions were imposed after the Persian Gulf war.
"Their existence validates our long-standing view that Iraq had hidden nuclear technology," the official said. "And this new evidence indicates that the Iraqis concealed proscribed documents and examples of critical centrifuge components, some of them extremely difficult to manufacture, in contravention of U.N. Security Council resolutions."
David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector now working as an adviser to the CIA, said the finding in Iraq "begins to tell us how huge our job is."
"Remember his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden," Mr. Kay told CNN. "There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it."
The centrifuge components were part of Iraq's pre-1991 uranium-enrichment program, the official said.
"Doctor Obeidi told us [the documents] represent a complete set of what would be needed to rebuild a uranium-enrichment program," the official said.
The scientist also disclosed to U.S. intelligence that the concealment of the components and documents were "part of a secret high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended," the official said.
The components include some of the most difficult parts of a centrifuge to produce. Centrifuges require high-strength steel and special bearings because of the high speeds involved in the spinning process.
The disclosure comes as U.S. intelligence agencies are under fire from critics in Congress who said intelligence on Iraq's hidden weapons of mass destruction were exaggerated to support the policy of going to war.
So far, no hidden stocks of weapons have been found, but two mobile vans were found. U.S. intelligence analysts believe the vans were part of Iraq's hidden biological-weapons program.
"I don't want this to proliferate because of the potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants and the hands of dictators or of terrorists," Mr. Obeidi told CNN.
Officials said Mr. Obeidi and his family were relocated out of Iraq to a third country.
Iraq secretly developed a gas-centrifuge program in the early 1990s that was kept secret from U.S. intelligence until shortly before the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The disclosure showed that before that war, Iraq was close to producing a nuclear bomb.
Gas centrifuges are used to spin gaseous uranium hexafluoride that is enriched into the fuel of a nuclear bomb.
Centrifuges were used to make the first U.S. atomic bombs and the technology is considered the earliest method of making the fissionable material for a bomb. The centrifuges have no other purpose but uranium enrichment.
Army Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the nominee to be the next commander of the U.S. Central Command, said during his Senate confirmation yesterday he believes Iraq's weapons eventually will be found.
Gen. Abizaid told the Armed Services Committee that he is confident that evidence "at some point ... will lead us to actual weapons of mass destruction."
The general told senators that at one point recently he called his top staff together and asked if anyone believed no weapons would be found. "And to a man and to a woman, they all said we would find it," he said. "So the confidence of the intelligence professionals and my confidence in them was high, and actually it remains high."
----
Iraqi Scientist Turns Over Nuclear Plans, Parts
Former Head of Uranium Enrichment Program Had Buried Material in Yard After 1991 Gulf War
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33828-2003Jun25?language=printer
A former Iraqi nuclear scientist has given U.S. intelligence officials a new lead in their search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: a trove of blueprints and parts he says were buried 12 years ago for use in the event that Saddam Hussein resumed his quest for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear research group and Bush administration officials said yesterday.
Mahdi Obeidi, who headed Iraq's uranium enrichment program in the late 1980s and early 1990s, turned over the documents to U.S. officials in Baghdad voluntarily and is now assisting the investigation of Iraq's former weapons program, according to officials of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit research group that advised the scientist in his decision to surrender the materials to the U.S. government.
Obeidi supplied U.S. officials with several components of a gas centrifuge, a machine used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, along with design plans for the machines, the institute's assistant director, Corey Hinderstein, said yesterday. The scientist, who contacted the group in late April, said he buried the materials in his yard in 1991 under orders from Hussein's son, Qusay.
"If the order was given, these documents and materials could be used to restart the program," Hinderstein said. She added: "Obeidi did not receive that order."
Despite assertions by Bush administration officials before the war that Iraq was rebuilding a nuclear program, U.S. officials have so far found no evidence that Hussein had reconstituted the advanced nuclear weapons program he developed throughout the 1970s and 1980s. That program, which included the construction of several facilities for enriching uranium, was dismantled in the early 1990s by coalition forces and by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Still, the discovery of buried blueprints and centrifuge parts earlier this month appeared to confirm suspicions that Hussein was prepared to resume his quest for prohibited weapons in the future, perhaps after the lifting of sanctions against Iraq.
CNN and NBC first reported yesterday the discovery of the blueprints and parts.
Gas centrifuges are fast-spinning machines used to process uranium into fissile material needed for nuclear weapons. Producing enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon would require the use of hundreds of centrifuges working constantly for up to a year.
Hinderstein said the blueprints provided by Obeidi would have saved Iraq considerable time if Hussein had decided to restart his nuclear program.
"They would not have to start from scratch," she said. "Iraq would still have been years from making a weapon. But they would have saved themselves time, on the order of years."
In an interview with CNN broadcast yesterday, Obeidi said he decided to turn the materials over to U.S. officials in part to encourage other Iraqi scientists to cooperate.
"I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them," Obeidi said in the interview. "And I don't want this to proliferate, because of the potential consequences, if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists."
A senior administration official said the parts and about two feet of documents were turned over to the CIA this month. He said U.S. officials consider this a "significant development" that demonstrates the challenge of uncovering Iraq's weapons and programs. "We can't dig up every garden in the country," he said.
He confirmed that the Iraqi scientist said the material was hidden after the Persian Gulf War but before inspectors arrived. The idea was to give Iraq "a leg up and save millions of dollars" if the nuclear weapons program were ever reconstituted.
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
-------- missile defense
U.S. MOVES TOWARD COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL ON BPI
Thu, 26 Jun 2003
Middle East Newsline
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/june/06_27_3.html
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States is said to be slowly moving toward cooperation with Israel in a new concept for missile defense.
Israeli and U.S. officials said the two countries are quietly exploring the prospect of a joint project to develop a system that would destroy an enemy ballistic missile in its boost ascent stage, termed Boost Phase Intercept. Israel and the United States have embarked on small-scale research projects connected to BPI, but were unable to expand the cooperation amid differing concepts.
"There have been some changes made on both sides and that's how cooperation takes place," a U.S. official said. "The Israelis wanted what we felt was a concept that was impractical and we wanted a concept that they found too expensive."
Officials said the Israeli concept of BPI constituted unmanned air vehicles hovering over suspected enemy missile sites. A airborne relay station would detect a missile launch and one of the UAVs, or a fighter-jet, would then fire an air-to-air rocket that would destroy the missile in its ascent stage, while the speed of projectile remained slow and its infra-red signature huge.
-------- treaties
The Perfect Nuclear Storm is Brewing
By: Douglas Mattern
06/26/03
Liberal Slant
http://www.liberalslant.com/dm062603.htm
When the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference was held in New York city in the year 2000, the nuclear weapons states make a commitment to an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate nuclear weapons. This was an empty and hypocritical promise, and experts now agree the danger of nuclear proliferation is worse than in the past 50 years.
The NPT was undermined, if not annihilated, when President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, which states the United States reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force-including nuclear weapons---to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies. William Arkin, a military analyst writes that the Bush administration's war planning "moves nuclear weapons out of their along-established special category and lumps them in with all the other military options."
The entire record of the Bush Administration on the nuclear issue is abominable. This includes refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Bat Treaty, abrogating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the intention to resume nuclear testing to build a new category of nuclear weapons, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. This weapon would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional bunker-busting weapons used in "Shock and Awe" bombing of Iraq.
The addition of India and Pakistan, and possibly North Korea, to the macabre nuclear club also increases the nuclear danger. Now add a recent study by the RAND think-tank that gives a frightening assessment of Russian's strategic capabilities. Former Senator Sam Nunn said "the risk has increased for a perfect storm in terms of a nuclear miscalculation or an accident."
The RAND study lists three reasons for this development.
- The U.S. and Russia maintain large nuclear forces on "hair-trigger" alert that could be launched in minutes and destroy both countries in an hour.
- Economic and social problems have led Russia to rely more on nuclear arms.
- The vulnerability of Russian forces is enhanced by the capability of U.S. forces to deliver accurate and devastating strikes.
The Rand report gives three gruesome scenarios, which could erupt at any time:
- An intentional unauthorized nuclear weapon launch by a terrorists or rogue commander
- A missile launched by mistake
- An intentional launch of nuclear weapons based on incorrect or incomplete information.
Robert McNamara acknowledged that during the Cuban missile crisis "we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without realizing it." McNamara said: "It's no credit to us that we missed nuclear war--at least we had to be lucky as well as wise." We can only guess how many times we have been lucky and escaped nuclear destruction throughout the Cold War. There are many frightening close calls that received little media coverage.
Bruce Blair, Director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) and a former Minuteman Missile Launch Officer, reminds us that both the U.S. and Russia remain preoccupied with preparing to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other on short notice. Both sides have thousands of nuclear warheads on a hair-trigger alert and aimed at each other. U.S. spy planes monitor the Russian coast and U.S. submarines still trail Russian submarines as soon as they leave port. The U.S. spends an average of $27 billion annually preparing to fight a nuclear war.
In a "doomsday" scenario, the CDI reports that Russia has come online at their Kovzvinsky Mountain facility with equipment designed to ensure a "quasi-automatic" Russian missile retaliation in case a U.S. first strike destroys their nuclear chain of command.
Terrorism is a burning problems to counter, but by far the greatest terrorism is that each and every day for the past several decades, and in this third year of a new millennium, we are daily under the threat of nuclear incineration whether by accident, miscalculation, or by design.
McGeorge Bundy, former assistant to President Kennedy, said: "In the real world even one hydrogen bomb on one city would be a catastrophe; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history. A hundred or even less would be the end of civilization"
There are 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world today and only a fool could believe we can exist indefinitely without these weapons being used. It's utter madness, and it's imperative that thinking people join together and declare unequivocally that, similar to the TV anchorman in the movie Network, WE ARE MAD AS HELL AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.
Liberation from the nuclear nightmare and the "architects of destruction" is the first priority to which we must hold every politician and policy maker, beginning with the reconstituted cold warrior hawks that comprise the Bush Administration.
~
Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens (AWC); a San Francisco based international peace organization with branches in 50 countries, and with UN NGO status. The website for AWC is www.worldcitizens.org Douglas is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant.
Find more articles by Douglas Mattern in the Liberal Slant Archives - http://www.liberalslant.com/liberalslantarchives.htm
--------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act of 2003
(Introduced in US House of Representatives June 26, 2003)
http://thomas.loc.gov = HR-2647
HR 2647 IH
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 2647
To provide for nuclear disarmament and economic conversion in accordance with District of Columbia Initiative Measure Number 37 of 1992.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
June 26, 2003
Ms. NORTON introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committee on International Relations, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
A BILL
To provide for nuclear disarmament and economic conversion in accordance with District of Columbia Initiative Measure Number 37 of 1992.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act of 2003'.
SEC. 2. REQUIREMENT FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AND ECONOMIC CONVERSION.
The United States Government shall--
(1) disable and dismantle all its nuclear weapons and refrain from replacing them at any time with any weapons of mass destruction;
(2) redirect resources that are currently being used for nuclear weapons programs to use--
(A) in converting all nuclear weapons industry employees, processes, plants, and programs smoothly to constructive, ecologically beneficial peacetime activities during the 3 years following the effective date of this Act, and
(B) in addressing human and infrastructure needs such as housing, health care, education, agriculture, and environmental restoration, including alternative fuel sources;
(3) undertake vigorous good faith efforts to eliminate war, armed conflict, and all military operations; and
(4) actively promote policies to induce all other countries to join in these commitments for world peace and security.
SEC. 3. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This Act shall take effect when the President certifies to the Congress that all foreign countries possessing nuclear weapons have established legal requirements comparable to those set forth in section 2 and those requirements have taken effect.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- kentucky
Ky. Uranium Plant Workers OK Contract
June 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Uranium-Plant-Strike.html
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- A nearly five-month strike at a plant that enriches uranium for the commercial nuclear industry ended Thursday after the workers ratified a new contract.
``A sound majority'' of the more than 500 striking workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant voted Wednesday in favor of the eight-year contract, said Leon Owens, president of Local 5-550 of Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International.
They began returning to work Thursday, starting off with orientation sessions.
``We're glad they're coming back,'' said Elizabeth Stuckle, spokeswoman for USEC Inc., the Bethesda, Md.-based operator of the western Kentucky plant. USEC is the only U.S. company that enriches uranium for nuclear power.
The company and union negotiators reached the tentative contract Monday. The 635 union workers at the plant went on strike Feb. 4 over pension, wages, health insurance and other issues. Since the strike began, job reductions have resulted in 103 fewer union members working at the plant, Owens said.
He declined to give specifics of the agreement but said both sides ``came as close to the middle as we possibly could.''
More than 1,400 people work at the Paducah plant, making it the largest private employer in western Kentucky.
-------- nebraska
Nebraska ousted from waste commission
June 26, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030625-091952-4067r.htm
OMAHA, Neb. -- Nebraska has been kicked out of a five-state waste commission because it blocked attempts to build a low-level radioactive waste site within its borders.
The action by the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission leaves only Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma as members.
Commission Chairwoman Catherine Sharp, Oklahoma's representative, told WOWT-TV in Omaha, "We did what was entirely supportable by the facts." The commission also levied a fine of $125,000 against Nebraska.
The action comes eight months after a federal judge ruled Nebraska acted in bad faith when it refused to issue a permit for the proposed waste dump. Nebraska officials claimed the dump would cause potential pollution problems.
-------- us politics
Bush warns Iran to keep no-nukes vow
June 26, 2003
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030625-115341-7125r.htm
President Bush yesterday warned Iran that it had better keep its promise not to develop nuclear weapons, "and if they don't, we'll deal with that when they don't."
A new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) outlines Iran's failure to provide access for agency inspectors that the president said is unacceptable.
"Iran must comply. I mean, the free world expects Iran to comply. Just leave it at that. ... We believe they will when the free world comes together," Mr. Bush said after a White House meeting with European Union leaders.
The United States and Europe, which were at odds over how to handle Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, yesterday agreed that Iran must be confronted over its pledge to allow more open inspections of its nuclear projects. Both agree that Iran could be using their atomic energy program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons.
"America and the EU agree that Iran must cooperate fully with the IAEA," Mr. Bush said. "We agree that Iran must sign and comply with an additional protocol giving the IAEA new tools to investigate clandestine nuclear weapons activities.
"Iran has pledged not to develop nuclear weapons, and the entire international community must hold that regime to its commitments," he said.
At an East Room press conference, Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said European leaders understand the threat posed by an Iran with nuclear weapons and therefore back the United States in calling on Tehran to allow IAEA inspectors free access.
"We push that they accept all the inspections, even ... planned inspections because we have to be sure that doesn't constitute a danger to future peace. We have to be absolutely sure," Mr. Prodi said.
In Tehran, the defense minister accused the United States of pressuring Iran over its nuclear program to cover up for its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the state news agency Islamic Republic (IRNA) reported yesterday.
"The U.S. approach to Iran is one of threats and seeking concessions, in other words forcing Iran to accept its unlawful demands," Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani told the agency. "The reason why the U.S. is pressuring the IAEA ... is to escape from its claims on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that it has not found."
He said that failure has led to U.S. accusations that Iran's clerical leadership is meddling in Iraq, helping al Qaeda fugitives and seeking a nuclear arsenal.
"Everyone knows that al Qaeda was started by the U.S., that most of its top leaders were trained by the U.S., and that they received U.S. financial and logistical support," he said.
Holding their first meeting since the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush, Mr. Prodi and Greek Prime Minister Konstandinos Simitis, whose country holds the EU presidency, made efforts to move past ugly disagreements.
"Many people have said that Europe is too old," said Mr. Prodi, a reference to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calling antiwar allies part of "old Europe." Added Mr. Prodi: "Maybe, but the old age helps us to understand our strengths and our weakness."
With a wry smile, Mr. Bush replied, "You're looking pretty young these days."
Said Mr. Simitis: "The United States and the European Union cannot possibly have and share on foreign policy or trade interests in all areas the same opinions. There will be issues and times where we will differ.
"But friendship presupposes that we will have to agree to differ, to accept to differ. And friendship presupposes that we must be disciplined and manage our differences. We should always act on the basis that what unites us will always outweigh any issue that divides us," he said.
To illustrate that point, the leaders yesterday announced a new agreement to curb funding to terrorism organizations and hasten extradition of terrorists. The pact, signed by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Greek Minister of Justice Philippos Petsalnikos, broadens the number of crimes that extradition will apply to and authorizes such things as joint investigative teams, video testimony in court cases and sharing information on suspect bank accounts.
"These treaties focus not on our differences, but on our common values," Mr. Ashcroft said at the Justice Department.
The leaders brushed over another issue separating them - genetically modified food. A 1998 European moratorium bans the import of genetically modified foods because many European consumers fear health risks.
Mr. Bush used a trip to France earlier this month to urge Europe to change its policy, arguing that it is worsening famine in Africa by discouraging African nations from investing in biotechnology.
But the U.S.-European relationship is once again strong enough that Mr. Bush could joke about the issue with the leaders, said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
He said the president ended yesterday's morning meetings by telling EU leaders, " 'Let's go eat some genetically modified food for lunch.' He said it with a big smile and everybody laughed," Mr. Fleischer said.
It wasn't true, though. They dined on freshwater prawns, fruitwood-smoked Kobe beef tenderloin, pencil Asparagus and potato hash.
----
Bush gives Europe his US policy wish list
By David Rennie in Washington
26/06/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/26/wbush26.xml/
President George W Bush presented European Union envoys yesterday with a list of demands, ranging from putting more pressure on Iran and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to opening EU markets to genetically modified foods.
European Council President Costas Simitis [left] with George W Bush and European Commission President Romano Prodi
In a hurried few hours of meetings at the White House - officially designated an EU-US summit - Mr Bush leaned on Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, and Costas Simitis, the Greek prime minister, to offer stronger support for US foreign policy.
In return, Mr Prodi took a less than subtle swipe at recent comments by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, that France, Germany and other opponents of American policy constituted "old Europe".
"Many people have said that Europe is too old. Maybe, but the old age helps us to understand our strength and our weakness, and the reality of the world," Mr Prodi said.
Addressing Mr Bush directly in the East Room of the White House, Mr Prodi made a plea for greater transatlantic unity: "If we stay alone, President, Europe is too old, and the United States too young, to bring peace in this world."
The two sides signed what Mr Bush called agreements "to increase our co-operation in the war on terror and to speed the extradition of terrorists," including steps to form joint EU-US investigative teams, and share information on suspect bank accounts.
Critics have expressed fears that European human rights principles have been left on one side by an unprecedented EU-US extradition treaty, which was signed yesterday.
It lowers the threshold of crimes that can trigger extradition to any offence carrying a prison sentence of more than a year.
----
KUCINICH DEMANDS PROBE OF CHENEY'S ROLE
Thu, 26 Jun 2003
From: Kucinich Campaign - info@kucinich.us
http://www.kucinich.us
The Kucinich Amendment seeking an audit of pre-war communications between the CIA and Vice President Cheney came up for a vote this morning. With the Intelligence Committee shielding the White House from a full investigation, the bill went down to defeat.
Kucinich introduced the amendment after a Washington Post article reported that CIA analysts felt pressured by Cheney to cook their intelligence on Iraq to help the war mobilization. "There are many unanswered questions about the erroneous assertions made by this Administration," asserted Kucinich. "It is now clear that an Independent Commission is needed."
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
India and China announce new pact
June 26, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030625-054827-8627r.htm
BEIJING, June 25 -- India and China have agreed to reopen part of their Himalayan border where they fought a 1962 war.
Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha announced the agreement during a Beijing news conference. India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is also in Beijing on a visit billed as a landmark effort to build trade and diplomatic cooperation.
Sinha quoted Chinese President Hu Jintao as telling Vajpayee his visit "will send a message to the entire international community that China and India are coming closer together" and putting decades of Cold War mistrust behind them.
Relations between Beijing and New Delhi have improved as the two nuclear nations downplay border disputes and such divisive issues as China's alliance with Pakistan, India's arch enemy.
Sino-Indian trade totaled $5 billion last year.
Channel NewsAsia said the border agreement calls for reopening a trade route once used by mule trains that crossed a 14,500-foot-high pass.
----
Indonesian Army's Upper Hand
With Ambitious Reform Efforts Stalled, Military Reasserts Broad Influence, Diplomats Say
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33811-2003Jun25?language=printer
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Five years after Gen. Suharto was ousted and a newly democratic Indonesia pledged to reform the military, the ambitious effort has largely stalled and the generals are resurgent, according to Indonesian and Western analysts.
The armed forces' newfound confidence was on display this spring, when the chief of the Indonesian army summoned his senior generals to an unprecedented meeting in the troubled province of Aceh.
Commanders of the army's special forces, strategic command and Indonesia's 12 military regions were among more than four dozen generals flown in by Hercules transport planes to a gas company's compound, separated by walls and barbed wire from the rebellious villages beyond. The generals donned the jungle camouflage uniforms of the war zone. Nearly 2,000 soldiers and police were deployed to guard the session.
The army was conducting its annual review outside the main island of Java for the first time in 38 years. It was a sensitive moment. A cease-fire that the government had concluded -- over the military's objections -- three months earlier with rebels fighting for Aceh's independence was faltering. By gathering in combat uniforms in the oil- and gas-rich province, at the northern tip of Indonesia's western island of Sumatra, the generals were sending what many Indonesians saw as a stark message of dissent.
"It was a deliberate move by the army commander to show the wishy-washy politicians in Jakarta that the army is the one that would protect the territorial integrity of Indonesia," said Juwono Sudarsono, a former defense minister. "It was open defiance."
In May, two months after that meeting, the government finally endorsed a military solution for Aceh, and the Indonesian armed forces launched their largest offensive since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The military had regained the upper hand in setting the course in the rebellious province and reasserted its lead role in protecting the country's internal security, according to Indonesian and Western defense analysts and diplomats. This occurred despite the government's previous efforts to transfer that responsibility to the police.
The reversal underscores the military's broadening influence over Indonesia's most sensitive policies, the diplomats and analysts say. In their view, there is much less talk now about reform -- removing the military from politics and placing it under civilian control, making it accountable for human rights violations and turning its attention to national defense rather than domestic policing.
This reflects the officer corps' determination to preserve its role as guardian of the nation as well as to maintain the riches it reaps through a network of patronage and private enterprises, according to the diplomats and analysts. But these revived fortunes are also the result of a civilian leadership that these observers say has proved more interested in currying the favor of the military than disciplining its excesses.
"The civilians don't have the guts and the confidence to control the army. They're not strong enough," said Salim Said, senior partner at the Indoconsult business consulting firm in Jakarta, who follows military affairs.
Instead, civilian politicians are competing with one another to woo military support ahead of landmark elections next year, which will be the first direct vote for president in the country's history and an important step in the transition to democracy.
"No political party wants to risk confrontation with the military by pushing for military reform," said Rizal Sukma, director of studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. He added that President Megawati Sukarnoputri "believes the continuation of her power depends on support from the military."
Megawati said in a speech in Tokyo this week that she had turned to the military in Aceh because Indonesia was facing a challenge to its territorial integrity and that "the constitution makes clear that Indonesia is a unitary state, and it is unacceptable that any people should aim for an arrangement contrary to that." Turning the Tide
Just last year, the military had agreed reluctantly to relinquish its traditional quota of seats in parliament. Eleven of its officers had been ordered by Indonesian judges to stand trial for alleged atrocities in East Timor after the former Indonesian province voted in 1999 for independence. It was losing the debate over Aceh policy while the rival police were winning international plaudits for capturing the suspected terrorists behind the bombing of two Bali nightclubs in October.
But in recent months, the armed forces, known in Indonesian as Tentara Nasional Indonesia or TNI, have turned the tide. They have reestablished themselves in internal security and rejected a historic proposal by reformers within the military to roll back the army's ubiquitous presence in towns and villages. The armed forces have also pushed for an expanded role in intelligence-gathering, according to analysts and officials familiar with military planning.
"The trend is certainly going in a different direction to what it initially followed when we began the military reform four to five years ago," Sukma said. "The military has been able to regain a lot more influence than they had a year ago both in defense policy and in the political process."
Military leaders deny that reform of the armed forces has stopped. "Internal change within the TNI will continue in line with government policy," said Lt. Gen. Djaja Suparman, commander of the military's command and general staff college. "Should there be an opinion that internal reform of the TNI is being done half-heartedly or even has not started due to reluctance on TNI's part, that would be mistaken."
With Indonesia facing a wave of terrorist attacks, separatist rebellions in two provinces, Aceh and Papua, and Muslim-Christian violence elsewhere in the archipelago, Indonesians are increasingly nostalgic for the generals' firm hand.
"The trust of the people in the armed forces is now growing," said retired Gen. Agum Gumelar, Indonesia's transportation and communications minister and former commander of the army's special forces. "It's because they feel, I'm sorry to say, the existing government [has] disappointed [them]. In this situation, the people are looking to the armed forces again. They feel that Suharto's era is better than now."
Under Suharto, military personnel filled the upper ranks of the civil service under a concept known as dwifungsi, or dual function, which guaranteed the armed forces a guiding role in politics as well as national defense. Though the military no longer holds those posts, Gumelar said, it still has the duty to prevent the civilian government from jeopardizing the national interest, in particular national unity.
"If there is an element of the nation that tries to go in the wrong direction, the armed forces must remind the government we have to make a correction," said Gumelar, one of six active or retired generals who hold cabinet-level posts in Megawati's government.
In a speech this spring, the army chief of staff, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, said the military would uphold Indonesia's laws but would not take a back seat to the elected government.
"The meaning of civil supremacy is not that soldiers are under civilians, but that the whole nation including the soldiers have to obey the prevailing civil laws," he said.
Senior officers say they have reformed since the Suharto era, building a professional force seeking to avoid the human rights abuses that long tarnished the military's international reputation. But rights advocates and foreign governments continue to raise concerns about military conduct, including reports that soldiers in Aceh have killed innocent civilians.
U.S. officials are also investigating whether members of the military were responsible for the killing of two American teachers and an Indonesian colleague near the Freeport gold and copper mine in the province of Papua last August. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew P. Daley said recently that the "preponderance of evidence" points to members of the military. The Indonesian military has denied involvement. Resistance to Reform
As the spirit of reform swept Indonesia following Suharto's ouster, one of the most dramatic proposals was to overhaul the military's longtime territorial command system, under which officers were stationed across the country at all levels of government, in essence forming a power structure parallel to the civilian bureaucracy.
Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo, chief of territorial affairs through 2001, ran a series of workshops to plan for eliminating the military's presence at local levels. This would have curtailed severely the army's power in local politics and limited its involvement in side business enterprises.
But the initiative encountered fierce resistance within the army ranks, Widjojo recalled. "It was just unthinkable for them to change," he said.
The military establishment was equally bold late last year when Megawati's defense ministry asked for its input on a new law regulating the military. In response, the military provided an entire draft bill, including an article that would allow the military to carry out emergency operations without the approval of the president, according to Sukma, who served on the panel drafting the legislation.
The legislation is now awaiting action by the parliament, where it seems likely to pass.
But it is over Aceh policy that the military has won its most decisive battle. Last year, Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, almost single-handedly persuaded Megawati and her cabinet to reach a negotiated settlement with the separatists. Though a former general himself, Yudhoyono faced opposition from senior military officers and the other retired generals in Megawati's inner circle. He was widely cheered, however, by foreign governments, in particular the United States.
The December agreement called for a cease-fire and partial demilitarization, with the rebels required to turn over their weapons at cantonment areas under international supervision and Indonesian forces obligated to pull back from some front-line positions. The two sides were also required to begin negotiations over the future status of the province, home to 4.1 million people.
In the following months, military officials accused the rebels of using the cease-fire to rearm and reorganize. The military refused to pull back troops as the agreement demanded. With tension mounting, the rebels delayed resuming peace talks, and Yudhoyono found himself increasingly isolated. Halting the Peace Process
Rather than redouble efforts toward a peaceful settlement, Megawati declared martial law in Aceh on May 18 and promised to crush the rebels within six months. Her senior officials said they ended the peace process because the separatists had refused to renounce their goal of independence and lay down their weapons.
About 300 people have been killed in the first month of the offensive, pitting about 40,000 Indonesian troops against about 4,000 to 5,000 separatists. The military says most of the casualties are rebels, but rebels, human rights activists and some Western diplomats assert that the victims include scores of civilians and government troops.
The military's resurgence has met little opposition from Megawati, who Indonesian political analysts say feels comfortable with the generals and shares their view that Indonesia's unity must be assured by force. That position also has popular support, according to recent public opinion polls.
Away from the capital, in the villages of this far-flung archipelago, the military's power is even greater. Military officers control patronage networks that can deliver electoral support. The officers can stir up trouble to undermine civilian politicians or, at a minimum, refuse to calm protests that prove embarrassing to the government. Civilian politicians recognize that after only five years of democracy, their parties cannot match the military's resources, according to Sudarsono, the former defense minister.
"They know at the end of the day, the real power remains with the military. It has the organizational structure, especially in the boondocks," he said.
Special correspondent Natasha Tampubolon contributed to this report.
-------- britain
Blair vows to stay course in Iraq
He promises additional troops if commanders ask for them
Alan Cowell/NYT NYT
Thursday, June 26, 2003
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/100781.html
LONDON After the killing of six British soldiers in disputed circumstances in southern Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged Wednesday to maintain Britain's military presence in southern Iraq and offered to send reinforcements if commanders on the ground asked for them.
Blair's pledge seemed designed to head off suggestions by some legislators that Britain should begin contemplating what one member of Blair's Labour Party called an "exit strategy" from Iraq.
It also came amid news reports from the region suggesting that the soldiers were killed not by insurgents but by angry civilians.
"Despite the terrible events of yesterday, the people of Iraq now have the prospect of hope for the future - the prospect of a proper, prosperous and democratic country," Blair told Parliament. "Even at this moment in time, it is particularly important that we make sure that we redouble our efforts to bring stability to that country because this is the surest way to bring stability to the rest of the world."
Blair said British commanders believed that the 14,000 British troops in the region - 10,000 of them in southern Iraq - were a big enough force. "But should they require more troops of course we will make sure that those troops are available," Blair said. At the height of the war, Britain had some 46,000 military personnel in the region.
Earlier, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said some 19,000 troops in Britain who had been standing by for potential firefighting duties were available for deployment and it was "not beyond the bounds of possibility" that 5,000 of them could be sent to southern Iraq.
Blair was addressing Parliament just 24 hours after word began to emerge of two attacks on British troops around Majar al Kabir, a small town near Al Amara in southern Iraq. The killings of the military policemen were the first known fatalities among British troops since the announced end of hostilities almost two months ago and seemed initially to suggest that the insurgency confronting American troops around Baghdad farther north was spreading.
Both Blair, and news reports from the region, seemed to suggest, however, that the slayings were part of a more complicated set of circumstances in Majar al Kabir, a Shiite Muslim town that claimed to have liberated itself from Saddam Hussein even before allied troops arrived there in the war.
News agency reports quoted local people as saying that the British troops had been killed not by insurgents but by armed civilians incensed by intrusive British weapons searches in their homes. Blair told Parliament, "There is a background to this in this particular province where the people actually liberated themselves from Saddam, but where there is a background to do with attempts by the British forces to make sure the local population, who regularly carried machine guns and small firearms, were disarmed of those weapons."
He added, "There had been problems with that and that may form part of the background to it."
He insisted, however, that it was "too early to say" what actually happened. He did not refer to a second attack earlier the same day in the same area where, Britain said Tuesday, eight British soldiers were wounded in an apparent ambush and a subsequent attack on a helicopter carrying reinforcements.
British military officials denied that the killings had been provoked by their soldiers. "The attack on the U.K. forces at Majar al Kabir was unprovoked," Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt told a television station. "The six military policemen who were trying to retrain the local police were murdered, as far as we're aware, in the police station" in the small Iraqi town.
"The enemies of peace have claimed that the United Kingdom forces are conducting violent searches of Arab homes and have not respected property. This is simply not true," he said.
Britain's Ministry of Defense also denied reports that British troops in Iraq had given residents of Majar al Kabir a 48-hour deadline to hand over the killers of the British soldiers.
The fatalities stunned Britons, who had become used to news reports of their troops being on good terms with Iraqi civilians, even patrolling without body armor or helmets. Hoon said military planners were considering whether to order a change in those tactics.
British authorities identified the six dead soldiers as a 41-year-old sergeant and five military policemen with the rank of corporal or lance corporal. The youngest of them was 20 years old, and they were all from a unit based in Colchester, northeast of London.
The commander of their unit, Major Bryn Parry-Jones, said, "We ask our men and women to risk the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and it is the sad truth that sometimes that sacrifice comes to pass."
In Parliament, Jon Owen Jones, a Labour legislator, said Britain "desperately requires an exit strategy."
And former Prime Minister John Major said Britain needed "an exit strategy so it is clear we have one," to convince Iraqis that the allies do not plan to colonize the country.
But the government's response was that British troops should stay as long as they are needed.
Hoon said: "It was a dreadful day yesterday, but it is important to recognize it is not typical, it is not widespread. It is not something we have seen in any other part of our area of operation."
He added in a radio interview, "Central to any exit strategy in this situation is to begin to train local people, to develop local security arrangements, so that the people of Iraq become as soon as possible responsible for their own affairs, their own security."
The New York Times
-------- business
No Protection Policy For Overseas Contractors
Oversight 'Inconsistent,' Report Says
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33436-2003Jun25?language=printer
The Pentagon's oversight of thousands of private contractors deployed with troops overseas is "inconsistent and sometimes incomplete," according to a General Accounting Office report that also found no overall policy on what protection the civilians require in hostile environments.
Despite the increasingly prominent role contractors play overseas -- cooking, training soldiers on high-tech equipment and acting as interpreters -- the Department of Defense does not track their numbers, according to the report, requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee and released this week. On some occasions, contractors have arrived without the ground commander's knowledge and found that they did not have the supplies they needed to do their job, the report said.
"There is no DOD-wide guidance that establishes baseline policies to help ensure the efficient use of contractors that support deployed forces," the report said.
The deployment of contractors will cost the government more than $4.5 billion between fiscal years 2000 and 2005, the report said. A GAO official said the armed services' disjointed approach prevented the agency from arriving at an exact figure.
In a written response to the report, the Pentagon acknowledged the lapses but questioned the need to address them. "While, in general, better Department-wide guidance needs to be provided addressing various issues related to contractor employees on the battlefield, I note that the lack of such guidance has not jeopardized the operation of any DOD mission in recent memory," Diedre A. Lee, director of defense procurement and acquisition policy, wrote in a statement included with the report.
"The benefits of any steps that provide greater guidance and obtain more information to ensure combatant commanders have a better picture of contractors on the battlefield must be weighed against the burdens and costs of such measures," Lee said.
The Pentagon's growing reliance on contractors has sparked concern that the military may lose part of its expertise, according to the report. The Air Force depends on contractors to maintain all of its fixed-wing aircraft, and the Army's biological detection equipment used in Afghanistan was maintained by civilian workers, the report said. "The increasing reliance on the private sector to handle certain functions and capabilities has further reduced or eliminated the military's ability to meet certain requirements internally," the report said.
As the defense industry boosts staff overseas, companies are increasingly concerned about their workers' safety. The government's responsibility to contractors in the event of hostilities is not clear, causing confusion and complicating management of the civilians, the report said. The Joint Chiefs of Staff say it is the contractors' responsibility to provide security, while the Army puts the responsibility on the local military commander, the report said.
"There is some general thinking that DOD can't wash their hands of the protection of these contractors because some of them are pretty vital to accomplishing the mission," said Neal P. Curtin, director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO. "You need to have a systematic way of making sure you have the right protection in place."
In May, nine employees of Fairfax-based Vinnell Corp., a subsidiary of industry giant Northrop Grumman Corp., were killed in an explosion in Saudi Arabia. In January, the co-founder of Tapestry Solutions Inc. was ambushed and killed in Kuwait. The attack left a co-worker wounded. Seven contractors were killed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to the report.
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Fearing a 'Buy American' Law
U.S. Defense Firms Expect Foreign Backlash
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33481-2003Jun25?language=printer
As Congress considers tightening restrictions on the Pentagon's foreign purchases, U.S. defense contractors are concerned that such a move could hurt their sales overseas and possibly derail large weapons programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter, a key international project led by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Industry officials worry that any effort to further restrict defense imports could prompt retaliation in foreign markets. The U.S. defense industry already sells six times as much to Europe as the Pentagon buys there, said Joel Johnson, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association. A move to restrain imports "would play into the hands of the European protectionists who see the future of their defense industry based on excluding American defense products," he said.
The House passed its version of the 2004 defense authorization bill with provisions that would strengthen "buy American" laws. While current laws already give preference to U.S. defense companies, the provisions would increase even further the dominance of American manufacturers and parts suppliers. Under the current legislation, 65 percent of components in items purchased by the Defense Department would have to be made in America, up from 50 percent.
The provisions also expand the list of items the Pentagon can buy only from U.S. suppliers, including the packaging for ready-to-eat meals, tires for ground vehicles, and aircraft and bomb fuses.
The Senate's version would give the Pentagon more options in buying from foreign suppliers. "The Senate bill recognizes that while the overwhelming bulk of America's military budget will continue to be spent on domestic products, our forces need the flexibility to procure the best of existing technologies and avail themselves of the strength of the global market," said John Ullyot, spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Industry officials and the Pentagon are especially concerned that the provisions would throw programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the missile defense system into turmoil. Restrictions on the use of foreign parts could force the fighter project to be revamped. In a written response to the legislation, the Pentagon said the "buy American" provisions would "require that international cooperative programs, such as Joint Strike Fighter, be modified or terminated drastically."
The fighter's development has depended on support from other countries. Britain has contributed $2 billion and Italy has provided $1 billion, industry officials said. The Pentagon cannot afford to build this next generation fighter jet without those kinds of contributions, the officials said, adding that cooperation could evaporate if participating countries find that they are frozen out of supplying certain parts for the program.
The countries are expecting a hefty return on their investment. For its $2 billion, Britain could potentially receive $43 billion in revenue through 2026 from the aircraft's production, according to a Defense Department report. Italy stands to collect $4.8 billion in manufacturing revenue on its $1 billion investment, the report said.
"There was a feeling that if you're asking countries to bear the cost of development, they want to see some participation in the program by their industries," said Jon Etherton, vice president of legislative affairs for the Aerospace Industries Association.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, dismissed concerns that the provisions could upset the fighter program. "It hasn't been demonstrated to the committee that this would result in damaging the Joint Strike Fighter program," he said in a recent interview. "Other countries just have to understand . . . we have to do everything we can to protect our defense industrial base. That is a legitimate national interest for this country."
Hunter argued that the U.S. defense industry has become too dependent on foreign components. During the Iraq war, he said, a Swiss manufacturer refused to provide a component for the Joint Direct Attack Munition, a smart bomb. Switzerland had banned military exports for war operations. An alternate U.S. supplier was found and production was not interrupted, said a spokesman for Boeing Co., which builds the weapon.
"If the war taught us anything, it's that we can't rely on our usual allies," said Joel D. Joseph, chairman of the D.C.-based Made in the USA Foundation. Referring to France and other European countries that opposed the war, Joseph said: "They have a right to be independent, and we have a right to be independent. The way to stay independent is for our industry to be self-sufficient."
Still, the proposed regulations worry many of the defense companies they are intended to protect. Boeing and Lockheed, for example, oppose a part of the provision that requires that only American-made titanium be used for military products. The companies say they need to use foreign metals to meet the Pentagon's cost requirements.
Raytheon Co., one of the country's largest defense contractors, recently established a joint venture with Thales Inc., a French defense firm, aimed at boosting sales for each company in the other firm's domestic market. "Clearly we have concerns with the 'buy American' provisions, and we're currently assessing the potential impact on Raytheon," said Dave Shea, a company spokesman. "Among our concerns is the potential damage they might do to our international business, which is about 20 percent" of Raytheon's total business.
The provisions could also impair the industry's ability to court foreign customers, the companies say. As part of their sales pitch, defense contractors often offer to allow a country to produce in its own market part of a weapons system a contractor purchases, industry officials said. "In any country with developed aerospace capabilities, they want to make part of what they buy," said Robbin Laird, a defense industry consultant.
A sales agreement might also stipulate that the part produced overseas would be incorporated into future versions of the weapon, the officials said. But under the proposed provisions that would limit foreign content, such agreements would become harder to negotiate, the officials said.
The United Kingdom supports an open and competitive market, a British Embassy spokesman said in a statement. "It will be no surprise, therefore," that the minister of defense would be opposed in principle "to any legislative steps that acted to limit such competition. . . . The UK Government regrets this move," the statement said.
U.S. defense contractors have been frustrated recently by resistance in parts of Europe to American weapons sales. As evidence of what they call "Fortress Europe," industry officials point to a recent competition between Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp. and EuroProp International, a consortium of European engine builders, for an Airbus Military contract. Airbus extended the deadline on bidding for the $3 billion contract to provide the engines for a fleet of European military transport vehicles so that EuroProp could submit a new offer closer to one presented by United Technologies, industry officials said. The contract went to EuroProp.
U.S. defense contractors were already leery of the European bidding process, and the Airbus Military competition proved their doubts, said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst for Teal Group Corp., a Fairfax-based defense research firm. "If you talk to an international program manger, they will tell you they feel snubbed" in Europe, he said.
At the Paris Air Show earlier this month, Robert Trice, Lockheed Martin's senior vice president for corporate business development, said: "When we see European governments . . . holding economic 'competitions' only to make the final award based on political criteria, we realize that there is still a lot of work to be done."
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Ex-Boeing Workers Charged Over Lockheed Documents
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33791-2003Jun25?language=printer
Two former Boeing Co. employees were charged last night with stealing Lockheed Martin Corp. documents to help Boeing win an Air Force contract.
The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said William Erskine, 43, and Kenneth Branch, 64, face criminal charges of conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and violating the Procurement Integrity Act. A lawyer who represented Erskine and Branch in a wrongful-termination lawsuit against Boeing did not return a call for comment.
The charges mark the latest escalation in a four-year fight over a multibillion-dollar contract to build the next-generation rocket launcher known as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. Earlier this month, Lockheed Martin sued Boeing as well as Erskine and Branch, accusing them of using corporate espionage to steal the high-profile Air Force contract.
"By covertly using a competitor's secret information, they caused harm not only to Lockheed Martin, but also to the Air Force and taxpayers who finance government operations," U.S. Attorney Debra W. Yang said in a statement. "Their improper conduct had huge ramifications because of the value of the contract."
If convicted on all three counts, Erskine and Branch could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison and a fine of $850,000.
Boeing acknowledges that some employees "behaved unethically" during the competition. The company fired Erskine and Branch in 1999 and has turned over more than 37,000 pages of Lockheed documents, including some that contained sensitive cost and technical information and Air Force critiques of Lockheed's proposal.
Lockheed declined to comment on the charges. "We are cooperating fully with the Justice Department's investigation and the Air Force's inquiry," said Boeing spokesman Daniel Beck.
The repercussions from the various investigations could profoundly affect Chicago-based Boeing, industry analysts said. If the Air Force punishes the firm by reversing its decision on the rocket-launch competition, the multibillion-dollar hit to the company's already struggling space business would be severe, they said.
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Ex-Boeing Execs Face Trade Secret Charges
Jun 26, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BOEING_CONTRACT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LOS ANGELES -- Federal prosecutors charged two former Boeing managers with conspiring to steal trade secrets from competitor Lockheed Martin to help their company win an Air Force rocket contract.
Kenneth Branch, 64, and William Erskine, 43, were charged with conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and violating federal procurement integrity laws, according to documents filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The action follows a federal lawsuit Lockheed Martin filed earlier this month against Boeing, the two managers and another former employee.
Both complaints charge that Branch, a former Lockheed employee, gave Boeing thousands of pages of documents that included financial details on Lockheed's planned bid for the $1.88 billion contract.
The deal, part of the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program, was divided between the two companies in 1999. But Boeing was eventually awarded 21 rocket launches, while Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed, the nation's largest defense contractor, received seven. Advertisement
The affidavit alleges Erskine hired Branch because he made an "'under the table' offer to hand over the entire Lockheed Martin EELV proposal presentation ... in exchange for a position at Boeing" if the Chicago-based company won the contract.
Boeing fired both in 1999 after an internal investigation. Larry Satchell, whose job was to ensure Boeing's bid came in under Lockheed's, was suspended and has since retired. He was not named in the criminal complaint. Boeing also was not named in the criminal complaint.
Branch's lawyer, Richard Steingard, called it unfortunate that the government is prosecuting his client instead of "corporate officials that created and implemented this plan."
A message left at the offices of Erskine's lawyer, Steve Madison, was not immediately returned. A federal court last year dismissed a wrongful termination suit Erskine and Branch filed against Boeing.
Prosecutors said Branch and Erskine, who are both from Cape Canaveral, Fla., will likely be arraigned in federal court next month. Both face a penalty of up to 15 years in federal prison and fines of up to $850,000 if convicted.
On the Net:
Lockheed Martin Corp.: http://www.lockheedmartin.com
Boeing Co.: http://www.boeing.com
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Defense Work in County Surges
Local Spending By Military Grew 41% Last Year
By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24707-2003Jun23.html
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, things looked shaky for Eric E. Tucker's high-technology company, Microcosm Inc.
First, the company's defense contract to produce and maintain laser microscopes shrank. Then the contract disappeared altogether as the government struggled to redefine its priorities. But since the anthrax attacks and the war in Afghanistan in 2001, federal defense spending has soared -- and throughout Maryland, companies such as Tucker's are cashing in.
"It's sort of a land rush now," said Tucker, Microcosm's vice president. "Almost anyone out there with a product is trying to characterize it as defense-related or homeland security."
Military spending increased nationwide by about 20 percent last year, according to a database analysis of Defense Department contracts available online.
Howard County saw its share of defense contracts grow more than most of Maryland and the country. The total amount of defense work done in the county jumped 41 percent, from $190 million in 2001 to more than $268 million in 2002. That's better than the statewide increase of 30 percent, which reflects growth in Maryland defense contracts from $5 billion in 2001 to $6.5 billion in 2002.
Why is Howard County reaping more of the work than many areas of the country?
Location, location, location, says Richard W. Story, chief executive of the Howard County Economic Development Authority.
"We're halfway between Baltimore and D.C., two major markets in defense procurements," he said. Although no major government agency is housed in Howard, the county is a short drive from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Fort Meade Army Base and the National Security Agency.
"I think the first preference is to be in Anne Arundel, as close to Fort Meade as possible. But it's full there, so now they're coming over to Howard County," said Randall M. Griffin, president of Corporate Office Properties Trust, a real estate company in Howard.
Offices near Fort Meade are so popular, Griffin's company has ran out of nearby spaces to sell. He is now constructing new buildings and has even relocated one company from its old space to make room for a government agency.
Elsewhere in the state, Prince George's County experienced the biggest dollar increase in defense spending, with its contracts jumping 68.3 percent from $609 million in 2001 to more than $1 billion in 2002, mostly to design such high-tech products as gas turbines and a de-icing system for the F-15 Eagle fighter jet.
Montgomery County, which has the highest concentration of biotech firms in the state, saw its dollar increase go up about 13 percent, from $1.15 billion in 2001 to $1.3 billion in 2002.
"Between the anthrax scare and the chemical weapons, our research has been sped up and better financed by the government," said Joe Shapiro, spokesman for the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.
Howard's defense contracts run the gamut, from fruits and vegetables supplied by a Jessup company for feeding military personnel to a guided missile system put together in Columbia. In recent years, the county has been moving more toward high-tech contracts such as the missile system.
The move is a smart one because the Defense Department's demand for high technology is growing, said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank.
"There's an increasing emphasis on data management," he said. "The Pentagon is buying fewer weapons systems, but the weapons and the military are getting more sophisticated."
As a result, Maryland's defense industry as a whole has shifted from manufacturing hardware toward developing information systems and high technology, Hellman said, and the trend seems to be paying off. Microcosm, for instance, has received new contracts to create molecular-size metallic particles, which could help detect anthrax and other biological threats.
Overall, Maryland has moved up to become the sixth richest state in defense dollars, according to defense spending figures. In 2002, it surpassed Georgia and Missouri, where defense contracts are still largely focused on manufacturing.
And the future looks even brighter for Maryland and Howard. The Pentagon announced this year that it expects its congressional appropriations to increase by $119 billion during the next six years. Much of that money could go to Maryland, which is well positioned to capitalize on another surge in defense spending, said Anirban Basu, an economic consultant in Baltimore.
"Federal procurement officers know our companies," he said. "Many of the companies already have security clearances. And we produce the type of technology now needed."
-------- colombia
Colombian Fighters' Drug Trade Is Detailed
Report Complicates Efforts to End War
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33676-2003Jun25?language=printer
BOGOTA, Colombia, June 25 -- A confidential assessment prepared for the president of Colombia on whether peace talks should begin with the nation's main paramilitary force has concluded that the group, which frequently fights alongside the Colombian military, is a drug-trafficking organization, according to a copy of the document.
A six-month review commissioned by President Alvaro Uribe to evaluate the possibility of peace talks with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC and listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, reports that "it is impossible to differentiate between the self-defense groups and narco-trafficking organizations." The review also contends that paramilitary leaders seek to exploit peace talks to protect their drug-trafficking profits.
The paramilitary organization was founded in the late 1980s, initially funded by large ranchers and private businesses that were targets of kidnappings and extortion at the hands of Marxist guerrillas. The first units formed in rugged northwest Colombia and along the central Magdalena River basin where the guerrillas also flourished.
In recent years, however, both the paramilitary forces and the guerrillas have turned to drug trafficking to fund their operations. The government report states for the first time officially the scope of drug trafficking by the paramilitary forces. Through a handful of drug kingpins posing as paramilitary commanders, they control about 40 percent of Colombia's drug trafficking. The AUC "sells its franchise" to regional drug traffickers, who rely on the group for security in exchange for a cut of profits.
The report also estimates that as much as 80 percent of the AUC's funding comes from drug trafficking. Members of the group have said in interviews that up to 10 percent of the drug proceeds go toward the war effort, with the rest enriching individual commanders. Colombia accounts for as much as 90 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States.
The report's conclusions appear to challenge Uribe's plan to grant political legitimacy to the paramilitary forces by beginning a formal peace process that would lead to their disarmament. The report also reveals a deep split between Colombia's civilian government and the military leadership over the wisdom of demobilizing the 11,000-member AUC at a delicate moment in the country's 39-year civil war.
The Colombian military uses the paramilitary forces to carry out offensive operations against the country's two Marxist rebel insurgencies, but the irregular forces also are accused by international human rights organizations of massacring civilians.
"The Armed Forces are the principal enemy to a peace process with the self-defense groups," the analysis concludes. "Opposition exists at the highest ranks to permit demobilization."
A government official familiar with the preparations for peace negotiations characterized the analysis as "very real, and a step forward" in helping address the administration's differences with the military command.
"We're working on it and working on it and working on it," the official said. "The president wants this done quickly."
Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving about $600 million a year in hardware and training for use against a drug industry that helps fuel the civil war. The Colombian army has long relied on the strength of the paramilitary forces in its fight against the 18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the largest Marxist-oriented insurgency group is known.
As a condition for continued U.S. aid, the Colombian military has pledged to sever links to the paramilitary forces. But the analysis, prepared by six civilian appointees , states that "the exploratory phase [of the peace process] has had serious incidents of obstruction from the Armed Forces," whose leadership appears to oppose the demobilization of paramilitary forces while the guerrillas constitute an active threat to the government.
The assessment, delivered to Uribe last week, was not intended for public review. A copy was provided to The Washington Post by a splinter paramilitary group's leader, code-named "Rodrigo 00." He contends that the AUC leadership is hoping to use the peace process to obtain political legitimacy for major drug traffickers inside the organization so they can keep land, cash and other drug profits.
The analysis is likely to complicate matters for Uribe, who took office Aug.7 promising a broader war against the guerrillas, because it appears to undermine conditions he placed on the AUC in return for beginning formal peace talks.
Uribe, who was criticized by human rights organizations for allowing paramilitary groups to flourish in Antioquia province when he was governor there in the mid-1990s, required the AUC to declare a cease-fire before considering formal talks. Carlos Castaño, the group's political leader, declared a unilateral cease-fire late last year. But, the analysis concludes, the "cessation of hostilities has not been complied with."
"We're discussing how to move forward with a peace process that has many, many difficulties ahead," said Vice President Francisco Santos, who declined in a brief interview today to specifically address the confidential assessment. "But we are determined to move ahead so that we can get rid of some 11,000 combatants that are harming this country. We're discussing different options and drawing on a lot of different material and information we have."
The analysis also poses political challenges for the United States, which for the first time plans to participate in Colombia's peace efforts by offering paramilitary fighters incentives to disarm. Although the United States has helped fund similar programs following civil wars in Central America, Africa and Asia, this is reportedly the first time it plans to do so on behalf of a group that the State Department considers a terrorist organization.
The U.S. government refused to participate in peace negotiations with the FARC, also on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, that were conducted by then-President Andres Pastrana. Privately, U.S. officials sharply criticized those efforts, which granted the guerrillas control of a 16,000-square-mile enclave in southern Colombia before the talks collapsed in February 2002. The FARC used the haven for military training, recruitment and increasing coca cultivation that it protects for a profit.
But the Bush administration's partnership with Uribe is stronger, mostly because the new president has embraced controversial U.S. aerial herbicide spraying that has devastated the coca crop in southern Colombia. Uribe also has allowed the extradition of 64 accused drug traffickers to the United States during his 10 months in office, more than Pastrana allowed during his four-year term.
The Bush administration has surveyed about 6,000 combatants involved in the two paramilitary units officially interested in peace talks, the AUC and the Central Bolivar Bloc. Officials said the U.S. government will spend up to $5 million in the first phase of a program to offer training, education, farmland and other incentives to paramilitary combatants who agree to lay down their arms.
If Uribe decides to proceed with peace talks, 2,000 paramilitary fighters could be demobilized by the end of the year, with the entire peace process completed by 2005, officials said.
"This is the first semi-serious show of intent on the part of one of these armed groups," said a U.S. official, explaining why the Bush administration decided to fund the paramilitary demobilization, after declining to participate in the FARC negotiations. Colombia's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, is scheduled to be in Washington this week for meetings with U.S. officials about the AUC process.
"I don't think it matters" that this is a terrorist organization, one U.S. official here said. "The idea here is to take pieces off the playing board. I think we have to look at it in those terms."
The AUC was a confederation of regional paramilitary groups that emerged across Colombia in response to the Marxist insurgency with a combined force of about 15,000 combatants. Many paramilitary fighters once served in Colombia's military, including some of its top commanders.
But the group splintered last fall, just before Castaño and AUC military leader Salvatore Mancuso were indicted in the United States on drug-trafficking charges. It is now split into at least five groups after an internal dispute over the AUC's increasing role in Colombia's drug trade.
The analysis says the paramilitary movement is no longer principally an anti-insurgency force, but that most of its interests are focused on expanding its ties to the drug trade.
Only two of the AUC's constituent groups are seeking peace talks with the government, meaning that as many as 9,000 other paramilitary fighters could remain outside the negotiations. Paramilitary leaders also expect "security and development for the regions they occupy," "legalization of a part of their fortune" and "judicial security," according to the report. The United States has refused to consider lifting the drug indictments and extradition requests for Castaño and Mancuso.
"The United States is not so naive, nor is the Colombian government," said Rodrigo 00, the dissident paramilitary commander.
The assessment also criticizes the Colombian military, whose leaders have claimed progress in recent years in cutting its paramilitary connections.
Colombian military officials have suggested that the dissolution of the paramilitary force would cause strategic problems for the army, which they say is stretched too thin to maintain control of paramilitary-controlled territory on its own.
-------- iran
Iran exile warns of killings by regime
June 25
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030625-060926-8845r.htm
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., A former Iranian general says the Tehran regime plans to kill two popular clerics, blaming the killings on the leaders of an anti-government student group.
Davood Beyk Zadeh told reporters in Southern California the Iranian government wants to blunt growing unhappiness among the population by making it appear the victims were slain by "terrorist" dissidents.
Zadeh, who left Iran in 2000 after serving as a commander in the Revolutionary Guard, declined to name the supposed targets, but said he would do so before July 9 -- the anniversary of a major protest in 1999 that was put down forcibly.
Zadeh also said Iran is stirring up trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan with the aim of winning concessions from the United States and Britain at the bargaining table.
-------- iraq
Iraqis struggle over Baath purge
A US campaign to eliminate Baath Party influence in Iraq is being criticized for inflexibility.
By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
June 26, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0626/p06s01-woiq.html
BAGHDAD - When it comes to assessing the US campaign to cleanse Iraq of Saddam Hussein loyalists, one need look no further than an assistant's desk at Baghdad University.
Piled two feet high are petitions from students and faculty alike, appealing to US officials for favorite professors to be exempt from a decree that fires all ranking Baath Party members.
This heavy pile is bursting the sides of a thick plastic shopping bag; the handles have ripped under the weight. And these are just a few of the hundreds of petitions that have been submitted - from universities only - that illustrate the difficulties of scrubbing Iraq clean of the old regime.
While the surge of guerrilla attacks against coalition forces grab headlines - including the death of six British military policemen in southern Iraq on Tuesday - real change in Iraq is being engineered here, at government institutions.
The result so far is a tension among Iraqis about a Draconian decree, that paints the problem of de-Baathification in black and white - while in fact, many Iraqis say, it should be shades of gray.
"It's not a witch hunt. It's a very careful process - as careful as we can make it in this demanding situation," says Andrew Erdmann, a US State Department policymaker who is the top American appointed to the higher education ministry of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
He is swamped with issues emerging at university campuses across Iraq, and trying to focus on meeting emergency needs to complete an extended school year by the end of July. That means fans, air conditioners - US troops delivered a consignment to the Technical College Wednesday - and even printing examination booklets.
Jubilant scenes as students sit for class portraits, Mr. Erdmann says, are "tangible symbols that students feel that their life is progressing, that there is something beyond."
But de-Baathification is complicating the picture. According to his own proclamation on May 16, only the American chief of the occupation authority in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, can approve individual exemptions. The decree purges the top four ranks of the Baath Party. Party apparatchiks with critical skills, who "demonstrated" that they were not committed to the Baath Party under Mr. Hussein would be most likely candidates.
"Some people stepped forward to protect people. Some did not. Those things matter," says Erdmann. There are exceptions, though "the idea that you became a senior party member by accident - it usually doesn't happen."
But some say it did happen to Hussam al-Rawi, a former ranking Baath Party member and British-educated former head of the architecture department, who now must "volunteer" to finish the year, until his status is resolved. At least one fellow professor says Mr. Rawi came to her aid in the past, against an unscrupulous Baathist who deliberately misinterpreted her work, to get her into trouble.
"They did this [de-Baathification] without considering who were good people, and who were bad people," says Janon Kadhim, an architecture professor who says that Rawi "protected" her reputation.
"This is not an American way of working," says Rawi, who lived in Britian for 16 years and was elected as a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. "A lot of skilled workers are out of jobs now," Rawi says. Mr. Bremer has "made enemies of millions of people."
During a brief interview on campus, two separate groups of concerned students, with folders and books tucked under their arms, came to Rawi to inquire, "Are you back with us?" and to wish him luck. Students and other faculty have signed a petition for an exemption for Rawi - adding to the pile of thousands awaiting Bremer's review.
Upon noticing the presence of a Western reporter, one student, unbidden and within minutes, collected five others, to vouch for their professor.
"Of course we don't accept what [the CPA] decides," says student Mohamed Jassim. "He studied abroad and we will lose him. Whoever comes after can't be as good."
"Dr. Hussam is a good professor and teacher, who helped us a lot," says another student, Haidar Faleh. "We want him to stay."
"In my case, if I were to leave the party, I would have had to flee the country, or would have been questioned," says Rawi, whose portrait hangs with those of a string of other past department heads, in the faculty room.
"They shouldn't draw a parallel between the Baath and Nazism, but between Saddam and Stalin. Look at [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. He was a former KGB agent."
That doesn't mean that all Iraqi professors share Rawi's apparent popularity. Before the de-Baathification decree, students protested against the university president, who was known to be the personal physician of the Iraqi dictator.
Erdmann says that several university presidents came to him privately, begging him not to reinstate them, because they "recognized that they did not have the legitimacy to continue, with students or with faculty."
Likewise, students and faculty have made their wishes clear of who should be forced to leave, as well as - demonstrating almost daily for certain professors that have lost their jobs - those they want back in the classroom.
Despite the upheavals, Erdmann notes that his meetings with university chiefs from around the country show that the lowest postwar attendance rates are 75 percent, with most campuses showing 80 and 90 percent or higher. Such figures in the aftermath of war, he says, are "incredibly encouraging."
And few Iraqis question the need to weed out Baath figures who helped make their lives miserable for a generation. But few, also, think a blanket decree was the best way to do it.
"The truth is that 80 percent of the party were members for fear or their interests, and have no belief whatsoever in Baath ideology," says Saad Jawad, a political scientist at Baghdad University.
And the fruits of membership were palpable. Students whose parents were Baathists automatically received extra points on exam scores. Admission forms had a spot marked "Friends of Saddam," a bonus based on the family's position in the party hierarchy. It could determine entry into a good school.
"When they consider every Baath member an enemy, the Americans are putting all of them on the other side of the fence," Mr. Jawad says. "These people are ready to cooperate with the Americans, to work with them. But when you shut them out, they will meet and make an armed cell to fight back."
----
Iraqi Mob Killed Britons
Dispute Over Market Patrol Escalated Into Siege
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33526-2003Jun25?language=printer
MAJAR AL-KABIR, Iraq, June 25 -- The attack on British forces here that killed six military police officers Tuesday was carried out by a mob of Iraqis enraged that paratroops had sought to patrol the town's market, witnesses and local officials said today.
After a seemingly prosaic dispute between the paratroops and townspeople escalated into an intense firefight, witnesses said, scores of Iraqis armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers laid an Alamo-like siege to a police station where British military police were training local patrolmen. At least four soldiers were killed at close range when their ammunition ran out.
"Almost the whole city was outside," said Ahmed Hassan, a police trainee who was inside the station but escaped through a side window. "It was not a small attack. It was like a war."
The clash was the most intense resistance U.S. and British forces have faced since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1.
Unlike recent fatal assaults on U.S. troops in restive central Iraq, which American officials have blamed on fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein, the siege at the police station in this small southeastern town did not appear to have been connected to the former president's supporters. Instead, residents and officials said, it was motivated by a growing anger at the foreign occupation of Iraq among people who just 10 weeks ago welcomed the fall of Hussein's government, raising concerns among U.S. and British officials that resistance activity may be broadening into areas they assumed were pacified.
In Majar al-Kabir and nearby towns, where local Shiite Muslim militias chased out Hussein's Baath Party government before invading troops arrived, British soldiers had adopted a low profile, refraining from shows of force and making relatively few trips into populated areas. But orders to confiscate banned weapons, such as rocket-propelled grenades, led them to intensify searches of private homes, which many residents contend have been conducted in ways that violate conservative local customs. The Iraqis' rage has been compounded by what they regard as insufficient progress by the United States and Britain in addressing the economic disruption and lack of basic services that followed the war.
"We freed our city. We kicked out the Baathists," said Talal Ahmed, 31, a shopkeeper who was appointed to speak on behalf of several local police officers and government officials. "The British did not free our city. We don't need them."
Ahmed and other residents said Tuesday's violent confrontation in this town 230 miles southeast of Baghdad began with a seemingly routine military patrol through the town's market, two perpendicular streets crowded with vegetable stands and shops.
Irate residents began shouting at the red-bereted paratroops. Rocks were thrown and, according to witnesses, an Iraqi fired at least one shot into the air. The British returned fire, first with rubber bullets and then with live ammunition, witnesses said.
"It was a situation that seemed to rise out of nothing and become very volatile," said Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt, the spokesman for British forces in southern Iraq.
The confrontation became so intense, witnesses said, that the paratroops retreated down the main street under a hail of gunfire, returning fire as they moved. Although reinforcements arrived and the paratroops were extracted, a dual-rotor Chinook helicopter was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade as an armed throng converged upon the British evacuation point from several directions, the witnesses said.
"The people were shooting at them from everywhere," said Ahmed Fartosi, 37, an administrator at a humanitarian aid center who observed the battle. "The street was like hell. There were bullets everywhere. It was just like a war."
British military officials said seven soldiers in the helicopter were injured as well as one paratrooper on the ground.
Four Iraqis were killed and about a dozen injured, according to a nurse at the local hospital.
Either during that clash or shortly after, residents said dozens of people armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers besieged the town's police station, about a quarter-mile from the market, where six members of the British Royal Military Police were inside training members of the town's new police force. The attackers shouted for the British police to drop their weapons and leave the building, which they refused to do, Hassan said. When the attackers began firing at the concrete-and-brick building, he said, the British fired back through windows and from the roof.
The Iraqis inside the compound quickly pried the bars off a side window and fled the compound, Hassan said. He and others who witnessed the gun battle said it lasted for about two hours, until the British soldiers ran out of ammunition. At that point, Hassan and others said, the mob rushed into the compound and killed the soldiers.
"They kept fighting and fighting until they had no more bullets," said Samir Mohammed, a teacher who said he watched the exchange of fire.
Some witnesses and Iraqi police officers who entered the station after the shooting said they found the bodies of four British soldiers. They said two others were killed several hundred yards away, at an agricultural school. But others in the town said all six soldiers were killed inside the police station.
British military officials said they were still investigating the incident and could not specify where the killings occurred.
Evidence at the station appeared consistent with accounts that at least some of the soldiers were killed from inside the building. Several bullet holes in interior walls appeared to have resulted from gunfire originating from an inner courtyard. Bloodstains on the floor suggested at least one soldier was killed in a hallway.
"They were murdered," McCourt said. He called the attack "unprovoked."
It was not immediately clear why the reinforcements sent to evacuate the paratroops did not also extract the military police officers. Local officials said British military police, who had been visiting the station regularly, did not appear to coordinate with the paratroops, who were making their first venture into the market. And once the police came under fire, they were unable to call for help because their radios were in their Land Rovers, which were parked in front of the compound, Hassan said.
Although McCourt insisted that British commanders "knew where our forces were," he said military officials still did not know "the relation between the two events or the sequence of the two events."
But people in Majar al-Kabir, situated in a swath of fertile farmland fed by tributaries of the Tigris River, said the two incidents were closely related. They said the people in the market were furious at the presence of the paratroops because the town's leaders had just signed an agreement with a British officer under which local authorities would collect banned weapons in exchange for a commitment that British troops refrain from house-to-house searches for two months.
The agreement had been reached Monday after a dispute over searches in a nearby village on Sunday led to protests here. Some villagers alleged that soldiers had behaved rudely and killed a few of their animals. To quell their anger, Karim Mahoud, a former anti-Hussein guerrilla fighter who had been empowered by the British to police the local population, promised to have his men search for weapons and hand them over.
Ahmed, the town spokesman, insisted the British violated the agreement by trying to patrol the market. "They broke the deal," he said. "They went inside the market with the guns in a way that upset people."
McCourt acknowledged the existence of the agreement but said it did not prohibit British forces from conducting patrols. He also insisted that all searches are "conducted in such a way as to avoid infringing Arab religious and cultural sensibilities."
In Majar al-Kabir, though, the dispute over searches is wrapped in a larger debate over the very presence of British troops in the area. Many in the town, long a center of resistance to Hussein's government and the target of security operations under his rule, contend that because Mahoud's militia took control of the area before British forces arrived, they should be allowed to look after their own affairs.
"If the British want to be in Iraq, that's fine," said Ali Abbas, 46, the owner of a small shop in the market. "But let them stay outside of our city."
Ahmed said British officers had given town leaders a 48-hour ultimatum to hand over those responsible for the shooting, although British officials denied that such an order was issued.
Although several tribal sheiks visited a nearby British base to offer condolences this afternoon, there was little regret or sympathy among the young men milling about the gutted police station or several other municipal buildings.
"What happened at the police station was not spontaneous," Ahmed insisted. "It happened after we asked them to leave. If they had left, this would not have happened."
As several men surrounding him nodded in agreement, Ahmed continued: "We don't want to kill them. But if they come to search our homes, to invade our city, this will be our reaction."
----
The Baathists' Blundering Guerrilla War
By Gary Anderson
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33717-2003Jun25?language=printer
When I predicted April 2 in an article on this page that a Baathist insurgency movement would follow a conventional coalition victory in Iraq, I believed that resorting to guerrilla warfare was the most obvious course of action for the true believers in a regime facing inevitable defeat. I also said that I believed that they would foul it up. They promptly did so; if nothing else, they are predictable.
Given the chance to lie low and bide their time -- waiting until the Americans were well into a withdrawal before striking -- the Baathist leadership, or what is left of it, chose instead to tip its hand while the American presence in Iraq was strongest. By doing so, these Baathist leaders, a loosely knit network operating in the Sunni triangle northwest of Baghdad, caused U.S. forces to pour into a region that should have been their natural sanctuary. Now they are facing retaliation from the U.S.-led coalition at precisely the time they should be resting and recovering.
If the Baathists had followed the classic insurgency doctrines preached by masters such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, they would have kept a low profile, spreading agitation and propaganda while the U.S. occupation forces waned in strength. They should have waited for a struggling, post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi central government to try to take control in the region before striking. Instead of a weak, fledgling democratic Iraqi regime, the Baathists are facing a seriously aroused U.S. liberation force still at the height of its power and competence.
In the classic first stage of an insurgency, the rebels build on public discontent to create local covert sanctuaries and muster their strength. They engage in hit-and-run attacks to show the population that they exist, but they try not to draw undue attention to their activities. The high-profile attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi allies in recent weeks are more like the second stage of a classic insurgency, in which the guerrillas have established a base of public support and have covert sanctuaries among the general population. The Baathists have neither. They remain unpopular, a residual cancer, operating only in the region where they have some civilian support. And they have many enthusiastic enemies among the civilian population, backed up by American firepower that is increasingly in search of retribution. This is not the way to start a popular revolution.
Any successful revolution needs a popular cause. The Baathists want the Americans out of Iraq. But if there is a popular sentiment in Iraq that trumps a desire to see an eventual U.S. withdrawal, it is the desire of the vast majority of people to have seen the last of the Baath Party. Again, this is not a promising building block for a popular liberation front.
This brings us to the question of how to best deal with this misanthropic proto-revolution. The answer is simple: We need to put it out of its misery early. This appears to be exactly what U.S. Central Command is doing. The current crackdown in the Sunni triangle is the only way to deal with this kind of overt challenge to the authority of occupation forces. We should not sell the decentralized nature of this revolution short. We need to remember that al Qaeda is also a networked organization. The difference is that al Qaeda spent years building covert cells, gaining operational experience and creating overt and covert sanctuaries before launching its spectacular operations. This is what makes it imperative to crush the Iraqi insurgency early.
The Baathists may be poor fighters, but they are accomplished thugs. If they are not dealt with firmly, they will begin again to intimidate the rest of the Iraqi population. We should redouble our efforts to hunt down and bring to justice the worst elements of the old regime -- and not just members of the deck of 52. The Iraqi people need to see that evil actions have consequences.
The next step will be subtler. We need to look at this situation as an opportunity as well as a problem. We need to create a force capable of replacing the U.S. occupation force with an Iraqi institution capable of taking up the counterinsurgency campaign without replicating the brutality of the Baathists. The creation of such an internal "people's army" is not without precedent; it was done in the Philippines in the first part of this century by the Americans and in Burma by the British after World War II. Something similar was the core of the Israeli state as it created a nation of citizen-soldiers to deal with both British and Arab foes. This will take patience, but it is also the eventual ticket out for U.S. and other coalition forces.
The people's army should be a temporary fix. Once the Sunni triangle is declared Baath-free, this force can be disbanded, with its veterans providing recruits for the new national army and police as well as the cadres for a new democratic political leadership. Doing this in the Sunni triangle is beyond the competence of the resurrected traffic cops who will likely suffice in the rest of the country. Waiting for a regular army to take up the counterinsurgency job while Americans patrolled the streets of Iraq's most anti-American cities wouldn't fly with the respective Iraqi or American publics. An interim measure that can be implemented in the near term is necessary.
Our U.S. Special Operations forces have the knowledge and experience to provide the training cadre for such an Iraqi "people's constabulary." We also have a strong pool of retired and former members of the Marine Corps Combined Action Program from the Vietnam era to draw on. An Iraqi internal security force must be well indoctrinated in respect for human rights and democratic traditions. It could well become the cradle for the first true democracy in the troubled Middle East.
The writer is a retired Marine Corps officer who served in Lebanon and Somalia.
----
Iraq raids are 'ugly business'
Operation nets innocent people and a few of the most wanted.
By William Booth
Washington Post / Detroit News
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.detnews.com/2003/nation/0306/26/a06-203424.htm
TIKRIT, Iraq -- The roosters were just beginning to crow in that lost hour before dawn when Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Army's 4th Infantry Division ordered his men to "go dark" and roll their Humvees up to the edge of a lone farmhouse here.
It was quiet, the village shuttered by a curfew. Desert wind rattled dry grass. One of the U.S. soldiers in the shadows lit a match to his cigarette. Then the radio sputtered, barely audible, a report from the reconnaissance patrol. "Movement on the roof."
The troops smashed an M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle through the front gates. This is the unfinished work of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
In an operation dubbed Desert Scorpion, U.S. forces gather intelligence from Iraqis by day then head out on raiding parties at night, hunting senior leaders from the government of former President Saddam Hussein. The operation began in part to stanch the string of attacks on U.S. troops that have killed 17 soldiers since May 1, according to the Pentagon and news reports.
It is, Russell said, "an ugly business, but it is the business we are in."
Russell's men come in like SWAT teams, ramming down compound walls. Children cry, women are terrified, and men are handcuffed and led away, sometimes with nylon bags over their heads.
More often than not they are innocent, or family members of the targets, or housekeepers or guards, and later released. Sometimes, as in last week's capture of Abid Hamid Mahmud, Saddam's trusted aide, they are among the most wanted men in Iraq.
By day, U.S. troops put on what one soldier in Russell's unit called "the smiley face." By night, during a raid, Lt. Chris Morris, leader of the scout patrol, said, "if I see some guy sticking his head around a wall, and he doesn't show me his hands, and then he pops out again, he's likely to get shot."
Here in Saddam's hometown, their efforts have produced results. In the past week, they snared not only Mahmud but a senior bodyguard for Saddam, a former brigadier general and a nephew of Saddam's who was caught with a gym bag filled with $800,000 in cash. In a raid at a farmhouse, they uncovered $8 million in $100 bills and plastic tubs filled with jewels.
Russell said he believed the money was used in part to pay for the low-level "triggermen" who are carrying out most of the attacks at the behest of former senior Baathists in hiding. Soldiers have found weapons caches buried in orchards and fields, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers and sniper's rifles, as well as night-vision goggles.
Yet the hunt also has turned up "dry holes," Russell said. On Saturday night, his men stormed a house in Tikrit, seeking the son of one of the 55 Iraqis who are most wanted by U.S. officials and whose pictures have been placed on playing cards. But the target had left the house three days before.
U.S. military intelligence officials suspect former Iraqi authorities are hiding out in Tikrit and its surrounding villages, especially the walled town of Auja, where Saddam and many of his closest aides and bodyguards were born.
Here, the search is being led by troops from the 1-22 Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas, with a Special Operations group moving throughout the region.
Their headquarters is a former Saddam palace on a bluff above the Tigris River. During the day, Russell and a few of his men make the rounds, visiting Iraqi police, officials in the interim government, tribal sheiks, friendly merchants and others who might be hearing about possible targets.
On a warm summer evening in Auja, Russell and his three Humvees pulled up to a mansion on the Tigris to meet with Sheik Mahmud Needa, an elderly leader of a large and powerful tribe. Just so Russell would understand whom he was dealing with, the sheik produced an autographed photograph of the late King Hussein of Jordan. "My brother," Needa said.
Russell played the courteous commander, drinking cups of strong Turkish coffee with Needa. Russell was willing to trade such things as weapons permits, or assistance for Auja's police chief, to receive information and build trust.
Needa's palace overlooks the lands where Saddam was born. The two are relatives, and their farms abut each other. "Everything will be better here," Needa told Russell, "when you catch Saddam Hussein."
Needa said his tribal council members had decided they would turn over to police anyone they suspected of plotting to harm Americans.
Russell told him, "I appreciate the great respect you have from your people and your efforts to secure a better Iraq for the future." Russell said obtaining the cooperation of sheiks -- especially in Auja, one of the towns most hostile to U.S. occupation -- shows that the remnants of Saddam's government may be facing their final days of freedom.
-------- pacific
1200 troops, 300 police for the Solomons
June 26, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030625-075540-6824r.htm
CANBERRA, Australia, Australia will send a warship and up to 1,500 soldiers and police officers to the Solomon Islands as part of a peace plan for the South Pacific nation.
John Howard announced the plan this week, an in-principle agreement for Australia's largest armed intervention in the South Pacific since World War II. Howard say anything less could create a vacuum for terrorists and criminals.
Unveiling what he described as "a significant change in Australia's regional policy," Howard told parliament the decision, by the National Security Committee reflected concerns the Solomons could be exploited by "drug dealers, money-launderers and international terrorism."
The intervention's aim is to bring stability to a country where violence, intimidation and extortion have become endemic.
It is estimated 90 percent of the Solomons' consolidated revenue does not reach the country's treasury.
-------- pakistan / india
Kashmir dispute - Musharraf seeks Bush's involvement
Accepts sending troops to Iraq; rules out dissolution of parliament
Thursday June 26, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2003-daily/26-06-2003/main/main1.htm
WASHINGTON: President Pervez Musharraf has said he would like US President George W Bush to involve himself in a West Asia-style 'roadmap' on Kashmir, but feared India would not agree to that, as it wanted bilateral resolution "of everything."
Asked in an ABC interview broadcast on Wednesday whether Bush supported Pakistan's desire for more involvement by him in the Kashmir dispute, Musharraf said: "Yes, he always says that he will remain committed to bringing peace and harmony between India and Pakistan."
The questioner said that 'remaining committed' was different from 'becoming involved' and asked whether President Musharraf would like the US President to become involved in a West Asia-style roadmap between India and Pakistan. Gen Musharraf replied: "Pakistan would certainly like (that), because we are of the opinion that there (should be) external influence, whether you call it mediation or facilitation. But unfortunately the other side, the Indian side, that talks of bilateral resolution of everything -- although they know that there is a (great) deal of facilitation going on behind the scenes - they don't want to talk about it."
The president said the US president certainly believes that it's India and Pakistan who need to get together to resolve our disputes, and that we are at a stand at the moment. But I only hope that, yes, with sincerity, India comes forward, and we both, with sincerity, try to address all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir and move ahead on that. He dismissed the suggestion about any Pakistani government influence in Afghanistan. "No, we are not at all interfering," he stated.
Replying to a question about the NWFP assembly's passing the Shariat Bill, he said the Shariat bill that has been passed by the frontier government will not affect the whole of Pakistan. In response to another question about his holding the offices of president and the army chief, simultaneously, he said: "Once I feel that the harmony is there, stability has come, political institutions have started functioning and they have been cemented, I would certainly like to take off this one hat that remains."
In response to a question on domestic front, President Musharraf brushed aside the suggestion that the dissolution of parliament was under consideration. "No, not at all. We have to adopt democratic methods." He said he would not take any extra-constitutional measures.
About Pakistan's policy toward Israel, the president said the issue was raised during an earlier interview. He said he was asked about the progress of the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.
"In that context, I did say that if at all these peace talks progress towards an improvement obligation, or towards a resolution of the Palestinian dispute, then in consultation with our other Muslim friends, one would like to examine our approach or our policy towards Israel."
In a separate interview with The Washington Post, Musharraf said that his country has accepted "in principle" a US request to send thousands of peacekeeping troops to Iraq, but first he wantd to see a larger role for other Muslim countries or the United Nations.
Pakistan, Musharraf said, is wary of the political difficulties of joining the US-led security operation in Iraq and also would need financial help to pay for the two brigades requested by US and British leaders.
As attacks have intensified on occupation troops commanded by US generals, Musharraf said the situation is neither under control nor satisfactory. He said he urged President Bush in their talks on Tuesday to establish an Iraqi government as quickly as possible.
"The sooner we put an Iraqi government in place to be seen by the people as their own government, that they are governing themselves, the better that will be. That will reduce the visibility of foreign forces there," Musharraf said in a breakfast session at the newspaper.
in his interview with CNN President Musharraf also indicated that he was still hopeful of getting F-16 fighter planes from the United States even though he could not secure a deal during talks with US President George W Bush. He said he had not expected a breakthrough on the supply of F-16s during his meeting with Bush. However, he said he had tried to explain to Bush Pakistani concerns about the balance of conventional forces in South Asia, where Pakistan has a tense rivalry with fellow nuclear power India. "So progress may be a step-by-step progress to the final, ultimate procurement of F-16s," Musharraf said. Asked whether he had been satisfied with his meeting with Bush, Musharraf said: "Yes indeed, I was quite satisfied."
Responding to a question about the deployment of Pakistani forces in the tribal areas along its border with Afghanistan, he said our forces had entered that area after a century and are working on building road networks, dispensaries and schools.
He said they are also there to undertake military operation and an intelligence network is now functional and very receptive. There is an effective deployment on the humanitarian side and the military operation side in the tribal area, he added. He said there is a Quick Reaction Force, which is available to act against any al-Qaeda operative in the region.
About capturing al-Qaeda members, Musharraf said we have captured many of their operatives and are acting against them. The operation, he said, is difficult because of the inhospitable and inaccessible terrain. He said Pakistan has set up an effective intelligence network to get information, as it is a war of intelligence.
Musharraf said there were some Taliban sympathisers in the tribal areas. "May be there are some sympathisers who are even hiding some al-Qaeda operatives, but this is not massive and we are succeeding in this area."
The president pointed that there is a vacuum on the Afghan side which needs to be filled as otherwise it will be utilised by elements who are operating against whatever we are trying to do in Afghanistan.
Regarding the Taliban and their education in the Madaris of Pakistan, Musharraf said they were misled by religious extremists. President Musharraf, responding to a question about the goals of terrorists, said it seems to be the "fall out of political disputes, mainly the Palestinian issue, that is what has led to the terrorist attack of 9/11."
He said, "Political disputes, which unfortunately involve Muslims, is giving rise to this kind of extremism within Muslim countries." About Pakistan's domestic scene, President Musharraf said we have our national interests and being the president he was guarding these interests. "There are no deals as such going on. These are people who have vested interests and are just trying to malign unnecessarily."
Regarding tackling extremist, he said we are taking a very holistic view of extremism in Pakistan. He said we are moving against al-Qaeda, Taliban, ex-Taliban supporters, sectarian and religious extremists in Pakistan and have made a lot of success. However, there are religious parties who have their own agenda of maligning me and my country. There are personalities who are sitting outside and have looted, plundered and bankrupted the country.
Musharraf said, "People of Pakistan like me and they support me and that gives me the strength and gives me the comfort and that is why I am out of Pakistan for over twenty days because I know everything is alright in Pakistan."
Responding to a question regarding democracy in Pakistan, he said "I believe in democracy". "It may sound odd, a military man at the helm of affairs...talking about democracy...but I mean every word of it." The constitutional changes authorised by the Supreme Court of Pakistan are made to ensure that democracy is functional in line with the environment in Pakistan, otherwise it will remain dysfunctional.
------- spies
Interview: 27-Year CIA Veteran
by Will Pitt
Thursday 26 June 2003
truthout | Interview
http://truthout.org/docs_03/062603B.shtml
Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, serving seven Presidents. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an outreach ministry in the inner city of Washington.
PITT: Could you give me some background regarding who you are and what work you did with the CIA?
McG: I was a graduate student in Russian studies when I got interested in the Central Intelligence Agency. I was very intrigued that there was one central place to prevent what happened at Pearl Harbor from happening again. I had been commissioned in the US Army, so I needed to do my two years service there, but wound up down in Washington DC. I took a job with the CIA in 1963, and it was what it was made out to be.
In other words, I was told that if I were to come on as an analyst of Soviet foreign policy, when I sat down in the morning, in my In-Box would be a bunch of material from open sources, from closed sources, from photography, from intercepts, from agent reports, from embassy reports, you name it. It would be right there, and all I had to do was sift through it and make some sense out of it. If I had an important enough story, I would write it up for the President the next morning. That seemed too good to be true, but you know what? It was true, and it was really heady work.
PITT: Which Presidents did you serve?
McG: I started with President Kennedy and finished with President Bush, the first President Bush. That would make seven Presidents.
PITT: What was your area of expertise with the CIA?
McG: I was a Soviet Foreign Policy analyst. I also worked on Soviet Internal Affairs when I first came on, but then my responsibilities grew and I became responsible for a lot of different parts of the world. During the 1980s I was briefing the Vice President and Secretaries of State and Defense, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I did this every other morning. We worked in teams of two, and on any given morning depending on schedules, I would be hitting two or perhaps three of those senior officials.
PITT: With all of your background, and with all the time that you spent in the CIA, can you tell me why you are speaking out now about the foreign policy issues that are facing this country?
McG: It's actually very simple. There's an inscription at the entrance to the CIA, chiseled into the marble there, which reads, "You Shall Know The Truth, And The Truth Shall Set You Free." Not many folks realize that the primary function of the Central Intelligence Agency is to seek the truth regarding what is going on abroad and be able to report that truth without fear or favor. In other words, the CIA at its best is the one place in Washington that a President can turn to for an unvarnished truthful answer to a delicate policy problem. We didn't have to defend State Department policies, we didn't have to make the Soviets seem ten feet tall, as the Defense Department was inclined to do. We could tell it like it was, and it was very, very heady. We could tell it like it was and have career protection for doing that. In other words, that's what our job was.
When you come out of that ethic, when you come out of a situation where you realize the political pressures to do it otherwise - you've seen it, you've been there, you've done that - and your senior colleagues face up to those pressures as have you yourself, and then you watch what is going on today, it is disturbing in the extreme. You ask yourself, "Do I not have some kind of duty, by virtue of my experience and my knowledge of these things, do I not have some kind of duty to speak out here and tell the rest of the American people what's going on?"
PITT: Do you feel as though the 'truth-telling' abilities of the CIA, the ability to come in with data without fear of reprisal or career displacement, has been abrogated by this administration?
McG: It has been corroded, or eroded, very much. A lot of it has to do with who is Director. In the best days, under Colby for example, or John McCone, we had very clear instructions. I myself, junior as I was in those days, would go up against Henry Kissinger and tell it like we thought it was. I was not winning any friends there, by any stretch, but I came back proud for having done my job. That was because Colby told me to do that, and I worked directly for him. I also worked directly for George Bush I, and he, I have to say to his great credit, acted the same way. He was very careful to keep himself out of policy advocacy, and he told it like it was.
So to watch what is going on now, and to see George Tenet - who has all the terrific credentials to be a staffer in Congress, credentials which are antithetical to being a good CIA Director - to see him sit behind Colin Powell at the UN, to see him give up and shade the intelligence and cave in when his analysts have been slogging through the muck for a year and a half trying to tell it like it is, that is very demoralizing, and actually very infuriating.
PITT: On September 26 2001, George Bush II went down to the CIA, put an arm around Tenet, and said that he had a "report" for the American people, that we have the best possible intelligence thanks to the good people at the CIA. We've come a fair piece down the road since then, and if you read through the news these days, you get the definite sense that the Bush administration is attempting to lay blame for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, to lay blame for that at the feet of the CIA. Furthermore, by all appearances, the months of reports the administration put out about Iraq's weapons capabilities are not turning out to be accurate. To no small extent, it appears that there is a scapegoating process taking place here. What is your take on this?
McG: It is interesting that you would go back to September 26, because that was a very key performance on the part of our President. Here was an agency that was created expressly to prevent another Pearl Harbor. That was why the CIA was created originally in 1947. Harry Truman was hell-bent on making sure that, if there were little pieces of information spread around the government, that they all came to one central intelligence agency, one place where they could be collated and analyzed, and the analysis be given to policy people.
So here is September 11, the first time since Pearl Harbor that this system failed. It was worse than Pearl Harbor. More people were killed on September 11 than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and where were the pieces? They were scattered all around the government, just like they were before Pearl Harbor. For George Bush to go out to CIA headquarters and put his arm around George Tenet and tell the world that we have the best intelligence services in the world, this really called for some analysis, if you will.
My analysis is that George Bush had no option but to keep George Tenet on as Director, because George Tenet had warned Bush repeatedly, for months and months before September 11, that something very bad was about to happen.
PITT: There was the August 6 2001 briefing...
McG: On August 6, the title of the briefing was, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US," and that briefing had the word "Hijacking" in it. That's all I know about it, but that's quite enough. In September, Bush had to make a decision. Is it feasible to let go of Tenet, whose agency flubbed the dub on this one? And the answer was no, because Tenet knows too much about what Bush knew, and Bush didn't know what to do about it. That's the bottom line for me.
Bush was well-briefed. Before he went off to Texas to chop wood for a month like Reagan did in California, he was told all these things. He didn't even have the presence of mind to convene his National Security Council, and say, "OK guys, we have all these reports, what are we going to do about it?" He just went off to chop wood.
PITT: Now why is that? There are people in America who believe this kind of behavior was deliberate - the administration was repeatedly warned and nothing was done about those warnings. It smacks of deliberate policy for a lot of people. This is the current World Heavyweight Champion of conspiracy theories.
McG: In this, I am an adherent of the charitable interpretation, and that comes down to gross incompetence. They just didn't know what to do. Look at who was in charge there. You have Condoleezza Rice. She knows a lot about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but she has no idea about terrorism. She had this terrorism dossier that Clinton NSC director Sandy Berger left behind, and by her own admission she didn't get to it. "It was still on my desk when September 11 happened," she said. They didn't take this thing seriously.
Now, you can probably fault George Tenet for not being careful about crying wolf. In other words, you cry wolf often enough and in an undifferentiated way, then that is not a real service to the President. You really have to say, "Mr. President, you know I warned you about this two months ago, but now this is really serious." You have to grab him by the collar and say, "We've got to do something about this." Tenet didn't do that. So I attribute it not to conspiracy theories, but to lack of experience, a kind of arrogance that says, "Who cares what Sandy Berger thinks," and just gross incompetence.
Now 'gross incompetence' is not a nice thing to say about a President, but he had no experience in this at all, and the people he surrounded himself with also had no experience.
PITT: Given all of this - the August 6 briefing, the other terrorism warnings, the big hug given to Tenet by Bush on September 26, and the fact that Tenet was kept on because he knew too much about what the Bush administration was aware of before September 11 - one gets the sense that Tenet has been relegated to the position of lapdog. This is a frightful position for the Director of CIA to occupy.
McG: It wouldn't be the first time, and I think regarding Tenet the term 'lapdog,' unfortunately, is apt. For example, here were rather courageous CIA analysts under terrific pressure from the likes of Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz to establish a contact or connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. They resisted this ever since 9/11, not out of any unwillingness to believe it, but simply because there was no evidence to establish it. To their credit, they held the line, and were supported by Brent Scowcroft of all people, who very courageously spoke out and said that evidence is "scant."
Now here's George Tenet, when push comes to shove on February 5 at the UN, sitting right behind Colin Powell like a potted plant, as if to say the CIA and all his analysts agreed with what Colin Powell was about to say about contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq. That was incredibly demoralizing for all my colleagues. That's the kind of thing that will be a very noxious influence on their morale and their ability to continue the good fight.
PITT: Is there a great deal of unrest and unease within the CIA at this point?
McG: Not a great deal, but an incredible amount of unease and disarray. There are a lot of people who feel as strongly as I do about integrity. It was not some sort of an extra thing with us. We took it seriously, and we had a big advantage, of course. We could tell it like it was. To the degree that esprit de corps exists, and I know it does among the folks we talk to, there is great, great turmoil there. In the coming weeks, we're going to be seeing folks coming out and coming forth with what they know, and it is going to be very embarrassing for the Bush administration.
PITT: How much of a dent does this unease, and this inability to stand up to those who have put this atmosphere in place, how much of a dent does this put in our ability to defend this country against the very real threats we face?
McG: A big dent, and that of course is the bottom line. What you need to have is rewards for competence and not for being able to sniff which way the wind is blowing. You need to have people rewarded for good performance and not for political correctness. You have to have people who are serious about collecting and analyzing this material. The way the analysis was played fast and loose with, going back to last spring, is just incredible. It requires a whole re-do of how the whole national security setup is arranged, to have intelligence come up and have it treated with the kind of respect and the kind of consideration it is due.
PITT: Let's bottom-line it here. In the situation regarding the question of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, where does the fault lie for the manner in which this has all broken down? Was it an intelligence failure on the part of the CIA, or are we talking about the Bush administration misusing both that institution and the information it provided?
McG: It's both, really. Let's take the chemical and biological stuff first. At the root of this, as I reconstruct it, is what I call 'Analysis by Subtraction.' Let's take a theoretical example: Iraq had listed 50,000 liters of sarin nerve gas in 1995. The UN is known to have destroyed 35,000 liters of this. Subsequently, US bombing destroyed another 5,000 liters of this. Therefore, QED, they have 10,000 liters of sarin.
There's no consideration given here to shelf life of sarin, what would be necessary to keep sarin active, where it would be stored, how it would be stored, the correct temperature and all that. Instead, it is, "We think they had this and here is the inventory. We think we destroyed this" or "We know we destroyed that, and so the difference, we assume, is there"
You don't start a war on an assumption, and with the sophisticated collection devices the US intelligence apparatus has, it is unconscionable not to have verified that so they could say, "Yes sir, we know that it's there, we can confirm it this and that way." Instead, as I said, it was analysis by subtraction. We had the inventory here, and we know we destroyed that, so they must have this. Analysis like that, I wouldn't rehire the analyst who did it if he were working for me. That's the biological and chemical part.
To be quite complete on this, it encourages me that the analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency - who share this ethic of trying to tell the truth, even though they are under much greater pressure and have much less career protection because they work for Rumsfeld - to their great credit, in September of last year they put out a memo saying there is no reliable evidence to suggest that the Iraqis have biological or chemical weapons, or that they are producing them.
PITT: Was this before or after Vice President Cheney started making personal visits to the CIA?
McG: It was all at the same time. This stuff doesn't all get written in one week. It was all throughout the spring and summer that this stuff was being collected. When the decision was made last summer that we will have a war against Iraq, they were casting about. You'll recall White House Chief of Staff Andy Card saying you don't market a new product in August. The big blast-off was Cheney's speech in Nashville, I think it was Nashville anyway, on August 26. He said Iraq was seeking materials for its nuclear program. That set the tone right there.
They looked around after Labor Day and said, "OK, if we're going to have this war, we really need to persuade Congress to vote for it. How are we going to do that? Well, let's do the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. That's the traumatic one. 9/11 is still a traumatic thing for most Americans. Let's do that."
But then they said, "Oh damn, those folks at CIA don't buy that, they say there's no evidence, and we can't bring them around. We've tried every which way and they won't relent. That won't work, because if we try that, Congress is going to have these CIA wimps come down, and the next day they'll undercut us. How about these chemical and biological weapons? We know they don't have any nuclear weapons, so how about the chemical and biological stuff? Well, damn. We have these other wimps at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and dammit, they won't come around either. They say there's no reliable evidence of that, so if we go up to Congress with that, the next day they'll call the DIA folks in, and the DIA folks will undercut us."
So they said, "What have we got? We've got those aluminum tubes!" The aluminum tubes, you will remember, were something that came out in late September, the 24th of September. The British and we front-paged it. These were aluminum tubes that were said by Condoleezza Rice as soon as the report came out to be only suitable for use in a nuclear application. This is hardware that they had the dimensions of. So they got that report, and the British played it up, and we played it up. It was front page in the New York Times. Condoleezza Rice said, "Ah ha! These aluminum tubes are suitable only for uranium-enrichment centrifuges."
Then they gave the tubes to the Department of Energy labs, and to a person, each one of those nuclear scientists and engineers said, "Well, if Iraq thinks it can use these dimensions and these specifications of aluminum tubes to build a nuclear program, let 'em do it! Let 'em do it. It'll never work, and we can't believe they are so stupid. These must be for conventional rockets."
And, of course, that's what they were for, and that's what the UN determined they were for. So, after Condoleezza Rice's initial foray into this scientific area, they knew that they couldn't make that stick, either. So what else did they have?
Well, somebody said, "How about those reports earlier this year that Iraq was trying to get Uranuim from Niger? Yeah...that was pretty good." But of course if George Tenet were there, he would have said, "But we looked at the evidence, and they're forgeries, they stink to high heaven." So the question became, "How long would it take for someone to find out they were forgeries?" The answer was about a day or two. The next question was, "When do we have to show people this stuff?" The answer was that the IAEA had been after us for a couple of months now to give it to them, but we can probably put them off for three or four months.
So there it was. "What's the problem? We'll take these reports, we'll use them to brief Congress and to raise the specter of a mushroom cloud. You'll recall that the President on the 7th of October said, "Our smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Condoleezza Rice said exactly the same thing the next day. Victoria Clarke said exactly the same thing on the 9th of October, and of course the vote came on the 11th of October.
Don't take my word for it. Take Henry Waxman's word for it. Waxman has written the President a very, very bitter letter dated the 17th of March in which he says, "Mr. President, I was lied to. I was lied to. I was briefed on a forgery, and on the strength of that I voted for war. Tell me how this kind of thing could happen?" That was March 17. He hasn't received a response from the White House yet.
That's the way it worked, and you have to give them credit. These guys are really clever. It worked.
PITT: We were talking a little while ago about Andy Card and marketing wars in August, and you stated that the decision to make war in Iraq was made in the summer of 2002. General Wesley Clark appeared on a Sunday talk show with Tim Russert on June 15, and Clark surprisingly mentioned that he was called at his home by the White House on September 11 and told to make the connection between those terrorist attacks and Saddam Hussein. He was told to do this on the day of the attacks, told to say that this was state-sponsored terrorism and there must be a connection. What do you make of that?
McG: That is really fascinating. If you look at what he said, he said, "Sure, I'll say that. Where's the evidence?" In other words, he's a good soldier. He's going to do this. But he wanted the evidence, and there was no evidence. Clark was not only a good soldier, but a professional soldier. A professional soldier, at his level at least, asks questions. When he found out there was no evidence, he didn't say what they wanted him to say.
Contrast that with Colin Powell, who first and foremost is a good soldier. But when he sees the evidence, and knows it smells, he will salute the President and brief him anyway, as he did on the 5th of February.
PITT: There was a recent Reuters report which described Powell being given a draft of his February 5 UN statements by Scooter Libby and the Rumsfeld boys. Powell threw it across the room, according to Reuters, and said, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
McG: I can see it happening. Powell was Weinberger's military assistant for a couple of years, and I was seeing Weinberger every other morning in those years. I would see Powell whenever I went in to see Weinberger, and so I used to spend 15 minutes with him every other morning, just kind of reassuring him that I wasn't going to tell his boss anything he didn't need to know. Not only that, but we come out of the same part of the Bronx. He was a year ahead of me. He was ROTC and so was I. He was in ROTC at City College and became Colonel of Cadets and head of the Pershing Rifles, a kind of elite corps there.
I understand Colin Powell. I know where he is coming from, I know where he got his identity and his persona, and it was in this great institution we call the United States Army, which, by the way, I am very proud to have served in. But that be exaggerated, and it has been in his case. People were expecting him to take a stand on principle and resign. That was never a possibility I attributed to Colin Powell, because unlike General Clark, Powell is really a creature of how he was given his identity in this whole system. He is just not constitutionally able to buck it.
PITT: Do you think Powell was aware that the British intelligence dossier he used on February 5 before the UN, the one he held up and praised lavishly, was plagiarized from a graduate student who was writing about Iraq circa 1991?
McG: No, I think he was unaware of that. I'll tell you a little story. Back in January, Colin Powell invited all the NATO countries for a confab so he could brief them on Iraq and tell them what they should be telling their host governments. After one of the sessions he was in the hall, and one of the ambassadors asked him what the evidence was like on Iraq. Powell said he didn't know, he hadn't seen it yet. That was January.
Small wonder that Powell now brags of having had to spend four days in early February - right before his UN speech on the 5th - up at CIA headquarters pouring over the evidence, analyzing and selecting what he should say on the 5th. I can only believe he had a lot on his plate - the Middle East and other stuff - and that the daily briefings were so sparse that he really didn't have a good handle on what the evidence was that support this case for weapons of mass destruction and all that stuff. It becomes more believable to me that he really was starting almost with tabula rasa on the 1st of February, and then went up to CIA headquarters and said, "OK, what have we got?" And the first thing he was given was Scooter Libby's first draft, and you already recounted his reaction.
PITT: So what we have, essentially, is in the run-up to the war the Secretary of State of the United States of America was cramming for a major exam like a freshman in high school.
McG: Yes. And most of the evidence was being supplied by the Vice President's office, in the person of Scooter Libby, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld along with Wolfowitz. That's curious enough, but an equally important point I would make is this: I worked at senior levels up there for 27 years. Never, never once, not one time did the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State or the National Security Advisor come up to the CIA for a working visit. Vice President Bush came up a couple of times to give awards out - after all, he was once the Director - but never for a working visit.
We went down there. I was part of that briefing team. I would be down there every other morning, and if they wanted more depth I would bring folks down there with me, folks who I knew were the experts. We came to them. We had our homework done alone, thank you very much. We got real good insights into what the concerns were during these morning briefings, and sometimes we got concrete requirements or papers to be done by the next day. We had a really good window into what was uppermost in policy-maker's minds, but we would take that back to CIA headquarters and say, "OK, now we know what they're interested in. What to we have?" And we'd do it alone. We'd analyze the heck out of it. We'd polish it off, pass it by our supervisors and bring it down the next morning.
The prospect of the Secretary of State and Condoleezza Rice and Cheney convening in CIA headquarters to sit around a table and help with the analysis...give me a break! You don't have policy-makers at the table when you're doing analysis. That's antithetical to the whole ethic of analysis. You're divorced from policy as soon as you do your analysis, and when you're finished, you serve it up to them, and they can do what they want with it. To be sure, that's the other part of the game. But when they get it, they get it in unexpurgated virgin form, and that was heady and important work. It was the only place in town, in the Foreign Affairs realm, that could and did do that work.
PITT: Where do you see this whole issue of the manner in which the war was sold to the American people going?
McG: The most important and clear-cut scandal, of course, has to do with the forgery of those Niger nuclear documents that were used as proof. The very cold calculation was that Congress could be deceived, we could have our war, we could win it, and then no one would care that part of the evidence for war was forged. That may still prove to be the case, but the most encouraging thing I've seen over the last four weeks now is that the US press has sort of woken from its slumber and is interested. I've asked people in the press how they account for their lack of interest before the war, and now they seem to be interested. I guess the simple answer is that they don't like to be lied to.
I think the real difference is that no one knew, or very few people knew, before the war that there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now they know. It's an unavoidable fact. No one likes to be conned, no one likes to be lied to, and no one particularly likes that 190 US servicemen and women have been killed in this effort, not to mentioned the five or six thousand Iraqi civilians.
There's a difference in tone. If the press does not succumb to the argument put out by folks like Tom Friedman, who says it doesn't really matter that there are no weapons in Iraq, if it does become a quagmire which I believe it will be, and we have a few servicemen killed every week, then there is a prospect that the American people will wake up and say, "Tell me again why my son was killed? Why did we have to make this war on Iraq?"
So I do think that there is some hope now that the truth will come out. It won't come out through the Congressional committees. That's really a joke, a sick joke.
PITT: During the Clinton administration, if there was going to be an investigation into something, it was going to come out of the House of Representatives. What would your assessment of the situation be at this point?
McG: It doesn't take a crackerjack analyst. Take Pat Roberts, the Republican Senator from Kansas, who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. When the Niger forgery was unearthed and when Colin Powell admitted, well shucks, it was a forgery, Senator Jay Rockefellar, the ranking Democrat on that committee, went to Pat Roberts and said they really needed the FBI to take a look at this. After all, this was known to be a forgery and was still used on Congressmen and Senators. We'd better get the Bureau in on this. Pat Roberts said no, that would be inappropriate. So Rockefellar drafted his own letter, and went back to Roberts and said he was going to send the letter to FBI Director Mueller, and asked if Roberts would sign on to it. Roberts said no, that would be inappropriate.
What the FBI Director eventually got was a letter from one Minority member saying pretty please, would you maybe take a look at what happened here, because we think there may have been some skullduggery. The answer he got from the Bureau was a brush-off. Why do I mention all that? This is the same Pat Roberts who is going to lead the investigation into what happened with this issue.
There is a lot that could be said about Pat Roberts. I remember way back last fall when people were being briefed, CIA and others were briefing Congressmen and Senators about the weapons of mass destruction. These press folks were hanging around outside the briefing room, and when the Senators came out, one of the press asked Senator Roberts how the evidence on weapons of mass destruction was. Roberts said, oh, it was very persuasive, very persuasive.
The press guy asked Roberts to tell him more about that. Roberts said, "Truck A was observed to be going under Shed B, where Process C is believed to be taking place." The press guy asked him if he found that persuasive, and Pat Roberts said, "Oh, these intelligence folks, they have these techniques down so well, so yeah, this is very persuasive." And the correspondent said thank you very much, Senator.
So, if you've got a Senator who is that inclined to believe that kind of intelligence, you've got someone who will do the administration's bidding. On the House side, of course, you've got Porter Goss, who is a CIA alumnus. Porter Goss' main contribution last year to the joint committee investigating 9/11 was to sic the FBI on members of that committee, at the direction of who? Dick Cheney. Goss admits this. He got a call from Dick Cheney, and he was "chagrined" in Goss' word that he was upbraided by Dick Cheney for leaks coming out of the committee. He then persuaded the innocent Bob Graham to go with him to the FBI and ask the Bureau to investigate the members of that committee. Polygraphs and everything were involved. That's the first time something like that has ever happened.
Be aware, of course, that Congress has its own investigative agencies, its own ways of investigating things like that. So without any regard for the separation of powers, here Goss says Cheney is bearing down on me, so let's get the FBI in here. In this case, ironically enough, the FBI jumped right in with Ashcroft whipping it along. They didn't come up with much, but the precedent was just terrible.
All I'm saying is that you've got Porter Goss on the House side, you've got Pat Roberts on the Senate side, you've got John Warner who's a piece with Pat Roberts. I'm very reluctant to be so unequivocal, but in this case I can say nothing is going to come out of those hearings but a lot of smoke.
PITT: So what is the alternative?
McG: The alternative would be an independent judicial commission, such as the one that a lot of the British are appealing for in London. You get a person who is not beholden to George Bush or to the Democrats, a universally respected figure, and let him pick the members of the commission, and you give them access to this material. Not restricted access, like what the 9/11 committee in Congress got. You give them everything, and you let them tell their story. It would take a while, but they would come up with a much better prospect of a fair judgment on what happened.
PITT: That's not going to come unless there is some pretty significant pressure put on the administration from outside Congress.
McG: I wouldn't see that coming at all, and surely not before 2004.
PITT: In your time at CIA as a Soviet Foreign Policy analyst, you were directly involved with analyzing Soviet policy issues in the run-up to and duration of the Soviet war in Afghanistan?
McG: Yes.
PITT: How deep into the details of that did you get?
McG: Oh, quite deep. By that time my responsibilities had grown, and I stayed very interested and abreast of what was going on there.
PITT: Could you talk about how America's involvement in the Soviet war in Afghanistan led to the events of September 11? There are some very clear, straight-line connections - starting with Brzyznski's 'Afghan Trap' in 1978 - between the two events, yes? From your perspective, how did that develop?
McG: The big momentum was put on by a fellow named William Casey, who was head of CIA under Reagan. He saw this as a little war that he could wage and win, and he had a lot of support from folks on the Hill. What they did was arm and recruit folks like Osama bin Laden and others. One of the big decisions they had to make was whether or not to give them Stinger missiles. I remember when that was under discussion. The dangers of giving these uncontrollable folks Stinger missiles was emphasized, but the decision was to go ahead and give them those missiles anyway. In many respects, the folks that were used as our proxies in this war against the Soviets have come back to bite us, and to bite us very hard as we know from 9/11.
PITT: The invasion came in 1979 because the Soviets were worried about their puppet regime in Afghanistan. It became a great Muslim cause to defend Afghanistan against the godless invaders. Osama bin Laden became a hero by funding this fight, and by fighting along with the others. When the war ended in 1989, when the Soviets withdrew with their tail between their legs, Afghanistan was left in an utterly shattered and destroyed state. Given the fact that we basically precipitated the start of that war by arming and training those mujeheddin fighters to go after the Afghan government in 1978 and 1979, why was the decision made in 1989 to leave Afghanistan in such a sorry state? The chaos left in the aftermath of that war led to the rise of the Taliban. Why didn't we help clean up the terrible mess we had helped to cause?
McG: I hate to be cynical about these things, but once we got the Soviets out, our reason to be there basically evaporated. You may ask about the poor people and the poor country. Well, we have a history of doing this kind of thing, of using people. The Kurds are one example. We use them and betray them, and we don't care much once our little geopolitical objective has been achieved. That's what was in play here. Nobody gave a damn. We had a brilliant victory, we got the Soviets out of there, we started pounding our chests, and nobody gave much thought to helping the poor Afghanis that were left behind.
In addition, these bad guys were our good guys. Osama bin Laden and all those folks were people we armed and trained, and when you get that close - and this is a systemic problem within the Agency - when you get that close so that you're in bed with these guys, you can't step back and say, "Whoa, wait a second. These guys could be a real danger in the future." You can't make a calculated, dispassionate analysis of what might be in store for these guys. It was a poor situation politically, strategically, and as it turned out, analytically as well.
PITT: What we're talking about is actions and consequences. At the time, there was not a lot of concern for Afghanistan after we had achieved our goals there, and the place was left to fester, and 9/11 became the inevitable consequence of that.
McG: Right.
PITT: Are you aware of the situation surrounding John O'Neill? He was a Deputy Director of the FBI, and was the chief bin Laden hunter. He investigated the first Twin Towers bombing, he investigated the Khobar Towers bombing, he investigated the bombing of our embassies in Africa, and he investigated the bombing of the USS Cole. He was the guy in government who knew everything about bin Laden, and he quit the FBI in protest three weeks before 9/11. He quit because he said he was not being allowed to investigate terror connections to Saudi Arabia, because such investigations threatened the petroleum business we do with that nation. O'Neill quit, took a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center, and died doing his job on September 11. The fact that he was thwarted in his terrorism investigations clearly left a hole in our intelligence capabilities regarding these threats - the guy who knew the most about it was not allowed to pursue those connections to the greatest possible degree.
McG: I am aware of that. There are other FBI folks who have spoken out about this same problem. There is an agent from Chicago named Robert Wright who has spoken out about his being hamstrung in his attempts to investigate these matters. Just read the book about the FBI labs that was written by Warren and Kelley. The corruption and deceit that goes on there, and the headquarters mentality where you can be completely incompetent and still get a Presidential award - which is what happened with the fellow who squashed the Minneapolis Bureau's requests for action against Moussaoui - there's something really insidiously wrong there. The problem is that if you ask Pat Roberts or the Judiciary Committee and the Congress to do something about it, well, lots of luck.
PITT: Is there anything else you would like to touch upon before we are finished?
McG: My primary attention is on the forgery of the Niger documents that supposedly proved Iraq was developing a nuclear program. It seems to me that you can have endless arguments about the correct interpretation of this or that piece of intelligence, or intelligence analysis, but a forgery is a forgery. It's demonstrable that senior officials of this government, including the Vice President, knew that it was a forgery in March of last year. It was used anyway to deceive our Congressmen and Senators into voting for an unprovoked war. That seems to me to be something that needs to be borne in mind, that needs to be held up for everyone to see. If an informed public, and by extension an informed Congress, is the necessary bedrock for democracy, then we've got a split bedrock that is in bad need of repair.
I have done a good bit of research here, and one of the conclusions I have come to is that Vice President Cheney was not only interested in "helping out" with the analysis, let us say, that CIA was producing on Iraq. He was interested also in fashioning evidence that he could use as proof that, as he said, "The Iraqis had reconstituted their nuclear program," which demonstrably they had not.
What I'm saying is that this needs to be investigated. We know that it was Dick Cheney who sent the former US ambassador to Niger to investigate. We know he was told in early March of last year that the documents were forgeries. And yet these same documents were used in that application. That is something that needs to be uncovered. We need to pursue why the Vice President allowed that to happen. To have global reporters like Walter Pincus quoting senior administration officials that Vice President Cheney was not told by CIA about the findings of this former US ambassador strains credulity well beyond the breaking point. Cheney commissioned this trip, and when the fellow came back, he said, "Don't tell me, I don't want to know what happened." That's just ridiculous.
Cheney knew, and Cheney was way out in front of everybody, starting on the 26th of August, talking about Iraq seeking nuclear weapons. As recently as the 16th of March, three days before the war, he was again at it. This time he said Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. It hadn't. It demonstrably hadn't. There has been nothing like that uncovered in Iraq. As the first President Bush said about the invasion of Kuwait, this cannot stand.
One other thing I'd like to note is the anomaly that President Bush has succeeded Saddam Hussein in the role of preventing UN inspectors from coming into Iraq. He has not even been asked why.
There is no conceivable reason why the United States of America should not be imploring Hans Blix and the rest of his folks to come right in. They have the expertise, they've been there, they've done that. They have millions of dollars available through the UN. They have people who know the weaponry, how they are procured and produced. They know personally the scientists, they've interviewed them before. What possible reason could the United States of America have to say no thanks, we'll use our own GI's to do this. Don't come in here. That needs to be brought out. For the UN to be waiting with those inspectors at the ready, there has got to be some reason why the United States won't let them back in.
The more sinister interpretation is that the US wants to be able to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, most people will say, "Come on, McGovern. How are you going to get a SCUD in there without everyone seeing it?" It doesn't have to be a SCUD. It can be the kind of little vile vial that Colin Powell held up on the 5th of February. You put a couple of those in a GI's pocket, and you swear him to secrecy, and you have him go bury them out in the desert. You discover it ten days later, and President Bush, with more credibility than he could with those trailers will say, "Ha! We've found the weapons of mass destruction."
I think that's a possibility, a real possibility. I think that, since it is a real possibility, the Democrats' sheepishness on this, their reluctance to get out on a limb and say there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, may be more explainable. But they should come around anyway.
PITT: I have heard that it is difficult to manufacture Iraqi-style weapons of this type, because the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons have a particular signature created in their inception that is hard to duplicate.
McG: It was very difficult to do the forgery, too. A slipshod job was done. When Colin Powell was asked about it , he said, "We have this information. If it is inaccurate, fine." Like I said before, he and I come out of the same part of the Bronx. He went to Army charm school and I did not. That kind of tone, that kind of attitude, was always accompanied by an obscene gesture and a four-letter word where I came from. But that's the attitude.
If they can take that kind of attitude on a forgery, they can take the same attitude on this. "You can believe who you want," they'll say. "You can believe Hans Blix and Saddam Hussein, or you can believe us. We say we found it there."
Four months ago, I would have said, "McGovern, you're paranoid to say stuff like that." But in light of all that has happened, and light of the terrific stakes involved for the President here - each time he says we're going to find these things, he digs himself in a little deeper - I think it's quite possible that they will resort to this type of thing.
William Rivers Pitt william.pitt@mail.truthout.org is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available from Pluto Press at www.SilenceIsSedition.com.
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Britain tries to weaken UN deal on cluster bombs
Owen Bowcott
Thursday June 26, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,985136,00.html
Britain and the United States are attempting to weaken the provisions of an international treaty requiring belligerents to clear up unexploded cluster bombs after the end of any conflict, according to the group Landmine Action.
Talks have been going on for 10 days in Geneva to reach consensus on a protocol under the United Nations convention on conventional weapons. Draft proposals would oblige countries to pay for the safe destruction of cluster bombs they had used during a war.
Richard Lloyd, the director of Landmine Action, said yesterday: "Rather than adopt a clear obligation to clear up the mess, the UK [delegation] is suggesting it should 'cooperate' in addressing the problems that unexploded munitions cause.
"We are disappointed the UK are failing to take a lead in this issue. Britain is quite isolated from other European countries over it. [The UK wording] would not make the difference to stop people being blown up after wars.
"The British position in Geneva is contrary to the impression left by ministers in parliament that that they would work positively to achieve an effective, legally binding protocol. They have been arguing instead for a weaker language in certain key articles."
The US, Mr Lloyd said, had been even more resistant to calls for a legal duty. "The biggest problem is the United States," Mr Lloyd said.
"We hope they will change their view, but at present they want a voluntary declaration [of intent to remove cluster bombs] rather than having a duty imposed on them.
"The negotiations are by consensus, so it looks likely there will be an agreement at the end of the week to adjourn for further talks in November."
The Ottawa Treaty on landmines already requires states which plant mines to remove them after a conflict.
As well as unexploded cluster bombs, the new protocol would also cover hand grenades and other explosive devices.
Landmine Action is one of the main groups campaigning on the issue, and has estimated that US and UK forces used around 300,000 cluster bomb sub-munitions, or "bomblets", on Iraq in the war earlier this year. A significant number failed to explode.
Cluster bombs are usually used against troop concentrations. British aircraft dropped 66 cluster bombs, each containing 147 bomblets, and fired 2,000 artillery shells which each contained 49 bomblets. US forces dropped around 1,200 cluster bombs.
UN agencies have estimated that hundreds of Iraqi children have been killed or injured since the end of the fighting from picking up unexploded shells and bomblets.
Landmine Action is launching a report today on the international extent of the problem. It says at least 92 countries are threatened by unexploded cluster bombs or other explosive remnants of war. In 57 of these countries, new casualties from the leftovers of conflict were reported in the period January 2001-June 2002.
The Foreign Office said last night that the UK fully supported the new protocol and was working for a formulation that would contain both legally-binding measures and "best practice" guidelines.
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Iraq Aid Is Tied to U.S. Pledges on Oil Funds
Potential Donor Nations Seek More Accountability
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33661-2003Jun25?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, June 25 -- Germany, France and other potential donors to Iraq are privately demanding that the United States provide greater accountability over its plans for Iraq's oil revenue and guarantee more opportunities for foreign companies before they will help fund the country's reconstruction, U.N. and European officials said.
U.S. allies in Europe who opposed the war in Iraq have said they are eager to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq. But they told delegates at a two-day meeting of international donors in New York this week that they would require assurances that billions of dollars in contracts financed by Iraq's oil revenues are put out to competitive bidding, European and U.N. officials who participated in the closed-door session said.
The reluctance of key allies and other wealthy nations to commit to funding represents an obstacle for U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The United States has been reaching out to foreign donors, including countries that opposed the war, to help fill a financial shortfall in its plans. Iraq's oil revenues, which are projected to reach $3.5 billion by the end of this year and $13 billion for 2004, will be inadequate to finance the administration and reconstruction of Iraq through the end of the next year and a half, senior U.S. officials said.
The Security Council authorized the United States to assume control over Iraq's oil revenue, subject to international monitoring, to help pay for the country's recovery.
But Security Council members have expressed concern that the United States is not assigning sufficient authority to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, which was established by the resolution to scrutinize the use of Iraq's oil riches.
They have also complained that efforts by the United States to establish a representative government in Iraq have been too sluggish, and that its preference for U.S. companies has complicated efforts by these countries to justify to their own citizens the cost of aid for reconstruction.
The Bush administration's decision to award more than $1 billion in contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development to seven U.S. companies, including a $680 million deal for Bechtel to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, has raised suspicions among foreign governments that the United States would deny their companies' access to the Iraqi market. U.S. officials counter that U.S. law requires that U.S. companies be given preferable treatment in obtaining the contracts, which were awarded as part of $1.7 billion in reconstruction funding approved by Congress. President Bush signed a waiver in January allowing international companies to compete for subcontracts.
"There is a tendency on the part of the coalition authorities to be too heavy-handed," a senior French source said. "So the rest of the international community needs to be reassured. What is important is to find a system in which those invited to contribute feel comfortable. If they give the impression that everything is precooked in a system in which they don't have a real say, obviously there will be no incentive to participate."
U.S. officials have publicly played down the rift. USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios, said there is "widespread support" among international donors, even those who opposed the war, to fund Iraq's reconstruction. "There is a genuine sense that we want to make this work," he said.
But privately, U.S. officials have acknowledged concerns. International donors at the New York meeting agreed in principle to meet in the middle of October to consider establishing a new trust fund for donors who are reluctant to put their money in a pot controlled by the United States. But some indicated they would not pledge aid until a representative Iraqi government is in place and the United States has presented them with a 2004 budget outlining how Iraq's oil resources would be spent.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva of Portugal, said today that the success of the conference hinges on establishing a representative government in Iraq.
Staff writer Jackie Spinner in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.S. May Press U.N. on Terror Arms Interdiction
June 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-shipments.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and allied countries may go to the United Nations to seek broad support of a plan to interdict shipments of weapons of mass destruction, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
Assistant Defense Secretary Peter Rodman told a congressional hearing that the United States supported ``proactive measures'' -- including perhaps stopping planes and searching ships at sea -- to halt the spread of nuclear technology, missiles and chemical and biological arms.
``My sense is that it is something that might, for example, be raised in the U.N. Security Council,'' Rodman said. ``But there may be other forums as well in which we would develop some multilateral consensus.''
He said in testimony to a House International Relations Subcommittee that the plan, raised by President Bush last month on a visit to Poland, could also include improved export controls and was gaining support from other countries.
Bush has demanded that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program and said he will not tolerate Iran producing a nuclear weapon.
The ambitious program aims to halt transfers by air or sea of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to carry them by having the United States and its partners invoke existing laws and international agreements to thwart illicit shipments.
AVOIDED UNITED NATIONS
The budding U.S.-led effort has thus far avoided the United Nations. But some experts say that, without broad international support, seizures on the high seas could be considered an act of war. They argue for a U.N. ban on WMD transfers.
The effort included an initial meeting in Madrid on June 12 of officials from the United States and 10 other countries. A second session is planned for Canberra, Australia, next month.
Navy Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific, told the committee on Thursday that he supported interdiction, but did not say whether it might include halting and searching ships departing North Korea.
Pyongyang is accused by Washington of exporting missile and other technology. Bush administration officials have voiced deep concerns that the North's nuclear program could provide dangerous knowhow or equipment for guerrilla groups.
``This (interdiction) has great potential to close some of the seams we see in the international spectrum ... of illegal activity,'' Fargo said.
He told the committee that, despite tension on the Korean peninsula, the potential for ``miscalculation'' resulting in war was low. ``We aim to deter and not provoke,'' Fargo said.
Bush administration officials say the interdiction initiative was in part born late last year when Spain, acting on a U.S. tip, seized a North Korean shipment of Scud missiles headed to Yemen from North Korea.
The ship was allowed to continue after Yemen assured Washington the 15 Scuds found on board were intended for defensive purposes only.
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UN sees no links between Iraq and al Qaeda
By Evelyn Leopold
(Reuters)
Thursday June 26
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030626/80/e3bij.html
UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. terrorism committee has found no evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda network, which it says has sprouted a third generation of suicide bombers in Morocco and elsewhere.
The committee, charged with reporting on al Qaeda and remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban, released a 42-page report on the state of international terrorism following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
"Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and al Qaeda," said Michael Chandler, one of five outside experts who prepared the report for the committee.
"That doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist. But from what we've seen the answer is 'no,'" he told a news conference on Thursday.
Chandler said the first he had heard of any links was during a presentation to the Security Council in February by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's purported links to al Qaeda was one reason used by the Bush administration to justify the March invasion of Iraq.
Another member of the investigating panel, Abaza Hassan, said: "It had never come to our knowledge before Powell's speech. We never received any information from the United States for us to even follow up on."
Powell said Saddam's government had allowed a senior al Qaeda operative, identified as Abu Musab Zarqawi, an alleged associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden, to operate in Baghdad for months.
Zarqawi previously had been accused of operating only in northern Iraq, an area not completely under Saddam's control. He has been indicted for the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan on October 28, 2002.
AL QAEDA ABLE TO ATTACK
The committee's report said despite huge strides by the United States and others in capturing key al Qaeda leaders, recent attacks in Morocco and elsewhere showed that ideological followers "were still willing and able to strike at targets of their choosing."
Chandler said the first generation followed Osama bin Laden, the purported leader of al Qaeda, in Saudi Arabia and then to Afghanistan for training and aid to the Taliban.
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, many militants dispersed to a variety of countries and many were arrested. He said those responsible for the bombing in Morocco had not been near Afghanistan but "are picking up the same ideology and want to behave in the same sort of way."
The committee has drawn up lists of more than 150 individuals and one group associated with the Taliban and 80 individuals and 91 groups associated with al Qaeda. States are asked to freeze their financial assets, among other sanctions.
Most of the names had been supplied by the U.S. government but Russia added a Chechen -- the province's former president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev -- to the list for the first time on Thursday.
Yandarbiyev, who has been living in exile in Qatar's capital, Doha, for the past three years, has been on the Interpol wanted list since 2001 along with other prominent Chechen rebels.
The report also noted that no one on the list had been seized crossing any border, and no arms destined for terrorist groups had been confiscated across international frontiers.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban are "still able to acquire adequate quantities of weapons and explosives where and when they need them," the report said.
Chandler recommended the list, which he said contained many misspellings, should include anyone who had participated in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and "those of associated terrorist groups."
This recommendation is bound to run into criticism, if ever implemented, as another abrogation of civil liberties. At the moment any Security Council member can put anyone on the list, with recourse for the accused difficult.
-------- propaganda wars
New law on terrorism raises spectre of agency abuse
June 26 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/25/1056449302485.html
ASIO will now have greater powers than police officers but with less oversight, writes Simeon Beckett.
Consider this. A hard-working journalist breaks a story about terrorist organisations operating in Australia. ASIO doesn't have the information but would sorely like it.
An ASIO operative asks the journalist whom he spoke to, and what information he gathered. In the finest tradition of journalism, the reporter refuses to reveal his sources.
Utilising powers recently granted under the ASIO laws, ASIO seeks a warrant to detain the journalist for questioning.
The attorney-general approves the request for a warrant, because the information will assist the collection of intelligence about terrorism and, because of the reporter's ethical concerns, he may not appear if asked.
The warrant is granted and the Australian Federal Police turn up at the newspaper's offices and detain the journalist.
The journalist is later brought before a retired judge and is required to answer ASIO's questions. He has two options: either break his ethical code, or refuse to answer questions and face five years in jail.
Under the legislation, he may be interviewed for three periods of eight hours each, and detained for seven days. There is no requirement for ASIO or the police to tell his family where he is.
Those are some of the extraordinary powers contained in the ill-thought-out ASIO reforms.
The journalists from Four Corners who reported two weeks ago on al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah operations in Australia might legitimately ask whether ASIO will want to question them.
Similar arguments can be made for religious leaders hearing confessions, or psychologists treating patients where information about terrorism is revealed.
The key point is that this reform is not aimed solely at those who have committed a terrorism offence. The ASIO plan allows for people to be detained solely because they have information about a terrorism offence - a power even police officers do not have when questioning a suspected murderer.
The police are not given powers to detain people solely to gain information. As a society which respects human rights, this is seen as a power that is just too intrusive.
The issue is dealt with through criminal offences for concealing a major offence. There is no reason to think those laws will not apply to terrorism offences.
The Government says there are sufficient accountability mechanisms to avoid abuse. Notwithstanding that the abuse is the power to detain and compulsorily question, the accountability mechanisms are woeful.
For police forces, accountability comes in the form of exposing evidence to public courts, ministerial responsibility and permanent commissions of inquiry, such as ICAC.
Accountability and intelligence gathering, on the other hand, are anathema. This is reflected in the ASIO plans, which only allow for complaints to be made to the inspector-general of intelligence and security.
The attorney-general has an oversight role, but is unlikely to reveal intelligence-gathering processes to the public. Reports are made to the joint standing committee on intelligence services, but those processes are not public.
It is simply not true, as Paul MacKinnon, the former head of Olympic security, recently said that there are a cascade of watchdogs, watching watchdogs, watching watchdogs, watching the workers work.
The inescapable conclusion is that ASIO is being given greater powers than the police, but will be subject to less accountability.
Which brings me back to accountability through freedom of the press. The work of ASIO using its powers under this plan will not be subject to the gaze of the media.
The ASIO changes threaten to curtail that freedom by making journalists think twice before reporting on terrorism.
Simeon Beckett is a barrister and spokesman for Australian Lawyers for Human Rights - http://www.alhr.asn.au/ .
----
British Government Takes Gloves Off in BBC Battle
Thu June 26, 2003
By Katherine Baldwin
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2998598
LONDON - The British government, locked in a battle with the BBC over a claim officials doctored intelligence on Iraq, challenged the state broadcaster on Thursday to answer questions on its reporting standards.
Alastair Campbell, Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications supremo, has been accused by the British Broadcasting Corporation of "sexing up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons that helped build the case for war.
But Campbell, who in turn has accused the BBC of biased reporting on Iraq and of slandering his name, gave the BBC until the end of Thursday to respond to more than a dozen questions about the allegation and its general working practices.
Blair's office has weighed in on Campbell's side but refuses to say what action it will take if the BBC fails, in its words, to "set the record straight."
"A highly damaging allegation was made that went right to the heart of the integrity of the government on a very important issue," Blair's spokesman said on Thursday.
The spat -- by no means the first between British governments and the state broadcaster -- erupted after the BBC, citing an anonymous intelligence source, said Campbell had pressed the security services to include a claim in a September dossier that Iraq's weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were the main Anglo-American justification for war but the failure to discover such arms has damaged the British government's credibility.
An indignant Campbell on Wednesday accused the BBC of lying and demanded an apology.
The BBC had accused him of inducing Blair to lie to parliament over the premise for war, Campbell said. But the corporation denied leveling such a weighty charge and is standing by its report and its anonymous source.
"Does the BBC still stand by the allegation that both we and the intelligence agencies knew the 45-minute claim to be wrong?" Campbell asked in his letter. "Why did BBC journalists not check the story with us before broadcast? Is this now normal BBC practice?" he went on.
Blair's spokesman denied the exchange was about "petty maneuvering." Earlier, at a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Blair did not offer the BBC a question, a highly rare occurrence.
British governments and opposition parties have often blamed the BBC for being biased against them.
----
Media walk on Ashcroft's leash
By JIMMY BRESLIN
Thu, Jun. 26, 2003
Newsday
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6170775.htm
On Friday, I rode across the Brooklyn Bridge, whose gray netting went with the sky, and as long as there was tension about the bridge, I was remembering Richard Seaberg, a big cop who climbed to the top of the bridge so many times and pulled somebody down before he jumped. Seaberg protected the Brooklyn Bridge.
Now there is a charge by the government that terrorists intended to blow up the bridge, or pull it down. Simultaneously, while protecting the bridge, the government was doing frightening damage to the life of the country.
Because of it, I am thinking that it could be time for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore. Let me tell you why.
Friday, the newspapers and television reported the following matter with no anger or effort to do anything other than serve as stenographers for the government:
On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen it says is Iyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no letters.
He was a U.S. citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world.
This citizen's proper name was Mohammed Rauf. He took ''Faris'' from a street name in his neighborhood in Columbus. I don't know why he did this for sure. A friend of mine in Columbus, Mike Weber, told me Friday that he thought the federal agents wanted him to use Faris because the real name, Rauf, purportedly would alert others that he had been caught. Who knows? You believe the FBI, you belong back in public school.
They held him secretly in an iron world for the next six weeks. This is plenty of time to hand out giant beatings. Oh yes, don't gasp. If cops are performing a fascist act, then always suspect them of acting like fascists. They have fun beating people up.
In mid-April, again in deep secrecy, the government says Faris was allowed to plead guilty to plotting to pull down or blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He was in a sealed Virginia federal courtroom. If he had a lawyer, that was some lawyer. After that, he was sentenced. We don't know what the sentence was because it is sealed.
I don't know what Faris looks like or sounds like or what he thinks and what he was doing. He could be the worst. I don't know. Prove he wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and let him paste a picture of Osama bin Laden on the cell wall for inspiration over the next half a century. But first bring him into open court and try him. Pretend you live in America. Even pick a jury. I don't know. What a thing it would be if he comes up not guilty.
What we do know is that this is your country now.
Once before this, in 1942, we detained Japanese Americans in secrecy. The nation swore never to do it again. We haven't. This case is out of the old Soviet Union. He was neither booked with television cameras watching nor arraigned in front of a judge.
Anybody concealed by government agents and guards for more than three months could have marks on him somewhere. And our newspeople write like the worst of the old Pravda. I read in papers from everywhere, ''After Mr. Faris was secretly arrested three months ago . . .'' and ``court papers this week said that Mr. Faris secretly pleaded guilty to charges of terrorism last
month.'' They say. They were simply typed out, as if to report the guy getting a parking ticket. Now the FBI doesn't even tell you the right name of a kidnapped man and makes the news reporters love it. Why would the government say he is a terrorist if he isn't guilty?
The only thing that could possibly bother anybody is the thought of somebody reading this 50 years from now and saying, ``Look at that. This is where they blew a couple of amendments.''
This government's kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and, using our new Patriot Act, turns them into fascism. He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when the owners show up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know.
The newspeople stand when the president comes into the room. They really do.They don't sit until he tells them to. You tell them a lie and they say, ``Sir.''
And now you have a citizen kidnapped by agents, and there is no anger. The day's news is about a children's book and a has-been heavyweight, Mike Tyson, under arrest. There is not even the beginnings of anger about an American kidnapped by his government, over freedom being taken from us all, and bet me you won't see it back. The newspeople are comfortable with being known as the ''media.'' That is a dangerous word; all evil rises around those afflicted with it.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- homeland security
New Graduate Course at GMU to Focus on Biodefense
By Michele Clock
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17919-2003Jun20?language=printer
During the Cold War, he helped to transform anthrax, smallpox and Ebola into deadly weapons for the Soviet Union. After defecting to the United States, he told his secrets to Congress and the CIA.
Now, Ken Alibek is using his knowledge to train a new generation of experts to defend society from the estimated 80 pathogens emerging and in existence worldwide today -- including some he helped to create as a deputy director of the Soviet bioweapons program.
This fall, Alibek and Charles Bailey, former commander of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, will lead a new graduate program in biodefense at George Mason University's Prince William campus.
University officials are touting the program as the first of its kind in the world.
The program will operate out of GMU's National Center for Biodefense, established in February 2002. At that time, GMU appointed Alibek and Bailey co-directors of the center, and each began teaching courses and workshops in biodefense. Previously, students would study microbiology, for example, and take a biodefense class or two. George Mason's graduate program is the first of its kind to offer a degree in the subject.
The university will spend an estimated $1 million to get the program running, said Larry Czarda, vice president of operations for GMU's Prince William campus. School officials said they expected as many as 85 master's, doctorate and certificate-bound students at that time.
"This is ambitious, but we know how to do this," Alibek said. "We understand this is absolutely essential work because for the first time, we understand the biological weapons threat. We understand it's a very grim threat."
Alibek spent 15 years working for Biopreparat, the Soviet state pharmaceutical agency whose primary function was to develop and produce weapons made from the most dangerous viruses, toxins and bacteria. Then known as Kanatjan Alibekov, he was first deputy chief from 1988 until 1992, when he defected.
GMU President Alan G. Merten said the program fits into the university's long-term goal of boosting its science offerings. University officials said they hoped the program would enhance GMU's reputation in biosciences and public policy.
The graduate program also gives the university greater access to federal funding, Merten said. The center received a $1.4 million grant from the Defense Department to support its research on non-vaccine-based approaches to fighting pathogens. Officials said the center has received grants from the department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health. More is likely on the way, Merten said.
"We're having a lot of good discussions with federal government and the corporate sector," he said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax attacks of the following months, education experts said that many universities have incorporated biodefense-related material into their curriculums.
Because it is the first university to develop an entire academic program of this kind, GMU is unique, said David Heyman, a senior fellow and director of science and security initiatives at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But . . . a lot of other universities are starting up things like this. You will see more and more of these programs. Part of it is there is an academic need, and part of it is there's money out there."
Although there are other biodefense centers at U.S. universities, most focus on research, not on academics, said Vikas Chandhoke, the center's director of general administration. Most also focus on either the public policy or the medical side of the issue, not both, he said.
GMU students will learn to analyze the threats posed by biological weapons, and each will focus on one of four subspecialties -- medical defense, engineering defense and countermeasures, nonproliferation, and counterterrorism and law enforcement.
"It's our idea to [give] these people . . . absolutely in-depth knowledge of this field," Alibek said. "We don't want these people to have tunnel vision," he said.
Alibek and other officials said they believe that ultimately, this crop of experts will make society safer.
"The ultimate objective of any defensive work, especially in the field of biological terrorism, is to save as many possible lives," Alibek said. "That's why this program is focused on preparing a new generation of highly proficient biodefense experts who would be able to research new directions . . . and new methodologies for treatment of various infections. . . . You have no well-prepared people if you don't have well-prepared experts."
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda Remains a Global Threat, U.N. Report Says
June 26, 2003
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/international/26CND-NATION.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 26 - Despite "marked successes" in the fight against the Al Qaeda network, a new generation of Al Qaeda-trained terrorists as well as veterans of the Islamic extremist group continue to threaten the global community, according to a report released here today by a United Nations monitoring group.
The report praises the capture of several senior Al Qaeda operatives and successful efforts to block the group's access to traditional financial channels, such as the international banking system, but said that recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and elsewhere suggest that Al Qaeda "and its associated groups still pose a significant threat to international peace and security."
Michael Chandler, chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the Security Council to track Al Qaeda and efforts to stamp out the group, told reporters here that his five-member team has found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's former regime in Iraq.
"That doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist," said Mr. Chandler, but simply that his team hasn't uncovered evidence indicating such a link. The team relies on data contained in 51 reports submitted by United Nations member states, its own research trips abroad, consultation with law enforcement authorities around the world and information gleaned from public records.
During Security Council testimony in February, before the United States-led war with Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell alleged that Al Qaeda training camps existed in northeastern Iraq. Mr. Chandler did not contest Mr. Powell's findings directly, but reasserted that his team had found no such evidence. He said that the camps Mr. Powell referred to may have been destroyed during the war.
The report raised alarms about Al Qaeda's potential access to nuclear and chemical weapons and its ongoing ability to finance its activities through the Afghani drug trade. "There is evidence, from al-Qaida training manuals and other intelligence, that al-Qaida has investigated the ways and means of developing" weapons of mass destruction, the report stated.
And the report painted an ominous picture of a new generation of Al Qaeda operatives, who apparently first surfaced in the recent bombings in Casablanca, Morocco. While previous Al Qaeda attacks have been carried out by terrorists trained in Afghanistan, officials here said that evidence suggests that the Casablanca attack was carried out by new operatives who had not been trained in Afghanistan. The reason for Al Qaeda's resilience, the report said, is its religious zeal.
"They retain strong appeal among Islamic extremist elements around the world and are able to draw on a substantial number of cadre trained in Afghanistan or in other training centres associated with the al-Qaida network," the report stated. "There are also indications that the al-Qaida network has been able to reconstitute its levels of support."
The report bemoans the fact that the United Nation's list of Al Qaeda operatives and associates of Osama bin Laden is relatively small, a problem it attributes to the unwillingness of some countries to provide names to the monitoring group. Most of the names thus far, officials here said, have come from the United States.
The most recent addition to the list, which to date includes 125 names, is Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, the former president of Chechnya. The Russian delegation to the United Nations requested that Mr. Yandarbiev's name be added. Mr. Yandarbiev, 50, is the first Chechen to be placed on the list. Mr. Yandarbiyev resides in Doha, Qatar, and Russian authorities have unsuccessfully tried to have him extradited for nearly two years.
Russia conducted a bitter, brutal war with Chechen separatists between 1994 and 1996 and Russian authorities suspect Mr. Yandarbiev of orchestrating an attack on a Moscow theater last October that resulted in the deaths of a number of Russian hostages.
Mr. Chandler said his monitoring group has found definitive evidence of Al Qaeda activity in Chechnya via ties to operatives in Bosnia.
-------- torture
Torture, deportation and imprisonment without trial - tactics used in the 'war against terror'
26 June 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=418977
NEW DEFINITIONS OF TORTURE
Abu Zubaida is said to be the most important terrorist in detention. Al-Qa'ida's head of external operations was shot in the groin during his capture in a joint FBI and Pakistan security forces operation in Faisalabad in March 2002. US security officials suggested that Zubaida's painkillers were used selectively in the beginning of his captivity. "His wound wasn't life-threatening," a military police officer said with a shrug. "He survived."
The admission gives some idea of the range of "stress and duress" activities which one former US intelligence officer has described as "torture-lite". The techniques are more psychologically tormenting than physically brutal but they include being tied in painful positions, subjected to deafening sounds and blinded by bright lights.
USE OF HOLDING CHARGES
Lotfi Raissi was arrested in London the week after the September 11 attack. The US authorities sought his extradition claiming he was a flight instructor of some of the hijackers. Their evidence reportedly included video footage. The extradition warrant, however, was based on "holding charges" claiming Mr Raissi had failed to disclose, on an application for a US pilot's licence, a minor theft conviction. He was detained in prison for five months before a British judge threw the extradition application out, saying there was no evidence of any terrorist activity.
Amnesty says the US sought Mr Raissi's extradition because of his profile: a Muslim, an Algerian, a pilot and a flight instructor.
ACQUITTED BUT STILL DEPORTED
Adnan Abdelah claimed political asylum on his arrival in the UK in April 2001. He was arrested after bragging about the September 11 attacks and knowledge of bombs. At his trial in May 2002 at Newcastle Crown Court, Abdelah denied charges of membership of a proscribed organisation (Hamas iz as-din-al-quezzem) and one charge of witness intimidation. On 23 May, the judge ruled there was no case to answer and directed the jury to clear Abdelah. He remained in immigration detention pending an asylum appeal, after which, on 19 December, he was deported to Morocco. The Attorney General has now referred the decision to acquit Abdelah to the Court of Appeal.
CIVIL JUSTICE
Some terrorists, after being held under immigration laws, are dealt with through normal processes in criminal courts. Two Algerian asylum-seekers living in Leicester, Baghdad Meziane, 37, and Brahim Benmerzouga, 30, (left) were held by immigration officials for four months but were then charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 with criminal offences in connection with a plan to bomb the US Embassy in Paris. The men were subsequently jailed for 11 years for financing Islamic terrorism. An appeal is pending for both cases.
Civil rights groups want all detainees to be subjected to full legal process, like this, or released.
MILITARY JUSTICE
José Padilla, who also used the name Abdullah al-Mujahir, is a US citizen arrested at Chicago's international airport in May 2002 in connection with an alleged conspiracy to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on a US city. But he was transferred to military custody at a naval base on the basis of an order by President Bush designating him an "enemy combatant".
A US district court has upheld the President's authority to do this, but ruled Mr Padilla was entitled to access to a lawyer. The government has appealed, arguing that this would hinder its ongoing interrogation of him. Mr Padilla has no access to his attorney pending the appeal."Padilla's case is troubling," says Amnesty, "as he was arrested on suspicion of a crime which would place him within the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system."
UNREASONABLY HARSH TREATMENT?
Mahmoud Abu Rideh came to the UK in 1995 and was granted refugee status in 1997. The Home Office accepted that he had been the victim of torture while imprisoned in Israel. He was arrested as a terrorist suspect in December 2001 and was detained at Belmarsh high security unit. Like the other terrorist suspects he was locked in his cell for 22 hours a day.He became suicidal and carried out acts of self-harm. Belmarsh authorities branded him a troublemaker; Amnesty said the conditions of his detention amounted to cruelty.
It was planned to transfer him to Broadmoor. Psychiatrists opposed this but were over-ruled and he was transferred to the top security mental hospital. In January 2003, Mahmoud was sent back to Belmarsh. He is now on a hunger strike.
----
The invisible
The human cost of the 21st century's first war is already enormous. In addition to those who have died, staggering numbers have been detained around the world in violation of their human rights and international law.
Paul Vallely investigates their fate, and asks whether this suspension of due process in the name of defending democracy can ever be justified
Paul Vallely
26 June 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=418979
Privately, the Americans admit that torture, or something very like it, is going on at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where they are holding an unknown number of suspected terrorists.
Al-Qa'ida and Taliban prisoners inside this secret CIA interrogation centre - in a cluster of metal shipping-containers protected by a triple layer of concertinaed wire - are subjected to a variety of practices. They are kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles. They are bound in awkward, painful positions. They are deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights. They are sometimes beaten on capture, and painkillers are withheld.
The interrogators call these "stress and duress" techniques, which one former US intelligence officer has dubbed "torture-lite". Sometimes there is nothing "lite" about the end results. The US military has announced that a criminal investigation has begun into the case of two prisoners who died after beatings at Bagram. More covertly, other terrorist suspects have been "rendered" into the hands of various foreign intelligence services known to have less fastidious records on the use of torture.
What is perhaps most disturbing about all this is that the US officials who have leaked the information have not done so out of a need to expose something that they see as shameful. On the contrary, they have made it clear that they wanted the world to know what is going on because they feel it is justified.
No fewer than 10 serving US national- security officials - including several people who have been witnesses to the handling of prisoners - came forward to speak to The Washington Post, which has published the most graphic account of what is going on in Bagram, and in several other unnamed US interrogation centres across the world. "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, one told the paper, "you probably aren't doing your job". He and the others involved are, in effect, saying: we are doing these things because we have to, and we want the world to know.
In one sense, there is nothing new in this. British forces used five similar techniques - hooding, forced standing, deprivation of sleep, subjection to noise, and deprivation of food and drink - in Northern Ireland. (The European Court of Human Rights ruled, in 1978, that these did not constitute "torture", but found that such methods were "inhuman and degrading", and therefore illegal under various treaties.) But there is a key difference. Where the British authorities were shamefaced about such practices, leading figures in the US are today aggressively unapologetic.
The changed mood is clear in official circles. "After 9/11, the gloves came off," the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Centre, Cofer Black, told a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees. One Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, has even raised the idea that - despite the fact that the US is a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment - permission for torture could be granted by judicial warrant.
To be concerned about this is not to minimise the threat posed to the civilised world by organisations such as al-Qa'ida - amorphous, mercurial, and motivated by a fanatical fundamentalism that sees martyrdom as a prize, not a price. America has the crater that was the World Trade Centre at its heart as a constant reminder of the gravity of that threat.
Nor is it to deny the importance of the thorough interrogation of suspects. The CIA director George J Tenet estimates that worldwide attempts to capture or kill terrorists have eliminated about a third of the al-Qa'ida leadership - and of these successes, almost half have come about from information gained in interrogations. The captures of the al-Qa'ida leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al-Darbi in Yemen, were all partly the result of information gained in Bagram. An al-Qa'ida plot to blow up warships in the Straits of Gibraltar was reportedly foiled by information obtained from a detainee in Guantanamo Bay.
CIA interrogation techniques are sophisticated and successful. Detainees are confronted with a thick file, often containing only dummy text, to give the impression that so much is already known that resistance is futile. Lies about al-Qa'ida are told to generate uncontrolled indignation in which key intelligence is let slip. In a technique known as "the Spinoza method", the captive is relentlessly questioned on events he cannot know anything about - leading him to tell what he does know by way of psychological compensation.
"The interrogations of Abu Zubaida [al-Qa'ida's head of external operations - see box] drove me nuts at times," said General Wayne Downing, the Bush administration's deputy national-security adviser for combating terrorism, until he resigned in June 2002. "He and some of the others are very clever guys. At times, I felt we were in a classic counter-interrogation class: they were telling us what they thought we already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they fabricated and wove in threads that went nowhere.
"But, even with these ploys, we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot and co-ordinate future attacks."
But some interrogation techniques go further than many feel is acceptable. Amnesty International has written to President Bush protesting at reports that interrogators holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - who, the CIA says, masterminded September 11, the Bali nightclub bombing, and much more - are also holding his two sons, aged seven and nine, as a bargaining tool. Mr Bush has not replied. There can only be "zero tolerance" when it comes to dealing with a man responsible for the deaths of thousands - and the threat to many more.
Yet, when it comes to the holding of children, or the business of torture, the following question arises: when is all this intelligence bought at too great a cost? It is not a question with an easy answer.
What is clear is that something is being eroded in our idea of what should be the ethical norms by which a civilised country acts. The shift is about more than simply a revision of the unwritten rulebook on torture. There is a new tolerance of the suspension of due legal process; of detention without trial; of refusing prisoners legal representation; and of imprisoning unconvicted suspects in harsh conditions. There is a new willingness to risk insults to religious minorities and foreigners - and the increased social tension that this inevitably produces.
Such shifts are not restricted to the US. All across the globe - from China to Chechnya, Israel to Indonesia, the UK to Uzbekistan - similar changes have occurred (see graphic on pages 2 & 3). The rhetoric of the "war on terror" is everywhere being used by governments as the pretext for untrammelled action against rebels and dissidents. Continent by continent, the figures of those "missing" in the so-called war on terror mount to a staggering minimum, according to our calculations, of 12,117 individuals. Were we to have included prisoners of war in Iraq in the calculation, it would be more than 15,000.
Nowhere is this new paradigm of diminished human rights more clearly epitomised than in Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base in Cuba, which has become the main prison for al-Qa'ida and Taliban suspects. The 680 detainees are in a legal limbo. The American military has refused to consider them prisoners of war, even though a majority were captured on the battlefield. They have not even been charged, let alone tried or convicted. They have no access to lawyers. Interrogation is sporadic and varies in length and intensity.
When, last year, three detainees - the British citizens Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, and the Australian national David Hicks - tried to take the US authorities to court, the presiding judge ruled that the US courts had no jurisdiction over Guantanamo inmates. Instead, an order by President Bush has established military tribunals as the forum for dealing with those accused of terrorism such as the September 11 attacks. Ten detainees are due to appear, in secret, before these tribunals soon, US officials said this month.
Yet, even though US officials privately admit that as many as 10 per cent of those detained may well be innocent - some 41 people have been released so far, including two farmers in their mid-seventies who the US authorities eventually admitted had just been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time - they are all kept in punitive conditions of confinement.
Those released spoke for the first time last week of their treatment. For the initial few months they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6ft by 8ft, covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements. The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. In the fifth month of their imprisonment, they went on hunger strike and were thereafter allowed to shower for five minutes and exercise for 10 minutes once a week, walking around the inside of a 30ft-long cage.
Even if the confinement of unconvicted men is essential to the security of the Western world, it is not clear on what grounds their imprisonment should be so harsh. It is like an Alice-in-Wonderland world of punishment first, trial later - if ever.
But Guantanamo Bay is far from the only place where basic human rights are suspended. Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice's internal watchdog, Inspector General Glenn Fine, issued a hard-hitting report on the treatment of aliens held on immigration charges in connection with the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
He found more than 1,200 people had been detained, and 766 held for prolonged periods using immigration charges as a pretext. The Justice Department has refused to release names of the detainees, and has conducted hearings against them in secret. The FBI had failed to distinguish between suspected terrorists and illegal aliens uncovered in its trawl. No more than a handful have been charged with a terrorism-related crime, and many were kept in detention even after their immigration cases had been resolved and they had been ordered to be deported to their home countries.
Many are detained under highly restrictive conditions, including "lock down" for at least 23 hours a day in permanently illuminated cells; handcuffs, leg-irons, and heavy chains; a limit of one legal phone call per week and one social call per month. FBI officials frustrated the efforts by detainees' attorneys, families, and even law enforcement officials, to determine where the detainees were being held, and a pattern of physical and verbal abuse was uncovered at one detention centre in Brooklyn, New York. "While our review recognised the enormous challenges and difficult circumstances confronting the Department in responding to the terrorist attacks, we found significant problems in the way the detainees were handled," said Inspector General Fine.
In this country, human-rights groups such as Amnesty and Liberty have made similar complaints about the UK. By contrast with European countries such as the Netherlands, France and Italy - where suspected terrorists have, by and large, been charged and taken through the courts - new legal measures have been introduced in Britain under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA), which permit the Home Secretary to designate a foreigner a suspected terrorist, and deport or detain them without trial. In addition, the UK, uniquely, has opted out of the section of the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial. Most recently, the Home Secretary announced that people could be held for 14 days without charge under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Most of those detained under the 2001 act are held in Belmarsh or Woodhill top-security prisons, where they are classified as Category A and are subjected to the most restrictive regime - locked up for 22 hours a day in single cells 3m by 1.8m, whose access to natural light is limited by the wire mesh on the windows. They are conditions of detention that Amnesty says amount "to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".
"These people have not been charged or tried - some haven't even been interviewed by the police," says John Wadham of the civil-rights group Liberty. Moreover, he asks, if these people are so dangerous that they must be locked up so restrictively, why does the Home Office's system permit them to leave if they can find any country that will take them?
There is more to all this even than concerns about civil liberties. It raises levels of suspicion of foreigners and religious minorities in a way that is already having an impact on the lives of Muslims, and others, creating increased social and racial tensions. Anyone who is male, Muslim and Arab - as were the 19 hijackers on September 11 - is, to many people, automatically a terrorist suspect. This would be crassly comic were it not so serious, as in the case of the two men who stopped to pray in a Texas parking lot and were arrested for "suspicious activity"; or the Muslim detainees in New York served pork at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.
There is more to this than ignorance and stereotyping. It breeds animus, too. Recent months have seen a Muslim interpreter banned from a British prison for refusing to remove her headscarf, or Muslim men strip-searched in front of female officers in a US detention centre. And another British prison put a detainee on "basic regime" for three weeks - which meant he lost one of the two hours to be spent out of the cell and a cut in visiting time. His offence? During a prayer service, a prison guard entered the room and told them to finish earlier than expected. When the man leading the prayers did not reply, because Islamic practice is that one is unable to speak in the middle of prayer, he was punished.
The problem goes beyond religion. A new xenophobia is abroad. In Connecticut, a resident told police that he had heard two "Arabs" talking about anthrax. Whereupon police officers arrested two Pakistani men suspected of having had the conversation at a gas station. They also hauled in an Indian businessman who was minding the station temporarily for his uncle, the owner. The man was held for 18 days and then released without charge or compensation.
It is, of course, easy to pick up the glaring flaws in the system. It is in the nature of terrorism that its victory is against the ordinary decencies of daily life. Those who are charged with fighting terror have a potent argument when they say that - with an enemy that, by definition, refuses to fight fair - there may be times when the law-enforcers cannot fight fair if they are to win.
Suggestions to the contrary generate irritation and impatience. The US Attorney General John Ashcroft had a tetchy message for civil-liberties activists. "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty," he said, "my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil."
Yet there is a balance to be struck here. If common sense tells us that someone is a fanatical bomber, then it may seem madness to allow that person to proceed unchecked. The danger is that, for short-term gain, we risk making the world not a safer place but a more dangerous one by curtailing human rights, embittering minorities, undermining the rule of international law, and allowing governments that are violating the Geneva Conventions by their interrogation procedures, to hide from scrutiny.
There is a grim irony in the fact that Amnesty International can now visit any prison in the whole of Afghanistan, except one, Bagram - the one run by that great champion of openness and freedom, the United States.
There is danger, self-evidently, from terrorism. But there is danger, too, that we are being changed by our response to that terror. If the terrorists can goad us into undermining part of what it is that makes us different from them, then they will win a victory of a different kind.
Denied access to lawyers
Yaser Esam Hamdi was arrested during the war in Afghanistan, reportedly after surrendering to the Northern Alliance. He was detained in Guantanamo Bay until he was found to be a US citizen. He was transferred to a secret location in the US in April 2002. He is being held without access to a lawyer or his family.
In January 2003, a US court upheld the government's right to designate a citizen as an "enemy combatant" and hold him or her indefinitely, without charge and the ability to see a lawyer. Part of the basis for the court's decision was an affidavit by a military bureaucrat indicating Hamdi was a good intelligence resource for the government whose value would be lessened if he were given access to lawyers. The ruling dooms Hamdi to legal limbo unless the Supreme Court reverses it.
Other detainees have had access to lawyers denied, but the Hamdi case makes the practice legal.
----
Missing presumed guilty: where terror suspects are being held
26 June 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=418978
UK
402 arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000. 49 have been charged, mostly with immigration offences, and are awaiting trial; five have been convicted - three for membership of banned organisations. Another 15 are detained as a "risk to national security" under Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. They can't be deported because of death penalty or torture in their home country, though two have since left the UK of their own volition. Rest are locked up for 22 hours a day in single cells, at Belmarsh top-security prison and HMP Woodhill, with restricted access to lawyers and families.
US
1,200 detained, at least 484 still held. Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn has 84 detainees; Passaic County Jail in New Jersey has 400. Plus secret sites. US government refuses to release identities of detainees. Inspector General of US Department of Justice last week confirmed abuses reported by human rights groups: prolonged detention without charge, denial of access to legal counsel, and excessively harsh conditions of confinement including "lock down" for at least 23 hours per day; handcuffs, leg irons, and heavy chains; and a limit of one legal telephone call per week.
CUBA
The 680 men held Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, are described by the Americans as among the "hardest of the hard core" of al-Qa'ida terrorist suspects from more than 40 countries. Mainly Afghans and Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and 83 Yemenis, but also nine Britons, some Australians, and six Algerians picked up in Bosnia. All are held without charge or trial; Washington insists Geneva Conventions don't apply; US courts refuse to exercise jurisdiction. Detainees live in wire cages and are subjected to CIA and MI5 interrogations. Senior defence officials have told US media off the record that as many as 10 per cent may be innocent. All are denied access to legal counsel. Only allowed out for two 15-minute exercise breaks a week. At least 28 suicide attempts to date.
SPAIN
50 held. The aftermath of September 11 brought a further crackdown on Basque separatists. Spain's anti-terror laws permit the use of incommunicado detention, secret legal proceedings, and pre-trial detention for up to four years.
MOROCCO
Infamous for torture. Has detained at least 35 terrorist suspects in the wake of the five simultaneous Casablanca suicide bombs. Another 100 have been "referred" there by US
EGYPT
Between 100 and "several thousand" al-Qa'ida suspects have been transferred from Afghanistan to Egypt, where the secret police use full-blown torture techniques. Hundreds of domestic suspects have been arrested and taken before military or state security courts since 11 September.
JORDAN
Between 100 and "several thousand" al-Qa'ida suspects have been transferred from Afghanistan to Jordan, where security services use torture including sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes and extended solitary confinement.
SAUDI ARABIA
Unknown number of detainees. During interrogations, US officials observe through one-way mirrors.
IRAQ
3,087 PoWs and interned civilians still held in 19 centres by coalition forces. The 5,905 other PoWs have now been released in accordance with Article 118 of the Third Geneva Convention. US forces are still rounding up "civilian" Iraqis suspected of involvement with paramilitary squads and may ship them to Guantanamo Bay.
DIEGO GARCIA
An unknown number of prisoners are held in US base on the Indian Ocean island leased from the UK. US interrogators impersonate nationals of countries known to use torture, in an effort to disorientate captives.
INDONESIA 30 people held under terrorism decrees. Since the Bali bomb, links have been assumed between local Islamist movements and al-Qa'ida. Police conduct public interrogations of suspects and use detainees in public re-enactments of the crime. New laws are imminent to allow police to detain suspected terrorists for questioning for up to six months. The broad definition of terrorism could include political dissenters.
INDIA
At least 300 detained under the new 2002 Prevention of Terrorism Act. The law is used against Muslim separatists in Kashmir, but also against other Muslim activists.
CHINA
At least 400 Chinese Muslims have been jailed since China took advantage of the "war on terror" to deepen its crackdown on ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang province. China claims 500 members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), financed by Osama bin Laden, fought with the Taliban and in Chechnya. ETIM is now on the US State Department list of terrorist organisations.
AFGHANISTAN
3,000 Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners are held in Bagram airbase and Jowzjan prison. Bagram is a CIA interrogation centre, practising "stress and duress" or "torture-lite". Prisoners are blindfolded and thrown into walls, kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep, with a 24-hour bombardment of lights. At least two detainees have died after being beaten. Bagram is off-limits to the Red Cross.
UZBEKISTAN
"Thousands" imprisoned since September 11. Uzbekistan has used the "war on terror" to justify its longstanding campaign to eliminate Islamists. Western governments, particularly the United States, are now less critical of the Uzbek human rights record.
CHECHNYA
Some 1,300 people have vanished since September 11. Disappearances currently running at the rate of 60 a month. In first two months of this year there were 70 murders, 126 abductions, and 25 cases in which corpses were found. Prisoners are routinely beaten and tortured.
GEORGIA
Georgian troops detained "several" suspected al-Qa'ida members last autumn and handed them over to the US after a raid on the Pankisi gorge - home to refugees fleeing Chechnya. Russia and the US both claim it is a haven for al-Qa'ida. A US-sponsored operation involves 60 US military personnel and British anti-terrorism experts.
SYRIA
At least one "war on terror" suspect has been held by Syria, which the US regards as a sponsor of terrorism and a user of torture. The alleged al-Qa'ida leader Mohammed Haydar Zammar was transferred there by US operatives. German government has been strongly critical of his detention, since Zammar holds joint German and Syrian citizenship.
ISRAEL
900 Palestinians held in administrative detention, without charge or trial. Most have no access to lawyers. Israeli authorities characterise all armed Palestinian activity as terrorism, and justify Israeli military actions as a part of the global "war on terror". Last year, the Knesset passed the Illegal Combatants Law, which enables the military to hold individuals indefinitely on the basis of assumption rather than proven guilt.
LOCATIONS UNKNOWN
There are a number of secret US detention centres overseas where due process does not apply. The CIA undertakes a "false flag operation" using fake decor and disguises meant to deceive a captive into thinking he is imprisoned in a country with a reputation for brutality, when, in reality, he is still in CIA hands.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
------- alternative energy
Power switch
June 26, 2003
By Anna Bakalis
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20030625-092843-7342r.htm
Generating power is becoming a breeze for a local restaurant chain. In July, Austin Grill will switch from traditional electricity to wind power - a $1 million move that will make it the first chain on the East Coast to "go green."
"For a little expense, it will do a lot of good," said Chris Patterson, president of Austin Grill, who said he hopes the conversion will encourage customers to look to renewable energy as a viable alternative to traditional fossil fuels. "At a certain point, our fossil fuels will be extinct. It just makes sense to use a resource like wind to capture the energy."
Currently, less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity is derived from wind energy. With improvements in turbine technology, backing of big companies such as General Electric, and increased consumer awareness, wind power is becoming competitive.
Austin Grill is set to receive 100 percent of its energy from a 44-turbine farm in West Virginia. One turbine will supply enough energy to power its six restaurants. Community Energy, a third-party energy supplier, buys space on the power grid from Washington Gas and Energy Services, and the electricity is distributed through existing power lines.
The restaurant will pay about $40,000 a year until the turbine is paid for. Unlike traditional electricity generation, there is no cost for fuel. Austin Grill will pay operation and utilities fees, which remain consistent over time.
Wind energy is more expensive than electricity derived from coal, nuclear power, natural gas or oil, but the price has dropped dramatically. In the 1980s, the average cost per kilowatt-hour was 40 cents. Today, it is 5 cents.
About 12,000 customers in the Washington area receive at least a portion of their electricity from wind energy, according to Robert Greenlaw, vice president for sales at Community Energy. He said customers are becoming aware of energy alternatives because companies such as Pepco and Washington Gas and Energy Services are branching out beyond traditional resources.
"These companies need to be applauded," he said. "Both are trying to make renewable resources available to the public. The emergence of competitive energy services is key to the progress of wind energy," he said.
Energy companies are offering programs that allow customers to buy any percentage of wind power they want. Customers can buy 5 percent of their electricity from wind generation for an extra $5 a month.
By using only renewable energy, Austin Grill will not contribute to local air pollution.
Companies such as General Electric have made it easier for advocates of wind energy by investing in renewable energy and in wind especially. GE has been manufacturing wind-turbine parts for a little more than a year. It recently started a TV advertising campaign touting the benefits of wind energy.
"This technology is well-accepted," said Dennis Murphy, a spokesman for GE. "We're excited to add wind energy to our portfolio. It gives customers another option and helps the environment."
Frequently seen as an alternative energy source, wind power is gaining credibility in Washington, where some lawmakers are eager to look to it as an answer to rising oil and gas prices.
The energy bill passed by the House and being reviewed by the Senate includes an extension of the wind-energy-production tax credit.
Eligibility for the credit is limited to wind facilities that generate power sold into the market. Companies such as Mountaineer Wind Energy, the provider in West Virginia that generates wind for Austin Grill, will receive tax benefits if the extension is allowed.
Advocates want a three-year extension of the credit, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
Technological advances have helped lower the cost of the wind turbines more than 80 percent over the last 20 years, and the tax credit helps bring the cost down more. The turbines can take up about 5 percent of a farmer's land; farmers get paid a stipend for land use.
While wind energy could never replace traditional electricity, Mr. Greenlaw and other advocates want wind to be a viable alternative.
"Wind is fairly predictable," he said. "It is not subject to foreign governments and economic slumps."
-------- health
Hormones may speed breast cancer
June 26, 2003
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030625-102117-7858r.htm
CHICAGO - More negative fallout from a landmark government study suggests breast cancer linked to estrogen-progestin pills may be fast-growing and hard to detect, clarifying risks for millions of women still using hormone treatment.
"Hopefully, it will convince women to reconsider," said Dr. Susan Hendrix of Wayne State University in Detroit, a co-author of the new analysis. "We've got to find a better way to help women with their menopausal symptoms."
Some previous studies suggested breast tumors might be less aggressive in hormone users; other studies indicated the opposite. Previous research also suggested that hormones might make breast tissue more dense, hindering the detection of tumors.
Seeking more-definitive answers, the researchers took a closer look at data from the government's landmark Women's Health Initiative study, which was halted last summer after it was found that estrogen-progestin pills raise the risk of heart attack, strokes and breast cancer.
While last summer's findings led many women to stop taking hormones, Dr. Hendrix said an estimated 3 million women still use them, primarily to relieve hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause.
The latest findings appear in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The analysis involved 16,608 women aged 50 to 79 who used either combined hormone treatment or dummy pills for an average of five years. As of January, breast cancer had developed in 245 women who used the combined hormone treatment and in 185 women who had taken dummy pills.
Hormone users' tumors were larger at diagnosis, 1.7 centimeters on average versus 1.5 centimeters in placebo women. Tumors had begun to spread in 25.4 percent of hormone users, compared with 16 percent of placebo women.
The researchers said this appears to mean that in women on estrogen-progestin, the tumors both grow faster - that is, are more aggressive - and escape detection longer.
Overall, women on both hormones faced a 24 percent increased risk of breast cancer - equal to eight extra cases of cancer per year for every 10,000 women taking the pills.
The increased risk did not appear in the first two years of treatment. But Dr. Hendrix said the tumors may have been present early on but were not detected until later because of hormone-induced breast density.
The new analysis did not examine breast density. But researchers think progestin may be the culprit because it can cause both normal and abnormal breast cells to proliferate, an effect that may be accentuated when the hormone is combined with estrogen.
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, maker of the Prempro pills used in the study, said hormones remain an appropriate therapy when used at the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time.
The latest analysis is by far the most conclusive, said Dr. Peter Gann, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study.
It "further worsens the news for long-term hormone replacement therapy. It suggests the excess breast cancer risk is not trivial," Dr. Gann said.
Last summer's Women's Health Initiative findings shattered long-held beliefs that hormones are good for women's hearts. Last month, another analysis of data from the study found that instead of sharpening the mind, hormones may double the risk of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
A second, smaller study in yesterday's journal also confirmed a link between combined hormone treatments and breast cancer, and suggested estrogen-only treatment may be safer.
-------- ACTIVISTS
I Never Promised You a Ruse Garden
A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
June 26, 2003
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php
Dear Lt. George W. Bush,
I hope you don't mind me referring to you by the only true military rank you ever achieved, that being the one from your on-again, off-again "days" in the, um, Texas Air National Guard. Ever since I saw you in that flyboy outfit, landing on that ship, I assumed you now wanted to be addressed by your military title, as opposed to the civilian rank imposed on you by your dad's friends.
So, Lieutenant, I was wondering, would you do me a favor?
Could you PLEASE do better than a ROSE BUSH?
I saw the guy on TV yesterday that your boys found, the Iraqi who said he had "planted" some nuclear plans in his "back yard" in Baghdad -- 12 years ago -- "under a rose bush."
Woo boy. That's a good one. Do you really think we are as dumb as we look? I know our fascination with "American Idol" and Scott Peterson may make us Americans look a little light in the head, but when it comes to lying to us to lead us into war, we really do demand a bit more of an EFFORT and a FOLLOW-THROUGH.
You see, George, it's not the lying and the doctoring of intelligence that has me all upset. It's that you've had control of Iraq for over two months now -- and you couldn't even find the time to plant just a few nukes or vats of nerve gas and at least make it LOOK like you weren't lying to us.
You see, by not faking some evidence of weapons of mass destruction, it shows that you thought no one would mind if it turned out you made everything up. A different kind of president, who believes that the American public would be outraged if they ever found out the truth, would go to great lengths to cover up his subterfuge.
Johnson did it with the Gulf of Tonkin. He said our ships were "attacked" by the North Vietnamese. They weren't, but he knew he had to at least make it LOOK like it happened. Nixon said he wasn't "a crook," but he knew that wasn't enough, so he paid hush money to the burglars and somehow had 18 1/2 minutes erased from a tape in the Oval Office. Why did he do this? Because he knew the American people would be pissed if they found out the truth.
Your blatant refusal to back up your verbal deception with the kind of fake evidence we have become used to is a slap in our collective American face. It's as if you are saying, "These Americans are so damn apathetic and lazy, we won't have to produce any weapons to back up our claims!" If you had just dug a few silo holes in the last month outside Tikrit, or spread some anthrax around those Winnebagos near Basra, or "discovered" some plutonium with that stash of home movies of Uday Hussein feeding his tigers, then it would have said to us that you thought we might revolt if you were caught in a lie. It would have shown us some
I guess you finally figured that out this week. It started to appear that millions of us were calling you on your bluff -- those "fictitious reasons for the fictitious war." So you quickly produced this man and his rose bush and some 12-year old piece of paper and some metal parts. CNN broke in at 5:15pm and screamed they had the exclusive! "IRAQI NUCLEAR PLANS FOUND!" But a few good reporters started asking some hard questions -- and, barely 3 hours later, your own administration was forced to admit the plans were "not the smoking gun" proving that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Oops.
Never a good idea to rely on a bush, Lieutenant.
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
--------
Iranian Exiles Sow Change Via Satellite
Islamic Government's Foes Tap TV, Web and Phones to Encourage Protests
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33643-2003Jun25?language=printer
LOS ANGELES -- "Good morning, Iran," says Zia Atabay, a former Iranian pop star who fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution. "And good evening, America."
It is 9 a.m. in Tehran, 9 p.m. in Los Angeles. The previous evening, Iranian demonstrators roamed the streets of Tehran, shouting, "Down with the mullahs." From a makeshift television studio halfway around the world, Atabay is urging people to join the protests -- and news reports from Iran suggest the appeal is striking a chord.
"If you don't act now, the regime will be around for a long time," he shouts into the television camera, as a telephone console on his desk flickers with calls from Iran. "So join with the students to bring the regime down. If you believe in freedom and democracy, everyone must be together."
A quarter-century after an exiled Iranian ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini undermined the shah of Iran by flooding the country with audiotapes of his fiery sermons, a new generation of Iranian exiles is seeking to emulate his feat. Their goal is to use modern-day communications technology -- radio stations, the Internet, cell phones, and, above all, satellite television -- to bring down Khomeini's successors.
When Khomeini began his revolution, he was living in a small town outside Paris. His audiotapes were smuggled into Iran, where they were copied and distributed through a network of mullahs and mosques. The epicenter of the new Iranian information revolution is Los Angeles, home to about 600,000 Iranian Americans and a dozen privately owned Iranian-language television and radio stations, beamed live by satellite into millions of Iranian homes.
The rebellion on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities comes at a time when the Bush administration has stepped up its criticism of the country's Islamic rulers for developing nuclear weapons and providing shelter to members of the al Qaeda terrorist network. While U.S. officials have voiced strong rhetorical support for the aspirations of the Iranian democracy movement, they deny exercising any influence over the Los Angeles-based television and radio stations, and have declined to support congressional attempts to fund their operations.
While some administration officials, particularly in the Pentagon, have argued in favor of a more active policy of undermining the Tehran government, others are skeptical of the exile groups' ability to trigger a revolution back home. They say the exiles lack a charismatic leader. Their most prominent spokesman is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, who lives in Falls Church. In the eyes of many Iranians, however, Pahlavi is tainted by the excesses of his father's rule.
None of the criticism fazes Atabay, who has sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars from his wife's plastic surgery business into National Iranian TV (NITV), and is described by friends as an Iranian mixture of Pat Boone and Jerry Springer. He has barely slept for the past two weeks, since Iranian students began staging nightly demonstrations in Tehran and other cities to demand democracy and an end to Islamic rule. His dream, he said, is to become head of Iranian state television after the fall of the mullahs.
"If the Iranian regime falls, I will have a good business," he said with a laugh. "But if it doesn't fall in the next five months, I will go bankrupt."
According to western news reports from Tehran, the protests snowballed as the result of blanket coverage on NITV and other satellite stations. Using cell phones and telephone credit cards distributed by exiled opposition groups, demonstrators called the Los Angeles-based stations to describe the protests and appeal to their fellow Iranians to join them in the streets. The protesters have used the satellite stations to circumvent a news blackout on their activities in Iran.
While the demonstrations appeared to fizzle out over the weekend, Iranian authorities and exile groups are bracing for more protests on July 9, the fourth anniversary of a violent crackdown by Islamic militants on student rebels at the University of Tehran that led to the death of a protester.
One measure of the influence of the Los Angeles-based TV and radio stations has been the angry reaction of the Iranian government. Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani used one of his Friday prayer sermons to urge Iranians "not to be trapped by the evil television networks that Americans have established."
While the mullahs may be convinced that the satellite stations are tools of the CIA, the broadcasters insist that they have not received a penny from the U.S. government. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has proposed legislation that would channel as much as $50 million to democracy activities in Iran, including TV and radio stations. But leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee oppose the amendment, and few observers expect it to pass this year.
"We need the money desperately, but until now it's just been talk and empty promises," said Fariborz Abbassi, founder of Azadi Television.
With names such as Pars, Channel One and Tapesh, the Los Angeles-based stations are shoestring operations that run as much on enthusiasm as large injections of cash. The communications revolution has made it possible to set up and run a satellite television station, dedicated to overthrowing a foreign government, for relatively small sums.
According to Atabay, the monthly budget for NITV, one of the better-funded stations, is around $140,000: $45,000 for satellite fees, $20,000 for office and studio rental, $40,000 for salaries, and the remainder for incidental expenses, such as cell phone costs. His revenue includes $25,000 in subscriptions from American viewers (Iranians with a satellite dish receive the service free), $27,000 from advertising, and $30,000 from commissions on sales of Iranian carpets.
That leaves a monthly shortfall of around $60,000, which Atabay either has to pay with his own money or raise from rich Iranian Americans eager to support the anti-Islamic street uprising back home.
Fomenting revolution in Iran was the last thing on Atabay's mind when he began NITV in March 2000 as a cultural station aimed at the Iranian American Diaspora. He only discovered six months later that his signal was capable of reaching Iran when a viewer called NITV from the central Iranian city of Isfahan. NITV soon became so popular in Iran -- with news shows, chat programs and "Saturday Night Live"-like spoofs of Iranian mullahs -- that the Iranian authorities began intermittently jamming the signal.
Back in Los Angeles, the station spawned a host of imitators eager to cater to the estimated 7 million Iranians with satellite dishes. (Since many dish owners share their signal with neighbors, the likely audience for the satellite programs is several times larger.) The stations range in focus from hard-line anti-mullah to pop music.
"We are all part of the movement, each in his own way," said Alireza Amirghassemi, founder of TV Tapesh, which treats its viewers to a heavy diet of singers Shakira and Jennifer Lopez. "When we air a video of a girl with . . . a lot of flesh, we are showing something that is forbidden in Iran."
The most ideological of the stations is Azadi, Persian for "freedom." The son of an Iranian army general, Abbassi has decorated his office with mementos of the former shah, including a large wall tapestry. He describes the shah's son as "Iran's only hope" and broadcasts almost daily interviews with him. He said he has smuggled hundreds of cell phones and thousands of phone cards into Iran, creating a network of supporters around the country.
"You tell me what action you want inside Iran, and I can do it in two hours, with a single phone call," said Abbassi, one of whose favorite phrases is "Money talks."
A recent call-in show on Azadi featured phone interviewers with Iranian demonstrators, urging viewers to get into the streets. "If everyone comes out, the Islamic militants will go away," said a caller from Isfahan. Another caller warned the Iranian government not to use force to break up the demonstrations, "or we will be forced to defend ourselves." The host, a restaurant manager-turned-TV firebrand named Behrooz Souresrafil, called for strikes at gasoline refineries and in the Tehran bazaar.
Such open political incitement is banned at U.S.-funded stations, such as Radio Farda, a 24-hour news and music Persian-language station, which went on the air last December. Like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the Washington-based Radio Farda is obliged by charter to be factual in its reporting.
While Pahlavi has expressed support for the Los Angeles-based stations, he has also distanced himself from some of the more extreme manifestations. In a recent interview, he said the Diaspora media lacked "focus and coordination," and advised against calling for street demonstrations, which could become a pretext for a government crackdown. The best antidote to repression, he said, is "a daily dose of truth and facts."
----
Protesters bring Iraqi nuclear powder to US forces
Story by Andrew Gray
REUTERS IRAQ:
June 26, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21296/newsDate/26-Jun-2003/story.htm
TUWAITHA, Iraq - Environmentalists presented U.S. forces in Iraq with what they said was a looted radioactive canister and slammed the occupiers for leaving more radioactive material at large.
The campaigners from Greenpeace handed over a large, abandoned canister of "yellow cake" - low-enriched uranium peroxide powder used as raw material for radioactive fuel.
They also took journalists to a metal container they said was giving off levels of radiation 10,000 times above normal found in the ramshackle home of a labourer and his family.
Looters plundered the Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 25 km (16 miles) south of Baghdad in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam Hussein's toppling by U.S. forces in April. Radioactive and toxic material is now scattered around the area, experts say.
"If this had happened in the U.K., the U.S. or any other country, the villages around Tuwaitha would be swarming with radiation experts and decontamination teams," Mike Townsley, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said.
The United States and its allies invaded Iraq in March citing the imminent danger posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons programme. They have so far failed to find any weapons of mass destruction.
Locals said Iraq's U.S.-led occupiers had not conducted a thorough survey of the area or provided medical screening.
"We have no resources to help our people," said Tarik Al- Obeidy, a town council representative. "It's a disaster."
YELLOW CAKE RETURNED
Townsley took the canister originally from Tuwaitha but abandoned on wasteland near houses and a busy road -- on a flat bed truck to troops now guarding an inner core of the complex.
They agreed to take the container, similar in appearance to the nose cone of a rocket, and to visit other sites where Greenpeace said it had found abnormally high radioactivity.
The head of the United Nations nuclear agency said on Sunday his experts had accounted for most of the uranium missing from a storage site at Tuwaitha. But Greenpeace said there could still be significant amounts of material in the open.
U.S. officials have played down the dangers of yellow cake, saying its radiation level is fairly low. U.S. troops have, however, been paying Iraqis for old yellow cake containers after reports people were now storing food and water in them.
Concerns will be heightened by the discovery of the metal box that was sitting at the home of Harchan Khanfer and his five children since he took it from Tuwaitha six weeks ago. It now stands outside in a metal can awaiting safe disposal.
A Greenpeace scientist, Rianne Teule, said she believed it was a radiation source for industrial use. People nearby would receive as much radiation in half an hour as the maximum safe amount for an entire year by Western standards, exposing them to higher risks of contracting cancer or radiation sickness.
"The radiation levels being this high are a danger to all the people living around here, even playing around here," she said as small children ran around behind her.
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