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NUCLEAR
A costly fusion reactor
Nuclear shipment taken through Sydney streets
Australia ships radioactive waste to France amid tight security
N.J. Man Faces Charges in Nuclear Case
Clark Responds to Kosovo Questions
Chirac planning new nuclear strategy against rogue states: report
France Denies Shift in Nuclear Deterrent Policy
Pakistan Promises 'Positive' Response to India
EU Officials to Pressure Iran on Nukes
China hails North Korea's "positive gesture" on nuke crisis
North Korea planned to open atomic site
Congressional visits to N Korea not 'appropriate' at this time
North Korean Defector Plans Talks in U.S.
North Korea contacts US on nuclear offer
Lawmaker: White House Nixed N. Korea Trip
Senator John Edwards Letter
Waste storage needs open debate
Hanford workers unearth barrels of radioactive waste
Greenpeace exposes secret nuclear shipment
What will make them stop?
Democrats in Debate Attack Bush on Iraq, Each Other
Senators Call On White House To Share Records With 9/11 Panel
MILITARY
Officials Ousted in Afghan Province
Rules Circumvented on Huge Boeing Defense Contract
Air Force-Boeing Negotiator Criticized
Bombings Plunge Iraqi Capital Into Chaos at Start of Ramadan
Blast Hits Red Cross Offices in Baghdad
From The Scene Volley of Rockets Shatters a Life and Images of Stability
Striking at a Key Symbol of U.S. Power
Israelis Blow Up Gaza Buildings Near Isolated Settlement
Sharon Says Israel Not Planning to Kill Arafat
'Russia may join Nato to fight common enemy'
Reforming DoD
Ministers of War, Criminals of the Cloth
Bush Sees Attackers as Growing Desperate Amid Progress in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
High Court May Have to Take Terror Cases
Operation Holy Tuesday
ACTIVISTS
Protests as Australia ships nuclear waste to France
-------- NUCLEAR
A costly fusion reactor
October 27, 2003
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031026-105113-9992r.htm
Charles Rousseaux rightly laments the enormous cost of the proposed International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion reactor that President Bush is supporting ("Wishing on a star," Commentary, Wednesday). The construction cost alone of the ITER fusion boondoggle is $5 billion (U.S.). After 10 years of construction, there will be 20 years of operating costs and then decommissioning.
Nor is ITER environmentally benign. Its own designers admit that it will result in 30,000 metric tons of radioactive waste, deadly for 100 years. ITER also uses large amounts of radioactive tritium for fuel, and emissions will increase the cancer risk in downwind populations.
Nor is there any practical benefit from the ITER reactor. It is purely experimental and will not produce any electricity - a commercial fusion reactor is at least 50 years away. The seven international ITER partners are expected to meet in the District Dec. 15 to decide on a host country for the reactor. All the partner countries will be losers. The Sierra Club of Canada opposes the siting of ITER in Canada because it is a senseless waste of taxpayers' money and a ridiculous direction for energy policy. The real answers to our energy problems are available now: efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
DAVID H. MARTIN
Policy adviser Sierra Club of Canada Toronto
-------- australia
Nuclear shipment taken through Sydney streets
27 October 2003
NZ Stuff
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2706429a12,00.html
CANBERRA: Australia shipped its sixth cargo of radioactive waste in 40 years today, taking the consigmment through the streets of Sydney to the harbour in secrecy and surrounded by tight security.
The Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which manages Australia's only nuclear facility at Sydney's Lucas Heights, said 344 spent fuel elements were loaded onto a specially designed cargo ship in the early hours of today after being moved through Sydney streets overnight.
They will be shipped to France for reprocessing.
The five trucks carrying the spent fuel were escorted by helicopters, motorcycle and mounted police, patrol cars and other emergency service vehicles.
"Relevant local councils and stakeholders were informed prior to shipment. However, the exact route and timetable was not provided for obvious security reasons," ANSTO's Acting Executive Director Ron Cameron said in a statement.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, all countries have stepped up security around the transportation of radioactive materials ranging from harmless medical supplies to weapons-grade plutonium.
An ANSTO spokeswoman said two boatloads of about a dozen activists from environmental group Greenpeace were in the harbour as the ship left, waving banners saying "Nuclear Never Save", but the demonstration was peaceful.
Cameron said this was ANSTO's sixth shipment of spent fuel since 1963, with the five others shipments travelling to various places globally without incident. The last shipment was in 2001.
The Lucas Heights plant, a 44-year-old facility, is Australia's only nuclear reactor and produces radioisotopes for use in more than 440,000 nuclear medicine procedures each year.
The shipment follows a decision by Australia's conservative government in 1997 not to establish a reprocessing facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney but instead ship all used fuel overseas.
The shipment, heading for La Hague in France, was the third under a contract between ANSTO and France's Cogema in 1999 and will be reprocessed at a cost of $A14 million ($NZ16.26 million).
----
Australia ships radioactive waste to France amid tight security
Reuters Canberra,
October 27, 2003
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_433975,00050004.htm
Australia shipped its sixth cargo of radioactive waste in 40 years on Monday, taking the consignment through Sydney to France for reprocessing amid tight security.
The Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which manages Australia's only nuclear facility at Sydney's Lucas Heights, said that 344 spent fuel elements were loaded onto a specially designed cargo ship in the early hours of Monday after being moved through Sydney streets overnight.
The five trucks carrying the spent fuel were escorted by helicopters, motorcycle and mounted police, patrol cars and other emergency service vehicles.
"Relevant local councils and stakeholders were informed prior to shipment. However, the exact route and timetable was not provided for obvious security reasons," ANSTO's acting Executive Director Ron Cameron said.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, all countries have stepped up security around the transportation of radioactive materials ranging from harmless medical supplies to weapons-grade plutonium.
An ANSTO spokeswoman said two boatloads of about a dozen activists from environmental group Greenpeace were in the harbour as the ship left, waving banners saying "Nuclear Never Save", but the demonstration was peaceful.
Cameron said this was ANSTO's sixth shipment of spent fuel since 1963, with the five others shipments travelling to various places globally without incident. The last shipment was in 2001.
The Lucas Heights plant, a 44-year-old facility, is Australia's only nuclear reactor and produces radioisotopes for use in more than 440,000 nuclear medicine procedures each year.
The shipment follows a decision by Australia's conservative government in 1997 not to establish a reprocessing facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney but instead ship all used fuel overseas.
The shipment, heading for La Hague in France, was the third under a contract between ANSTO and France's Cogema in 1999 and will be reprocessed at a cost of $9.8 million.
-------- business
N.J. Man Faces Charges in Nuclear Case
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
10/31/03
Associated Press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3334867,00.html
NEW YORK (AP) - An engineer was arrested Friday on charges that he sent off blueprints for critical nuclear-plant parts knowing they might be headed for North Korea.
A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan accused Sitaraman Ravi Mahadevan, 40, of Marlton, N.J., of shipping blueprints for valves to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc. in New York, knowing they might be sent to North Korea.
Mahadevan allegedly shipped six packages containing approximately 90 blueprints to Mitsubishi, one of the contractors responsible for constructing the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization's nuclear plant in North Korea, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the export of the valves or their blueprints to any nuclear facility in North Korea without a valid government export license is prohibited.
Mahadevan, manager of the nuclear business unit at Valcor Engineering Corp. in Springfield, N.J., declined comment as he was released on $750,000 bail. His lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, also had no comment.
Jonathan Carson, a U.S. Department of Commerce agent, said in court papers that the valves are used to regulate pressure inside a nuclear vessel.
The rule barring shipment has been in effect since December 2002, when North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from its nuclear plants.
According to the complaint, Mahadevan last year had applied for and been denied a license to export similar valves and associated documents worth $3.2 million to India.
In its rejection, the Commerce Department told him the United States does not permit direct or indirect assistance to nuclear activities in countries that do not provide full scope safeguards or have not ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Carson said.
Prosecutors said on Oct. 17, Mahadevan shipped the blueprints to Mitsubishi without obtaining an export license even though he knew they could end up in North Korea.
An investigation by the Commerce Department, which issues export licenses, led to the seizure of the blueprints while they were en route from Valcor to Mitsubishi.
If convicted, Mahadevan faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
-------- depleted uranium
Clark Responds to Kosovo Questions
October 27, 2003
Matthew Rothschild
http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx1027b03.html
After his speech at the press conference in Madison, Wisconsin, on October 27, Clark took a few questions. I asked him a three-parter on the war in Kosovo, which he led.
One part dealt with the use of depleted uranium. He said there have been a lot of studies on depleted uranium, and "there is no indication it causes any trouble," except perhaps if you put something in your mouth that is covered with it.
Another part of the question dealt with a comment by British General Michael Jackson, who defied Clark's order to attack Russian troops who were beating the allies to an airport in Kosovo. General Jackson reportedly told Clark back then: "No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to start World War III for you."
At the press conference, Clark responded, "That comment was way out line. I did what any commander would do."
The last part of my question dealt with the speeding up of the film of the train that U.S. bombers hit as it was crossing a bridge during the Kosovo war. In briefings at the time, the U.S. military made it seem like the train was going faster than it was, so as to suggest that the pilots could not possibly have known the train was about to cross the bridge.
Clark's response: "I had no indication the film was sped up," and he added that he supported what the pilots did.
-------- europe
Chirac planning new nuclear strategy against rogue states: report
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031027183600.px2agbgz.html
President Jacques Chirac is planning to revamp France's nuclear strategy in order to address the threat posed by so-called "rogue states", the Liberation newspaper reported Monday.
The newspaper, which hinted that Chirac could announce the policy changes in the coming weeks, quoted an unidentified senior military official as saying that the policy shifts would be "definitively finalized" by early next year.
Chirac's office however denied any change in France's policy since a June 2001 speech in which the president outlined the country's strategic doctrine for the 21st century, endorsing the theory of nuclear deterrence.
In that address, Chirac said the theory, under which atomic weapons ensure peace by the threat of devastating retaliation, allowed France "to face threats which might be brought to bear on our vital interests from regional powers armed with weapons of mass destruction" -- taken to mean rogue states.
He sternly warned: "If they are driven by hostile intentions towards us, the leaders of such states must know that they would expose themselves to harm that they would find totally unacceptable."
At the time, Chirac called for the development of a diverse arsenal and broader European defense cooperation to counter new threats.
But on Monday, Liberation reported that Paris was preparing to redefine its policy of nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis rogue states that could launch chemical or biological weapons attacks against France or French interests.
It said the new policy also would "take into account the threat from China, qualified as a 'remote possible scenario'."
Since 2001, France has invested heavily in its nuclear arsenal to counter such threats "with the development of new missiles and warheads," the paper reported, citing the figure of 17 billion euros (20 billion dollars) over six years.
About 20 percent of France's spending on military hardware is devoted to its nuclear deterrence capability, according to Liberation.
On the cards are a fourth new generation missile-launching submarine, an M51 ballistic missile that can reach as far as Asia, an improved medium-range missile launched from fighter jets and a program of simulated test launches, it said.
France became a nuclear power in 1960 under then president Charles de Gaulle, making it at the time one of five recognized nuclear powers, along with Britain, China, Russia and the United States.
Since then, India and Pakistan have joined the nuclear club, and Israel has neither confirmed nor denied possessing nuclear weapons.
Chirac put an end to France's nuclear testing in January 1996, less than one year after taking over the presidency, after widespread protests over a series of tests in the South Pacific.
--------
France Denies Shift in Nuclear Deterrent Policy
October 27, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-france-nuclear.html
PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac's office Monday denied a newspaper report that France plans a shift in its nuclear defense policy to take account of new threats from what Washington has identified as ``rogue states.''
The daily Liberation quoted an unidentified senior military official as saying that a revamp of France's nuclear deterrent could happen in early 2004, and said Chirac could unveil the new policy at a visit to a navy base in Brest in the weeks ahead.
``Without citing any country, the French (nuclear) capacity to strike will from now on target what the Americans call 'rogue states' -- nations which equip themselves with weapons of massive destruction,'' Liberation wrote.
It said the new strategy would take account of states believed to have biological and chemical weapons at their disposal, as well as those with nuclear arms, and in the longer term ``would take into account the threat from China.''
But Chirac's office said there was no change from the stand outlined by the president in June 2001, when he said no single anti-missile system could meet new challenges from so-called rogue states and argued for a broad array of disarmament measures and stronger European defense to avoid a new arms race.
At that time, Chirac told French defense studies institute IHEDN: ``France would preserve the means to maintain the credibility of its nuclear deterrent in the face of all new threats.''
But he added: ``Our nuclear forces are not directed toward any country and we have always refused that nuclear arms can be considered as a battle weapon within military strategy.''
Defense analysts say the increased threat from rogue states as tensions bubble after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and this year's war in Iraq is forcing a rethink of the rules of war and of the way countries will guard themselves against attacks.
Former IHEDN head General Bernard Norlain told French LCI television Monday that a strategy shift was inevitable given the changes in the geopolitical climate.
``Of course there is a need to adapt it,'' he said.
``We have been working under the concept of non-use and dissuasion. We said 'this weapon is not designed to be used'. Now, faced with a potential enemy that is quite irrational, we are going to have to reverse that concept.''
France's nuclear deterrent accounts for around 20 percent of its military equipment budget. The 2004 military budget will fund a third nuclear submarine and additional missiles.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Promises 'Positive' Response to India
October 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia-pakistan.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan said Monday it would respond positively and soon to a set of Indian proposals seeking to improve relations between the nuclear rivals.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a news briefing that internal consultations were under way to prepare a comprehensive response.
``Our response would be positive and robust because some of these proposals are obviously our own proposals. The only thing that had been done by India is that they have creatively rehashed, recycled them,'' Khan said.
New Delhi announced a dozen mostly symbolic proposals last week, seeking to save Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's bid to end enmity between the neighbors, who nearly went to war last year.
The proposals include starting a new cross-border bus service between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir and the resumption of hugely popular cricket contests.
``Our response would be robust, we may accept some of their proposals and we may add. Our response would be comprehensive,'' Khan said.
But he expressed regret over a statement by Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes that it was New Delhi's final effort to rescue the faltering peace process.
``You can't negotiate peace at gunpoint,'' Khan said.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
-------- iran
EU Officials to Pressure Iran on Nukes
October 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-Iran.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European Ministers urged Iran on Monday to follow through on its recently announced commitment to suspend uranium enrichment efforts and allow increased international inspections of its nuclear program.
The 15 foreign ministers of the European Union seek to maintain pressure on Iran ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline for Tehran to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
The European Union, Iran's largest trading partner, has tied future trade and aid to cooperation on the nuclear issue.
Iran's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that the government ``is currently studying'' carrying out the suspension of uranium enrichment. But the ministry did not say when the step would be taken.
Iran on Oct. 21 told visiting foreign ministers from Britain, Germany and France that it would suspend uranium enrichment and sign a protocol allowing spot checks of its nuclear programs.
Though it gave no timetable for its actions, the agreement was a breakthrough because Iran had previously insisted it would continue enriching uranium to non-weapons levels for a nuclear program that it says is intended to only produce power as its oil stocks decline.
Iran's agreement came ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline set by the board of governors of the U.N's International Atomic Energy Agency.
The agency's board of governors meets Nov. 20 and could ask the U.N. Security Council to review Iran's nuclear programs if it finds that suspicions remain about a possible weapons program in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The council could impose sanctions.
-------- korea
China hails North Korea's "positive gesture" on nuke crisis
BEIJING (AFP)
Oct 26, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031026135807.dyfj6mr4.html
China praised North Korea on Sunday for agreeing to consider the United States' offer of a written security guarantee in return for dismantling its nuclear programme.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue hailed North Korea's announcement as a "positive gesture", the official Xinhua news agency said.
"China hopes that all parties concerned will further show their sincerity, narrow their differences and create the necessary conditions to continue the dialogue progress and seek a political solution for their concerns," Zhang said.
She added that China would continue to contribute to efforts to solve the crisis.
North Korea said on Saturday that Pyongyang was ready to consider US President George W. Bush's offer of a written security assurance in return for scrapping its nuclear programme.
Pyongyang had previously insisted on a non-aggression pact and aid from the United States before it would respond to the demand.
A Chinese delegation headed by parliamentary leader Wu Bangguo is set to visit Pyongyang this week.
----
North Korea planned to open atomic site
Mon October 27, 2003
(Reuters)
By Paul Eckert
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=394234§ion=news
SEOUL - North Korea says it planned to show a nuclear complex at the centre of its atomic crisis to a U.S. congressional delegation whose visit to the communist country was postponed by Washington at the last minute.
The bipartisan delegation was scheduled to leave the United States on Sunday for a trip that coincided with a visit to Pyongyang by a senior Chinese leader and signs of progress in the year-old impasse over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican set to head the delegation, said in a statement on Sunday the trip had been delayed after the White House withdrew its support for the visit "at the 11th hour". His spokesman confirmed the North had suggested visiting the Yongbyon nuclear site.
The White House, which has been trying to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes, said it was important to concentrate on six-way talks involving China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States.
"Given our desire to keep the focus on the six-party process, we believe that a congressional delegation visit to North Korea at this time would not be appropriate," a White House official told Reuters.
Late on Sunday, North Korea's official KCNA news agency said Weldon's delegation had been scheduled to visit the Yongbyon nuclear complex where Pyongyang has said it has reprocessed fuel rods as part of its atomic arms programme.
KCNA said the North had "prepared an itinerary in such a way as to let the delegation visit the nuclear facility in Yongbyon as desired by the delegation so that it might watch on the spot the completed reprocessing and the switchover made in the use of plutonium obtained in its course".
Weldon's spokesman said North Korea had been very keen to give the delegation the chance to visit Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
"The North Koreans had made very strong overtures that the congressional delegation would have the opportunity to visit the Yongbyon facility," Weldon's spokesman Bud DeFlavius said.
No foreigners are known to have visited the top-secret complex since North Korea expelled U.N. nuclear monitors at the end of last year. It was not clear how Weldon's team could verify plutonium reprocessing without the help of experts.
North Korea's repeated efforts to escalate the nuclear crisis, including a statement this month that it had completed reprocessing fuel rods for weapons use, have met with scepticism in the capitals of the other parties to the six-way talks.
SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS
KCNA said North Korea wondered whether President George W. Bush's administration withdrew its support for the congressional visit because it feared the team would be able to confirm progress in the North's nuclear plans.
"This, of course, is an internal affair of the United States which we have nothing to do with. But it is the view of our relevant field on this matter that this has happened because the congress delegation will have an opportunity to see for itself the nuclear facility in Yongbyon," said KCNA.
"We wonder if the administration is not getting nervous about the possibility of the state of our nuclear activity being confirmed by the delegation. Is there any need to do so?"
Both the United States and North Korea have moderated their stances on the dispute in recent days.
Bush said last week he was willing to negotiate some kind of multilateral security guarantee short of a treaty with North Korea if it scraps its nuclear programmes, which Washington sees as a security threat to Asia and a global proliferation worry.
North Korea, in a significant shift away from a rigid insistence on a bilateral non-aggression treaty, said on Saturday it was prepared to consider the U.S. offer of security guarantees in return for Pyongyang dropping its atomic weapons programme.
North Korea's official response to the Bush offer came ahead of a visit to Pyongyang by a Chinese delegation headed by Beijing's Communist Party number two, Wu Bangguo. China has hosted two rounds of nuclear talks with North Korea.
China welcomed the North's shift as a positive gesture.
Weldon, who is vice chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, visited North Korea in May, after which he proposed giving up to $5 billion a year in aid as part of a plan to end its arms programme. The State Department dismissed that idea.
North Korea said on Monday one of leader Kim Jong-il's closest foreign policy aides had died after a traffic accident but South Korean analysts said the death of Kim Yong-sun was unlikely to have an impact on Pyongyang's diplomacy.
----
Congressional visits to N Korea not 'appropriate' at this time: US official
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031027192011.02th4hse.html
Visits to North Korea by US lawmakers at this time are not "appropriate" as they may lead the Stalinist state to lose interest in the resumption of multilateral talks aimed at ending the deadlock over its nuclear weapons programs, a senior State Department official said Monday.
The official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said the White House had weighed in to discourage Congressman Curt Weldon and other legislators from making a trip to North Korea this week for that reason.
"Obviously, we've reached a stage with the possibility of six-party talks that that remains the channel, the emphasis for us," the official said.
"So the White House basically told the congressman that we didn't think that congressional visits at this time would be appropriate," the official said.
"The issue is whether it leads the North Koreans to take their emphasis off the return to the six-party talks," the official added.
The first round of six-party talks -- attended by the United States, China, Russia, Japan and North and South Korea -- were held in Beijing in August. A next round is now being organized by host country China but no dates have been set.
On Sunday, North Korea complained that the White House had blocked Weldon's October 28 to 31 trip to Pyongyang that was to have included a tour the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang.
North Korea has claimed to have completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods at the complex, and was building nuclear bombs there.
Following his last visit, Weldon called for a non-aggression pact between the United States and North Korea and Washington's official recognition of the Stalinist state.
US President George W. Bush has ruled out a non-aggression pact and offered a written multilateral security guarantee for the Stalinist state instead.
On Saturday, North Korea said it would consider the US offer.
----
North Korean Defector Plans Talks in U.S.
October 27, 2003
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/asia/27KORE.html
TOKYO, Oct. 26 - After six years under virtual house arrest in Seoul, South Korea, Hwang Jang Yop, who proudly clings to his status as North Korea's highest-ranking defector, is to arrive in the United States on Monday to talk with Washington's elite about the inner workings of North Korea's secretive government.
Mr. Hwang, who was North Korea's chief ideologue and served as tutor to North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il, has been eagerly awaited by American conservatives. He is to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meet with Bush administration officials and give interviews.
In a recent interview in Seoul, Mr. Hwang, 80, made it clear that he would oppose any deal in which Mr. Kim would give up his nuclear bombs but remain in charge in North Korea. But with the Bush administration now offering North Korea a regional security guarantee in exchange for dismantling its bombs and bomb factories, Mr. Hwang's message may be out of season.
"I absolutely oppose giving North Korea guarantees if the North withdraws its nuclear weapons program," he said. "I completely oppose any policy that will ensure maintenance of the North's dictatorship."
"It is necessary to put America in a leading role of a coalition of South Korea and Japan to eliminate the North Korean dictatorship," added Mr. Hwang, who relied on a hearing aid and spoke through an interpreter. "I won't compromise with any deal that is separate from democratic principles."
For four decades, Mr. Hwang was part of North Korea's Communist dictatorship, rising to become president of Kim Il Sung University and secretary of the governing Korean Workers' Party. He is said to have been the author of the nation's policy of juche, or self-reliance.
But in 1997, Mr. Hwang defected to Seoul. His family paid a steep price for this betrayal. His wife and one daughter are believed to have committed suicide. His son and another daughter, and his granddaughters, are believed to be in slave labor camps.
North Korea's harsh prison camp system, with starvation rations and high mortality rates, was described in a report, "The Hidden Gulag," which was released in Washington last week, by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a private bipartisan group.
Charging that Mr. Hwang's visit would "stir up Washington's war plans against the North," a left-wing student group, the Federation of Korean University Student Councils, has protested outside the American Embassy in Seoul.
Mr. Hwang has led a tightly guarded life in Seoul, surrounded by government security agents. With security officials worrying about North Korean assassination squads, South Korean newspapers and politicians speculate that, once in the United States, he would try to stay. He has said such an idea is "totally groundless" and that he plans to spend only one week in the United States.
"I worked as a close aide to both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il for 40 years," he said. "I believe that my accurate description to Americans of what I saw and felt would be an important purpose of the visit to the U.S."
In Washington, members of Congress are expected to question Mr. Hwang about his knowledge of North Korea's nuclear program and about what Kim Jong Il might do next.
"I was directly told by Kim Jong Il that the North developed the nuclear weapons program," Mr. Hwang said in Seoul. "I also heard it from the associated workers. But I have not seen the nuclear arms."
North Korea, in a shift of policy, said Saturday that it would study the Bush administration proposal to offer North Korea regional security assurances in return for dismantling its nuclear program.
"We are still in for long days and nights of negotiations, but it's a positive step forward," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "The president has made it clear that he has no intention of invading North Korea or attacking North Korea."
In a further move, the North agreed late last week to a visit from an American Congressional delegation that would include a look at the Yongbyon nuclear complex. Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who was to lead the group, said the White House had vetoed the use of an American military plane for the visit. Mr. Weldon said he was studying alternate ways for his group of six legislators to make the visit.
But few people in Washington should expect words of compromise this week from Mr. Hwang, who leads an exile group, the North Korea Democracy Council.
"North Korean society has turned into a dark world of totalitarianism highlighted by hereditary succession of leadership and feudal patriarchy," Mr. Hwang wrote in a recent manifesto for his group. "The upshot of all this is famine and mass exodus of its people while the regime spends hundreds of millions of dollars to build the mausoleum for Kim Il Sung's dead body."
----
North Korea contacts US on nuclear offer
27 October 2003
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/54187/1/.html
WASHINGTON : North Korea has contacted the United States over an offer to give written security assurances in return for the communist state ending its nuclear weapons programme, Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
Powell called it a positive sign, but warned that there are still "long days and nights" of negotiations ahead to end the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.
"We would only enter into an agreement that can be verified," he insisted.
North Korea signalled a shift in stance on Saturday when it said it was ready to consider President George W. Bush's offer of written security guarantees in return for scrapping its nuclear weapons programme.
China, which has the closest links of any country with the isolated regime, immediately welcomed the North's move as a "positive gesture".
Powell said North Korean officials contacted US counterparts last Friday but did not say where. Normally the two sides carry out unofficial negotiations through their missions at the United Nations in New York.
The secretary of state said that since the United States had said last year it had no intention of invading or attacking North Korea the two sides have been "doing diplomatic dances" which gathered pace when President George W. Bush went to an Asia-Pacific leaders summit in Bangkok last week.
North Korea has demanded a full non-aggression pact but Bush reaffirmed his offer of some form of multilateral security assurances during talks with China's President Hu Jintao in Bangkok.
The North Koreans "have responded, at least through their press agency, as well as being in touch with US officials last Friday, to suggest they wish to pursue the ideas that the president has put on the table," Powell told NBC television.
Powell said it was "a positive development" that would be discussed with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea which took part in nuclear talks with North Korea and the United States in Beijing in August.
Powell declined to call the North Korean announcement a breakthrough. "I am reluctant. I try not to hyperbolise things. We are still in for long days and nights of discussions and negotiations. But I think this is a step forward."
The diplomatic effort could make new progress when Wu Bangguo, head of the Chinese parliament and the number two ranking state official, visits Pyongyang this week.
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said North Korea's announcement was a "positive gesture" and that China would keep up efforts to solve the crisis, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
"China hopes that all parties concerned will further show their sincerity, narrow their differences and create the necessary conditions to continue the dialogue progress and seek a political solution for their concerns," Zhang said.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Saturday the nuclear crisis could be resolved if Pyongyang's proposal for "a package solution" is agreed.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said officials from the North and South exchanged opinions about the "package" proposal at the weekend. "I believe the US side is considering the North's suggestion," an unnamed South Korean foreign ministry official was quoted as saying.
Pyongyang has insisted on a non-aggression pact and aid from the United States before it will respond to demands to scrap its nuclear programme.
The crisis erupted one year ago when Washington said the North had admitted running a secret uranium-enrichment programme in violation of a 1994 accord with the United States.
In retaliation, Washington stopped replacement fuel supplies to the stricken state, and in reaction, North Korea reactivated a mothballed nuclear reactor that can make weapons-grade plutonium.
After Saturday's announcement, North Korea returned to its hardline rhetoric on Sunday. An official newspaper warned in a commentary that the nuclear dispute could enter an "uncontrollable phase" if Washington did not cancel plans for what it called a blockade of the communist country
----
Lawmaker: White House Nixed N. Korea Trip
October 27, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-NKorea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Republican congressman said Sunday that opposition from the White House caused him to scrub plans to lead a group of U.S. lawmakers to the site of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
``At the 11th hour, the White House withdrew its support for our bipartisan visit to North Korea,'' Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said in a statement. It said Sunday's scheduled departure has been delayed temporarily.
KCNA, North Korea's official news agency, reported that the congressional delegation had notified Kim Jong Il's government Friday that the trip was canceled ``due to the opposition of the White House.''
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush had good discussions on his recent trip to Asia on moving forward with multinational diplomacy to persuade the North to move forward to end its nuclear weapons program.
To try to keep the focus on that process, the official said, ``we believe that a congressional delegation visit to North Korea at this time would not be appropriate.''
Weldon is considered an expert on foreign policy matters, especially involving Russia, China and other former Cold War rivals such as North Korea.
He had planned to visit the communist-led North from Tuesday through Friday. He led a delegation there in late May and said on his return that North Korea's government was ready to bargain about its weapons development program and nuclear stockpiles.
KCNA said North Korea had planned to invite Weldon's delegation to visit Yongbyon, North Korea's main nuclear complex. Weldon and his congressional colleagues would have been the first outsiders at the plant since North Korea threw out U.N. nuclear inspectors late last year.
``Discussions continue between our delegation and North Korean officials,'' Weldon said in his statement. ``The members of the delegation still believe that a congressional visit will positively impact relations between our two nations.
``In that regard, the North Koreans continue to make overtures that our delegation will have access to the Yongbyon nuclear facility.''
North Korea said on Saturday it would consider President Bush's offer of written security assurances in return for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
A North Korean spokesman, quoted by KCNA, said his government was ``ready to consider Bush's remarks on the `written assurances of nonaggression' if they are based on the intention to coexist'' and offer simultaneous actions.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday any reciprocal agreement leading to written assurances against an attack on North Korea would have to be verifiable.
``The president has made it clear since the beginning of this situation last year that he had no intention of invading North Korea,'' Powell said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``North Korea listened to these assurances, and we've been doing diplomatic dances for the last year.
``And in the last several days, after the president, once again, reaffirmed his position with President Hu Jintao of China and other leaders in Thailand last week, the North Koreans have responded ... to suggest they wish to pursue the ideas that the president has put on the table.''
North Korea has been a particular problem for the Bush administration since the president put the North in an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran in his 2002 State of the Union address.
Later disclosures that the Koreans had continued working on nuclear weapons, despite an agreement with the former Clinton administration to stop, caused a precipitous fall in relations.
After a full break, the two are again talking, together with Russia, South Korea, Japan and China. Bush said last week the five other negotiating parties would join in the written assurances that no attack was planned.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Senator John Edwards Letter re new nuclear weapons
October 27, 2003
From: Cheryl Newell, Black Mountain, NC
Dear Ms. Newell:
Thank you for contacting me about funding for the development of nuclear weapons, including nuclear earth penetrators ("bunker busters")....
I oppose the development and funding of so-called "low-yield" and "bunker buster" nuclear weapons. Making nuclear weapons more "usable" will not make Americans more secure. Reversing the ban on developing these weapons is both unnecessary and irresponsible. This would send exactly the wrong message to the rest of the world. Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and technology is one of our most important international goals, and we need to do much more to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and keep these weapons out of terrorists' hands.
Every decision we make about U.S. nuclear weapons policy must take into account the arms control and non-proliferation strategies that have helped keep the world safe for decades. On September 16, the Senate considered two amendments to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act for FY 2004 that would prohibit the use of Department of Energy funds for nuclear weapons development. Senator Feinstein's amendment would have specifically prohibited the use of funds for Department of Energy activities relating to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, Advanced Weapons Concepts, modification of the readiness posture of the Nevada Test Site, and the Modern Pit Facility. This amendment failed by a vote of 53-41. Senator Reed's amendment, which prohibited the use of funds for certain activities relating to advanced nuclear weapons concepts, including the robust nuclear earth penetrator, later passed the Senate in a voice vote....
John Edwards
JE/kh
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- utah
Waste storage needs open debate
Monday, October 27, 2003
Provo, Utah Daily Herald
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=4856
We're surprised that Rep. Rob Bishop, a former high school history teacher, could fail this lesson in civics: Controversial matters deserve a public hearing and open debate before they are approved.
Bishop, R-Utah, and former lobbyist for Envirocare of Utah -- a company devoted to the storage of nuclear waste -- tacked on an amendment to the Energy Bill that would allowEnvirocare to accept uranium tailings from a government plant in Fernald, Ohio.
Bishop got his amendment inserted during conference committee discussions to reconcile differences in House and Senate versions of the bill. It's a point in the process that deprives Congress as a whole of the opportunity to debate its merits and remove it if desired. When the amended bill comes back for a floor vote, lawmakers can only vote yes or no. After conference committee, no more changes are allowed.
Bishop's amendment redefines what constitutes "Fernald waste" -- leftovers from highly concentrated nuclear material used to make weapons. Changing the definition doesn't change the material, of course, but it does place it in a milder category for purposes of regulation.
Bishop's new definition would allow Fernald waste to be stored in a commercial site such as Envirocare. Under the old definition, this stuff can be stored only in underground repositories used for plutonium.
This little matter of semantics has serious repercussions for Utah. It's a question of public safety when radioactive waste is being shipped across the country, possibly putting millions of people at risk along the route. It's also a question of whether Utah should be the place for dumping radioactive waste.
These important questions should be debated in the open, not pushed through Congress by sleight of hand. It deserves public hearings to allow members of Congress to get as much public input as possible.
Congress should never be forced to vote on something that a lobbyist-turned-congressman inserted into a bill after the official clock ran out on debate -- an insertion suspiciously favorable to his former employer.
Congress needs to reject the Energy Bill unless Bishop's rider is removed and introduced as separate legislation.
-------- washington
Hanford workers unearth barrels of radioactive waste
10-27-03
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=294326
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have begun a large-scale effort to retrieve thousands of barrels of hazardous and radioactive nuclear waste from burial grounds.
About 30 barrels were pulled out by Monday afternoon from the underground sites at the center of the reservation, said Dale McKenney, deputy director of waste management and groundwater protection for Fluor Hanford, the company handling some aspects of waste cleanup at Hanford.
Fluor is the contractor that manages Hanford for the U.S. Department of Energy.
''The waste that's in these trenches is one of the last great unknowns here at Hanford,'' said Mike Wilson with the state Department of Ecology. What we do know, he said, is that the longer the barrels are buried, the greater the chances they will decay and cause leaks that could reach the Columbia River.
Some of the barrels have been stored underground since the 1970s, and all precautions are being taken to ensure worker safety on the site, McKenney said.
''Make no mistake, this is not easy work,'' said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland office.
The state of Washington and the Energy Department announced an agreement Friday for a schedule to retrieve, store and treat the waste at Hanford, the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
The agreement covers radioactive trash and hazardous waste, including transuranic waste that has been packed in barrels and buried at Hanford. Transuranic waste is typically plutonium-contaminated trash such as discarded protective gear, tools and equipment, which is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years to decay to safe radiation levels.
Rep. Doc Hastings, who was on hand for a media event Monday to show how the barrels are unearthed, congratulated all parties involved with getting an agreement.
''Working together is absolutely paramount,'' said Hastings, R-Wash. ''The key is trying to get these disputes resolved.''
The equivalent of 75,000 55-gallon barrels containing suspected transuranic waste are stored underground at Hanford.
Workers are expected to retrieve about 6,000 drums of waste in the coming year. Once the drums are unearthed, crews will inspect them and examine the contents to determine how they should dispose of the waste.
Barrels containing less hazardous waste will be disposed of in appropriate facilities at Hanford. Drums that are determined to contain transuranic waste ultimately will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal.
About 1,600 drums of transuranic waste from Hanford's warehouses already have been shipped to the disposal facility in New Mexico since 2000.
''We're going in to get these drums before they can further degrade and affect the environment,'' Klein said. ''We're accelerating cleanup of these areas, and reducing the risk this material poses to the surrounding environment.''
Fluor Hanford also has increased its staff and made additional equipment available to speed the process of shipping waste to New Mexico.
Each shipment contains an average of 35 drums. Fluor Hanford made 37 shipments last year and expects to triple that number in the coming year.
On the Net:
www.hanford.gov
-------- us nuc waste
Greenpeace exposes secret nuclear shipment
Greenpeace:
Monday, 27 October, 2003
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/features/features_details.html?site_id=45&news_id=1207
Federal government attempts to keep secret a shipment of dangerous nuclear waste were foiled by Greenpeace and local residents overnight.
At 1.30am today, under heavy police escort, trucks carried hazardous radioactive waste from Lucas Heights, through suburban streets, to Port Botany. From there it was shipped to Cherbourg, France for reprocessing and temporary storage.
Following community opposition at the reactor in southern Sydney, Greenpeace and volunteers documented the transportion of hazardous material through General Holmes Drive tunnel under Sydney airport - a stretch of road which is banned to hazardous goods.
Greenpeace then set up a 24-hour surveillance team in Port Botany to monitor the shipment which is believed to be the highest level of nuclear waste in Australia, consisting of some 344 spent fuel rods from the Lucas Heights reactor.
Greenpeace nuclear campaigner James Courtney said, "In the longstanding tradition of Greenpeace we bore witness to this immoral activity and documented the transportation of this dangerous high-level nuclear waste.
"This could be the last time that the public get to learn about the dangerous nuclear transports being run through Sydney's streets and across the Pacific Ocean by the Federal Government. Next week the federal parliament will debate a Commonwealth Nuclear Secrets bill which, if passed, would make independent monitoring of future shipments illegal.
"Greenpeace is calling for the sections of the Bill that abolish the public's right to know about the hazards of nuclear waste transports to be rejected.
"By keeping their route secret, the Government thinks they can get away with side stepping these fundamental safety regulations. Greenpeace will continue to monitor nuclear transports to ensure that the Federal and NSW Governments are held responsible for putting the community at unneccesary risk with inadequate and dangerous management," he said.
-------- us politics
What will make them stop?
By JOHANNA MCGEARY, CNN / Time
Monday, October 27, 2003 http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/27/timep.nukes.tm/
Carrots? Sticks? Inside Bush's diplomatic struggle to persuade Iran and North Korea to give up their nuke programs
Foreign policy never seems to come easily to the Bush Administration. Consider the controversial light-water nuclear plant that Iran is building, with Russian help, at the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr. The prospect of Iran's mullahs controlling a 1,000-MW reactor capable of generating plutonium has worried Washington for years.
With Tehran facing an Oct. 31 deadline for coming clean on its nuclear ventures, you'd think the Administration would have a clear take on Bushehr. Think again. There's the conciliatory view: "We could conceive of them keeping the reactor," says a senior State Department aide.
If the Russians took back all the spent fuel, as they have proposed, "that would be acceptable." And the hard-line slant: "No way. That's not the policy," says a senior Administration official. The U.S. will never accept Bushehr "as long as we think they have a weapons program."
So what is it? Conciliation? Hard line? Such divisions have plagued President George W. Bush's approach to nuclear-security issues with both Iran and North Korea, the remaining points on the "axis of evil."
The neocons argue that the only way to curb the suspected atomic ambitions of these regimes is to depose the rulers. The moderates believe that engaging adversaries in dialogue can diminish the threat more easily and cheaply. So the Bush team has alternately ignored, threatened, cajoled and coerced the two countries, driven not by a coherent strategy but by a disorderly struggle at the highest levels to find common tactical ground between two irreconcilable approaches, engagement and confrontation.
For the moment, a President viewed abroad as a go-it-alone cowboy is looking more like a born-again multilateralist. The potentially important deal that Iran signed with European leaders last week to slow its nuclear program could push Bush to accept a level of engagement with Tehran that his hard-line advisers have resisted.
And his offer of a written, multinational security guarantee for North Korea if it gives up its nuclear ambitions could commit the U.S. to protracted negotiations there as well. A President famed for his harsh, admonitory tone struck a conciliatory note aboard Air Force One last week, telling reporters, "I've been saying all along that not every policy issue needs to be dealt with by force."
Bush has uttered similar words on occasion, but they have tended to get lost in the confrontational politics that the hard-line part of his Administration espouses. In the heady days after Saddam Hussein's statue fell in Baghdad's Firdos Square, when regime change seemed so easy, some hawks even suggested that North Korea or Iran should be next.
But with the U.S. military still busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, intervention - if it ever was an option - seems out of the question. And as Bush heads into an uncertain election year, he may wish to avoid creating any new international crises.
The stakes could hardly be higher. Iran has long been considered one of the world's most active sponsors of terrorism. With nuclear weapons, it could pose precisely the kind of threat Bush argued was so dangerous in prewar Iraq. North Korea is the world's most active proliferator of advanced weapons and the self-proclaimed possessor of a bomb or two.
Backed into a corner, it might react with reckless irrationality. What comes next will depend on whether Bush's turn to diplomacy is a temporary expedient or a sincere strategic shift. Wise observers note that the twin efforts last week to cool these nuclear threats represent a beginning, not a resolution.
Washington's hard-liners aren't about to give up easily, any more than the tough factions in Tehran and Pyongyang will. If things go badly, the U.S. could easily find itself back in confrontation mode.
Here are the twin threats and the Bush Administration's efforts to contain them.
Iran
The Bush Administration already had grievances with Iran, like its export of revolutionary ideology and support for terrorism. Although two-way contacts kept Iran from meddling in the Afghan and Iraq wars, Administration hard-liners successfully rebuffed periodic State Department proposals to reach out to the modestly reformist government of President Mohammed Khatami, under the fundamental axiom that the Bush Administration does not do business with outlaws.
Then earlier this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) learned that Iran was cheating on nukes. Since it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970, Iran is allowed to pursue peaceful nuclear development under the watchful eyes of the IAEA.
But in August 2002 exiled dissidents revealed that Iran had secretly built an underground uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz equipped with centrifuges that could spin out weapons-grade uranium. If not stopped, the plant could give Iran enough enriched uranium for two bombs a year, with the first available by the end of the decade (says the U.S.) or maybe in just two years (says Israel). Inspectors also wanted to know why Iran had conducted experiments converting unreported uranium tetrafluoride into uranium metal - a process necessary for bomb production.
And then IAEA inspectors found the Natanz centrifuges were tainted with traces of highly enriched uranium, a telltale sign that Iran could be brewing fissile material. Iran denied that it was covertly making bombs and claimed that the centrifuges had been contaminated before they reached Iran.
The evidence seemed sufficient to the Administration. Washington charged Iran with violating its NPT commitments and insisted that the agency take Iran's noncompliance to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose punitive sanctions. To Tehran's dismay, the international community sided with the U.S.
"The Iranians are behaving in a way that leads people to think they have something to hide," said a British official. The IAEA agreed unanimously in September to give Iran until Oct. 31 to explain itself or face possible U.N. sanctions.
The approaching deadline has added fuel to Iran's internal political struggle. President Khatami's reformers, according to an adviser, feared that defiance would cost the country its hard-won trade with Europe and Japan and any hope of emerging from U.S.-imposed isolation. Iran's hard-liners wanted to keep the centrifuges spinning, quit the NPT and let Iran bully its way to regional supremacy as an A-bomb owner, according to diplomats and Iranian analysts.
Both sides suspected that the U.S. was using the nuclear agency to force a showdown. "Americans have been looking for pretexts for 25 years now," Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami's official spokesman, told TIME. "The neocons in the U.S. don't believe in the needs and demands of other nations, and they don't believe in dialogue. They want to use force."
Iran's embattled President spent three months maneuvering against the hard-liners. According to close associates, he built a broad coalition for a moderate response to IAEA demands among pragmatists in the military and clergy, reformers in parliament and Iranian public opinion.
Because the conservatives never publicly claimed that Iran wanted a nuclear bomb and Iran's top cleric once called such weapons un-Islamic, it was not humiliating to climb down. "In the end," Khatami's adviser says, the President convinced the country's real boss, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, that defying the IAEA would entail formidable risks to Iran's national interests.
What made it all work was the intervention of Britain, France and Germany, which devised a face-saving deal. The three countries wrote to Khatami in late August, offering to recognize Iran's right to peaceful nuclear development and to provide technological "cooperation," meaning trade, if Iran would meet the IAEA demands.
That let Khatami show hard-liners that Iran would profit by giving in and prove the country is prepared to play by the world's rules. By the time the three European nations' Foreign Ministers arrived in Tehran at Khatami's invitation last week, Iran was ready to make the announcement.
The country would sign the Additional Protocol, which calls for unfettered inspections and a suspension of uranium-enrichment and -reprocessing activities and requires Iran to answer all questions about the "possible failures and deficiencies" of its nuclear program.
While Iran hailed the agreement as a major breakthrough and Europe basked in the success of its politics of engagement, the U.S. reserved judgment. U.S. officials say they knew and approved of the initiative, and Bush grudgingly described the deal as "an effective approach."
But privately, U.S. officials, especially the neocons, are charging that the deal was a ploy designed to buy Iran time to procure the Bomb. Washington is skeptical that Iran will follow through on its paper promises and fears that the Europeans may grow soft on Iran and prove more eager to accommodate a dangerous miscreant than to hold it to its word.
But without the European intervention, there probably wouldn't have been a deal. Iranians, says Tehran University political-science professor Hadi Semati, would never have given in to American bullying. "If it had been the stick alone," he says, "there would have been no choice but to go the North Korean route."
Many analysts say any agreement to curb Iran's nukes deserves a cheer. But will Tehran live up to its promises? Administration skeptics are worried that the deal merely delays, not derails, an eventual confrontation.
At the end of last week, Tehran delivered to the IAEA in Vienna a thick, indexed binder containing its "full" declaration detailing the hows and whys of its suspect behavior. The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told TIME the report admitted "mistakes" that resulted not from attempts to build weapons but from ignorance of IAEA requirements and a desire to be "discreet" because of the threat of U.S. sanctions.
More troubling, he said, the document does not resolve a key issue: how the centrifuges were contaminated. The ambassador insisted, as Iran has done for weeks, that the parts came from middlemen who got them in several countries, "but we do not know where." The IAEA must now attempt to determine whether this is a dodge.
Nor did the agreement with the Europeans specify when Iran would sign the new inspections protocol or how long it would take the country's elected government and clerical overseers to ratify it.
The same day Iran promised to suspend reprocessing efforts, Iran's national security council chief Hassan Rowhani said, "We voluntarily chose to do it, which means it could last for one day or one year." In any case, the goal is to make the voluntary suspension permanent and get Iran to stop making nuclear fuel. The Europeans hope to persuade Tehran by guaranteeing that they will provide supplies.
But no matter how diligently Iran respects NPT rules or how well monitored its program is, if it retains the capacity to enrich uranium, it can revert to the bomb business on short notice unless the facilities are completely dismantled.
North Korea
The nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula has hung over the U.S. ever since Bush declared his "skepticism" about the regime. "I loathe Kim Jong Il," he told author Bob Woodward. "I've got a visceral reaction to this guy because he is starving his people." Bush said that, unlike the Clinton Administration, his would not submit to Kim's nuclear blackmail by rewarding the obdurate nation for abandoning its illicit ambitions. For the next 18 months, North Korea was pretty much ignored.
But Kim's regime forced the U.S. to take notice in October 2002 by admitting that it had cheated on its 1994 accord with Clinton to stop pursuing nukes and was well down the road toward making some.
Now the threat was grave: North Korea had tested a missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead to the U.S., and the cash-strapped regime could conceivably sell some of its stock to terrorists. North Korea's worried neighbors felt Washington's harsh line had driven Kim to reckless behavior. In January Pyongyang quit the NPT, threw out inspectors and accelerated its plutonium production. The North is thought to have one or two bombs plus fuel to make up to six. But as Pyongyang watched Bush charge into Iraq, it fretted that it could be next. It demanded that the U.S. sign a nonaggression pact renouncing hostile intent as a prerequisite for a nuclear stand-down. The U.S. said it would strike no bargain unless the North scrapped its nukes first.
Since taking office, Secretary of State Colin Powell has tried to nudge Bush toward a diplomatic overture. As the crisis built this year, Powell finally persuaded Bush and China to form a united front with Russia, Japan and South Korea to negotiate with the North.
The show of unity at a six-way session in Beijing in August highlighted the North's isolation, but the principal antagonists did not budge. Pyongyang said it was not interested in continuing talks. The allies grumbled there was no point in pressing ahead if the U.S. was just going to restate its absolutist position.
As Bush prepared for the trip he made to Asia two weeks ago, he felt pressure to offer a concession that might break the stalemate. If the talks collapsed, his Asian allies would blame him.
On the weekend of Oct. 11, he called advisers to Camp David to thrash out an acceptable compromise. The group proposed that Bush offer a written multilateral "agreement with a small a"--not a treaty - assuring that the U.S. would not attack the North. In return, Kim would have to start dismantling his nukes.
Bush's offer, made in a private meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Bangkok, was out there for exactly two days before the North dismissed it as "laughable." But it played well elsewhere, especially among the anxious Asian allies. It now falls to China, which has grudgingly taken on the role of chief mediator, to entice Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. Prospects brightened Saturday as the North abruptly reversed itself and said it would "consider" Bush's proposal.
For the moment, multilateralism rules. Bush sounded like a convert when he told reporters he welcomed Europe's involvement in Iran as well as the Asian effort in Korea. "It's the same approach," he said, "a collective voice trying to convince a leader to change behavior."
But few believe Iran and North Korea are ready to give up their nuclear dreams. And fewer still think Bush has permanently metamorphosed from Lone Ranger to great statesman. On his way back from Asia, Bush couldn't help bashing Kim: "I just can't respect anyone that would really let his people starve and shrink in size as a result of malnutrition." Back home, the neocons and hard-liners who surround the President are just waiting for the poofy multilateral deals to fall apart.
Then they will have the case they want to go full bore after regime change in the rest of the "axis of evil."
- with Scott Macleod/Tehran and Massimo Calabresi/Washington With reporting by Matthew Cooper/with Bush, J.F.O. McAllister/London and Andrew Purvis/Vienna
----
Democrats in Debate Attack Bush on Iraq, Each Other
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20780-2003Oct26?language=printer
DETROIT, Oct. 26 -- Candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination attacked President Bush on Iraq Sunday night, charging that he misled the country before the war and lacks an exit strategy to end it. Then they turned on one another in sharp exchanges over their own positions on the war and its aftermath.
The divisions over Iraq highlighted the 90-minute debate among the nine Democrats and overshadowed differences on the economy and other domestic issues that also emerged, particularly whether former Vermont governor Howard Dean would cut federal entitlements programs to help reduce the budget deficit.
The nationally televised session underscored that, with the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire less than 90 days away, the battle for the nomination is rapidly intensifying.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) quarreled with retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, while Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) clashed with Lieberman on Iraq and with Dean on domestic policy. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) defended his votes backing Bush on Iraq and on $87 billion to support military and reconstruction efforts there and in Afghanistan. Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) defended his decision to vote against the new money after supporting the war resolution a year ago.
This was the fifth debate among the Democratic candidates in eight weeks and also included Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), former senator Carol Moseley Braun (Ill.) and Al Sharpton. The debate, held at the Fox Theatre, was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute and carried on the Fox News Channel. PBS's Gwen Ifill moderated the debate, with questioning also by Carl Cameron of Fox News and Huel Perkins, local anchor at WJBK-TV.
Bush drew the opening fire on Iraq, with the candidates charging that he has mismanaged the war from the beginning. "This president has done it wrong every step of the way," Kerry said, adding that Bush has "broken every promise" in his handling of the war.
Sharpton said the country is playing "Bush roulette" with the safety of U.S. troops in Iraq and said it is time to bring them home now. Clark accused the president of "bait and switch" after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "He promised to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive," Clark said. "Instead, he went after Saddam Hussein."
But it took only a few minutes for the debate to turn inward, as Lieberman jumped on Clark, Edwards and Kerry for inconsistency on the war. He criticized his fellow senators for supporting the war resolution but not the $87 billion in new money, then accused Clark of a failure of leadership.
"He took six different positions on whether going to war was the right idea," Lieberman said. "It took him four days to decide whether voting on the $87 billion was a good idea. The American people want leadership that they can trust to do what's right for our country and have the courage to stick with that, whether it's politically easy or not."
Clark shot back, "I wasn't in Congress. I wasn't able to vote on the $87 billion, but I want to make it very clear that I would not have voted on $87 billion. I want to commend John Edwards and John Kerry and those who voted against this resolution."
Kerry cited his own Vietnam combat experience to rebut Lieberman. "Well, Joe," he said to applause, "I have seared in me an experience which you don't have, and that's the experience of being one of those troops on the front lines when the policy has gone wrong."
"Obviously, I respect John Kerry's military service to our country," Lieberman said, "but that's not what this is about. This is about the votes that he's cast that I believe are inconsistent."
Edwards said he had stood with the president on the war because he believed Hussein was a threat to the country, but said he opposed the $87 billion funding request because "this president has no plan" for stabilizing Iraq and bringing U.S. forces home in a timely way.
"For me to vote yes on that," he said to Lieberman, "would be to give this president a blank check, and I am not willing to give George Bush a blank check."
Gephardt said he agreed with others that "the president has failed," but said, "I can't find it within myself to not vote for the money to support the troops, our young men and women who are over there protecting us, dodging bullets in a very tough and difficult situation."
But later he summed up his feelings for Bush when he said, "Like father, like son -- four years and he's done."
Dean has criticized unnamed opponents in a new television ad for their support of the war. One member of Congress who opposed the war, Kucinich, challenged the ad as leaving the false impression that all the other Democrats had taken a position opposite of Dean's.
"Why forfeit the public trust?" he asked. "Why can't you just admit you made a mistake and take down the ad? I mean, you have Ambassador Braun, Mr. Sharpton, myself -- we opposed the war. Why don't you take down those ads? They're not true."
"I don't think my ad is inaccurate at all," Dean said. "I'm talking about the people who supported the war, with whom I disagree."
Dean defended his foreign policy credentials and has said he had better judgment about Iraq than his more experienced rivals, but Kerry took issue with Dean's assertion that, as president, he would have good advisers around him. "We're electing a president of the United States, not a staff. And we need to elect a president who has the judgment to do this," Kerry said.
Clark was asked about charges from the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. "Hugh" Shelton, that he had been called home early from Europe, after successfully prosecuting the war in Kosovo, for reasons of character and integrity.
Saying that some in the Pentagon "disagreed with me" on how to fight the war, he said. "I worked, I warned, I struggled to prevent a war. And when it finally came down to it, I had to fight it, lead it, and we won it." He added: "Why Hugh Shelton would say that now, I have no idea."
On domestic issues, the sharpest exchange came over whether Dean would consider cutting Medicare, Medicaid or other entitlements programs to help balance the budget. He said none of the three is "on the table"
Kerry, noting that Dean had said earlier that he would consider cutting some entitlement programs, shot back, "If he just took Social Security and Medicare off the table, the question is, what entitlements are on the table? Veterans' pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, Social -- disability? He can't answer that question."
The Democrats criticized remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin for suggesting that the war on terrorism is a war between Christianity and Islam. "This is not about one religion against another," Sharpton said. "It's about right versus wrong. I said it earlier when we were talking about right to choose: One of the reasons I'm glad to be in this race is we're going to have the battle between the Christian right and the right Christians."
Edwards and others attacked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and his enforcement of the Patriot Act. "He has consistently abused his discretion," Edwards said. "We all know that now. These provisions need to be changed."
At one point, Braun complained that she and Kucinich had not had a chance to get into the debate. When told that was because the exchanges were mostly a series of rebuttals among the other candidates, she said, to laughter, "Well, just because nobody's mad at us."
--------
Senators Call On White House To Share Records With 9/11 Panel
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21492-2003Oct26.html
Prominent senators of both parties, learning that the chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has not received full access to pertinent government documents, called on the White House yesterday to be more forthcoming.
"After claiming they wanted to find the truth about September 11th, the Bush administration has resorted to secrecy, stonewalling and foot dragging," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). "They have resisted this inquiry at every turn."
Lieberman, a presidential candidate and co-sponsor of legislation forming the bipartisan panel, pressed the White House to release all records relating to the terrorist attacks, including highly classified intelligence reports.
"If they continue to refuse, I will urge the independent commission to take the administration to court," he said in a statement. "And if the administration tries to run out the clock, John McCain and I will go to the floor of the Senate to extend the life of the commission." McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean said in an interview with the New York Times published yesterday that the panel "will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document." Kean is prepared to subpoena documents held by the White House and other federal agencies, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg confirmed.
Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, has acknowledged his commission is seeking sensitive materials. But he suggested presidential privilege does not apply to the work of his panel in the same way it might enable the White House to withhold documents from Congress.
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) urged the administration to comply with the commission's requests.
"On the intelligence committee, we're going through some of the same problems," Rockefeller said. "A lot of the documents that we've requested from the Department of Defense, from the White House and the National Security Agency, we do not have yet."
Last month, the 10-member National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States issued its first subpoenas to the Federal Aviation Administration. In all, the commission has received 2 million pages of documents and conducted hundreds of interviews, Felzenberg said.
White House spokesman Brian Besanceney had no comment on the prospect of a subpoena, but said: "The administration has provided unprecedented cooperation, including millions of pages of documents, and we look forward to continuing to work with the commission to accomplish its goals."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Officials Ousted in Afghan Province
By Burt Herman
Associated Press
Monday, October 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21489-2003Oct26.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 26 -- Boldly asserting the central government's power in the tense north, Afghanistan's interior minister on Sunday dismissed several top officials after the outbreak of some of the worst factional fighting there since the fall of the Taliban.
During a visit to the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, the official, Ali Ahmad Jalali, appointed a new provincial governor and deputy governor and replaced the city's mayor and police chief, officials said.
The reshuffle was part of unpublished measures passed by Afghanistan's national security council aimed at "bringing more security to the north and finding a solution to some of the security problems," presidential spokesman Jawid Luddin said.
Feuding warlords have routinely clashed in isolated villages across the north since they returned to power there after helping the U.S.-led coalition topple the Taliban in late 2001.
But earlier this month, fighting between forces under ethnic Uzbek Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum and his Tajik rival, Gen. Attah Mohammad, erupted into a pitched battle just outside Mazar-e Sharif, with tanks rumbling through the city of 1.5 million on their way to the battlefield. One side asserted that more than 60 people were killed; the other said there were fewer casualties.
In one of the more unusual appointments, the former police chief of the southern city of Kandahar -- Mohammed Akram, an ethnic Pashtun -- was named chief in Mazar-e Sharif, said Sultanali Sultani, a spokesman for an ethnic Hazara faction.
Many Pashtuns have left the north, where they are a minority, because of discrimination after the ouster of the Taliban, whose stronghold was in Kandahar and who were mostly Pashtun.
Sultani said the head of Balkh University, Habibullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was appointed caretaker governor of Balkh province, of which Mazar-e Sharif is the capital.
Dostum and Mohammad, were not affected themselves in the shake-up, although it removed from power those who had loyalties to their factions.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticized warlords for fomenting instability in the country and blamed them for using illicit opium crops to help finance their private armies. Afghanistan is world's largest opium producer.
Helping to bring increased security to the north, an advance team of German troops arrived Saturday in Kunduz, east of Mazar-e Sharif, to prepare for the arrival of 450 peacekeepers by spring.
Mazar-e Sharif is one of the eight cities expected to host international troops after the U.N. Security Council agreed this month to extend their mandate outside the capital, Kabul.
-------- business
Rules Circumvented on Huge Boeing Defense Contract
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21584-2003Oct26?language=printer
The Boeing Co.'s campaign to win federal backing for a lucrative new military airplane contract was in trouble in October 2002. The head of the Office of Management and Budget had just told the Air Force and Congress that the acquisition plan -- which featured the most costly government lease in U.S. history -- was not urgent and would squander billions of dollars.
Then White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., acting at what officials say was the direction of President Bush, told the Air Force and OMB to resolve their differences. Bush had been lobbied hard by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), whose districts are in states that include, respectively, Boeing's headquarters and a key production facility.
Given the depth of the speaker's feelings about it, Bush really hoped something could be worked out, Card told others, according to a participant in the internal deliberations. And with Card's intervention, obstacles to the deal eventually fell away. Vehement objections raised by OMB and Pentagon budget analysts -- that the planes were too expensive and that leasing would set a bad precedent -- were muted or withdrawn.
Card's intervention was but one fruit of a two-year lobbying campaign, mounted jointly by the Air Force and Boeing, that has brought the $21 billion to $25 billion deal within one congressional hurdle of being passed. An examination of that campaign, based on dozens of interviews and thousands of internal e-mails Boeing surrendered to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, shows how Boeing circumvented the usual route of Pentagon acquisitions -- and, with it, many of the rules and regulations enacted over the past three decades to forestall defense contracting abuses.
"This thing," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said at a Sept. 4 hearing, "is a very skillful, really, Hail Mary pass, long run around the process." His panel is the only one of four congressional committees that has yet to approve the tanker acquisition -- and it may be only days away from doing so. Under the contract, Boeing would produce 100 refueling tankers based on its 767-model airliner, a deal Dicks predicts would be expanded and eventually bring the giant weapons manufacturer $100 billion. That would make it one of the most expensive military programs this decade.
Leasing, rather than buying, is the key to the deal: The Air Force, under current budgeting, cannot afford to buy so many aircraft at once. Leasing would permit it to pay less up front, although it would ultimately pay as much as $5.7 billion more overall. And Boeing would be able to keep its 767 production line active despite a decrease in commercial orders for the plane. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have denounced the program as corporate welfare born in backroom dealing. Air Force Secretary James G. Roche has said it is a cost-effective way to modernize an aging tanker fleet.
In getting this far, the Air Force never conducted a formal study of alternatives to leasing new tankers, as is standard, and it did not formally study the degree of age-related damage to its existing tankers. It never conducted a formal competition before signing the contract, or arranged to test the new tankers before committing to lease all of them.
The deal was approved by a new Pentagon leasing review panel that operates with a fraction of the oversight and regulatory control associated with such recent military acquisitions as the Joint Strike Fighter, the FA-22 attack fighter and Stryker armored vehicle. It is the first in a series of big leases the Pentagon is contemplating, all of which push costs into the future.
Some Pentagon officials remain convinced that the tanker leasing agreement, signed by the Air Force in July, does not meet federal accounting standards, a view shared by the General Accounting Office. Two weeks ago, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it was actually a purchase disguised as a lease, making it "significantly more costly" than a normal purchase.
Ordinarily, such costly military systems are procured after being included in formal budget proposals, which lead to congressional hearings and votes in committees and on the House and Senate floors. In this case, no hearings were held or committee votes taken before the deal was approved in the House and in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In December 2001, language authorizing the deal -- but providing no money -- emerged in legislation in what Hill veterans refer to as a "virgin birth," meaning it was inserted into the defense appropriations bill after the bill had passed the House and Senate, during closed negotiations between conferees. It was then approved on the House and Senate floors as part of a compromise bill.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a longtime supporter of expanding federal leasing, has claimed credit for inserting the language. One month before he did so, he received $21,900 in campaign contributions from 31 Boeing executives at a fundraiser in Seattle, where Boeing has many employees.
Thirty of those contributors -- including executives from the Boeing division that makes 767s -- had not contributed to Stevens in the previous decade, according to records collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and first reported by Defense Week. Stevens spokeswoman Melanie Alvord said there is no connection between the contributions and the legislation.
Stevens is hardly the only supporter of the deal to receive Boeing campaign contributions. About 55 percent of the company's expected revenue of $49 billion this year will come from the federal treasury, and the company has been generous to Congress and the administration. Over the past decade, its employees and political action committees have given $925,000 to members of the four House and Senate committees that handle defense matters, according to the watchdog group Common Cause. The company also gave $100,000 for Bush's inauguration.
Last week, Boeing's congressional supporters sought to include money for the leasing deal in the administration's high-priority $87 billion appropriation bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. If they succeed, the provision will emerge this week from House-Senate conference without having been considered beforehand by either chamber.
Tankers and Partners
The idea of converting 767s into tankers surfaced formally in February 2001, when Boeing proposed to convert 36 planes and sell them to the Air Force for $124.5 million each. The unsolicited bid was undercut by an Air Force study the same month -- drafted by a consulting arm of Boeing -- concluding that existing Air Force KC-135 tankers would be "viable through the year 2040" and that no new planes need be bought until after 2010.
Many existing tankers have flown only a third of their planned lifetime, the study pointed out, and have averaged 12.5 days of flight a year. A separate Air Force study in 2000 concluded that corrosion, a growing problem in aging tankers, was manageable if watched carefully and aggressively repaired. After Boeing made its proposal for new tankers, Roche called both studies flawed.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Boeing pressed the idea with new vigor. Airlines had deferred commercial orders for 767s, and Boeing laid off thousands of employees at plants in Everett, Wash. But the Air Force had not even listed tankers among its "unfunded priorities" in 2001, a multibillion-dollar wish list of weapons it wanted but could not afford. The Air Force had no money to buy the tankers, so on Sept. 25, 2001, the company's top executives met with Darleen A. Druyun, then a senior Air Force acquisitions officer, at the Pentagon to work out a lease deal instead.
Druyun agreed at the meeting, according to notes taken by Boeing, not only to promote the leasing idea on Capitol Hill but also to find needed money by cutting back a comparatively inexpensive modernization program for existing tankers -- an arrangement, Boeing and the Air Force have acknowledged, that will retire flightworthy tankers early to procure new ones.
She also said "work placement could help," meaning that Boeing should ensure that subcontracts were awarded in the districts of key Congress members, according to the notes. She noted further that Stevens could "work" a former employee of his who was then at the Office of Management and Budget. And she asked Boeing to help produce briefing charts the Air Force could take to Stevens's office, and nowhere else.
"The AF is to make no other distribution on the Hill," a Boeing executive wrote in an e-mail on Oct. 17, 2001.
It was the beginning of an effort by the company and top Air Force officials to propel the deal forward -- an effort in which, according to Boeing e-mails, Druyun would explore getting Congress to approve a special waiver of federal accounting rules and advise Boeing on how to win over key lawmakers. McCain said the e-mails demonstrate that "the Air Force appeared not so much to negotiate with Boeing as to advocate for it, to the point of" giving Boeing unusual control over pricing, and other terms and conditions.
Rudy DeLeon, a former Air Force undersecretary and deputy defense secretary who became the head of Boeing's Washington office in July 2001, said in an interview that the e-mails show that "people who believed in the program" were working hard to get it completed. A company official defended the lobbying effort as common practice and said the only atypical thing about it is having it on public display in the e-mails. Druyun declined to comment.
Shortly after the Boeing-Druyun planning meeting, a senior Air Force official summarily dismissed an earlier tanker lease proposal from a small firm called Frigate International Airways. He explained that leasing was constrained by budgeting processes and said that "operational needs [mandated] . . . strict ownership, title and control" of any tankers -- a demand the Boeing deal could not meet.
In November 2001, the Air Force drafted a document spelling out what capabilities the new tankers must have. Col. Mark Donohue, an official in the air mobility office, promptly sent it to Boeing for private comment, and the company sought, and received, concessions so the requirements matched what the 767 could do. The Air Force agreed to drop a demand that the new tankers match or exceed the capabilities of the old ones.
Philip E. Coyle III, an assistant secretary of defense for test and evaluation from 1994 to 2001, said he was surprised by this. The plane's operational capabilities, he said, should be pegged to what the military needs and "should not become the subject of lobbying, nor of endless negotiations."
Boeing then strove to "prevent an AOA [analysis of alternatives] from being conducted," according to a Boeing briefing chart presented to top executives in late 2001 and other e-mails. This, too, surprised Coyle. An AOA "is done virtually every time" a major weapon system is acquired, he said. The company's aim in blocking such an analysis was primarily to avoid delaying delivery of the tankers, John Sams, Boeing's tanker program director, said in an interview. In any event, he said, Stevens's amendment to the defense bill that December already had specified Boeing 767s, so consideration of other options was moot.
Other concessions were in price negotiations, according to e-mails. Druyun "spent most of the time bringing the USAF price up to our number. . . . It was a good day!" a Boeing executive wrote in June 2002.
"This is a classic case of the Iron Triangle" in defense contracting -- the alliance between corporations, the government and affected members of Congress, Jeffrey P. Bialos, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs during the Clinton administration, said after reading the e-mails. The seller in such an arrangement, he said, "works with the government to create the demand."
Opposition and Support
Still, the deal faced large hurdles. It called for Boeing to sell the planes to a nonprofit trust, which would lease them to the Air Force. Leasing costs would be paid partly by bonds sold on Wall Street, with the Air Force paying the interest. Trusts of this sort got a bad reputation in 2001 after regulators learned that corporations such as Enron abused them to manipulate accounting results.
An Air Force financial consultant told Boeing at one point that it was good that attention was focused on Enron instead of "your illogical accounting posture," according to a Boeing e-mail. Among critics of the deal, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) said the Air Force seemed to be using the trust to obscure the deal's cost and reduce its transparency.
In addition, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., then chief of the Office of Management and Budget, told members of Congress in a series of letters that the deal was "irresponsible" because it did not meet federal leasing rules, cost too much and would actually cause a net decline in refueling capacity as 767s replaced existing tankers. It was, he told colleagues, the kind of deal that gave defense contracting a bad name.
Bob Gordon, a Boeing vice president, worried in an August 2002 e-mail that the company could have a "PR risk" because the idea that leasing was preferable to buying "won't make sense in the newspapers." Furthermore, he wrote, neither Boeing nor an investment banking firm familiar with the deal "would ever put its hand on a bible and say that makes economic sense."
Moreover, the Institute for Defense Analyses, an independent think tank, told the Pentagon after a detailed study that the Air Force was overpaying by at least $21 million per plane and that the lease violated federal accounting rules. "The concern remains that we are not giving the [U.S. government] a fair deal. This continues to be driven by the IDA study and OMB," Boeing defense systems president Jim Albaugh wrote at one point.
Boeing executive Thomas Owens wrote in an e-mail that Roche asked the company to pressure his Pentagon bosses to squelch the study. Roche, through a spokesman, called the allegation preposterous. The institute, in fact, did not back down.
To overcome opposition to the deal, Air Force officials sought to use Boeing's political connections to discredit critics by forging a grass-roots strategy, e-mails say.
One quotes Bill Bodie, a senior adviser to Roche, as urging Boeing executives to "have our friends on the Hill, think tanks, etc. get more visible/vocal" in registering their support for the program. The aim was to "drown out McCain" and "insulate/support" Roche, the e-mail said. Bodie declined to comment for this story.
The company sought to solidify support from Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), the senior Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee, by agreeing to explore a subcontract to a firm in his district, some of the e-mails state. Boeing and the Air Force jointly planned a campaign "to educate the media" on the merits of the deal.
Boeing also asked retired Adm. Archie Clemins, a former commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, to submit an op-ed article touting the 767 tankers to Navy Times, a part of the Gannett media chain. Clemins acknowledged in an interview that Boeing "helped me write that." In an internal e-mail, a company official called it "ghost-written." The article appeared in five Gannett publications. Months later, Boeing hired Clemins as a consultant. A Boeing spokesman said he "was aware of no relation between the hiring and the op-ed."
Tobias Naegele, editor in chief of the Army Times Publishing Co., which runs the magazine, said: "The piece came over without any indications he wrote it with anyone else. We really should have asked him, and it is standard practice now."
A Boeing consultant on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David E. Jeremiah, was tasked to "engage in OSD [Office of Secretary of Defense] circles," a Boeing e-mail said. Jeremiah said he did not engage any defense officials on the tanker issue.
One Boeing e-mail noted that "we are in touch with Andy Card and White House political operation." It said a "union strategy [was] in play," which McCain has interpreted as a go-ahead to Arizona labor unions, which ran advertisements calling on him to register as a lobbyist for Airbus, a Boeing competitor.
Boeing executives contacted key subcontractors last winter and "urged them to be part of the debate" by calling Card and other administration officials, DeLeon said. Hastert, whose district lies 30 miles from Boeing's new headquarters, and Dicks directly reached Bush in late September 2002. According to a Boeing e-mail, Bush asked Card to be "on point" for the deal.
A month later, a Boeing e-mail said, Card called Roche and others to the White House and asked them to detail how many jobs the leasing deal would create; this was a key issue for an administration during which 2.5 million jobs have been lost. Boeing executives wrote in an e-mail to Druyun the next day that the lease would support 25,000 to 30,000 jobs, including both existing and new workers.
The next day, Roche sent a letter to Card that overstated this tally. Citing Boeing as his source, he said the deal would create about 39,000 new jobs alone -- more than 11,000 at Boeing and 28,000 among suppliers, according to the letter. Asked to explain the discrepancy, Air Force spokeswoman Cheryl Law said Roche felt his numbers were "consistent" with Boeing's.
Card led other meetings about the deal, met with Boeing officials and took calls from Dicks and Boeing lobbyists, according to the e-mails. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, "I think it's appropriate for him to work on an issue of great importance to fulfill a needed capability . . . and to make sure the taxpayers get the best deal for their money."
Under continuing pressure from OMB, Boeing agreed to cut the price of the tankers, bringing it closer to the Institute for Defense Analyses figure; it accomplished the reduction by further scaling back the tanker capabilities. The company was motivated in part, according to its e-mails, by the looming retirement of Undersecretary of Defense Edward C. Aldridge Jr., a supporter of the deal. His replacement, acting undersecretary Michael W. Wynne, had already aggressively pressed the firm for a huge price cut.
On May 23, Aldridge's last day at the Pentagon, he announced an agreement with Boeing on most terms of the lease, calling it a way to get new tankers "delivered much faster" than if they were purchased.
Critics of the deal have continued to complain about Air Force decisions to award Boeing a $5 billion sole-source maintenance contract for the new tankers and to permit the company to earn a 15 percent profit on the deal, or more than double what Boeing makes from commercial aircraft orders.
Several Air Force officers recently brought chunks of a corroded wing from a tanker in the trunk of a car to Capitol Hill, and an Air Force general was flown in from Oklahoma to brief members of Congress on tanker aging.
Asked a month ago about Boeing's travails, Bush spoke about trying to "help the worker, help the economy" by funding the construction of new planes. About the tanker leasing deal, he said, "I think it's going to go through."
McCain said he still hopes to stop it, arguing that using defense spending to create jobs undermines real military needs.
Staff researchers Margaret Smith and Karl Evanzz and special correspondent Gregory Vistica contributed to this report.
--------
Air Force-Boeing Negotiator Criticized
Close Relationship Questioned on Hill
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21519-2003Oct26?language=printer
To hear defense contractors describe her, Darleen A. Druyun was a formidable opponent, one of the most powerful women in the Pentagon and someone who could cripple a cherished program with a scornful eye. Her nickname, they say, was "Dragon Lady."
Druyun, a former weapons buyer for the Air Force, was also known to keep the interests of the industry's giants in mind, understanding that thriving contractors were necessary to ensure that vital Air Force contracts would be fulfilled. Now, her role in negotiating a lease with Boeing Co. for 100 tanker planes has drawn criticism from Capitol Hill.
That criticism centers on whether Druyun, while with the Air Force, became too close to the industry she was negotiating with on taxpayers' behalf. Congressional critics have charged she promoted the contract as welfare for a struggling Boeing, where she went to work shortly after retiring from the Air Force last November.
A lifelong bureaucrat, Druyun built a reputation for riding contractors who fell behind schedule or went over budget, usually in an abrupt, humorless style, according to several industry officials and former Air Force officials who worked for her. "I have never seen her not be a fierce advocate for the Air Force, " said Jim McAleese, a defense industry lawyer who has negotiated with her.
Druyun's complex working relationship with Boeing is illustrated by company e-mails related to the tanker lease. In an internal October 2001 e-mail, a Boeing executive predicted that "Darleen will make the actual contract favorable," adding that she promised to help win the support of Wall Street for the deal.
But in an April 2002 e-mail, another executive said that "Darleen repeatedly came at us on price through the discussions." Still, the Air Force settled on a price that other government officials thought was too high.
"I am surprised that anyone has accused her of protecting [defense companies]. If you took a cross-section of people in industry and government, you would find that she has an outstanding reputation for integrity and she consistently pushed industry for better products at lower costs to the taxpayer," said Bill Sheehan, Druyun's attorney. Druyun, 56, declined to comment for this story.
Twice she has found herself under official scrutiny for allegedly veering across an ethical line. She was cleared after the first investigation. One aspect of her role in the Boeing lease negotiations is part of an inspector general's probe.
Over her 33-year government career, Druyun negotiated and supervised hundreds of programs, but one would come to dominate tenure: the C-17. She even claimed for herself the title of "Godmother of the C-17."
The program, designed to produce a plane for carrying heavy equipment around the world, was running behind schedule and was over budget in the early 1990s. The prime contractor, McDonnell Douglas, also was under financial pressure.
Some Air Force officials feared that McDonnell Douglas's crisis would translate into troubles for the C-17 program, according to a 1993 report by the Pentagon's inspector general. The report accused Druyun and four other Air Force officials of secretly funneling $349 million to McDonnell to stave off a cash crunch and keep the program on track.
An Air Force investigation found no criminal wrongdoing, but then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin fired a general associated with the program. That probe cleared Druyun, then a high-ranking official in Air Force Systems Command, and said she was not involved in the payments in question.
Her involvement in the program continued, and in 2000 Druyun announced an Air Force plan to convert the C-17 program into a commercial venture, on the presumption that the sales would reduce Air Force costs. Critics denounced the proposal as a sweetheart deal allowing Boeing, which had bought McDonnell Douglas in 1998, to avoid government oversight. The Air Force eventually dropped the proposal.
Now, Pentagon Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz is investigating the negotiations that led to the Boeing tanker lease. In particular, he is examining whether Druyun, while negotiating the tanker lease with Boeing, gave the company pricing information on tankers made by Europe's Airbus. Airbus contends that information it gave the Air Force was proprietary; to distribute such information violates federal procurement rules.
Boeing said the information it received was not proprietary and is publicly available. Druyun does not recall mentioning figures cited in a Boeing internal e-mail, but if she did relay any numbers to Boeing she is certain they are not proprietary information, Sheehan said.
Criticism of Druyun's negotiation of the tanker lease includes not only pricing issues, but also her sale of a house in the Dunn Loring area of Fairfax County in January. The buyer was John Judy, a Boeing lawyer.
Sheehan said that Judy's real estate agent presented him with several houses and that Druyun's was one of them; that the sale occurred after Druyun retired from the Air Force, and that it was completed when she began working for Boeing's missile defense program. The sale price, $692,000, was about $50,000 below the original asking price.
Watchdog groups have said that Druyun's position at Boeing is another example of the Pentagon-defense industry revolving door. Air Force service and defense contracting are the family line of work. Druyun's husband, whom she met in the 1970s at an Air Force training center in Denver, is a retired Air Force official working at General Dynamics Corp. One daughter is still in college; the other works for Boeing in St. Louis. A Boeing spokesman said Druyun did not influence her daughter's hiring at the company.
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Bombings Plunge Iraqi Capital Into Chaos at Start of Ramadan
October 27, 2003
By DEXTER FILKINS and ALEX BERENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/middleeast/27CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - A series of suicide bombings shook Baghdad early today, including an attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and blasts at four Iraqi police stations that punctuated two days of bloody violence in this capital city.
Iraq's police chief and deputy interior minister, Ahmad Ibrahim, said at a news conference that 34 people had been killed and 224 had been wounded in the attacks. He said 26 of the dead were civilians and 8 were police officers; 65 police officers and 159 civilians were wounded.
The explosions plunged the capital into chaos at the outset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Ambulances raced through the streets and smoke rose from smoldering cars blown up in the blasts. Iraqi police officers dug through rubble to search for bodies.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States would stay the course to rebuild Iraq. "We're determined not to be intimidated by these killers," Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House after meeting with L. Paul Bremer III, the United States' chief administrator in Iraq.
The attacks took place between 8:30 and 10:15 a.m. local time, leading American and Iraqi officials to believe that they were part of a highly coordinated operation. There was a strong suspicion that foreigners were involved, and American and Iraqi officials referred to a "new element" being responsible for the bombings.
On Sunday, Mr. Bremer, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said that three groups of people were responsible for attacking Americans: groups associated with the ousted government of Saddam Hussein; common criminals released by him in the weeks before the American invasion; and terrorists who have come in through the borders with Iran and Syria.
Today, the commander of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, told Pentagon reporters that he believed that foreign fighters accounted for "a very, very small percentage" of the people mounting attacks against Americans and their allies in Iraq.
"My initial feeling is, this is former regime loyalists doing this maybe with minor coordination with a few people that might not be from Iraq originally," General Odierno said in a video-teleconference hook-up from his headquarters in Tikrit. "A couple from Syria, some Wahhabists from other countries - but that's really been it," he added. "We have not seen a large influx of foreign fighters thus far" and the American authorities have "no specific information that's linking coordination between foreign fighters and the former regime loyalists."
However, the officials here differentiated between today's attacks and one on Sunday against a highly guarded Baghdad hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying. The Sunday attack was attributed to loyalists to the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.
An attack on a fifth police station this morning was foiled when the attacker was shot and wounded. American and Iraqi officials said he was carrying Syrian identification and had identified himself as Syrian.
Another of the police station attacks succeeded, officials said, in part because the bomber was driving a police vehicle and wearing a police uniform.
The blast at the Red Cross headquarters occurred when an ambulance carrying a bomb exploded about 40 to 50 feet away.
Compared with other potential targets in Baghdad, the Red Cross building was lightly protected with oil drums filled with sand and some barbed wire; many other buildings have truck barricades or cement walls as a security cordon.
A statement from the office the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, denounced the bombing as "a crime against humanity."
"The I.C.R.C. is a universally respected humanitarian organization," it said. "Its neutrality and impartiality are the mainstays of its operations."
Iraqi witnesses said they saw an Iraqi ambulance and a small civilian car speeding down a narrow alleyway leading to the building's parking lot about 8:30 a.m. The cars were racing and then the ambulance sped up and drove inside the gate, said Rawzi Jamar, who runs a cigarette stand about 1,000 yards from the building.
An Iraqi police major said the attacker had crashed through the security gate. The bomb exploded about 50 feet from the building. Most of the Red Cross staff had not yet arrived for work when the blast went off around 8:30 a.m., leaving a crater six feet deep. It heavily damaged buildings on both sides of the street and shattered windows a mile away.
The charred remains of bodies could be seen in the water-soaked parking lot, where body parts were scattered and fires burned inside cars.
The Red Cross had reduced its staff in Iraq after the devastating bombing of the United Nations headquarters here in August. The staff members who remained had moved their offices to the middle of their four-story concrete building in the center of the city.
Shortly after the bomb at the Red Cross facility, four more suicide attackers struck at Iraqi police stations across Baghdad nearly simultaneously with powerful car and truck bombs.
The attacks left a trail of devastation from Saidiya, in southern Baghdad, to Shaab, about 10 miles to the north.
At least 15 people were killed, and more than 100 were wounded, including 30 seriously, according to doctors at the Yarmuk hospital, which received most of the casualties. The dead were both Iraqi police officers and civilians, including a 12-year-old boy and a 25-year-old woman and her infant daughter, according to witnesses. One American soldier was also killed, according to a statement from the military.
A pool of blood marked the spot in west Baghdad where several bystanders were killed when one of the suicide attackers failed to breach the barricades around the Khadra police station. With his path blocked, he blew up the vehicle in the middle of a busy four-lane street filled with shops and schools.
An ambulance driver, Mohammad Hassan Mahdi, said he took at least eight wounded Iraqi police to the hospital and four bodies. Two children were among the dead, one of them a boy with his head sheared off by shrapnel.
Abdul Karim al-Jibouri, the owner of a small market near the station, said he had thrown himself to the ground when he heard the explosion. "It is a holy month, and I dont think any Muslims can do this criminal act," Mr. al-Jibouri said. "It cant be."
Mr. al-Jibouri and another man also said American soldiers had mistakenly shot one man in the chaos following the attack when he ran toward the station seeking his family. Their accounts could not be independently confirmed, and soldiers at the scene denied that they had shot anyone.
Bodies stacked up in the morgue at the Yarmuk hospital. Some of the dead were burned beyond recognition.
Bandaged men lay in rooms all over the hospital, friends or relatives sitting quietly beside them. One wounded man slowly chewed a sandwich of lamb in pita bread, since Ramadan's requirement for daytime fasting does not apply to the injured.
Other beds held men in no condition to eat. In a room that stank of sweat and drying blood, Mahdi Mahawis lay curled on his side in a blue hospital gown, his head and hands bandaged.
Mr. Mahawis said he had gone to the Saidiya police station on behalf of his son, a prisoner there. There was the sound of an explosion, and then there was a big fire in front of the station, he said, and "I saw many people lying down on the ground."
The bomb attack in Saidiya also damaged the roof of a courtyard at a mosque. Thamer al-Aani, who delivers the call to prayer, said no one was seriously injured.
The United States must pull its troops out of Iraq, he said, adding "If the Americans leave, the explosions will leave with them."
In the attack on Sunday, an American colonel was killed and at least 16 people were wounded when a barrage of rockets from a homemade launching pad slammed into a hotel from about a quarter-mile away. American military officials said they did not believe Mr. Wolfowitz was the target of the Sunday attack, though they called the attack carefully planned.
One official said that the military had had specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special precautions had been taken.
Mr. Wolfowitz, who arrived here on Friday for brief visit, was one floor above where one of the rockets hit, officials said; he was not hurt.
Officials said the wounded in the hotel attack included five American soldiers, seven American civilians working in various Iraqi ministries as part of the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq, and four non-American civilians. The identity of the dead colonel was not immediately made public.
Raymond Bonner contributed to this article from Baghdad.
--------
Blast Hits Red Cross Offices in Baghdad
At Least 2 Killed; U.S. Officer Dies In Earlier Attack
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19417-2003Oct26?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- A car packed with explosives detonated early Monday in front of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in central Baghdad, killing at least two people and damaging several surrounding buildings.
The blast came one day after the U.S. occupation authority abandoned the al-Rashid Hotel, which was hit early Sunday by a fatal rocket barrage fired from a launcher disguised as a portable generator. A senior U.S. Army officer was killed and 17 people were wounded in the brazen strike at the core of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was in the hotel but unhurt in the attack, vowed that "we're not giving up on this job."
The blast in front of the Red Cross offices scattered debris across a wide area and sent a billowing cloud of black smoke into the sky. Witnesses said at least two people were killed and more than six were injured. One witness told the Associated Press that the bomb was packed in an ambulance but this could not be confirmed.
Another explosion was heard in central Baghdad shortly after the first, but its location could not be determined.
In the attack of the al-Rashid on Sunday, eight to 10 rockets were fired by a timer from the launching platform, which was described by one U.S. commander as resembling a "science project." The air-to-ground missiles struck the hotel at about 6:10 a.m., smashing holes in the beige cement exterior and sending debris flying through the 14-story luxury hotel. Occupants were roused from bed and fled in their pajamas.
Two more explosions were reported by the military late Sunday night inside the "green zone," a heavily guarded complex of former presidential palaces and buildings that encompasses the al-Rashid and the headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority. There were no immediate reports of casualties, military spokesmen said.
The assault on the 462-room al-Rashid Hotel was aimed at a prominent symbol of the U.S. occupation. The hotel was the living quarters for hundreds of U.S. military and civilian personnel. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, on NBC's "Meet the Press," said, "We'll have to get the security situation under control." He added that officials knew security would be a challenge but "we didn't expect it would be quite this intense this long."
Wolfowitz appeared shaken but was unhurt in the attack. He pledged it would not deter the reconstruction of Iraq and kept his schedule of Sunday events, visiting with Iraqis and U.S. soldiers. "They're not going to scare us away; we're not giving up on this job," he said after visiting hospitalized victims of the hotel attack. Seven American civilians, four U.S. military personnel and Italian, Nepalese, Indian and British workers were wounded. Two Iraqi policemen suffered injuries at the scene when several rockets fell short and struck nearby concrete barriers, but they were treated and returned to duty, the U.S. military said.
Despite the homemade appearance of the rocket launcher, the U.S. military said the attack took months of planning and surveillance. The assault on the al-Rashid, the second in a month, again underscored the vulnerability of American officials in Iraq and raised fresh concerns about the U.S. military's ability to crush a resistance that has become bolder in its methods and choices of targets.
Muslims on Sunday began celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, a period of reflection marked by fasting, and U.S. military officials said they are braced for more attacks. The average number of daily attacks against U.S. soldiers has doubled since the summer and guerrillas increasingly are using mortars and rockets, which can be launched over longer distances and can easily be fired over the high concrete walls that ring U.S. bases here.
Army officers described the launcher as a crudely soldered array of 40 rocket tubes, hidden in a freshly painted blue electrical-generator trailer. It had been parked for about 15 minutes before the attack and was fired by a battery-operated timer.
The 40 rockets in the launcher included 20 that appeared to be French-made and designed for use with the Alouette helicopter, Army officers said. The other 20 missiles appeared to be Russian-made, the officers said.
Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division, told Wolfowitz that the launcher was a "Rube Goldberg device" and that its crudeness indicated the weakness of the forces opposing the U.S. occupation, rather than their strength. Soldiers and Iraqi policemen attempting to inspect the trailer found booby traps, which were disarmed. There were 11 rockets still inside the launcher, the U.S. military said.
Half of the missiles were 68mm, with a range of two to three miles; the others were 85mm, with a range of three to four miles. The trailer was parked on a side street in a park that had been reopened a month ago, Dempsey said. The four-lane road in front of the park, 14th of July Street, had been reopened the day before, when the U.S. military allowed the resumption of traffic on the 14th of July Bridge, which leads to the street.
Dempsey contended that guerrillas were responding to two recent events that demonstrated progress in Baghdad: the lifting of a citywide curfew in effect since the war, and the reopening of the bridge.
He dismissed the rocket launcher as a crude device akin to a garage science project "with a welder and a battery and a handful of pipes." Yet he acknowledged that it was dangerous and deadly. "It had the effect they intended, didn't it? But I don't see it as sophistication."
At about 6 a.m., Iraqi police officers along 14th of July Street saw a car slowly pulling a blue trailer into al-Zawra park about 400 meters from the hotel. Thinking it could be a car bomb, they approached the car, the U.S. military said, but the occupants quickly unhitched the trailer and drove away.
"I heard the explosion once it hit the room and I started walking around thinking, 'What the hell is going on?' " said Bret A. Flinn, a Defense Department employee in Room 822. "Then I looked and my head and my face were bleeding like crazy."
Flinn, who got out of bed when the first rocket hit, said the second or third projectile came through his window and cut a perfect hole the size of a softball. He was sprayed with glass and shrapnel and was cut on his arms, legs and face, and underwent surgery on his right hand to remove an embedded piece of metal.
"I feel incredibly unlucky that it hit my room, but incredibly lucky that once it hit my room, the shell didn't explode," Flinn said.
Within minutes of the attack, Lt. Col. Charles Fisher, 57, of the Army's 352nd Civil Affairs Command, recalled he heard a moan across the hall on the ninth floor, and grabbed his M-16 assault rifle and medical kit. A colleague, an active duty soldier whom he did not want to identify, was lying near the window motionless.
His body was drenched in blood. The door was blown from its hinges and jammed in the frame. Fisher and several others dislodged it. Sparks spewed from live wires hanging from the ceiling, and water from ruptured pipes spilled across the floor. He carried his bloodied colleague on a sheet through a hallway billowing with smoke and down the nine flights of stairs. By the time they got to the lobby, the sheet was red with blood. Medics inserted an IV and stabilized him, and within 30 minutes of the attack, he was transported to a hospital, where he underwent surgery.
"I think he'll live," said Fisher, standing outside a former palace with bloodstains still on his shirt.
Iraqis working at the hotel were sent home on Sunday. Meanwhile, hotel occupants collected their belongings Sunday night and were sent to other lodging facilities in the green zone.
The U.S. military said that a lieutenant colonel assigned to the occupation authority was killed. He was not identified pending notification of next of kin. His death brings to 109 the number of U.S. military personnel killed in hostile action since President Bush announced that major combat was over on May 1.
Last month, assailants fired three projectiles from within the neighborhood that struck the top floors of the al-Rashid Hotel but did not cause any injuries or serious damage.
Access to the hotel is limited to occupants and official guests. Large dirt-filled barriers near the entrance are intended to prevent car bombings, and all vehicles and people who enter the grounds are searched. In addition to several external checkpoints, concrete barriers ring the entire compound.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said Sunday that the attack did not mean that security in the country was getting worse. "I don't think that is true," he told ABC's "This Week" when asked whether he thought the rocket attacks were a sign that security was worsening.
"We certainly had a bad day, and as I have stressed all along, we are going to have good days and bad days," he said.
Elsewhere in Iraq, the U.S. military reported that a soldier with the 4th Infantry Division in Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, died from a non-combat gunshot wound early Sunday morning. No other information was available.
Correspondents David Ignatius and Anthony Shadid, and staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.
--------
From The Scene Volley of Rockets Shatters a Life and Images of Stability
By David Ignatius
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20090-2003Oct26.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- The al-Rashid Hotel quaked when a volley of rockets battered its walls early Sunday morning. This reporter was in a room seven doors down the hall from where a missile hit the room of a U.S. soldier, who was killed. A loud explosion shook my room, followed by several others. Crouching by the window, I saw one of the rockets roar up toward the hotel, leaving a trail of sparks and smoke before it detonated a few stories below.
The attack came as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was in the hotel just one floor above where the soldier was killed. Wolfowitz was on a three-day visit to Iraq that had been designed to underscore Iraq's stability -- an upbeat image shaken by the rocket blasts.
Wolfowitz was unhurt, and continued with a Sunday schedule that included a visit to a Baghdad police station and a military patrol of the neighborhood near where the attackers had fired their missiles.
"This terrorist act will not deter us from completing our mission, which is to help the Iraqi people free themselves from the type of criminals who did this," Wolfowitz told reporters three hours after the attack. He argued that "the big news" was not the rocket attack on his hotel, but "that Iraqis are fighting and killing these people."
Despite Wolfowitz's optimism, the attack on the hotel -- home to visiting dignitaries and members of the U.S. occupation authority -- illustrated the vulnerability of American occupation forces here and the insecurity that continues to plague Baghdad seven months after the U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein.
From the window, I could see the blue vehicle from which the rockets had been fired. It was parked several hundred yards away, just on the other side of the concrete barrier that separates the al-Rashid from the surrounding Baghdad neighborhood.
When the firing stopped, I went down the hall to Room 1124, where one of the rockets had exploded. The wooden furniture inside had been shattered by the explosion and a water pipe had burst, sending water gushing ankle-deep into the hall.
Another reporter traveling with Wolfowitz, Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard, entered the room and found the soldier slumped in a chair in a corner, seriously wounded from shrapnel and broken glass. A medic arrived soon and began treating him. He later died. His identity had not been released Sunday pending notification of next of kin.
Blood spots marked the stairway as the 17 wounded made their way down to the lobby. I saw Wolfowitz there, before security aides took him to a shelter. He was unhurt and seemed angry but otherwise unfazed by the attack.
Wolfowitz lunched later with soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division, who had captured the makeshift rocket launcher. It had been hidden in a freshly painted blue electrical-generator vehicle parked near the hotel about 15 minutes before the attack and fired by a battery-operated timer, Army officers said.
The rest of Wolfowitz's day was taken up with meetings that had been arranged earlier to underscore his strategy of seeking to improve stability by giving Iraqis greater responsibility for security. He met in the morning with newly retrained Iraqi police in the New Baghdad neighborhood, where his host was Iraq's deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, a career police officer who was imprisoned under Hussein.
"We are sure we can control Baghdad and all Iraq," Ibrahim said. But he said the country would need to expand its police force from 40,000 to 70,000, and that the process would take two years.
Wolfowitz also met with members of the newly created Baghdad Citizens' Advisory Councils, composed of about 800 Iraqis. He talked, as well, with a senior Shiite religious leader and met with a group of women's activists.
At every stop he repeated his pitch that Iraqis must take responsibility for their country. "The fight is going to be won at the end of the day by the Iraqi people," he told reporters Sunday afternoon, after visiting five critically wounded victims of the rocket attack. A few hours later, Wolfowitz departed for Washington.
--------
Striking at a Key Symbol of U.S. Power
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21713-2003Oct26.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- With an audacious rocket attack Sunday on the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, Iraqi resistance fighters showed again how a strike against a high-profile target can overshadow weeks of slow progress and create the impression that the Bush administration lacks a plan for securing the country, military commanders and defense analysts said.
The early morning fusillade, which killed a U.S. officer, demonstrated that the fighters could strike at the heart of American power in Baghdad, and do so despite heightened security, which was in place for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz's overnight stay at the official residence of the U.S.-led occupation.
One defense official in Iraq said that "the strategic impact of the attack was almost as great as the bombing on the United Nations compound" in August, at least in terms of its symbolic value.
With the U.N. bombing, which killed 18 people, and Sunday's rocket attack, the Iraqis showed an ability to adjust their tactics and defeat the massive concrete barricades, designed to stop car bombs, that surround major hotels and line the perimeter of the U.S. "green zone" where most top officials of the U.S.-led occupation live and work, the commanders and analysts said.
They also stressed that the attack underscored the complexity of an Iraqi resistance that can easily stage repeat attacks and cannot be defeated quickly by aggressive combat operations.
"Placed in the context of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces that are increasing in frequency and effectiveness, this particular operation -- notable both for its daring and for what it says about the enemy's intelligence capabilities -- that, yes, it really does promise to be a long, hard slog," said retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a Persian Gulf War tank commander who is a professor of international relations at Boston University.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, agreed. The attack on the al-Rashid, he said, illustrated that it is "almost impossible to win a counterinsurgency battle" in the short term.
This is particularly true in Iraq, he said, where there is "a significant recruiting base and easy access to weapons and methods of attacks, and where simply disrupting civil development and producing low-level casualties is enough to create the image of victory."
Army Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division and responsible for securing Baghdad, acknowledged as much Sunday during a news conference.
"Some of these attacks get a lot of notoriety, but fundamentally, they're a single event that tends to get [the fighters] what they're seeking, which is notoriety, and no one of those is any more serious to me than another," Dempsey said.
Single attacks that employ rockets and mortars are virtually impossible to stop, current and former military professionals said.
"I think we have to be careful not to make too much of this attack, though I recognize that's not easy to do given the wide coverage of it," one commander in Iraq said on condition of anonymity. "The fact is that it's very difficult to stop rocket and mortar attacks, as they can be launched from several kilometers away and as those launching them can then scoot very quickly. Generally, they're inaccurate."
"I'm surprised it took them this long to take a shot at the Rashid," said Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps officer who lectures at George Washington University. "Mortars and rockets are cheap and reasonably risk-free."
Another commander in Iraq, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, bristled at the suggestion that the U.S. government may be winning many individual battles in Iraq, both in the military and reconstruction arenas, but losing the overall war.
"I would suggest we are gaining tactically and having periodic strategic setbacks, which we overcome," the commander said. "Those are the terms of an insurgency, which we are fighting."
"Yes, high-profile attacks generate a lot of media interest that definitely takes away from the many great things that we are doing to advance Iraqi growth, Iraqi improvements in life, and a representative government in Iraq," the commander said. "Yes, the target of the al-Rashid Hotel is significant, especially since Mr. Wolfowitz was staying there at the time."
But the attack must be weighed against increasing Iraqi frustration with the attackers and increasing Iraqi participation in securing their own country, the commander said, adding that Iraqis themselves are turning in more and more of the attackers.
Ultimately, giving Iraqis political and economic power, Dempsey said, is the only way to win the war.
"This is not the kind of conflict where we're going to know it's over because somebody walks out of a building with a white flag," he said. "And so if the standard of effectiveness in Baghdad or in Iraq writ large is the single attack, then it's going to be a long year for the both of us, it's going to be a long year for Iraq."
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Blow Up Gaza Buildings Near Isolated Settlement
October 27, 2003
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 - The Israeli Army blew up three vacant apartment buildings in the Gaza Strip on Sunday near a settlement where a Palestinian gunman killed three soldiers early Friday, as a debate sharpened in Israel over whether the isolated settlement was worth keeping.
Soldiers evacuated more than 2,000 Palestinians from surrounding buildings before demolishing the apartment houses, 12-story structures that the army said Palestinians had used to spy on the nearby settlement, Netzarim.
Israeli soldiers also shot and killed at least three Palestinian gunmen in clashes in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian security officials said.
The blast on Sunday sent black smoke billowing into the pre-dawn sky and shattered windows of neighboring houses. One Palestinian was seriously injured, Palestinian officials said.
The apartment buildings were built by the Palestinian Preventive Security force for its members before the conflict began more than three years ago, but they were never occupied.
"I hope it will be a good message to the Palestinian Authority not to let civilian infrastructure be used for terror," said Brig. Gen. Gadi Shammi, Israel's commander for the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian officials said the Israeli action would only fuel anger.
Um Mahmoud Ismail, 28, said she and her children had been awakened by soldiers demanding that they temporarily evacuate the area. "You don't even have time to take a blanket or food and water," Ms. Ismail said. "Suddenly, I was outside, and all I saw was people crying."
On Friday, hidden in thick fog, a Palestinian gunman cut his way through Netzarim's perimeter fence, shooting dead the three soldiers and wounding two more before troops killed him as he tried to escape.
The Israel radio quoted an unidentified high-ranking army officer on Sunday as saying Netzarim was too big a burden for the army. Some Israeli cabinet ministers called on the government to consider removing the settlement, Israeli news reports said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an architect of the settlement movement, has argued that conceding any settlement during the conflict would reward terrorism. He has said Netzarim serves an important security function, permitting Israel to observe Palestinian activity closely in that area of northern Gaza.
For Israel's left, Netzarim has long been the leading example of what they consider the excesses of the settlement movement.
Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. It has settled more than 200,000 of its citizens in those territories, including about 6,000 in heavily fortified enclaves in Gaza. About 1.2 million Palestinians live in Gaza.
About 60 families live in Netzarim, guarded by an Israeli battalion. The settlement is accessible by a single east-west road, which bisects Gaza's main north-south road.
The intersection has been a flash point of the conflict. Settlers reach Netzarim only in an armored bus escorted by jeeps, as soldiers block Palestinian traffic. Palestinian orchards along the settlers' road have been bulldozed because, Israel says, they were used to stage attacks.
Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University, called in an op-ed column on Sunday in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot for settlers to evacuate Netzarim voluntarily. "They are demanding of Israeli society to defend something that cannot be defended," he told the Israel radio.
Itzik Vezana, a resident of Netzarim, responded, "Our moral responsibility is as part of the process of strengthening the people of Israel in its land."
Residents of Netzarim, a cluster of red tile-roofed cottages and army trailers, contend that they safeguard other Israelis by, in effect, drawing Palestinian fire. If Israel gave up Netzarim, they say, Palestinians would set their sights on Tel Aviv.
Mr. Sharon made a similar argument in April 2002 when he said, "The fate of Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv."
Palestinian security officials said the three Palestinians were killed early Sunday when they tried to infiltrate an Israeli settlement in Gaza.
The Israeli Army said that its soldiers had opened fire in two separate incidents. In one, it said, they shot at four Palestinians crawling toward an outpost guarding a settlement. It said the troops had hit two, while the other two fled. During a subsequent search, soldiers did not find any bodies, the army said.
In a second episode at the same outpost, it said, soldiers opened fire at an armed Palestinian, killing him.
Also on Sunday, a crude rocket was fired over Gaza's fenced boundary toward the Israeli town of Sederot. The army said that it was at least the 13th such rocket fired in the last week, but that there were no reported injuries from any of them.
-------
Sharon Says Israel Not Planning to Kill Arafat
October 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html?hp
JERUSALEM, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said for the first time in public on Monday that Israel has no plans to kill Palestinian President Yasser Arafat despite the Israeli government's vow to remove him from power.
Israel's security cabinet decided in principle last month to "remove" Arafat and Sharon's deputy Ehud Olmert said killing the 74-year-old symbol of Palestinian nationalism was an option.
"I don't see any plans to kill him although the man is responsible for deaths of hundreds, of thousands of mostly civilians because his strategy is a strategy of terror," Sharon told a group of European parliamentarians visiting Jerusalem.
Sharon's statement followed weeks of speculation on how and when Israel might carry out its threat to oust Arafat, which has drawn an international outcry and strong U.S. opposition.
Political sources had said Sharon had ruled out assassinating Arafat, but it was the first time the right-wing Israeli leader has done so publicly.
Israel accuses Arafat of fomenting violence in a three-year-old uprising for independence. Arafat denies the allegation and accuses Sharon of waging of a war to annihilate the Palestinian people.
Taking note of international criticism, Sharon told the European delegation: "I'm afraid to even mention the words 'to kill him'."
Some Israeli cabinet members have talked openly of expelling Arafat, who has been confined by Israeli tanks to his West Bank compound in Ramallah for much of the past two years.
Sharon appeared to rule out exiling Arafat in an interview earlier on October 17, saying it would be damaging for Israel if it harmed him. But in a major policy speech on October 20, he said Israel was determined to "remove" Arafat.
Arafat has had a recent spate of health problems but his doctors says he has no serious ailment.
CLASH ON ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER
Adding to tensions in the region, Hizbollah -- a Lebanese guerrilla group backed by Syria and Iran -- fired rockets and artillery rounds at Israeli army positions in a disputed area of the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel hit back with two air strikes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Tensions have been high since Israel struck what it said was a training camp for Palestinian militants in Syria three weeks ago in the deepest attack on its neighbour in the past 30 years.
The militant Islamic group Hamas, meanwhile, said it was ready to talk to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie about his proposal for halting attacks against Israelis and said that a commitment would depend on whether Israel would stop its own attacks on Palestinians.
Also on Monday, Israel said it planned to provide government services to some Jewish settler outposts in the West Bank which it had undertaken to dismantle under a stalled U.S.-backed peace "road map."
The Palestinian Authority said the decision that showed Sharon lied when he pledged to remove dozens of small enclaves built on occupied land without Israeli government authorisation.
"This move will certainly increase the cycle of violence," Arafat's senior security adviser Jibril al-Rajoub told Reuters.
Most of the international community considers the estimated 50 outposts as well as about 150 established settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be illegal. Israel disputes this.
The Defence Ministry said it would provide lighting, communications, education services and beefed-up security but denied what the Israeli media said amounted to the granting of more permanent status to eight outposts receiving new treatment.
-------- nato
'Russia may join Nato to fight common enemy'
Monday October 27, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2003-daily/27-10-2003/world/w12.htm
BERLIN: Outgoing NATO Secretary General George Robertson was quoted on Sunday as saying that former enemy Russia could one day join NATO to fight the new common enemy of "international terrorism".
Robertson told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper he was convinced the expansion of NATO would continue when he leaves his post at the end of the year.
Robertson is due to be replaced by Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
"I can't rule out that in some years Russia will join NATO. We both face a common enemy: international terrorism," said Robertson.
NATO's 19 members last year agreed to admit seven new countries to the alliance - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia by May 2004.
NATO currently holds monthly meetings with Russian foreign ministry and defence officials in Brussels.
In the interview, Robertson reiterated his warnings about proposals for the European Union to develop its own defence command and control structures.
"Europe should concentrate on improving its defence capabilities," he said.
"Together the European members of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have 1.4 million soldiers and a further one million in reserve. But only 55,000 can be used for foreign missions. Such armies exist only on paper," Robertson was quoted as saying.
"Competition (between the EU and NATO) would be damaging - for both organisations. It would be a waste of money, time and energy.
The EU can draw on NATO resources for its own missions. In the Balkans, the Alliance and the EU have shown they can work together. They will fail if they go separate ways," he added.
-------- us
Reforming DoD
By Richard Halloran
October 27, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031026-105117-5039r.htm
In a leaked memo that caused a stir in Washington and throughout the far-flung American military forces last week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked: "Is the DoD [Department of Defense] changing fast enough to meet the new 21st century security environment?"
From this perch in the Pacific, the answer is a resounding no. Here are a couple of suggestions for bold moves the Pentagon might make to speed things along, including a revision of the commands in the Asia-Pacific region:
• Streamline the Defense Department by abolishing the three anachronistic departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force, eliminating about half of the senior positions in the Pentagon's bloated bureaucracy and making the Secretary of Defense the master of his own house.
• Provide for integrated military plans and operations by abolishing the anomalous Joint Chiefs of Staff, a quarrelsome organization led by a chairman who acts like a corporate executive making widgets, and replace it with a military staff led by a warrior in command of the operational forces.
The Rumsfeld memo asked four top colleagues to be prepared at their next meeting to discuss issues such as: "Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip, and focus to deal with the global war on terror?" and "Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?"
The contents of the Oct. 16 memo appeared on Oct. 22 in the newspaper USA Today. It was not secret, suggesting that Mr. Rumsfeld may have wanted it to be made public. He scoffed, telling reporters: "If I had wanted it published, I would have issued it as a press release."
The Department of Defense was established in 1947, and was intended to foster joint planning and operations by bringing the military departments together under one roof. Instead, the nation got rival fiefdoms locked in an unending struggle for money and missions. The secretary of defense sits atop this turbulent mass as a referee.
Take personnel, for instance. The Pentagon has nine high-level officials and officers setting policy and managing the forces - four politically appointed civilians and five three-star generals or admirals, each with a swollen staff. Surely, one civilian to maintain the time-honored civilian control of the military and a senior personnel officer for each service could do the job.
Inastreamlined scheme, an undersecretary of defense would take over from the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force the responsibility for the readiness of the combat forces. Reporting to him would be the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, commandant of the Marine Corps and the chief of staff of the Air Force, who would continue to prepare their forces for war.
In the new order, a chief of military staff would replace the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and wouldcommandthe armed forces, rather than be an adviser to the secretary of defense and the president. As it is now, the chairman legally has no operational control over the forces in the field, although in practice he has whatever authority the secretary delegates.
That would provide a clear chain of command that would run from the president to the secretary of defense to the chief of military staff to combatant command, such as the Pacific Command. (The vice-president is not in that chain to remove the temptation, however remote, to seize control of the armed forces in a coup against the president.)
Getting rid of the military departments and setting up an operational military staff would give the combatant commanders, such as Adm. Thomas Fargo of the Pacific Command, more clear-cut authority over their forces. Today, a regional commander looks both to the chief of his service and the secretary of defense for orders.
Taking that a step further, the command lines in Asia and the Pacific should be straightened out by abolishing U.S. forces in Korea as a separate command and making it part of the Pacific Command, as is the U.S. force in Japan. That would integrate U.S. forces into a single area of operations in northeast Asia, instead of the present divided command.
Those military revisions would require political changes, because U.S. forces are in Korea under a United Nations command. Since the United States and South Korea have already agreed to move the U.N. and U.S. headquarters out of Seoul and to consolidate U.S. formations south of Seoul, changes in the U.S. command structure at the same time might be in order.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent who lives in Honolulu.
----
Ministers of War, Criminals of the Cloth
By WILLIAM A. COOK
October 27, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook10272003.html
Perhaps we have not paid enough attention to Exodus and have lost, therefore, the import of General "Jerry" Boykin's words to the evangelical Christians as reported in the LA Times on the 16th, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this." Exodus states it clearly enough: "The Lord is a man of war"(15:3). Lt. Gen. Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence (sic), no doubt speaks for Bush and Rumsfeld's forces in the field as he takes up his position as fourth in command under Lord General God. It is comforting to know that we are under the command of the Head Man in Heaven as we enter the lists against the infidels led by their god, a mere pagan "idol." Boykin, who has probably met "face to face" with that other general, places the US squarely in God's "house," indeed, in His "Kingdom" as we "take up the cross" to fulfill His divine commands, our army having been "raised for such a time as this."
One wonders if all the other ministers of war sat enthroned behind the General as he expounded on God's words: Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, to name a few. Did they cheer him on? Did any of them suggest, perhaps, that his invocation to the God of War had imbedded in it yet another prayer, the one Mark Twain penned in his caustic satire that turned such fawning gibberish into nonsense, "The War Prayer." Let me paraphrase: "Dear God who counseled 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' bless our cause and curse our enemy, destroy their children, leave their mothers' barren and homeless, let the old and infirm weep alone as they await death, devastate their land, burn their fields, and destroy even the memory of their existence, in God's name we pray!" These evangelical Christians listen in rapture to the general who has become their instrument to effect Armageddon even as they curse those who give the appearance of appeasement against the Islamic hordes, including that former general, Colin Powell who should be "nuked" according to Robertson.
Consider the import of this scene, the general garbed in full combat regalia, spit shined shoes, epaulets ablaze with glistening brass, marching before the attentive congregation declaring that "radical Islamists hated the United States 'because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and roots are Judeo-Christian ...'" And more, "He's (Bush) in the White House because God put him there." This man, now in charge of "intelligence" in the Defense Department, enlists his Christian warriors to take on "Satan." He becomes the embodiment of the Tele-evangelists prophecy, those who proclaim "end-time theology," the means by which God will bring about prophecies present in the Book of Revelation. This scene contains two important revelations, neither of them resident in the Book of Revelation: the ministers of war enlist once again the myths of Revelation to achieve power in the secular realm and the myths that proclaim America's roots as Judeo-Christian rise once again as fact when, in fact, they are anathema to the concept and purpose of democracy.
The rising chorus of evangelicals decrying Islam as the sole source of terror, the increasing volatility of their wrath, and their visible displays of displeasure and impatience with the policies of government in a democracy threaten the very basis of a government based on separation of church and state. Dennis Prager (October 7, 2003), prophet of the right wing airways, attempts to defend America's need to go it alone against Islamic "terror and tyranny" in this "war of civilizations." He notes that the world is not supportive of the "American mission" to fulfill God's word, and this explains in good measure why they dislike George W. Bush, "the believer in the biblical God and in an American mission." "We cannot defeat the Islamist threat," he proclaims, "without the same degree of faith fanatical Muslims have." Here he notes, Israel and America are one because both nations have fanatical believers who can stand against the infidels. "One civilization believes in liberty and one does not." Prager fears that Europe and non-believers in America can jeopardize the fulfillment of God's mission. "It is between those who fervently believe in America and in Judeo-Christian revelation and those who fervently believe in neither." Those who do not believe are, in Prager's mind, "the Left, many Democratic Party leaders, pacifists, the cultural elite and academia..." This type of thinking pits religious denominations against the political system because the government must become the instrument to fulfill their interpretation of God's word. Add to Prager's views those of Pat Robertson who beseeches God on public television to intercede to change the make-up of the Supreme Court and declares that only devout Christians and Jews are fit to hold public office, and the casting of America as a theocracy takes form.
According to Philip Lindsey ("Are the Neo-Cons Conning Us") "All the major figures of the Christian right have joined the new crusade to defend the Israeli state and spread Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and in the Occupied Territories. The Reverend James Hutchins, president of Christians for Israel/US, proclaimed that this support was in order to fulfil a 'divine calling to assist the Jewish people in their return and restoration of the land of Israel.' A quarter of a million US Christians have sent over $60 million to Israel while Hutchins' organization has financed the immigration of 65,000 Jews. For both the Christian and Jewish right, Islam is the new 'evil empire' and Yasser Arafat is Israel's 'bin Laden.'" With the three prominent Tele-evangelists urging their flocks to reject the rights of Palestinians to a homeland because the Jews have a covenant with God, with their active and visible intervention in political affairs directly affecting this nation, with the financial support they provide to terrorists in the settlements, with their politically motivated sermons directing their congregations to vote for born again Christians and Zionist Jews, with their loud condemnation of non-Christians and Christians not supportive of the Zionist right wing, they have created a fissure of intolerance in America that threatens not only the pillar of separation of church and state, but the rationale that under girds this nation's tolerance of all religions in favor of the fanatics that demand obeisance to the ministers of war who interpret God's word for him in the Book of Revelation.
The actions of the Christian Zionists are arguably anti-American in their attempts to gain control of the democratic system, anti-American in their efforts to impose a right-wing Christian theocracy upon all Americans, illegal in their incitement to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, who have done nothing to Americans, through their support of Jewish settlements that terrorize Palestinians, and illegal in their active promotion of right wing factions in Israel that oppose American foreign policy that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state. These militant actions of the Christian Zionists stem from their belief that the on-going crisis in the Mid-East is prophesied in the Book of Revelation. Belief in Revelation compels them to incite their congregations to destroy the infidels. Ironically, this is not the first use of the Book of Revelation on this continent by militant ministers of the Almighty that has resulted in the slaughter of innocents. In 1500, as Columbus ravaged the "new world" with the help of the Franciscans who were set to build "the Kingdom of God on earth," a similar intolerance of other religions took hold. "There had always been a millenarian cast to the followers of Saint FrancisºMany believed that their founding saint was the angel of the apocalypse who had unlocked the seal of the sixth age of revelation; the gospel would now be preached throughout the new world and then would come the Anti-ChristºWas not Charles V the prophesied world emperor? And had not Mexico fallen to Catholicism just as northern Europe fell to the Lutheran heretics? Were these not signs that the hosts of good and evil were assembling for Armageddon? º On New Year's Day, 1525, the friars drove the Mexican priests from their temples and began the 'first battle against the devil'" (Ronald Wright, The Stolen Continent, 1992). The Franciscans, driven by their fanatical zeal and bound in allegiance to the Spanish Conquistadors to affect the fulfillment of their prophecies, lost sight of the humans they killed in the name of their God. They were the Christian Zionists of their day!
If this was the first abuse of Revelation on this continent, it followed 20 others in Europe dating from 1186 to 1492 and yet others in preceding centuries. Not all resulted in slaughter of innocents, but many did, including the crusades initiated by Urban II who used other myths to enlist peasants and knights to the slaughter of the Jews and Muslims in attempts to reclaim Jerusalem for the Church. Does not the shear number of pseudo-prophets who have proclaimed the imminence of Armageddon require us to declare our current crop benighted idiots?
Have we learned nothing from history? Does superstition guide civilized people in the year 2003? Must we fall prey to denizens of myths who find power in prophecy and ego enhancement in incitement to riot? Must we repeat what we have seen in our own past, that fanatics maliciously use their positions of respect to drive their believers to actions diametrically opposed to the teachings of their supposed leader, Jesus Christ? Are not these religious zealots criminals, exhorting their legions to engage in illegal behavior when they call on them to give millions of dollars to settlements damned as illegal by the UN and the worlds' communities of nations in numerous resolutions? Are not their rabble-rousing harangues designed to justify acquiescence and complicity to the terrorism inflicted by Ariel Sharon on innocent civilians in Palestine in the name of the God of Revelation? Yet these ministers of war know no more of that God than all the previous prophets of doom that preceded them, but they should; they hold doctorate degrees in theology; they have the scientific evidence that tracks the biblical writings of Revelation to an unknown source on Patmos; they know no one knows the authors of the New Testament; they know they cannot speak for God anymore than the pseudo-prophets of the dark ages, yet they prophecy, they prophecy for profit and power, the true ends of their proselytizing!
With what absolution then do they preach death and destruction? Shouldn't this administration find these false prophets enemies of the people? Do they not incite to riot and enlist their minions to support illegal activities that are detrimental to the peace of America? Have they not brought America more insecurity by confirming in the minds of those fearful of a clash of civilizations that indeed America is on a crusade to destroy Islam? Have they not given aid and comfort to Osama and his hordes by demonstrating the truth of what he says, the Christians are out to defeat Allah?
Consider the power these men wield over American policy. Not only does the "General of Intelligence" preach before the evangelical hordes, but Tom DeLay, the anointed leader of the Republican majority in the House and a rabid Christian Zionist, addressed the Israeli Knesset on July 30 urging Israel "to ignore the truce and go on killing Palestinian activists." Benny Elon, Sharon's Minister of Tourism, appeared with DeLay at the Washington convention of the Christian Coalition where he called for the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland claiming that land for Israel since it was guaranteed them in the Bible. The ethnic cleansing is authorized in that same Bible according to Elon, and confirmed by no less an authority than Richard Army who called for removal of the Palestinians, despite the presence of an indigenous population of Arabs in Palestine for the last 1900 years! Even now, this month, 500 evangelicals visited Israel in support of Sharon's divisive actions against Palestinians. The yoking of the Christian Zionists, the right-wing Jewish Zionists and the pro-Israeli neo-cons has undermined the foundational concepts that guarantee American freedom of conscience and religious tolerance. Perhaps Melchior Grimm had it right when he declared in the mid 18th century: "It has taken centuries to subdue the human race to the tyrannical yoke of the priests; it will take centuries and a series of efforts and successes to secure its freedom."
We need only pay heed to Thomas Jefferson's words to Dr. Benjamin Rush in his letter of April 21, 1803: "It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may ... become his own." Freedom of conscience cannot exist in a climate of fear or in a nation that dictates truth. For the Christian right to impose its beliefs on this nation by controlling the ballot box to ensure the election of radical "end time" believers, to impose their religious beliefs through legislation that all must accept, or to align themselves with groups like the neo-cons who desire a similar goal and would willingly subvert the rights of the people as stated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights to attain it, can and will result in the erosion of the principles that ensure our freedom. In that same letter to Rush, Jefferson noted the corruption of Jesus' teachings as "doctrinized" by denominations, extolling instead Christ's undiluted teachings: he taught "universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids"(Italics mine). How different in concept this understanding of Christ's teachings that provides tolerance of all as members of one family from the teachings of the Christian Zionists and right-wing Jewish Zionists who would purge a people from their homeland by superstitiously interpreting words that allow them to determine the fate of millions.
How brilliant does the wording of the Declaration seem now, "endowed by their creator with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," a prescription guaranteed in the Bill of Rights that indelibly marks each and every human with the same rights to live in a free society unencumbered by the dominance of another's infallible thoughts! Jefferson understood that religions are not tolerant or democratic; indeed, they are inherently neither, since ministers serve as intermediaries to the divine and become the conduit of doctrines and dogma that determine thought for the believer. It followed logically for Jefferson that church and state must be separate if all religions were to exist in the new country. America does not rest on Christian principles; it exists, as all democracies must, in tolerance of Christian beliefs as it exists in tolerance of all religious beliefs precisely because it was not founded on beliefs expounded by one religion. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, the principal exponents of the foundational concepts upon which this country rests, were Deists who accepted the genuine precepts of Jesus, not those that have evolved in the various denominations over the course of centuries. Love, charity, and compassion define Christ's precepts; love of all, charity toward all, compassion for all, that all may live in peace. How anathema to General Boykin and the Christian Zionist teachings as they incite their congregations to war!
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was just published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Sees Attackers as Growing Desperate Amid Progress in Iraq
October 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Monday that U.S. progress in Iraq is making insurgents more ``desperate'' and spurring attacks such as the bombings at the international Red Cross headquarters and three police stations across Baghdad that killed dozens of people.
Defense officials said earlier Monday that they thought loyalists of fallen Iraq leader Saddam Hussein likely were responsible for the latest series of bombings and described the last two days as a significant spike in attacks -- a surge of violence that showed some level of coordination.
Officials said, however, they couldn't say just how coordinated the attacks were.
``The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that's available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become,'' Bush told reporters at the White House.
Bush spoke after meeting with civilian U.S. Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer, who along with the U.S. military commander for Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, previously had scheduled meetings with the president, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and others here before the latest outburst of violence. The goal of the meetings was to focus on what lies ahead for occupation forces.
The president, sitting next to Bremer in the Oval Office, said those who are continuing to engage in violence ``can't stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos.''
But Bush said he remains ``even more determined to work with the Iraqi people'' to restore peace and civility to the wartorn nation.
Said Bremer: ``We'll have rough days ... but the overall thrust is in the right direction and the good days outnumber the bad days.''
Bush called those orchestrating the attacks ``cold-blooded killers.''
A number of Iraqis were killed and captured in the attacks, one defense official said, although he said he didn't know the number and had no other details.
As they have said following previous attacks, U.S. officials vowed that the newest wave of violence will not deter them from their aim of stabilizing the country, systematically rooting out remnants of the former regime and training Iraqis to take over responsibility for security.
Bush vowed to track down those carrying out the escalating attacks, which the president said are being conducted by a minority in Iraq.
``The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world,'' the president said. ``We will find these people and we will bring them to justice. It's in the national interest of the United States that a peaceful Iraq emerge and we will stay the course in order to achieve this objective.''
Bush insisted anew that he would veto an overall Iraqi aid package if the Iraqi reconstruction money were to be structured as a loan.
``The reason why is that we want to make sure the constraints on the Iraqi people are limited so they can flourish and become a free and prosperous society,'' he said.
Last week, the White House threatened to veto the overall $87 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan if any of the Iraqi reconstruction money was structured as a loan.
Congressional negotiators are trying to work out differences between the House and Senate versions of the aid package. The Senate had some of the Iraqi money structured as a loan; the House did not.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
High Court May Have to Take Terror Cases
October 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Sept-11-Cases.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has stayed out of judging the Bush administration's terrorism-fighting strategy, but that soon could change.
Lower courts have kept busy with challenges to the imprisonment of ``enemy combatants'' in the United States, government spying, secrecy about immigrants arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the detention of terrorism suspects in Cuba.
Several justices have said they eventually expect to take cases related to the fight against terrorism.
``It's going to get harder and harder I think for the Supreme Court to stay out of these,'' American Civil Liberties Union legal director Steven Shapiro said.
The justices' next chance comes early in November, when the court is expected to announce whether it will review cases involving the detention of foreigners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
About 660 men from some 40 countries, mostly said to be al-Qaida and Taliban foot soldiers, have been held for as long as two years without access to lawyers.
Dozens of heavy-hitters -- former ambassadors and judges, retired military officers, ex-prisoners of war, human rights groups, foreign leaders -- want the court to hear appeals filed on the prisoners' behalf.
Three terrorist-related appeals were rejected by justices last spring without explanation, but the cases were not as sweeping as those now at or near the high court's doorstep.
The court is warned in filings that America's international reputation is at stake, as well as the safety of U.S. soldiers who might find themselves detained by another country.
The court has selected most of the cases it will hear this term, but could add at least one terrorism appeal to its docket.
Three pending appeals give the court its best opportunity:
--The Guantanamo cases, which ask if U.S. courts can consider whether the detentions violate international law and are unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the terror suspects held in Cuba have no right to hearings in American courts because they are foreigners being held in a foreign land.
--An appeal on behalf of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a 22-year-old U.S.-born man who lived most of his life in Saudi Arabia. He was captured during the fighting in Afghanistan and is now held in America. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. citizens captured overseas could be treated as enemy combatants, who may be detained without access to courts, lawyers and sometimes even their families.
--A challenge to the government's refusal to release names and other details about hundreds of foreigners detained in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. The appeals courts in Washington, D.C., said the disclosure could help terrorists.
When the Supreme Court does agree to hear a terror case, it walks into a murky area of court oversight of executive branch decision-making. The Bush administration has successfully maintained in most lower courts that judges lack the power to second-guess the government's wartime decisions.
Even more difficult, the court would be forced to revisit precedent set in a series of World War II-era cases that gave the executive branch broad power to do what it wants in such a crisis. For example, a 1944 ruling upheld holding 100,000 Japanese-Americans in camps during World War II.
The administration's Supreme Court lawyer, Theodore Olson, told justices in a filing that the Guantanamo appeal ``challenges the president's military detentions while American soldiers and their allies are still engaged in armed conflict overseas against an unprincipled, unconventional, and savage foe.''
The detainees have been classified enemy combatants and are being interrogated for information about terrorism. Critics argue that without court oversight, they could be held forever.
``The war on terror may go on for decades, and we will not know, at the time, when it is finally over. This war will not end with a surrender ceremony,'' Chicago lawyer James Schroeder wrote in a filing on behalf of three retired military leaders. They are two former Navy Judge Advocate Generals -- Rear Adms. Donald Guter and John Hutson -- and Marine Brig. Gen. David Brahms, who was a legal adviser on prisoner-of-war matters.
Most Supreme Court watchers say the question is when, not if, the court will step in.
Scott Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, predicts the court will bypass the Guantanamo appeals, viewing them as more political than legal.
But he said justices may be inclined to consider an after-the-fact challenge to a military trial of an enemy combatant, which so far has not happened, or review the government's treatment of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb.
Among the cases that have not reached the court yet are those attacking the USA Patriot Act. The law gives the government wide-ranging search and seizure powers, allowing the FBI to secretly obtain records from organizations including libraries.
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
-------- terrorism
Operation Holy Tuesday
October 27, 2003
By GEORG MASCOLO and HOLGER STARK, Der Spiegel
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/europe/27SPIEGEL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The two chief planners of September 11th have confessed, and the records of their interrogations can now be used to paint a precise picture of the events leading up to the terrorist attack. Their statements also reveal how Osama Bin Laden personally selected the suicide pilots from Hamburg.
The prisoner no longer recalls precisely when he heard these words and in which of the many hideouts in the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, this single sentence uttered by Osama Bin Laden has burned itself into his memory, this decisive sentence, spoken in a soft and silky voice, that would ultimately become a death sentence for about 3,000 people: "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?"
It was this sentence that marked the beginning of operation "Holy Tuesday," as the men of the Al Qaeda terrorist network called the terrorist attack in which, on September 11, 2001, two passenger jets crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington, while a fourth exploded in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen, told his American interrogators that the "ax" to which Bin Laden referred was his own plan for an attack. In 1996, Mohammed proposed leasing a small charter plane, filling it with explosives, and crashing it into the headquarters of the American secret service agency, the CIA. His plan, however, represented little more than raising an ax to strike the hated enemy. Bin Laden preferred the "bulldozer" approach, in which his followers were to hijack several passenger jets and fly them into their targets as airborne bombs.
The powerfully built, portly sheik has repeatedly surprised his interrogators in recent months with such insider views of the Al Qaeda network. The Bin Laden associate and chief planner of September 11th was arrested in March of this year. Ever since American interrogation specialists began taking him to task, he has been talking profusely. And now that his right-hand man, Ramzi Binalshibh, who has been in custody since September 2002, has delivered a life confession of sorts, the documented confessions can be used to precisely reconstruct the genesis of the most spectacular act of terrorism in history.
The statements remove the air of mystery that surrounded the prehistory of September 11th until today. They provide evidence that top Al Qaeda leaders were permanently involved in the preparations, and at a much earlier point than has been assumed until now. Most of all, they demonstrate that the world's second-most-wanted man (after Saddam Hussein), prince of terror Osama Bin Laden, personally decided on the selection of the suicide pilots and the aircraft to be hijacked.
It is the confessions in particular that have closed gaps in the terrorism experts' information, and US security experts have allowed the first details to filter down to the public in recent weeks. These details match everything that Sheik Mohammed and Binalshibh said in a double interview the two men gave to the Al Jazeera Arab television network shortly before their arrests. Recommendation: Nick Fielding, Yosri Fouda: "Masterminds of Terror". Europa Verlag, Hamburg; 256 pages; Euro 14.90.
While being interrogated by the Americans, Binalshibh prided himself in the role he played in the attacks, claiming that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "legitimate targets, because they were military targets." After all, he said, the enemy's infrastructure as well as its political and economic symbols must be destroyed in a war. He also said that September 11th by no means marked the end of this war, and that the terrorists intended to keep attacking until America became "the land under water." Then, according to Binalshibh, it would be possible to "kill all its inhabitants."
The prominent prisoner is certainly the most qualified of all to report on the diabolical plot. Binalshibh was the decisive link in the chain, serving as the connecting point between Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and the Hamburg cell surrounding suicide pilot Mohammed Atta, which was based in the now notorious apartment at Marienstraße 54 in Hamburg's Harburg neighborhood. Binalshibh gave Atta the targets and personally informed Bin Laden about the precise date of the deadly attacks. From his base in Hamburg, Binalshibh controlled the flow of funds and coordinated the supporters. He always had several cell phones in his pocket, none of them registered under his own name. At times he would sigh and say: "What is so wonderful about this life? Paradise is far more beautiful!"
Binalshibh's statements also explain how someone who was once an inconspicuous, open-hearted and cheery refugee first became a fraudulent applicant for political asylum and phony student and ultimately turned himself into one of the world's leading terrorists. Now he is someone who, since September 11th, is considered by Islamists the world over to be an icon of Al Qaeda, whose image even Taliban fighters carry in their breast pockets while on the battlefield. He is a manager of death who celebrated with Bin Laden's eldest son Saad in March 2002 and whose arrest just over a year ago was personally praised by US President George W. Bush: "He thought he could get away. But he forgot that he was being pursued by the most powerful nation on earth."
The last photographs of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Binalshibh show the two strategists of the "Holy War" in humiliating poses. A confused-looking Sheikh Mohammed stares into the camera, his hair unkempt, his chest bared, and his hands apparently tied behind his back. Binalshibh is shown blindfolded with his head pulled back, while a Pakistani security officer brandishes his pistol.
Both were caught in Pakistan, and there is no doubt that they were first interrogated by the notorious Pakistani secret service, the ISI. Binalshibh began talking immediately and answered many questions. But the ISI experts were unable to break the silence of his fellow believer, Sheik Mohammed. At first he only prayed. For two full days he crouched on the floor in a trance-like state, reciting verses from the Koran. On the third day he apparently chastised his Pakistani interrogators: "Playing the willing allies of America will not help you and your country!" Then the Pakistanis placed a mask over his head, drove him to the Chaklala air force force base in Rawalpindi, and turned him over to the American authorities, just as they had done with Binalshibh five months earlier.
The methods US interrogation specialists apply to convince their prisoners to talk have already come to light in Guantanamo Bay. The terrorists imprisoned there are told, in no uncertain terms, that there is only one hope for them: to talk. Whether the prisoner is allowed to get a full night's sleep, whether the light in his cell is kept on day and night, what he gets to eat - these are all things that depend on whether he talks. The pressure seems to work. According to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "We have been able to get a tremendous amount of information out of them, information that will make things much more difficult for an unbelievably large number of people in this world."
"IF I HAD HAD MORE MONEY FOR A BIGGER BOMB, THE TOWERS WOULD NO LONGER BE STANDING."
Nevertheless, each interrogation report on Sheik Mohammed and Binalshibh begins with the disclaimer that one cannot be sure where the real information ends and where the lies begin. The US agents believe most of what the two prisoners say about preparations for the terrorist attack, such as information about secret meetings and when the details of the plan were ironed out. However, the terrorism experts question much of what Sheik Mohammed and Binalshibh have to say about the roles of individual Al Qaeda operatives, possibly in an attempt to protect their co-conspirators.
In spite of all reservations, and although the history of September 11, 2001 has thus far been a puzzle missing a few important pieces, investigators believe that the picture is now almost complete, even down to the last detail. The prisoners, says Vince Cannistraro, former head of the CIA anti-terrorism unit, have "contributed those pieces that have been missing until now, so that the US government can be certain that it now has a relatively accurate understanding of the plan leading up to September 11th."
The same applies to the German authorities. The German government, the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation and the German intelligence services have received copies of those portions of the confession reports that apply to Germany. However, the Americans have prohibited the Germans from using the material in court cases against suspected terrorists, placing the German legal system into a rather uncomfortable position.
By now, about one-third of the 29 members of the so-called Al Qaeda round table, the assembled leadership team surrounding Bin Laden, are in custody. The interrogation experts have repeatedly compared the statements made by different prisoners, verified the information during subsequent questioning, and sorted out anything that was unclear or clearly false.
To the investigators, it is now apparent that the apocalypse in New York only became possible because three threads gradually converged in the mountains of Kandahar. The first thread was the obsession of Sheik Mohammed's clan, the members of which deeply detest the United States. The second was the power that fanatic Osama Bin Laden held over an entire army of religious fanatics with paramilitary training. The third and final thread was the blind willingness to become martyrs within a group of Muslims from Hamburg-Harburg, men who wanted nothing more fervently than to die in the war against the infidels.
The history of September 11th began as a private war on a gray Friday in the spring of 1993 - with the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center. On February 26, 1993, Ramsi Ahmed Yussuf, a nephew of Sheik Mohammed, detonated a powerful bomb in the underground parking garage of the WTC. The bomb contained about 600 kilograms of highly explosive nitroglycerin hidden in a white delivery van parked on the B 2 parking level. The explosion ripped a 200-by-100-foot crater into the building's foundation, killing six people. The towers shook. But they did not fall.
When he was arrested years later, Yussuf, a bearded, brooding, introverted man with enormous ears, was still enthralled by the brilliant design of his bomb. In 1995, investigators transported him by helicopter to the New York FBI office, and when the twin towers came into view, Yussuf said: "If I had had more money and time to build a bigger bomb, the towers would no longer be standing."
And as if he were practically yearning for the paradise he had been promised, Yussuf asked the FBI officials whether his execution would be carried out without delay once he had been sentenced to death.
Again and again, it became apparent just how deeply entrenched the hate was within the clan of the Mohammeds. Sheik Mohammed's older brother Sahid also became a member of Al Qaeda, and another brother lost his life fighting alongside the Mujaheddin in their battle with the Soviets. And according to the FBI, "KSM," US investigators' internal abbreviation for the name of Sheik Mohammed, was already involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, acting as one of the masterminds who raised the money to buy the explosives.
SHEIK MOHAMMED PRAYED FOR TWO DAYS IN A TRANCE-LIKE STATE, AND THEN CHASTISED HIS GUARDS
In the wake of what the terrorist clan considered to be a failed attack, it was certainly not surprising that it did not give up its efforts to strike a devastating blow against the Americans on their own soil. "KSM" and his nephews developed a script that was to vastly exceed the attack on New York in terms of its sheer magnitude. It was called "Operation Bojinka."
It was also not surprising that Khalid Sheik Mohammed intended to join bomb maker Yussuf and play a leading role in the murderous plot this time around.
In those days Sheik Mohammed, now about 38 or 39 years old (the FBI isn't entirely sure of his age), made frequent trips to the Philippines. His father, who had emigrated to Kuwait from the Pakistani province of Beluchistan, had become a popular cleric in his adopted Arab country. The father, a businessman, sent his son Khalid to study at a Baptist college in North Carolina, and later to the University of Greensboro, where Sheik Mohammed earned a degree in mechanical engineering in December 1986.
Now he wanted to apply the technical skills he had acquired there to "Operation Bojinka." According to the plan, bombs with time fuses would be used to blow up twelve American passenger jets almost simultaneously.
However, the plan fell apart on January 6, 1995. In an apartment complex in Manila, Yussuf had been experimenting with potassium and sodium chlorate in his home laboratory when the mixture suddenly caught fire. Yussuf fled in a panic. A short time later, investigators discovered various files filled with perfidious ideas on a laptop they had found in the apartment. One of these ideas was to assassinate the Pope during his visit to Manila in early 1995, and another was a detailed plan of "Operation Bojinka."
Yussuf and two other men were arrested shortly thereafter, but his uncle, Sheik Mohammed, had managed to get away in time, and he continued his efforts. After that, the Americans began distributing "wanted" posters, some depicting the sheik as a Jihad warrior with a flowing beard and some as a clean-shaven Muslim wearing worldly clothing: a white shirt and a striped tie.
But neither the description on the "wanted" posters ("slightly overweight, brown eyes, wears glasses") nor a two million dollar bounty did the trick. Sheik Mohammed, who is said to speak fluent English, Arabic and Urdu, had gone into hiding among the Taliban in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Even there the Islamist did not lose focus on his true objective. As he has now told his astonished interrogators, it was as early as 1996 that Sheik Mohammed was able to convince Osama Bin Laden of his idea to use a small plane as a kamikaze bomber. And, according to Mohammed, he also asked Bin Laden for two things that were absolutely necessary to achieve his goals: money and martyrs.
Because Bin Laden pushed for something much bigger, a far more spectacular showdown - a "bulldozer" instead of an "ax" -, Sheik Mohammed developed a plan that was as ambitious as it was daring. According to his proposal, Al Qaeda would hijack ten aircraft simultaneously, five on the West coast and five on the East coast of the United States. Each of these aircraft would then be flown into suitable targets.
But Bin Laden had his doubts. He felt that such a massive plan was not feasible, that not even Al Qaeda could manage the organizational challenges associated with such a major attack.
During one of these meetings with Sheik Mohammed, the prince of terror pragmatically suggested an initial attack involving only four pilots. He told Mohammed that he already had four promising young men in mind, men who were prepared to die for Allah at any time, and that all they required was the appropriate training. Two of the candidates, Saudi Arabians Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hamsi, would later hijack the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th. At the time, Bin Laden had also set his sights on two Yemenis.
It was 1996. The countdown to "Holy Tuesday" had begun.
Sheik Mohammed assumed control over the military committee of the Al Qaeda network. Soon the terror manager came to be known as "al Much" - "the brain." From then on, Sheik Mohammed was one of the key planners behind virtually every deadly attack. Investigators have learned that he also remained in charge after September 11th, such as during the attack on German tourists vacationing on the island of Jerba in April 2002.
SHEIK MOHAMMED DEVELOPED A DARING PLAN: HE WANTED TO HIJACK TEN AIRCRAFT.
His people were responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the world, year after year, such as the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Daressalam. There was only one problem: They had yet to strike the Americans in their own country. A planned attack on the Los Angeles airport in 2002 failed because the courier carrying the explosives was apprehended.
But the organization felt strong enough to try again.
A group of advisors - a small committee consisting of Bin Laden and five other men - carefully debated the pros and cons of various plans. One thing was clear, however: The Islamists intended to use hijacked passenger jets as weapons. But which targets would they attack? Nuclear power plants were discussed first, but the idea was discarded "for fear that the whole thing would spin out of control," as Sheik Mohammed said in the Al Jazeera interview. He was also concerned that the attack could fail, because the US Air Force monitors the air space over nuclear power plants very closely.
Osama's followers also considered how the great attack was to progress, and initially planned an attack in two waves. First, they intended to hijack several aircraft in America and, soon afterwards, additional aircraft in Southeast Asia. However, Bin Laden vetoed the idea of a double attack, explained Sheik Mohammed, because it would have been "too difficult to synchronize."
In 1999, the Al Qaeda leadership decided to stick to the plan that involved hijacking four aircraft. Meanwhile, the pilots Bin Laden had selected, Nawaf al-Hamsi and Chalid al-Midhar, had begun their commando training in Afghanistan. Hamsi was a fanatic who had first traveled to Afghanistan as a teenager in 1993. In 1995, he and Midhar fought as volunteers against the Serbs in Bosnia. The two later became devoted followers of Bin Laden.
But then there were problems. Only Midhar and Hamsi received visas from the US consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia in April 1999. The two Yemenis who had also been suggested by Bin Laden were denied visas. The US immigration authorities were already suspicious of men from the Islamic state of Yemen before September 11th.
The Al Qaeda leadership needed a few well-trained replacements. Their qualifications included a familiarity with Western countries and the ability to solve complex problems and work independently. The ideal candidates were people who, like Sheik Mohammed himself, could even have studied in a Western country, were technically skilled, and spoke perfect English. "We had plenty of volunteers," Sheik Mohammed bragged to Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda. "Our task was to find the right ones, the ones who were familiar with the West."
Under these circumstances, the four Jihad recruits from Germany who arrived in the Hindu Kush in the winter of 1999 were a true stroke of luck.
The students, Mohammed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ramzi Binalshibh, had left Hamburg-Harburg to join the Holy War. To fund the trip, Shehhi withdrew 12,000 German marks from his account with Dresdner Bank on November 12, 1999. He used the money to buy plane tickets on Turkish Airlines flights to Karachi via Istanbul. As a precaution, the four men flew on four different days. When Jarrah returned to Germany and his girlfriend asked him where he had been, he told her that it would be better for her "not to ask questions."
The group had recruited Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a veteran of the early Al Qaeda days who had fought in Bosnia. Zammar, a heavyset, 300-pound man, distributed manually copied Bin Laden pamphlets in Hamburg and was considered a point of contact for potential Holy Warriors. He is now in custody in Syria and has confessed to having recruited Binalshibh and others for Al Qaeda.
Just how successful he was in his efforts is documented in a video depicting many of the members of the Hamburg terrorist cell.
The video shows the wedding of Said Bahaji, one of the closest friends of Atta and Binalshibh. It was recorded on October 9, 1999, about six weeks before the group of martyrs departed for Afghanistan. The ceremony at the Kuds Mosque on Hamburg's Steindamm Street was something of a class reunion for the northern German Islamist community, and the video attests to the radicalization of the Muslims.
THE RECRUITS FROM HAMBURG WHO ARRIVED IN AFGHANISTAN WERE A TRUE STROKE OF LUCK FOR AL QAEDA
In the video Binalshibh, who had been sitting quietly, cross-legged, in the large assembly room, suddenly began speaking. First he apologized politely for the interruption, but then began preaching to the assembled brothers: "The goal of every Muslim is to free the Islamic lands of every oppressor and tyrant! And when these tyrants attack you, you will become a wave of fire and blood!" Later on the guests sang old Arab fighting sons, led by Marwan al-Shehhi: "We will be filled with glowing enthusiasm, and we will crush the thrones of the oppressors!"
These were symbolic words at a wedding ceremony that would become a farewell ceremony for some of the guests, men who would only return to Hamburg intermittently on their journey to America.
Originally, as Binalshibh reported to his interrogators, the four fighters from Hamburg planned to go to Chechnya, not Afghanistan. Back then, the atrocities committed by the Russians were a constant topic of conversation in German mosques, and volunteers were always leaving for Grosny.
The Hamburg group sought the advice of experienced Mujaheddin. Finally, they were received by Mohamadou Ould Slahi, an Islamist and Al Qaeda recruiter living in Duisburg who is now in custody in Guantanamo Bay. He had received guerilla training in Afghanistan and maintained excellent international contacts.
Ould Slahi, well-versed in matters of conspiracy, warned the volunteers from the Kuds Mosque that Arabs coming from Europe were having trouble making it to Grosny. He told them that it would be better to travel to the Hindu Kush region through the Pakistani city of Quetta.
It was in Quetta, during the first few weeks of the year 2000, that the decision must have been reached to send Atta and Co. to America to conduct "Operation Holy Tuesday."
Armed with Ould Slahi's personal recommendation to Bin Laden, the four Islamists from Germany gradually arrived in Kandahar: the reserved, earnest head of the group, Egyptian Mohammed Atta, 31 at the time; the worldly Lebanese Ziad Jarrah, 24, later photographed in Florida proudly holding his newly acquired pilot's license and wearing dark sunglasses; the wealthy, plump Marwan al-Shehhi, 21, who received a check for 4,000 German marks each month from the United Arab Emirates, to pay for his education; and the jovial Yemeni Ramzi Binalshibh, 27, the last of the group to reach Afghanistan.
BIN LADEN ASKED THE YOUNG MEN FROM HAMBURG WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO LIVE AS A MUSLIM IN EUROPE.
In the mountains, all four delivered the "Baia," the oath that was required to gain access to the inner circle of Al Qaeda: the oath of allegiance to Bin Laden. "I swear by Allah, in whose hands the life of Sheik Mohammed lies: I wish to fight and to die in battle, and to fight again and to die in battle, and then to fight again and to die in battle." Before long, the group was invited by Bin Laden himself to attend a Ramadan feast, an exceptional honor bestowed upon only very few of the many thousand recruits from all over the world.
During one audience, Bin Laden asked Binalshibh how he felt about the Taliban and what it was like to live as a Muslim in Europe. Then the prince of terror promised the men that they would be permitted to enter paradise as martyrs, but he did not tell them just how this would transpire, not yet.
Shortly before their departure for Germany, Bin Laden summoned the men from Hamburg once again. Al Qaeda's military chief, the Egyptian Mohammed Atif, who was later killed in a US bombing raid in Afghanistan, told the men attending the meeting that they had been selected for a "top secret mission." They were told to obtain a pilot's license in the United States and, for the time being, to get out of Afghanistan quickly. Speed was critical, because the camp's leaders expected renewed American attacks on Al Qaeda positions in early 2000. The US Navy had already launched cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in August 1998, though without great success, in the wake of the attacks in Tanzania and Kenya. Now another attack was expected.
Bin Laden and Atif also gave the men a piece of practical advice. They were not to forget to throw away their passports, so that their trip to Afghanistan would remain undetected. They were also told to shave off their beards for their new passport photos, so that they would not be recognized as religious men.
And this was exactly what they did. In his Egyptian passport, number 1617066, which was issued to Atta by the Egyptian General Consulate in Hamburg on May 8, 2000, even though his old passport was still valid, the student in the photo is clean-shaven. From then on, in keeping with Bin Laden's wishes, Atta and the Lebanese Ziad Jarrah would be the leaders of the group.
Sheik Mohammed has confessed to US authorities that he developed a special training manual specifically for the hijackers, one in which behavior in American society was taken into account. It included instructions on how to find useful addresses in the yellow pages, how to select flight schools, and how to study flight schedules. The intention, after all, was to ensure that Atta and the others would be as well-prepared as possible for their time in the United States.
Binalshibh who, like Bin Laden's father, comes from the Yemeni province of Hadramaut, became one of Bin Laden's favorites during his two-month stay in Afghanistan, partly because the prince of terror believed he was especially trustworthy. "Obeida" (his code name) quickly developed the reputation of being a confidante of the boss. In fact, according to Sheik Mohammed, Binalshibh was appointed "Coordinator of the Operations of Holy Tuesday" by Al Qaeda leadership.
To assume this role, however, he had to return to Hamburg where, as Binalshibh says, "the communication among the cells came together and where the commands were received from supreme headquarters in Afghanistan."
Binalshibh was very well-qualified to perform the decisive function of a coordinator: transferring money. He spent eight years working as a clerk for the International Bank of Yemen before traveling to Germany in 1995. His supervisors in Yemen described him as highly rebellious, claiming that he often insulted his superiors, came to work late, or was simply too lazy to lock up confidential documents after the close of business. But he was familiar with the way money moves internationally.
After returning to Germany from Afghanistan, Binalshibh first tried to get pilot training on his own, traveling to the Dutch town of Apeldoorn in mid-March 2000 to enroll in flight school. But Dutch pilots told him that he should learn how to fly in America, if that was where he was headed. They also said that he would receive better training in the United States.
Between May 17, 2000 and October 25, 2000, Binalshibh made four attempts to obtain a visa for the United States, first in Germany, then in Yemen, and then in Germany again. But when a clerk at the American embassy in Berlin returned his 99-mark application fee for the fourth time and recommended that he refrain from any further attempts, it became clear that perhaps the other group members were destined to become martyrs, but not Binalshibh.
Then he gave up and concentrated on his true role - as Bin Laden's personal courier.
On January 31, 2001, a flight from Hamburg touched down onto the runway at Teheran International Airport. Ramzi Binalshibh was on board, but his only objective in making a stopover in Teheran was to cover his tracks. Back home in Hamburg, he had withdrawn all the money from his bank account, all of 1,900 German marks. It was just enough money for the trip to Afghanistan, where Bin Laden was waiting for him. It is only since Binalshibh has talked about this trip that the investigators know that a key meeting of the Al Qaeda leadership took place in the mountains of Afghanistan in early February 2001, a meeting to update Bin Laden on the progress of the plan.
Apparently he was satisfied, and was so convinced of his disciples' willingness to die for the "just cause" that he told Binalshibh what the four targets were that Al Qaeda had selected for the attacks. Three of them, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were in fact hit. The fourth pilot, according to Binalshibh's statements during the interrogations, was to attack the Capitol, the seat of the US parliament. However, the aircraft, flown by Ziah Jarrah, crashed over Pennsylvania after passengers resisted the terrorists. US authorities have long presumed that the plane was destined to hit the White House, and only Binalshibh's statements have corrected that erroneous assumption.
According to Binalshibh, Bin Laden had already selected the targets in May or June 2000, and the chief terrorist also personally selected the men who were to accompany each of the four pilots. The planes were not to be hijacked by men from different countries, but by a group from Saudi Arabia, a country to which he felt a particularly strong bond. There were 14 Saudi Arabians, called "the musclemen" by Al Qaeda insiders, because that could only be used for appropriate tasks. They were men such as Hamsa al-Ghamdi, who flew into the south tower of the WTC and whom Bin Laden praised on a videotape put out by Al Qaeda to honor the attackers: "His heart was filled with love for the fight against the enemy. He was very devout, and he absorbed the Koran with a lightness of heart, like a basket that catches dates falling from a tree."
When Binalshibh left Afghanistan in February 2001, Bin Laden sent him on his way with one additional instruction: "Be patient and await further instructions."
In their confessions, Binalshibh and Sheik Mohammed also explained how the new, detailed commands from Afghanistan reached Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. At the time, the three pilots from Hamburg were just completing their flight training in the United States. Atta and Shehhi had received their pilot's licenses for civilian aircraft on December 21, 2000, three days before Christmas.
Binalshibh told the interrogation experts that he gave the pilots their instructions at a meeting in the Spanish vacation town of Tarragona in July 2001. Investigators had long since known that the meeting took place, but had virtually no other details. According to their reconstruction of the meeting, Atta himself had traveled to Spain from the United States on Iberia Airlines Flight 656 from Miami, arriving in Madrid at 4:20 p.m. In the Spanish capital, he rented a car - a Hyundai Accent - for seven days. In Tarragona, the "ringleader," as the FBI refers to Atta, checked into the Hotel Casablanca Playa. He paid in cash.
At the vacation spot, Atta told Binalshibh that the hijackers were ready and that the date had been set. Atta and Binalshibh had previously dubbed the operation "Porsche 911," a code word to be used if they ever had to speak to each other on the telephone.
And the "Porsche," Atta now said, was ready to go.
He told Binalshibh that the pilots had been selected and the routes had been coordinated. Their investigations had revealed that the cockpit doors are usually left open after takeoff, presenting ideal conditions for storming the cockpit. He also said that group members had successfully managed to get box cutters on board on test flights, and had not been questioned by security personnel.
At the end of the conversation, Atta wanted to know whether Binalshibh had remembered the jewelry. Atta had asked his co-conspirator to bring him all kinds of flashy jewelry. It was a precautionary measure to prevent him from being detected shortly before reaching his objective. Atta believed that his reentry into the United States would be far less conspicuous if he were disguised as a wealthy Arab.
Spanish investigators presume that Al Qaeda member Imad Zarkas, a.k.a. Abu Dahdah, also attended the meeting. According to FBI experts, Atta had already met with Dahdah in Spain, travelling alone at the time, in January 2001. Investigators believe that this bald man with glasses, head of a group known as "Soldiers of Allah" and currently on trial in Spain for providing assistance to the terrorists, was in charge of the cells that Binalshibh coordinated from his base in Hamburg and that were responsible for providing support to the attackers.
Shortly before the attacks, on August 6 and August 27, 2001, an unknown man named "Shakur" called Abu Dahdah. In the first conversation, he boasted: "I have prepared a few threads and things that will please you."
"Shakur" was more precise in the second telephone conversation: "We have begun studying aviation in class and have even beheaded the bird." He went on to say that it would "take another month, more or less." He then told Abu Dahdah not to mention this to anyone, because the telephone could be "hot."
It was in fact "hot." The Spanish police taped the conversations, and later, after the attack on the World Trade Center, believed that "Shakur" was one of the suicide pilots.
But "Shakur" called again, this time on September 26, 2001, 15 days after the attacks. He wanted to know whether Abu Dahdah had "taken the malaria medicine." Things were "very bad," responded the Spaniard, clearly upset, saying that he was now "ill." At that point, he was already being watched around the clock by the Spanish police, and was arrested a short time later.
Who in fact this secretive "Shakur" was remains a mystery, and the role played by his conversation partner Abu Dahdah is only likely to be elucidated in court. It is certain, however, that supporters in Spain played an important role in Binalshibh's escape during the days leading up to September 11th. On September 5, 2001, six days before the attacks took place, the Yemeni boarded Lufthansa flight 4398, departing Düsseldorf at 2:40 p.m. and bound for Madrid. As Binalshibh has now confessed, when he arrived in the Spanish capital he was met by an Al Qaeda member named Abd al-Wahid, who gave him a Saudi Arabian passport and tickets to Karachi. According to Binalshibh, Al-Wahid was a Saudi Arabian with a British identification card, and was responsible for the travel arrangements of Al Qaeda leadership. Shortly after September 11th, Binalshibh finally arrived in the Afghan city of Kandahar, the secret capital of the Taliban.
He was not the only one who fled to Afghanistan as quickly as possible during the days surrounding September 11th. As Binalshibh has said, Bin Laden knew the exact date of the attacks by no later than the end of August. The chief terrorist then discretely sent messengers around the world to instruct his followers to return to Afghanistan by "no later than September 10th." Bin Laden carelessly had someone call one of his favorite wives, who was in Syria at the time, asking her to return to the safety of Afghanistan, indicating that the request was very urgent. The telephone conversation was tapped by several intelligence services, but none of them foresaw its significance.
At 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Based on everything investigators know today, the plane was piloted by the former student of urban planning in Hamburg who had taken the German group from Hamburg to Afghanistan, via Duisburg, in the fall of 1999: Mohammed Atta.
Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 plowed into the south tower of the office complex. Atta's friend, Marwan al-Shehhi, was at the controls.
Another fourteen minutes later, at 9:43 a.m., a Boeing 757, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon. Chalid al-Midhar, Bin Laden's trusted follower and the first of the volunteers to be selected, a man who had known since 1999 that he was to die a martyr, was on board.
At approximately 10:10 a.m. local time, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers had heard about the apocalypse in New York and stormed the cockpit. Jarrah, the former bon vivant at the controls of the aircraft, did not reach his destination.
The terrorists killed more than 3,000 people. They destroyed a symbol of economic power and, most of all, damaged the self-confidence of an entire nation. September 11th was a victory for Islamists, and for them it has become a "holy Tuesday." Sheik Mohammed had been dreaming of such a day since 1993.
US PRESIDENT BUSH IS TO DECIDE WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE PLANNERS OF SEPTEMBER 11th.
Where Binalshibh and Sheik Mohammed are currently being questioned is unknown. It is certain, however, that they are not being held in Guantanamo Bay. Otherwise, there are many rumors. They are said to be on a US warship, at the air force base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or at Bagram, the US' main headquarters in Afghanistan. However, it is also possible that they are being held in a country where human rights and prohibitions on torture are not taken that seriously, a country that may be handling the dirty work for the Americans. US investigators refer to these kinds of places as "Hotel California."
US interrogators have never had any doubts about the purpose of their jobs. According to the CIA, it is in the national interest that everything that the two men know about Al Qaeda be extracted from them: "If they are silent, it will cost our blood." Even American politicians are uncomfortable about this ultimatum-like approach. Without specifically mentioning the word "torture," members of the intelligence committees in the US Congress have asked whether force is being used. "All I can say to that is that there is a before and an after September 11th," responded Cofer Black, former director of counterintelligence at the CIA and currently charged with the same duties at the State Department. He added that "we have taken off our kid gloves."
Omar al-Faruk, a sort of Southeast Asia representative of Bin Laden until his arrest, discovered exactly what this means. In his isolation cell in Bagram, the light was left on day and night, and Faruk was forced to squat on the floor at night. His interrogators would suddenly raise the temperature in his cell to a tropical 100°F and then drop it to an icy 10°F, continuing this cycle until he became willing to cooperate.
The circumstances under which the confessions of Binalshibh and Sheik Mohammed were obtained will certainly influence the political and criminal assessment of their cases, if they are ever brought before ordinary courts, that is. The decision as to the legal status of the Al Qaeda members currently in custody ultimately rests with US President George W. Bush.
Will they remain locked up for the rest of their lives, or will they be tried before a military tribunal? From the US perspective, is the death penalty appropriate for a crime of such awesome proportions? Or would it be an even greater punishment if the mass murderers were to spend the rest of their lives in isolation and without any prospects, like Sheik Mohammed's nephew Ramsi Ahmed Yussuf, who was sentenced to 240 years imprisonment in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
Ramzi Binalshibh was apparently not particularly impressed by the potential consequences of his actions. The prisoner loudly proclaimed that he had nothing against being flown to Guantanamo Bay. The internment camp, joked Binalshibh, is currently the only place in the world "where 500 Mujaheddin fighters can be together in one place." He says he would probably establish an institute or a religious school in the camp. And when he is released, Binalshibh threatens his interrogators, the first thing he will do will be to "kill 1,000 Americans."
Translated by Christopher Sulta
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protests as Australia ships nuclear waste to France
SYDNEY (AFP)
Oct 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031026234434.fccncb2d.html
Amid protests and under cover of darkness, Australia dispatched a load of used nuclear fuel to France early Monday in the first overseas shipment of Australian radioactive waste in two years.
A convoy of five trucks carrying 344 spent nuclear fuel rods crossed suburban Sydney under heavy police guard before dawn and loaded the waste aboard the French ship Fret Moselle, which quickly departed, officials said.
It was the first shipment of waste from Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor to reprocessing centers in France since January 2001.
Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace circled the Fret Moselle in inflatable boats to protest the shipment, but did not attempt to block the vessel, a spokesman for the group said.
"It was a bizarre event to be unfolding while most of Sydney slept," said Danny Kennedy.
"There were five large trucks with containers on the back of them, each of them containing caskets that hold the spent fuel rods from Lucas Heights," he said.
The convoy was protected by police and emergency vehicles, motorcycles and helicopters in a major security operation "probably bigger than anything Sydney's ever seen," Kennedy said.
The Fret Moselle left port shortly before dawn and Greenpeace said it was likely to spark further protests en route to France either through the Pacific or via the Indian Ocean.
Lucas Heights is Australia's only nuclear reactor and the government decided in 1997 to ship spent fuel rods from the research facility overseas for reprocessing by the French firm Cogema.
Under Australia's contract with Cogema, the French firm is to extract and retain enriched uranium and send intermediate-level radioactive waste back to Australia for long-term storage.
Greenpeace said due to technical problems in France, none of the spent fuel sent by Australia since 1997 has yet been reprocessed and Australian authorities have yet to develop a site to store returned waste.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, which manages Lucas Heights, said all necessary precautions had been taken to ensure the safety of Monday's shipment.
"This fuel that was transported had been in store waiting for transport for some time," said the organizations' executive director, Ron Cameron.
"The average age of that fuel was about 25 years old, so it's really quite old fuel," he said. "There is no risk to the Australian public."
Kennedy said there was unprecedented security surrounding the nuclear waste convoy and Port Botany, where the Fret Moselle docked just after midnight.
"There were 10 police launches protecting the vessel, including fast inflatable vessels with guys in black helmets and night-vision goggles ... racing around the water," he said.
"It is an obscene abuse of the public purse," he said.
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