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NUCLEAR
Depleted uranium said polluting Samawah
Ex-military doctor decries use of depleted uranium weapons
Divided Over Iran's Nuclear Program, Agency Delays Action
U.S., U.N. Trade Barbs on Iran
U.S. Softens Hard Line on Iran's Nuclear Cover - Up
U.S. Softens Position on Iran Over Nukes
N.Korea Berates Rumsfeld as Worse Than Hitler
Work on N. Korea Nuke Reactors Suspended
Lawmaker Blasts Bush on Nuclear Project
Democrats Say Bush Broke Promise on Nuclear Waste
MILITARY
2 Bills Would Benefit Top Bush Fundraisers
Insurgents Use Rockets on Donkey Carts to Hit Sites in Iraqi Capital
Al Qaeda Group Claims Turkey Attacks
Bush Calls Turkey a 'Front' in War on Terror
A Battle of Words Over War Intelligence
U.N. Aims to Aid Iraq Transition
Army Is Planning for 100,000 G.I.'s in Iraq Till 2006
U.S. Military Returns to War Tactics
Free Iraqi Media Called a Worthy Onus
Bush Ad Criticizes Democrats On Defense
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Pledged Secrecy to New York
Privacy Is Primary Issue, Mayor Says of 9/11 Tapes
Approach of Holidays Spurs Terrorism Alert
Special Registration for Arab Immigrants Will Reportedly Stop
Moussaoui Defense Warns of 'Loophole'
FBI let innocents get death sentences: report
Draft Report Questions FBI Bullet Analyses
FBI Gets More Time on Gun Buys
Analysts See Terrorism Paradox
ENERGY AND OTHER
Senate Energy Bill Is Blocked GOP Thwarted in Getting Floor Vote
ACTIVISTS
Thousands protest Iraq war in Italy demos
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium said polluting Samawah
By EIICHIRO ISHIYAMA
Kyodo News The Japan Times:
Nov. 22, 2003
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20031122b4.htm
Experts warn that Self-Defense Forces troops risk depleted uranium radiation exposure if they are deployed to Samawah in the south to help rebuild the country.
According to European and U.S. news reports, and testimony by experts who carried out inspections in Iraq, it appears certain that the U.S. used depleted uranium shells in the invasion this year.
But the Japanese government, responding to a question from Mizuho Fukushima, a Social Democratic Party member of the House of Councilors, admits it does not know whether the United States used depleted uranium shells in its invasion of Iraq.
Yuko Fujita, a Keio University assistant professor of environmental physics, said he spotted more than two dozen cartridge cases and tips of depleted uranium shells in the yard of Iraq's Planning Ministry during a visit in May to survey the country.
"There's no doubt (the U.S.) used depleted uranium shells," Fujita claimed. "It's possible the number may have exceeded the number of (such) shells used during the Gulf War."
The main ingredient of depleted uranium rounds is uranium 238, which originates in the process of enriching uranium 235 for nuclear fuel from natural uranium ore. Because of their light weight, depleted uranium rounds are less susceptible to wind sheer and have a longer range.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of the U.S. Central Command said U.S. military forces used a very small volume of depleted uranium projectiles in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor quoted U.S. military personnel as saying U.S. forces fired 300,000 depleted uranium rounds from 30-mm machineguns alone.
Quoting a U.S. Army colonel who took part in the invasion, U.S. reporting group CFFTM said the total volume used was about 500 tons. Samawah, a candidate site for deployment of SDF personnel, is described as a region polluted by depleted uranium shells where increased cases of births of babies with disabilities and infantile cancer have been reported over about five years since the end of the Gulf War.
Some experts have also warned of the risk of radiation exposure for SDF personnel if they are deployed there.
Hisataka Yamazaki, representative of a private depleted uranium shell research group, said, "It is fully possible that (some SDF) personnel may suffer health problems several years later, although it depends on the period of their stay and what they do."
Fighting in Samawah during the invasion left more than 100 civilians dead.
----
Ex-military doctor decries use of depleted uranium weapons
By NAO SHIMOYACHI Staff writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003
The Japan Times
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20031122b3.htm
The depleted uranium rounds the U.S. and British forces were believed to have used in the war on Iraq may have subjected parts of the country to heavy radioactive contamination, a visiting U.S.-based doctor of nuclear medicine has warned.
Asaf Durakovic
Asaf Durakovic, director of the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent organization with offices in the United States and Canada, said his research team conducted a three-week field trip to Iraq last month. It collected about 100 samples of substances such as soil, civilian urine and the tissue from the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad, Basra and Najaf.
Durakovic said preliminary tests show that the air, soil and water samples contained "hundreds to thousands of times" the normal levels of radiation. But he must wait another three months before getting the final results, he said.
Durakovic spent 19 years as a military doctor for the U.S. Defense Department, and studied the health of veterans after the 1991 Gulf War.
"This high level of contamination is because much more depleted uranium was used this year than in (the Gulf War of) 1991," Durakovic told The Japan Times.
The Pentagon has admitted using some 300 tons of depleted uranium during the Gulf War. Durakovic puts the amount used in the latest war on Iraq at 1,700 tons.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium-enrichment process in nuclear reactors. Due to its extreme density, it is used on armor-piercing rounds, and is also used to enhance tank armor.
Depleted uranium rounds release fine radioactive particles upon impact, Durakovic said. If the particles are inhaled, they enter the lymph nodes and bones and can remain within the body for years.
"We analyzed the urine of American war veterans" of the 1991 Gulf War, he said. "Nine years after (my initial tests), they are still positive."
Depleted uranium was first used during the Gulf War by U.S. and British forces. It is believed to have also been used in NATO airstrikes on Kosovo in 1999 and the U.S-led antiterror campaign in Afghanistan that began in 2001.
Critics say the number of Iraqi cancer patients and children born with birth defects is rising, and they blame depleted uranium weapons.
The weapons are also suspected of being a contributing cause of "Gulf War Syndrome," which is reportedly suffered by tens of thousands of U.S., British, Canadian and French veterans who participated in Operation Desert Shield. Their ills include leukemia, chronic fatigue, swollen joints and depression.
Durakovic said he was forced to resign from his position at the Pentagon in 1996 because of his studies. The U.S. and British governments deny that depleted uranium can be harmful to human health, he said.
"They are hampering efforts to prove the connection between depleted uranium and the illness," Durakovic said. "They do not want to admit that they committed war crimes" by using weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under international law.
He said he suspects that such factors as the huge cost of conducting thorough research into the effects of depleted uranium, which he said would take "billions of dollars," and the need to dispose of huge stockpiles of radioactive waste produced through nuclear power generation are contributing to the governments' unwillingness.
But Durakovic remains optimistic. "We will soon know more (about depleted uranium's effects) because the world is learning more and more about the hiding of the truth," he said.
-------- iran
Divided Over Iran's Nuclear Program, Agency Delays Action
November 22, 2003
By MARK LANDLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/middleeast/22NUKE.html
FRANKFURT, Nov. 21 - The United States and Europe remain at such loggerheads over how harshly to rebuke Iran for its secret nuclear program that the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday delayed the passage of a resolution until at least the middle of next week.
Diplomats in Vienna, where the agency is based, have wrangled for days over the wording of the resolution, with the United States demanding tougher language and making threats of taking further action against Iran.
"There was no coming together on the text of a resolution," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the agency.
"It was judged that it would not be ripe for tabling until next Wednesday."
The negotiations are now expected to move to Washington, Paris, Berlin and other capitals, where the United States and Europe will try to bridge the gap "at the highest levels," Ms. Fleming said.
Tensions flared during the meeting on Friday after the American ambassador to the agency, Kenneth Brill, criticized its director general, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, for declaring in his report on Iran that there was "no evidence" that the Iranian government was seeking a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Brill said the report elaborately documented Iran's clandestine nuclear activities, stretching over 18 years and including its use of advanced laser technology to enrich uranium.
"It will take time to overcome the damage caused to the agency's credibility by his highly unfortunate and misleading `no evidence' turn of phrase," Mr. Brill said.
In an unusually tart response, Dr. ElBaradei accused the United States of being disingenuous.
The agency, he said, has long used the word "evidence" to mean "proof," citing his copy of Black's Law Dictionary, which declares that the two words may be used interchangeably.
"I do take exception to the suggestion that the agency's credibility has been damaged," Dr. ElBaradei said. "We maintain our credibility by continuing to be impartial and factual."
The public clash, rare in the agency's diplomatic culture, reflects a frustration among Bush administration officials about what they see as a lack of aggression in policing the nuclear ambitions of either Iran or Iraq.
The board did conclude one bit of business, authorizing Dr. ElBaradei to sign an agreement with Iran that would allow the agency to conduct surprise inspections.
Iran must still sign the agreement and ratify it.
----
U.S., U.N. Trade Barbs on Iran
Envoy Says Agency Too Easy on Past Nuclear Coverups
By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press
Saturday, November 22, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4746-2003Nov21.html
VIENNA, Nov. 21 -- An American envoy criticized the U.N. nuclear agency on Friday for going too easy on Iran, accusing the Iranian government of "violations and lies." The statement provoked an unusually sharp response from the agency's director.
Diplomats called the exchange unprecedented in the more than two decades since the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors began meeting as the agency's executive body. It reflected tensions dividing the board as it wrestles with the language of a resolution that would balance U.S. demands for a strong response to Iran's nuclear coverups and Europe's calls for milder language in recognition of Tehran's recent pledges to cooperate.
After two days of failing to reach consensus, the board adjourned its meeting until Wednesday in hopes of finding a compromise. A spokeswoman for the IAEA, Melissa Fleming, told reporters the pause would provide an opportunity for high-level negotiations.
Addressing delegates, the U.S. representative to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, suggested that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei's report on Iran was "questionable" in saying there was "no evidence" that Iran had tried to build nuclear weapons. "No proof" would have been the proper phrase, Brill said.
ElBaradei dismissed the argument as disingenuous, according to diplomats who attended the meeting. "In our dictionary, evidence is the same as proof," he said.
Fleming said ElBaradei "takes issue with the U.S. accusation that the agency has threatened its credibility," adding, "We believe that we are impartial and credible and that actually our credibility has been enhanced."
Brill assailed Iran for "violations and lies" that he said stretched over 18 years, including enriching uranium and processing small amounts of plutonium.
"Iran systematically and deliberately deceived the IAEA and the international community about these issues for year after year after year," he said. The purpose, he said, was "the pursuit of nuclear weapons."
Iran's conduct "constitutes noncompliance with its safeguards obligations," Brill said. Such language indirectly accuses Iran of violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, an act that normally results in U.N. Security Council involvement.
Earlier, after hours of delay, the Iranian government had submitted a letter to the board agreeing to open its nuclear programs to wider, spot inspections without waiting to see the text of the resolution.
But some diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity said Iran continued to insist it had the right to withdraw its promise to agree to inspections if the resolution referred to Security Council involvement or contained other language it found unacceptable.
Before the discussion moved to the board members' capitals, a draft discussed in Vienna and quoted to the Associated Press by a senior diplomat would have given the board the right to call an emergency session immediately should any evidence surface that Iran was guilty of "significant failures."
ElBaradei has said he wants a strongly worded report that nonetheless stops short of asking for Security Council involvement. Determining whether Iran tried to build nuclear weapons "will take some time and much verification effort," ElBaradei told the board.
----
U.S. Softens Hard Line on Iran's Nuclear Cover - Up
November 22, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States has dropped its demand the U.N. atomic watchdog declare Iran in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, despite its belief Tehran wants to build an atom bomb, Western diplomats said on Saturday.
After two days of talks, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-member Board of Governors on Friday adjourned until Wednesday to give diplomats a chance to revise a French, German and British draft resolution condemning Iran's 18-year concealment of sensitive nuclear research.
However, Western diplomats said informal talks continued on Saturday between Washington and the capitals of the European Union's ``big three'' to toughen up the trio's proposal, two drafts of which the Americans rejected as too weak.
``Talks are definitely ongoing, though much of the discussion is taking place in the capitals,'' a Western diplomat said.
Diplomats close to the talks said U.S. officials had foregone their demand for the resolution to contain an explicit reference to Iran's past ``non-compliance'' with its NPT obligations and that Tehran be reported to the U.N. Security Council, which could choose to impose economic sanctions.
``I think the U.S. will accept a resolution without an explicit reference to non-compliance,'' another diplomat said.
Diplomats told Reuters U.S. negotiators had abandoned early last week their demand that Iran be reported to the Council when it became apparent only four other board members -- Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- would support this.
In exchange, diplomats close to the talks said the United States, which is convinced Iran wants nuclear weapons, were now helping Britain, France and Germany revise the resolution to include a timetable to keep pressure on Iran to cooperate.
The French, British and Germans want to encourage Iran to continue with its stated policy of fully cooperating with the IAEA rather than punish it for past failures. Diplomats said Germany especially feared too harsh a resolution would backfire and cause Iran to stop cooperating with the United Nations.
BOMB PLANS HATCHED DURING IRAN-IRAQ WAR
In October, Iran gave the IAEA what is said was a full and accurate declaration of its nuclear program and said it had no more nuclear secrets to disclose. Tehran admits covering up the full extent of its atomic program but denies wanting bombs.
But a senior Western diplomat said there was no question Iran had an atomic weapons program that most likely began during the fierce Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. He added that there were suspicions the program still exists.
The United States harshly criticized the IAEA for saying in a recent report on Iran that it had ``no evidence'' suggesting Tehran had a secret weapons program.
U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, told the board on Friday the phrase ``no evidence'' was ``highly unfortunate'' in the light of revelations about Iran's cover-up and secret experiments with plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment. He said the IAEA should have used the words ``no proof'' instead.
Brill said the IAEA's wording had provoked ``expressions of disbelief that the institution charged with... scrutinising nuclear proliferation risks was dismissing important facts.''
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei reacted strongly, calling the U.S. statement ``disingenuous.''
--------
U.S. Softens Position on Iran Over Nukes
November 22, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP ) -- American officials hinted they were backing away from demands that the U.N. Security Council get involved in a dispute over Iran's nuclear program, even as a U.S. envoy voiced unprecedented criticism of the U.N. atomic agency because of the issue.
The United States has failed to convince most board members of the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Security Council needs to step in, diplomats said Friday.
That task was made more difficult this week after IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei issued a report saying the agency had found ``no evidence'' of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
U.S. envoy Kenneth Brill called the conclusion ``questionable.'' ElBaradei called the statement ``disingenuous'' -- and noted U.S. weapons hunters have come up empty-handed in Iraq, another country where it alleged a nuclear program.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli suggested Friday the United States was backing away from its insistence that the IAEA board refer Iran's record on nuclear activities to the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
``We continue to work with our friends to make sure that the IAEA Board of Governors take fully into account what Dr. ElBaradei reported about Iran's nuclear program,'' he said in Washington.
Asked specifically if the United States still wants the Iran matter to be referred to the Security Council, Ereli said, ``I'm not going to negotiate a board of governor's resolution from the podium.''
But a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: ``I'm not sure, frankly, that referring it to the Security Council is something we are insisting on.''
On Thursday, Ereli had said the United States expects the board ``to meet its obligations under the IAEA statute to find that Iran has been in noncompliance with its safeguards agreement and to report that noncompliance to the UN Security Council.''
The exchange between Brill and ElBaradei, an Egyptian, reflected differences at the IAEA board meeting over whether to condemn Iran's past nuclear transgressions or focus on what major European nations say seems to be its newfound openness.
After two days of failure, the board adjourned until Wednesday in hopes of finding a compromise. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the pause would allow for high-level talks in foreign capitals.
Addressing delegates, Brill criticized Iran for ``violations and lies'' by enriching uranium, processing small amounts of plutonium, and other activities that Washington says point to a weapons agenda.
``Iran systematically and deliberately deceived the IAEA and the international community about these issues for year after year after year,'' Brill said. The purpose, he said, was ``the pursuit of nuclear weapons.''
Such conduct ``constitutes noncompliance with its safeguards obligations,'' he said, in language that indirectly accused Iran of violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- an act that normally results in U.N. Security Council involvement.
Brill suggested a statement in ElBaradei's report was ``questionable'' in saying there was no ``evidence'' that Iran had tried to build nuclear weapons.
A combative ElBaradei dismissed the criticism.
``Frankly, I find it disingenuous that this word 'evidence' has suddenly become a matter of disbelief,'' he told board members, in comments made available to reporters.
He suggested that in at least one instance -- the war in Iraq -- the IAEA's credibility was ``enhanced,'' and America's diminished, because there is still no sign of the nuclear weapons program that Washington accused Saddam Hussein of having.
``We reflect facts, as radar does, without partiality,'' ElBaradei said. ``We do not jump to conclusions or make leaps of faith. We have not said that we have come to the conclusion that the Iranian program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, because we still have work to do.''
In Washington, Ereli sought to smooth over the rift.
``There's no intention to impugn the credibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the fine work that director ElBaradei has done in putting together what is an important report on Iran's nuclear program,'' Ereli said.
Earlier, Iran submitted a letter to the board agreeing to open its nuclear programs to pervasive spot inspections, giving up attempts to wait until it saw the text of the resolution and approved its language.
A diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said only a few countries -- Canada, Australia and Japan -- supported the U.S. position.
ElBaradei has said he wants a strongly worded report that nonetheless stops short of asking for Security Council involvement.
On the Net:
IAEA Web site: www.iaea.org
-------- korea
N.Korea Berates Rumsfeld as Worse Than Hitler
November 22, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-rumsfeld.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea issued a blistering attack on Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday, saying the U.S. defense secretary was worse than Adolf Hitler.
The official KCNA news agency also said Rumsfeld's criticism of North Korea this week -- he called it an evil regime -- made Pyongyang doubt the prospects of talks to resolve the North's nuclear crisis.
``It is nothing surprising that Rumsfeld talked such nonsense as he put Hitler into the shade in man-killing and war hysteria. But we can never pardon him for malignantly slandering our dignified and inviolable political system whether he is a political dwarf, human scum or hysteric,'' the agency said.
``If his vituperation represents the stance of the Bush administration, it can not but cast a doubt about the prospect of the six-way talks,'' it said.
The United States held nuclear talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan in Beijing in August and is trying to convene another round next month.
Rumsfeld said in a speech to U.S. troops at an American air base in South Korea on Tuesday that ``people in the North, repressed people to be sure, watch their children waste away, eat bark, as that evil regime spends huge sums on weapons.''
As many as one million of North Korea's 22 million people are estimated by experts to have died from famine over the past decade. Dependent on outside food aid, the North spends about 30 percent of gross domestic product on its military, the world's fifth largest.
KCNA said Rumsfeld's remarks showed the North was right to seek nuclear arms and ``reinforces the conviction that there is no other way but to stand in confrontation with the U.S. to the end.''
--------
Work on N. Korea Nuke Reactors Suspended
November 22, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-North-Korea.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union decided Friday to suspend construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea, which is suspected of secretly developing atomic weapons.
The four are members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization executive board, which had been building the light-water reactors under a 1994 deal between the United States and North Korea. The reactors were meant to come online in 2007.
The suspension will be for one year, the board said in a statement from its New York headquarters, announcing a decision reached earlier this month.
However, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday the U.S. position was that ``there's no future for the reactor project.''
The light-water reactors, difficult to adapt to nuclear weapons production, were meant to replace three North Korean reactors that are able to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
North Korea has said it is enriching uranium, which could be used in bombs. Most security analysts believe the communist nation has reprocessed enough plutonium from spent fuel rods to make at least two bombs and fear it may be stepping up weapons production.
The future of the $4.6 billion reactor project came into question when it became apparent a year ago that North Korea was violating a 1994 agreement to cease any nuclear weapons programs.
Japan said it hoped Friday's announcement would force North Korea to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, noting the KEDO board could decide to resume construction at any time so long as Pyongyang made clear it was abandoning its weapons program.
``We'd certainly hope to see a positive response from North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons development program in an irreversible, complete, and verifiable manner,'' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiro Okuyama.
In Seoul, a senior South Korean official said he hoped the decision would not hinder prospects for a fresh round of six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the communist state's suspected nuclear weapons programs.
``We wish that the nuclear dispute can be resolved quickly through the six-nation talks, so that the project in North Korea can be resumed in one year's time,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, North Korea on Friday berated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for calling its regime ``evil,'' and accused Washington of deception.
The statement came as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly wrapped up an Asian tour and left for Washington to further coordinate policy amid hopes for a second round of the six-nation talks.
``Recently the Bush administration is talking about offering a security guarantee for our country, but the slander by Rumsfeld, who leads the U.S. policy, shows that the 'security guarantee' is nothing more than a play aimed at deceiving us,'' KCNA, the North's official news agency, said in a commentary. The commentary was monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
This shows that it is only right ``for us to increase the nuclear deterrent force,'' KCNA said.
North Korea has accused Washington of planning a pre-emptive attack against it, after labeling the communist country part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iran and Iraq.
On Friday, Kelly met his South Korean counterpart, Assistant Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, for a second day in the South Korean capital, Seoul. They discussed security assurances for North Korea, one of Pyongyang's key conditions for abandoning its nuclear ambitions.
Kelly made a quick tour of Asia this week amid efforts to hold another round of the nuclear talks involving the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia. He visited Tokyo and Beijing before coming to Seoul.
Diplomatic efforts to resume the six-nation conference gained speed last month after North Korea agreed ``in principle'' to return to the negotiating table. Pyongyang also dropped its demand for a nonaggression treaty with Washington, saying it would consider President Bush's offer for written security assurances from the United States and North Korea's neighbors.
The first six-nation conference in August ended without an agreement on when to meet again.
Upon arrival in South Korea on Wednesday, Kelly said it was uncertain whether a second round of six-nation talks will take place next month. South Korean officials have said the talks could be held Dec. 17-18.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Lawmaker Blasts Bush on Nuclear Project
November 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Democrats-Nuclear.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- President Bush broke his campaign promise to Nevadans and rushed ahead with plans to develop a national nuclear waste repository in the state, the speaker of the Nevada Assembly said Saturday in the weekly Democratic radio address.
The decision by the Bush administration to move forward on the Yucca Mountain project has serious consequences not only for Nevada, but for the 38 million Americans who live within a mile of the nation's highways and rail lines, Speaker Richard Perkins said.
``There are a host of questions about the safety of shipping nuclear waste thousands of miles, questions about the safety of the canisters, rail and truck routes and their vulnerability to terrorist attacks,'' said Perkins, who is also a deputy police chief in the city of Henderson.
``There are serious questions about burying nuclear waste ... when exposure to even small amounts will result in almost certain gruesome death.''
Bush signed legislation last year tapping Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's sole nuclear waste repository. The plan is to transport 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste through 43 states to the underground repository beginning in 2010 .
The president and the Energy Department contend the waste can safely be transported and stored at Yucca Mountain.
Perkins said Bush reneged on his promise during the 2000 campaign that he would rely on ``sound science'' to make a decision.
``President Bush broke his promise to us here in Nevada with a speed and arrogance that is astounding,'' Perkins said. ``He short-circuited the research going on at Yucca Mountain. He ignored the concerns of independent scientists and rushed to judgment.''
Perkins called on Bush, who is making his first visit to Nevada next week as president, to ``rebuild his credibility'' by reconsidering his decision.
``You can't build trust based on breaking promises and misleading people,'' he said.
-------- us nuc waste
Democrats Say Bush Broke Promise on Nuclear Waste
November 22, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-politics-democrats.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Days before President Bush was to visit Las Vegas, Democrats accused him on Saturday of breaking his promise to Nevada by going ahead with efforts to establish the state's Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole nuclear waste repository.
``President Bush broke his promise to us here in Nevada with a speed and arrogance that is astounding,'' Richard Perkins, speaker of the Nevada Assembly, said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.
When Bush was campaigning for president in 2000, Perkins said, he ``promised us here in Nevada that he would not rush to judgment on nuclear waste, that he would let science guide the administration's decision-making.''
Instead, Perkins said Bush ``short-circuited the research going on at Yucca Mountain, he ignored the concerns of independent scientists and rushed to judgment.''
Bush signed legislation last year long sought by the nuclear power industry to clear the way to build a repository for nuclear waste beneath Yucca Mountain.
That would lead to the transport of ``77,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste -- currently stored safely at 131 sites across the country -- over interstate highways and rail lines, through 43 states'' to the repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Perkins said.
With questions over how to protect the waste from accidents and from possible attacks by terrorists, he said transporting it long distances turns secured waste into ``a potentially dangerous 'dirty bomb-on-wheels.'''
Perkins also said there also are questions about the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, which he said is in ``one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the nation.''
With Bush slated to be in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Perkins said the president ``will be met by folks from across our state urging him to reconsider his decision, not just for the safety of the people of Nevada, but for Americans all across the country.''
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
2 Bills Would Benefit Top Bush Fundraisers
Executives' Companies Could Get Billions
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5053-2003Nov21?language=printer
More than three dozen of President Bush's major fundraisers are affiliated with companies that stand to benefit from the passage of two central pieces of the administration's legislative agenda: the energy and Medicare bills.
The energy bill provides billions of dollars in benefits to companies run by at least 22 executives and their spouses who have qualified as either "Pioneers" or "Rangers," as well as to the clients of at least 15 lobbyists and their spouses who have achieved similar status as fundraisers. At least 24 Rangers and Pioneers could benefit from the Medicare bill as executives of companies or lobbyists working for them, including eight who have clients affected by both bills.
By its latest count, Bush's reelection campaign has designated more than 300 supporters as Pioneers or Rangers. The Pioneers were created by the Bush campaign in 2000 to reward supporters who brought in at least $100,000 in contributions. For his reelection campaign, Bush has set a goal of raising as much as $200 million, almost twice what he raised three years ago, and established the designation of Ranger for those who raise at least $200,000.
With the size of donations limited as a result of the campaign finance law enacted last year, fundraisers who can collect $100,000 or more in contributions of $2,000 or less have become key players this election cycle. The law barred the political parties from collecting large -- sometimes reaching $5 million to $10 million -- "soft money" contributions from businesses, unions, trade associations and individuals. This has put a premium on those who can solicit dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of smaller contributions from employees, clients and associates.
The energy and Medicare bills were drafted with the cooperation of representatives from dozens of industries. Power and energy company officials; railroad CEOs; pharmaceutical, hospital association and insurance company executives; and the lobbyists who represent them are among those who have supported the bills and whose companies would benefit from their passage.
The Medicare bill was scheduled to be acted upon by the House late last night. If passed, it will go to the Senate. The first comprehensive revision of energy policy in more than a decade passed the House this week, but in the Senate, the measure ran into a roadblock yesterday when opponents stopped it from coming to a vote. Sponsors promised to make further efforts to get the 60 votes to break the filibuster.
The energy bill provides industry tax breaks worth $23.5 billion over 10 years aimed at increasing domestic oil and gas production, and $5.4 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees. The bill also grants legal protections to gas producers using the additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), whose manufacturers face a wave of lawsuits, and it repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), a mainstay of consumer protection that limits mergers of utilities.
The bill has been the focus of a bitter ideological and partisan fight for three years. A leading sponsor, Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, praised the legislation, saying, "All Americans can look forward to cleaner and more affordable energy, reliable electricity and reduced dependence on foreign oil for generations to come."
Public Citizen, which has tracked the legislation and correlated patterns of contributions to members of Congress and to Bush, denounced the bill as "a national energy policy developed in secret by corporate executives and a few members of Congress who are showered in special interest money."
Perhaps the single biggest winner in the energy bill, according to lobbyists and critics, is the Southern Co. One of the nation's largest electricity producers, it serves 120,000 square miles through subsidiaries Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power and Savannah Electric, along with a natural gas and nuclear plant subsidiary.
The repeal of PUHCA, for example, would create new opportunities to buy or sell facilities; "participation" rules determining how utilities share the costs of new transmission lines that are particularly favorable to Southern; two changes in depreciation schedules for gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines with a 10-year revenue loss to the Treasury of $2.8 billion; and changes in the tax consequences of decommissioning nuclear plants, at a 10-year revenue loss of $1.5 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
At least five Bush Pioneers serve as a Southern Co. executive or as its lobbyists: Southern Executive Vice President Dwight H. Evans; Roger Windham Wallace of the lobbying firm Public Strategies; Rob Leebern of the firm Troutman Sanders; Lanny Griffith of the firm Barbour Griffith and Rogers; and Ray Cole, of the firm Van Scoyoc Associates.
The railroad industry also has a vital interest in the energy bill. For years, it has been fighting for the elimination of a 4.3 cent-a-gallon tax on diesel fuel, and, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.7 billion over 10 years, the measure repeals the tax. Richard Davidson, chairman and CEO of Union Pacific, is a Ranger, and Matthew K. Rose, CEO of Burlington Northern, is a Pioneer.
Among the major lobbying firms in Washington, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feldhas been one of the most successful collecting fees for work on the energy and Medicare bills. In the first six months of this year, Akin Gump, which has two partners who are Pioneers -- Bill Paxon and James C. Langdon Jr. -- received $1.6 million in fees from medical and energy interests.
Barbour Griffith & Rogers received $1.1 million from similar clients.
On energy issues, Akin Gump represented Amerada Hess Corp., Waste Management Inc. and FirstEnergy Corp., Pacific Gas and Electric Co., BP Exploration and Phillips Petroleum Co. Two of those corporations have, in turn, executives who are major Bush fundraisers, Pioneer A. Maurice Myers, CEO of Waste Management; and Anthony J. Alexander, president of FirstEnergy, a Pioneer in 2000 and again in the current campaign.
On Medicare issues, Aikin Gump represents the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer Inc.. All would benefit from the expanded markets resulting from a key provision of the bill -- the first federal subsidies to help Medicare patients pay for prescriptions.
Hank McKinnell, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, has pledged to raise at least $200,000 for Bush's reelection, although he is not yet listed as a Pioneer or Ranger. Pioneer Munr Kazmir, who runs a direct-mail drug company called Direct Meds Inc., estimates that he has about 100,000 customers on Medicare who will have more money to buy drugs from his company. "We know the patients, we know how important this bill is," he said.
In addition to the prescription drugs provision, the Medicare bill is intended to encourage recipients to join preferred-provider organizations (PPOs) and other kinds of private health care, instead of receiving care through the traditional fee-for-service system in which they pick their doctors and generally get whatever care they request. The health industry has provided substantial support to the Bush campaign, and a number of officials whose companies and associations actively support the Medicare bill are Pioneers and Rangers .
Pioneer Charles N. Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said that the Medicare bill will make "important strides in ensuring that all hospitals have sufficient funding to meet the medical needs of this nation's seniors." A federation spokesman noted that the bill provides more money for rural hospitals and for hospitals serving disproportionate numbers of the uninsured, and that it prevents doctors from setting up new competing specialty, or "boutique," hospitals.
M. Keith Weikel, chief operating officer at HCR Manor Care, a chain of more than 500 nursing homes and other facilities serving the elderly, is another Pioneer. Weikel and Manor Care did not respond to requests for comment on the Medicare bill, but the major nursing home trade group, the American Health Care Association, strongly endorsed the bill, which, among other things, would continue to bar Medicare from capping the amount it covers for various therapies offered by health care providers such as nursing homes.
Staff writer Peter Behr and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this story.
-------- iraq
BAGHDAD
Insurgents Use Rockets on Donkey Carts to Hit Sites in Iraqi Capital
November 22, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/middleeast/22IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 - Faced with an American military crackdown using all the paraphernalia of high-technology warfare, Iraqi insurgents resorted today to the humblest of creatures and the simplest of transports to carry out what American officers called "spectacular" strikes against heavily fortified targets in Baghdad.
The attackers used four donkey carts disguised as hay wagons to haul homemade multiple rocket-launchers close to several of the most heavily defended sites in the city, including the 20-story Palestine and Sheraton hotels on the banks of the Tigris River, and the Oil Ministry, which manages the resources on which Iraq's hopes for resurgent oil wealth depend.
One American working for Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest American companies involved in reconstruction here, was seriously wounded when his 15th-floor room at the Palestine Hotel took a direct hit. The American military command said the man, who was not identified, was in critical condition with head and chest wounds and would be evacuated to the American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
Another donkey cart carrying rockets was spotted by a suspicious shopkeeper and disarmed before it could detonate near the Italian and Turkish embassies and the headquarters of a Kurdish political party in another part of central Baghdad. Yet another donkey cart was found near a law school and an adjacent American military camp farther down the Tigris, with still more rockets under a mound of hay. It, too, was disarmed.
American commanders said they had no immediate suspects in the attacks. The donkey carts themselves yielded few clues, beyond the sort of hand-lettered inscriptions that Middle Eastern carters commonly inscribe on their vehicles. "Allah, Muhammad, Ali," one said, invoking the Shiite Muslim trinity of God, the Prophet Muhammad and the Shiites' first imam, Ali.
Agence France-Presse reported that one of its reporters had glimpsed a note in broken English clutched by an American officer at the scene of one of the attacks that read, in parts, "To all the forces . . . (specially the Jews . . . American forces) get . . . from our country. Do not . . . let your mother crying."
[At least six people were killed Saturday morning in a suspected suicide car-bomb attack on the main police station in the town of Baquba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, Reuters reported.
[The police said a car packed with explosives detonated at around 8 a.m. It was the latest in a series of attacks against the Iraqi police.]
Although the attacks fell short of the horror of recent suicide bombings that killed dozens at the United Nations compound and the Red Cross headquarters here, they appeared intended to have maximum psychological impact on Baghdad's increasingly fearful 5.5 million people.
"These are spectacular attacks," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief spokesman for the United States military command. He described those mounting attacks across Iraq as "an adaptive, ingenious enemy," but said they knew that they could not prevail in a direct confrontation with the 155,000 allied troops, all but 25,000 of them Americans.
"They realize they can't defeat us in a conventional war," he said. "What they're trying to do is to break our will and grab headlines,"
General Kimmitt, who took up his post as a deputy director of operations for the American command earlier this month, said the attacks should be kept in perspective. "We've had some very dramatic attacks in Baghdad, but generally the country is very peaceful," he said.
Yet the assaults seemed intended to offer a riposte to American commanders who have claimed that a two-week offensive has enabled them to get on top of groups that have been mounting armed attacks in Baghdad. The rockets soared over fortifications the Americans have built around many key installations in Baghdad, including a double row of 20-foot-high concrete blast walls around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels.
Another American general said Thursday that the offensive had reduced the number of attacks across Baghdad by 70 percent in the last two weeks. Given the rising arc of the attacks, recently as many as 50 a day across Iraq, that appeared to mean that the offensive had pushed the attacks in Baghdad back to about where they were before August, when suicide bombings began, signaling a new intensity in the insurgents' strikes.
Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, said at a news conference that the offensive in Baghdad, like others across Iraq that are part of the same crackdown, had relied on an improving flow of intelligence about armed groups loyal to Saddam Hussein.
He also emphasized the patient, "precise" use of American high-technology weapons systems like fast, low-flying attack helicopters with advanced night optics and fixed-wing attack aircraft firing satellite-guided bombs and missiles, used in Baghdad in the last 10 days for the first time since American troops captured the city in April.
The attacks on Friday offered a taste of how difficult that task is likely to be, given the insurgents' quickness in exploiting any American weakness and their readiness to resort to low-technology tactics that can help them escape detection.
The donkeys were tethered to trees, with the rockets inserted inside home-made launchers linked to car batteries and time-fuses, and hidden under hay. But these "contraptions," as one American officer called them, were armed with powerful battlefield rockets. Several feet long and as big around as a fire hose, they were said by American officers to have been either Soviet-made 107-millimeter or Brazilian-made 122-millimeter rockets, two types that were stockpiled by Mr. Hussein's army before the American invasion. They have a range of up to 10 miles.
Only luck appeared to have averted far more serious damage. At least 50 of the rockets failed to fire. Those that did struck with great force. Four holes as big as soccer balls were punched in the outer walls of the Palestine Hotel, throwing concrete chunks and glass into three upper floors and filling corridors with thick, grimy dust.
At the adjacent Sheraton, a rocket severed the cables of an external, glass-encased elevator and sent it plunging to the ground, smashing the glass roof of the atrium and sending shards showering into the lobby. Miraculously, there were no injuries.
An upper floor of the Oil Ministry caught fire, but there were no reported injuries in a building that, unlike the hotels filled with foreign journalists and other outsiders, was virtually deserted at the start of a Muslim prayer day.
The United States military command swiftly issued a citywide alert after the attacks. Many carts plying the city's streets, delivering hay, collecting scrap and other loads, then came under stone-throwing attacks and curses from jumpy Iraqis if they lingered anywhere for long.
The donkeys, all of which survived, appeared to have played a part in limiting the severity of the attacks.
Iraqis who were outside the Palestine Hotel at the time of the attack there said the donkey there had started so violently after the first volley of rockets singed his backside that he upset the cart, toppling the launcher onto its side, spilling the battery onto the street and disrupting the firing mechanism. Outside the Italian Embassy, Iraqis said the donkey there had begun munching on the hay, exposing the rocket launcher before it could fire.
-------- mideast
Al Qaeda Group Claims Turkey Attacks
As Istanbul Falls Silent, Bombing Probe Focuses on Turks With Ties to Radicals
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4669-2003Nov21.html
ISTANBUL, Nov. 21 -- An organization with ties to al Qaeda asserted responsibility Friday for suicide bombings on Thursday at the British Consulate and a British bank that killed 30 people and injured 450, according to a statement posted on a Web site. The same organization said it attacked two synagogues here last Saturday.
Turkish authorities announced the arrest of several people in connection with the attacks against the two British targets. Security sources told Turkish newspapers that the probes into all four bombings are focusing, in part, on Turkish men who fought or trained with Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan, Chechnya or Bosnia, where they may have established links with militant organizations.
The Istanbul Health Directorate reported the deaths of three more victims of Thursday's double bombing, bringing the death toll to 30, plus the two bombers. Health officials said 54 of the wounded remained hospitalized.
The nerves of an entire city seemed ragged Friday, as residents wrestled with the fear and bewilderment caused by bombings that ravaged four neighborhoods, killed 57 people and injured about 750 -- all in the space of six days.
Many schools reported that most parents had kept their children home, glitzy Western-style shopping malls were nearly devoid of customers, and residents who ventured along famous Istiklal Street near the British Consulate glanced nervously over their shoulders at the sound of any loud bang.
Friday, the holiest day on the Muslim calendar, marked the start of Turkey's nine-day national and religious holiday, which concludes with Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Downtown clothing shops, traditional bakeries and other stores that normally would have been jammed with customers were empty.
In deference to the somber mood that has settled over this secular Muslim nation, television networks announced they were canceling all comedies and other light entertainment, airing only more subdued dramas. Some of Istanbul's most popular bars and night clubs announced they were closing for the weekend, and the country's stock market remained shuttered .
"They say there will be more explosions," said Halil Ipek, 22, who sells Turkish desserts in the upscale Akmerkez shopping mall but whose only customers Friday afternoon were other mall employees. "I still worry that I will leave home in the morning and I won't come back in the evening."
The multi-level mall, located in an affluent neighborhood several miles from any of the bombing sites, is the type of Western-style location the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital, has warned Americans to avoid. "There are hardly any customers," Ipek said. "Yesterday it was completely empty. We closed down early and went home."
Newspaper headlines, superimposed over horrific images of bloodied victims and the splintered wreckage of buildings, reflected the anger and confusion of many Turks. "Why us?" asked Vatan. "9/11 repeated in Istanbul," said the Turkish Daily News, an English-language newspaper. "Al Qaeda is at war with Turkey," declared Radikal, a Turkish daily.
Turkey's National Security Council, meeting as intelligence services warned of the potential for more attacks, said in a statement, "It is necessary to increase regional and global cooperation to carry on a more active fight against terrorism in the international field."
Both President Bush and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw offered to assist Turkey in combating terrorism.
Turkish authorities said they were continuing to attempt to determine what role domestic militant organizations may have had in the attacks of the past week. A Turkish intelligence report cited by the daily newspaper Milliyet said authorities have identified 1,050 young Turkish men who fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia, then returned to Turkey and allegedly maintain "continued links with radical religious terrorists" they met during those wars. The two men identified as the bombers who detonated trucks near two Jewish synagogues last Saturday were Turkish, and one had traveled to Iran for training, police officials have said.
A statement carried on the al-Mujahidoun Web site, which has posted other purported announcements from al Qaeda, said the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades organized Thursday's attacks. The claim's authenticity could not be verified, but the statement said the group struck British targets to "shatter the peace of Britain . . . which battles Islam." It said the HSBC bank was attacked to "let Britain and its people know that its alliance with America will not bring it prosperity or security."
It also said that the British consul general, Roger Short, had been specifically targeted. Short, 58, had passed through the consulate gates into its walled compound about two minutes before a green Isuzu truck barreled through the entry way and exploded, killing Short and an assistant, British officials said.
Straw, speaking to reporters after touring the site of the bank blast Friday morning, said the attackers had Short under surveillance. "Obviously they had reconnoitered the consul general," Straw said.
Straw said the attacks appeared "to be perpetrated by al Qaeda and its associates."
The Web site message said the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades regretted the large number of civilian casualties, which it alleged were caused by an improperly positioned "car of death." All but three of the victims who died were Turkish Muslims.
Ali Bardakoglu, head of Turkey's religious affairs directorate, lashed out at Islamic terrorist organizations during nationally televised prayer services at Ankara's majestic Kocatepe Mosque Friday night.
"There are those who try to use the holy values of religion in violence and terrorism," said Bardakoglu, who led prayers for the holiest night of the Muslim year, commemorating the prophet Muhammad's receipt of the first verses of the Koran. "This is treason against the essence of the message of religion."
Staff researcher Yesim Borg contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Calls Turkey a 'Front' in War on Terror
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4670-2003Nov21.html
DARLINGTON, England, Nov. 21 -- President Bush identified Turkey as a new front in the war on terrorism Friday and offered American assistance to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On the last day of a state visit to Britain, Bush called the Turkish leader from Air Force One while flying to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's parliamentary district here in northern England. Bush offered his condolences for Thursday's attack on two British buildings in Istanbul that killed 30 people, only days after synagogue bombings in that city killed 23.
"I told him our prayers are with his people. I told him that we will work with him to defeat terror, and that the terrorists have decided to use Turkey as a front," Bush said. Asked whether Turkey was a new front, Bush said: "It sure is. Two major explosions. And Iraq is a front, Turkey is a front, anywhere the terrorists think they can strike is a front."
Repeating Thursday's vow that there would be no letup in his efforts against terrorists, Bush said: "Yesterday's attack in Turkey reminded us that we haven't completed our job yet."
The White House also released a transcript of an interview given Wednesday to a journalist from Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, in which Bush affirmed his intention to begin handing over authority to Iraqis next summer, saying, "That's exactly what we're aiming for now."
But the president declined to commit to any change in troop levels. "We will have troops on the ground that will match the security needs," he said, adding, "I'm going to listen to the generals." During a news conference in London on Thursday, Bush had raised the possibility of increasing the number of troops in Iraq.
Bush separated the transition to Iraqi civilian authority and the military occupation. "We're talking two separate tracks," he told the newspaper. "The political track is developing and it's developing well," Bush said, because there have not been major refugee flows, sectarian violence or hunger. As for the occupation, he said, "we will stay until Iraq is allowed to emerge as a free society, which we know will happen."
Bush made his stop in northern England after he and the first lady visited with Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, in London on Friday morning. He arrived back at the White House Friday night.
During the stopover, Bush and Blair had lunch at a pub called the Dun Cow Inn in Sedgefield with about 50 selected locals. While opponents and supporters held small demonstrations outside, Bush signed several autographs, including one on a U.S. flag. He drank a non-alcoholic beer with a meal of fish and chips, mushy peas, leek and potato soup and creme brulee.
After failing to win concessions from Bush on trade disputes or the holding of British prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Blair brushed off a question about whether he got enough from Bush, saying there was no "scorecard."
Bush visited Blair's home and a nearby school. There, Bush bounced a soccer ball on his head and told the children that Blair "works out a lot. So do I."
In response to a question that appeared to come from one of the students, Bush offered some barbed affection for his press corps. "Let me ask, who has the final word, I wonder, me or the press?" he asked. "I love the press around me."
Blair took a different tack: "I'll tell you the truth a bit later, okay?" he said.
-------- spies / spy agencies
A Battle of Words Over War Intelligence
November 22, 2003
By JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/arts/22INTE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Intelligence - or rather bad intelligence - has become an obsession in Washington. Fueled by the growing casualties among American soldiers in Iraq and the administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction there, the Central Intelligence Agency, Congress, an independent commission and scores of private experts and government analysts have been fiercely debating what went wrong in Iraq and, more broadly, the state of the government's intelligence capabilities.
Enter Sir John Keegan, the eloquent, pre-eminent British historian of war with an iconoclastic notion: despite the finger pointing and passionate debate, he concludes in a new book that intelligence - good or bad - matters far less than brute force in winning wars.
"War is ultimately about doing, not thinking," writes Sir John, the author of 16 other books about war and military tactics, including the instant classic, "The Face of Battle." In his latest offering, "Intelligence in War" (Alfred A. Knopf), he insists again and again, "Only force finally counts."
"Decision in war is always the result of a fight, and in combat willpower always counts for more than foreknowledge," he argues. "Let those who disagree show otherwise."
A number of Western military historians, political scientists, diplomats and defense experts have taken up the challenge. Most of them would agree with Richard Holbrooke, the former diplomat who as chief negotiator to the Balkans conflict in the mid-1990's helped end that war. He called Sir John's theory "not only counterintuitive but wrong."
"Is Keegan right in arguing that intelligence is overrated? Yes," Mr. Holbrooke said. "But intelligence is also indispensable. And its greatest successes are preventative."
Sir John readily acknowledges that good intelligence is essential to successful battles and campaigns. He opens his new book quoting the Duke of Marlborough's dictum: "No war can be conducted successfully without early and good intelligence." But Sir John rejects what he calls the romantic myth that victory depends mainly on spies, stolen secrets and cracked codes.
To support his thesis he explores a series of gripping case studies, from Admiral Nelson's 73-day chase of the French fleet and its ultimate defeat at the Nile in 1798, to Stonewall Jackson's Civil War campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, to some of the most harrowing naval battles and bloody campaigns of the World Wars. In each episode, he argues, the role of intelligence was highly overrated.
Nelson's intuitive genius about Napoleon, for instance, mattered far more in defeating him than the intelligence on the French fleet's location that arrived late from London. The Allies in World War II could have won the battle against the German U-boat fleet "without the assistance of the code breakers," he maintains. In 1941, though British cryptanalysts had broken the Germans' Enigma Code and clearly saw the shape of the German forces, the British lost Crete because the British commander made fatal mistakes.
Bruce Hoffman, director of RAND's Washington office and a terrorism analyst, said that although Sir John analyzed the role of intelligence in countering Al Qaeda, most of his examples were drawn from 18th- to 20th-century wars rather than 21st-century conflicts. "Keegan is largely right on the role of intelligence in conventional wars," Mr. Hoffman said, "but he is not right about counterinsurgencies in any century, when intelligence is the sine qua non of success." Modern wars, he argued, are not fought only with military tools. "So intelligence has a very different role today. You can no longer fight, much less win them just with military strength."
Mr. Hoffman maintained, for instance, that poor intelligence on the radical jihadists and pro-Saddam Hussein loyalists who are killing both Iraqis and American soldiers today "is one of our major problems in Iraq."
Roger Cressey, the former chief of staff to President Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and a former director for transnational threats at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, agrees, noting that America is being forced to fight modern wars under far greater constraints than ever before. "Intelligence isn't particularly important if you have a scorched-earth policy or are spending a lot of time in the Soviet archives," Mr. Cressey said. "But if you are trying to win hearts and minds by killing as few civilians as possible, good intelligence on, say, where insurgents, as opposed to noncombatants, are located, is hugely important."
John Hamre, a deputy secretary of defense under Mr. Clinton who led a survey group to Iraq last summer for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said that even the projection of the overwhelming force that Sir John endorses is dependent today on good intelligence. "You can no longer separate intelligence from overwhelming force," said Mr. Hamre, who now heads the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private organization in Washington. "We have that force because we have tactical intelligence."
The technological advances largely of the past decade have transformed modern warfare, he said, adding: "We can now integrate national-level intelligence with the tactical level, and we can integrate what comes from the intelligence agencies quickly to the front lines for battlefield surveillance. Our force is so overwhelmingly powerful because of good intelligence, not because we fly or move faster than they do."
Mr. Hamre called the past decade's technological advances "nothing short of spectacular." By making a huge array of intelligence sensors "an organic part of operations, we have a wide range of sensors that are largely beyond the knowledge of our opponents," he said. "It's multidimensional, and both passive and active, and it is what makes our force so overwhelming."
Consider the war in Iraq, he said. In the last two days of the roughly monthlong military campaign, "in 27 minutes, we changed the attack program of a B-1 in the air to drop a bomb on what we thought was Saddam Hussein's bunker."
Kenneth Pollack, another former Clinton administration official now at the Brookings Institution, argued that modern warfare would increasingly be dominated by those who control what he called the "information spectrum." "In an age of long-range strike weaponry, brilliant munitions, hypereffective sensors, whoever has greater information will be able to bring far greater fire power on a much wider range of targets and in a much shorter time than ever before," he said. That was why "the U.S. military is now in a class by itself."
Such intelligence information is particularly vital at the strategic level. "War has become so much more destructive through concealment and long-range strikes that the warning time before an attack has diminished considerably," Mr. Pollack said. Terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction, states and other nonstate actors could inflict terrific damage in a much shorter time frame than ever before."
Thus, he argued, it is becoming increasingly vital that a country have accurate information about the intentions and capabilities of an adversary, especially for an administration that has promoted a doctrine of preventive wars.
"If you're worried about Osama bin Laden or North Korea, then you want to make damn sure that you know what they have, as well as where and when they're going to try to hit you before they do," Mr. Pollack said.
But that is precisely the problem, Sir John notes. In the war against terrorism, good intelligence may be extremely hard to obtain, particularly against Al Qaeda. A "coalition of like-minded but separate groups" despite its name, which in Arabic means "the base," Al Qaeda is a diffuse target, and one that has thus far been fairly resistant to America's high-tech, electronic surveillance prowess, he says. The United States, he warns, will have to rely on old-fashioned spies rather than gadgets. But in this regard the America he so obviously admires is decidedly weak.
On this point Edward N. Luttwak, a maverick defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, shares Sir John's concern. For all its electronic surveillance wizardry, the "humint" or human intelligence needed to combat Al Qaeda's terrorism is not America's strength, Mr. Luttwak argues. "Overhead technical means of collection do you no good," he said. "And Al Qaeda members have learned how to evade intercepts. Humint over the past years has yielded virtually nothing. It doesn't suit Americans."
"To be a case officer you have to be a poet," he continued. "You need to romance and seduce. You need to be able to learn Urdu in six months." Woefully short of language skills, many American intelligence officials, "can't even ask for a cup of coffee."
But this failing, too, highlights the danger inherent in relying on poor intelligence in 21st-century conflicts, Mr. Luttwak maintains.
In an interview Sir John seemed willing to modify an argument in his book to reflect the potentially dire consequences of bad intelligence about terrorists armed with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. While he wrote that intelligence was the "handmaiden, not the mistress of the warrior," he added that with respect to groups like Al Qaeda and decisions on preventive war, intelligence may well be "an indispensable servant of force."
-------- un
U.N. Aims to Aid Iraq Transition
France, Germany, Russia Push for Larger Oversight Role
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4814-2003Nov21.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 21 -- France, Germany and Russia today demanded that the United Nations and other foreign powers be granted a broader role in overseeing Iraq's political transition in exchange for the Security Council's blessing of U.S. plans to transfer power to Iraqis.
The move signaled a fresh battle for the Bush administration in the 15-nation council over Iraq. The United States plans to introduce a resolution that would endorse a U.S.-Iraqi pact that would culminate in a new ratified constitution and a new elected government by Dec. 31, 2005.
That agreement, which would lead to the establishment of a provisional Iraqi government by June 30, has been welcomed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other members of the council.
But today's action by the council's leading opponents of the war in Iraq reflects concern that the agreement, which does not refer to the United Nations, could sideline the organization and favor the Americans' closest allies in Iraq.
John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the agreement to transfer "full sovereign powers" to the Iraqis next year was a "dramatic step forward, and one that should be welcomed and supported by the international community."
He also insisted that the United States is eager for the United Nations to play a more active role in Iraq. He urged the appointment of a new special representative and offered to provide security to allow U.N. workers to return to Iraq in greater numbers to resume humanitarian and reconstruction work.
Annan told council members this week that Baghdad remains too dangerous for U.N. workers to be permanently stationed there. He said he will soon appoint a new official to oversee the United Nations' operations from outside the country. He indicated, however, that he will delay a decision on appointing a new special representative in Iraq until early next year.
Annan also told the council at a luncheon on Thursday that he is establishing a new of group of nations -- including Iraq's six neighbors, Egypt, the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- to advise him on the political future of Iraq.
The latest challenge to the Bush administration's Iraq policy came at a Security Council meeting convened to hear a report from the United States and Britain on the coalition's progress in rebuilding the country. France, Germany and Russia said that while they commend the U.S. decision to speed up its transfer of power, they backed a Russian proposal for a conference of Iraqi political figures, the United States, foreign governments and the U.N. secretary general to plot the country's political future.
France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, outlined elements that the three governments would like to see included in a new resolution. They include a reference to a role for the United Nations in Iraq's political transition, and broader participation of Iraqi political groups, including Iraqi nationalists and members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist political party, and Iraq's neighbors in the political process.
-------- us
Army Is Planning for 100,000 G.I.'s in Iraq Till 2006
November 22, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/politics/22MILI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - Army planning for Iraq currently assumes keeping about 100,000 United States troops there through early 2006, a senior Army officer said Friday. The plans reflect the concerns of some Army officials that stabilizing Iraq could be more difficult than originally planned.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned that maintaining a force of that size in Iraq beyond then would cause the Army to "really start to feel the pain" from stresses on overtaxed active-duty, Reserve and National Guard troops.
The officer was offering a senior-level Army view on the issue, but the size of any future American force in Iraq will ultimately be decided by President Bush and a new provisional Iraqi government that is expected to assume control from an American administrator by June. The Army plans nevertheless give a view of top-level Pentagon thinking about the size of the American force that may be needed in Iraq well beyond the time next year when Washington expects to turn political control of Iraq back to Iraqi leaders.
Mr. Bush has said he will be guided by the military's judgment in deciding troop levels. Military officials have said they will base their recommendations largely on security conditions in Iraq and the extent Iraqis are trained to fill missions now carried out by American troops.
Another senior military official cautioned that while the senior Army officer's comments reflected prudent planning, it "has nothing to do with what the security situation on the ground might be in 18 months."
The Pentagon has said it will reduce the American military presence in Iraq to 105,000 by May from 130,000 now. While some defense officials have raised the possibility of shrinking the force even more next year, if circumstances allow, the senior Army officer said Army planners were assuming that the number of American forces in Iraq would probably stay the same when the military begins its third one-year troop rotation in March 2005.
"What we're looking at doing is making some assumptions with the Marines about sustaining the type of force we're going to need," said the officer, who spoke to a small group of military reporters. "As you look at this, it wouldn't seem prudent right now to plan on using a force of less than what is there now, for March '05." That force would presumably remain in Iraq until March 2006, although its size could fluctuate, depending on conditions on the ground.
A third senior military official said that, while planning for the force to enter Iraq in early 2005 was under way, it was far too early to predict how many American troops would be needed for that rotation.
White House and Defense Department officials have insisted political considerations played no role in the Pentagon's decision to reduce the force that is rotating into Iraq next spring to replace troops that have been there a year. On Thursday, Mr. Bush even suggested he was open to rethinking the Pentagon's plan to cut troop levels in Iraq next year.
Many military planners are looking at future troop levels in Iraq, for different reasons. Army and Marine Corps officials must plan for worst-case scenarios, since their services will provide the vast majority of forces in future rotations. Planners on the military's Joint Staff in Washington examine how forces are allocated for hot spots around the world.
Planners at the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which has responsibility for military operations in Iraq, closely watch the specific troop requirements in Iraq. For that reason, Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, who heads the Central Command, will probably have the most influential voice in deciding future troop levels in Iraq.
"John Abizaid is the one who's going to tell us at several points down the road over the next couple of years what he thinks he's going to need," the senior Army officer said.
Even so, the views of senior Army and Marine Corps officers involved in the planning in Washington are important because they track and respond to what ground commanders in Iraq say they require.
Just how large the American military presence in Iraq will be in the future depends not only on negotiations with Iraqi political leaders but also on the level of violence in Iraq and how quickly newly trained Iraqis can take over security, American officials say.
Teams of Army Special Forces are now training Iraqis in an accelerated program to fill out the ranks of a civil defense corps, the equivalent of a militia.
The Iraqi militiamen are already conducting joint patrols with American forces, and General Abizaid has said he envisions the militia over time assuming a more prominent and independent role in attacking Baath Party supporters, foreign fighters and other insurgents who carry out ambushes and roadside bombings against American forces.
To combat the insurgents in Iraq, General Abizaid and his subordinate commanders have said they need better intelligence.
To that end, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, said Friday that the Defense Department had instructed the military services to beef up their human intelligence capacities to address unmet needs in Iraq.
"We're a little short on the human side, there's no denying that, so we're in the process of adding to the number of people who may be involved," he said at a breakfast with defense writers. He did not give specifics, but indicated that the changes were part of a broader effort to reinforce American intelligence capacity in Iraq to support the campaign against insurgents.
Dr. Cambone said that the lack of sufficient human intelligence capabilities in the military services had become apparent during operations in Iraq, but that it dated from cuts made during the early 1990's. He said the main focus of the American military effort in Iraq would continue to be primarily on "former regime loyalists who are trying to drive out the coalition."
Exactly what kind of relationship the American military has with a new Iraqi provisional government was discussed on Thursday at a meeting of General Abizaid, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior military officials.
One official involved that said that the internal discussions were at a preliminary stage, and that General Abizaid would make recommendations in coming weeks. "We're looking at lots of different possible arrangements," the official said.
--------
U.S. Military Returns to War Tactics
Resumed Use of Heavy Munitions Part of Intensified Counterinsurgency
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 22, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5040-2003Nov21?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- The U.S. military is using 2,000-pound bombs and precision-guided missiles in Iraq for the first time since April as part of a tactical shift designed in part to intimidate resistance fighters.
The powerful munitions -- some of which have been dropped by Air Force and Navy fighter jets that had not flown bombing runs over Iraq for six months -- have been used to flatten houses, factories and training camps that military commanders say have been used by insurgents to assemble bombs, stage ambushes and coordinate attacks on American troops. The bone-jarring explosions and drumbeat of cannon fire that echoed across Baghdad this week evoked memories of the intense campaign that preceded the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.
Three Army generals here said the use of high-intensity weapons and strike aircraft is part of a new, nationwide campaign to intensify counterinsurgency operations in the wake of escalating attacks on U.S. forces, including the downing of two helicopters this month in which more than 20 soldiers were killed. The operations have included scores of raids, block-by-block searches for weapons and patrols that have resulted in the detention of more than 500 suspected insurgents.
Despite the intensity of the bomb and artillery strikes, Iraqis living near the target areas and even some U.S. officers say they consider the offensive more symbolic than substantial. They contend most of targeted structures -- some of which were unremarkable, single-story brick buildings -- were empty when they were hit. And they insist that the new tactics, which have featured deafening nighttime strafing runs by AC-130 Spectre gunships and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, have frightened ordinary people more than insurgents.
Although commanders acknowledge that the destroyed structures have been unoccupied in most cases -- in some cases, soldiers have used loudspeakers to warn occupants to flee -- they maintain that the strikes are throwing resistance fighters off guard, raising the possibility that their redoubts will be destroyed while they are inside. Until now, almost all U.S. counterinsurgency operations have involved raids aimed at capturing suspects; shooting typically only broke out when insurgents were fleeing or attacking American forces.
"If one night an aircraft that they couldn't see or hear lobs a couple of rounds into the ground and turns the ground into a pile of dirt, it's got to cause you pause the next time you decide to go out and shoot your rockets," said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. "And that's what I'm looking for. I want the enemy to know that although I'm on his home turf, he is not going to use that to his advantage."
In Baghdad, Dempsey's division commenced an operation dubbed Iron Hammer late last week that resulted in the most significant military strikes in the capital since Hussein's government was toppled. Over the past week, the operation has involved 20 missions by AH-64 Apache gunships, 7 missions by AC-130s and A-10s and 26 artillery and mortar attacks, Dempsey said. Most of those strikes have occurred to the south and west of the city, away from densely populated areas but close enough to the city for residents to hear reverberations from the blasts.
Raids under Iron Hammer netted 522 artillery and mortar rounds, 25 rocket-propelled grenades, 4 completed roadside bombs and 2 surface-to-air missiles, he said. The operation also disrupted three insurgent cells, with 14 resistance fighters killed and 104 captured, he said.
Speaking on Thursday, a day before more than 10 rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraqi Oil Ministry headquarters and two large hotels, Dempsey boasted that Iron Hammer had reduced attacks on U.S. forces in the capital by about 70 percent.
In one airstrike last week, he said, an Apache helicopter attacked a pickup truck, killing two men who had just fired mortars at an American military base and wounding three. In a demonstration of another new military campaign -- a public relations push to highlight what it deems to be successes in Iraq -- he showed a picture at a news conference on Thursday of the shot-up truck next to two bodies covered by black shrouds. In the past, U.S. military officials had generally refrained from commenting on specific numbers of Iraqis killed in engagements with American soldiers.
Aerial and artillery bombardment also have been employed to the north of Baghdad, in parts of the Sunni Triangle. The area is home to many members of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority who received disproportionate power and compensation under Hussein's government. Fighter jets have dropped 500-pound bombs in the cities of Samarra, Baiji, Balad and Baqubah, the military said. The Army's 4th Infantry Division, which controls the northern and western parts of the triangle, also has employed at least two satellite-guided missiles to attack what the military called "terrorist infrastructure targets."
In several parts of the 4th Infantry's area of operations, including Hussein's home town of Tikrit, soldiers have used tank and artillery rounds to destroy the homes of suspected insurgents. A spokesman for the division said the attacks were designed to "send a message" to resistance fighters.
The decision to demolish houses suspected of sheltering insurgents resembles a tactic long in use by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to punish the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Like the Israelis, troops with the 4th Infantry have also flattened wide swaths on roadsides to inhibit the laying of bombs.
The Israeli-Palestinian analogy was much on the minds of the newly homeless in Hawijat Ali, a rural hamlet near Tikrit. Earlier this week, U.S. tanks and a helicopter gunship flattened one house and heavily damaged three others after an unsuccessful search for a pair of suspected insurgents. "The Americans want to follow the Israeli plan," said Hamed Hassan, an elderly resident of Hawijat Ali. "It doesn't work there. Why will it work here?"
Although the human-rights group Amnesty International said on Friday that the demolitions appeared to violate the Geneva Conventions, U.S. commanders have made no apologies for their tougher tactics.
"This is war," Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is responsible for the western part of the triangle, said this week. "And we're going to prosecute the war not holding one hand behind our back. When we identify positively an enemy target, we're going to go ahead and take it out with every means we have available."
Borrowing a phrase from Viscount William Joseph Slim, the British field marshal who evicted Japanese troops from Burma during World War II, Swannack said the U.S. military intended to "use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut."
For instance, in Baqubah, a city about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, a pair of F-16 jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on abandoned buildings in the countryside north of the city and the Army used mortars to pepper trees near the village of Salah. Inspection of the tree-lined area revealed some tattered branches and bark scarred by shrapnel and indistinct craters among scrub and brownish dirt.
Military officers in Baqubah said the aim was to stop rocket-propelled grenade attacks along roads dubbed "RPG alley," as well as to hit areas suspected as launch sites for mortars. "It's to let the bad guys know we are around and to hit places we know they fire from," said Lt. Robert Small of the 200th Engineer Company, which is attached to the 4th Infantry.
While the Americans have a vast array of weaponry, targets are not easy to come by, Small acknowledged. At this stage in resistance activity, the guerrillas hold no swaths of territory, operate in small groups and continue to organize so loosely that finding someone or something to hit is difficult, U.S. officers say.
The insurgents, on the other hand, have no trouble finding objectives to attack. In Baqubah, the insurgents have tried to assassinate the mayor, placed bombs under the cars of Iraqis who cooperate with the Americans and recently lobbed mortar shells into the city's central square while aiming for the U.S. military civil affairs office.
"When we were on the march into Iraq, we had the advantage of targets," Small said. "Now it's the other way around. The odds are with them."
But American generals insist the recent bomb and artillery strikes are driven by new intelligence indicating where insurgents are meeting, building bombs and staging attacks. Dempsey said Iron Hammer missions around Baghdad were the "result of several weeks of intelligence gains."
Among the targets his officers identified as worthy of strikes has been a former textile factory on the city's southern fringe. Military officials said the factory, located in an industrial area near a highway, was used as a "meeting, planning and rendezvous point" for resistance fighters who had fired mortars at a nearby U.S. base at least twice.
"That factory had been used on countless occasions . . . to attack us," Dempsey said.
On four nights over the past week, American forces have either fired artillery shells at the factory or strafed the building with an AC-130 gunship, which carries a 25mm Gatling gun capable of firing 1,800 rounds per minute. The structure now resembles a giant block of Swiss cheese, with large holes in its brick walls and metal roof.
Nearby residents said they have been perplexed and scared by the decision to fire at the factory again and again. Jassim Nussaif, a former guard at the factory who lives about a half a mile away, said he saw insurgents fire mortar shells at the American base from an intersection near the factory, but not inside the building.
"It was abandoned," said Nussaif, a short, bearded man. The insurgents, he said, "would just drive up and shoot and leave. They never stayed in the factory."
He said the repeated strikes have spooked his family. "We thought the Americans were here to help us," he said. "This is only hurting innocent people. It will not scare the fighters. It will only terrorize the people."
But Dempsey said he was convinced the building had been used by insurgents. He said it had been hit night after night because the military wanted to prevent them from returning to the site.
"What I want to make sure the enemy knows is there is no sanctuary," he said.
Williams reported from Baqubah and Tikrit.
-------- propaganda wars
Free Iraqi Media Called a Worthy Onus
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4813-2003Nov21.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that new media freedoms in Iraq are making the occupation harder for the U.S.-led authority, "but in the last analysis, I think the benefits vastly outweigh the burdens of it."
Speaking before a Pentagon town meeting yesterday, Rumsfeld said, "We've seen the free press abused in this country and other countries, and it's not a surprise that it can be abused there." He noted that the two most popular television satellite stations in Iraq, Dubai-based al-Arabiya and Qatar-based al-Jazeera, are "violently anti-coalition" and that "it will take some time to persuade people to watch different programming."
Rumsfeld's remarks came at a time when the Coalition Provisional Authority is seeking bids for a $100 million contract to run Iraq's former government-controlled television and radio networks and national newspaper, which used to be edited by Saddam Hussein's late son, Uday.
Now called the Iraq Media Network, the operation has come under criticism for carrying television and radio programming that features primarily occupation authority officials and announcements along with a weekly broadcast by L. Paul Bremer, head of the occupation authority.
"Many Iraqis and outside Arabs feel the coalition is an occupying force that does not serve Iraq's needs effectively, distrusts what the coalition says and relies on other media," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who has just returned from a two-week visit to Iraq. In a report on his trip, Cordesman said it was not clear that the media network was being fixed, but he noted, "Information operations are absolutely critical to U.S. success."
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Pentagon meeting that Bremer's media team had begun offering new programming "that we hope will attract the average Iraqi citizen's attention."
One communications expert familiar with the Iraq situation said yesterday that the occupation authority's television channel, run by Pentagon contractor Science International Applications Corp., will have changed its format three times by the end of the month. "Each time you change, you have trouble getting audiences back to sample it again," he said.
The U.S. Broadcast Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America and created Radio Sawa, a relatively new broadcasting effort in the Middle East, is also planning to establish a television presence in Iraq. It will air 12 hours of television programming out of Baghdad beginning early next year.
--------
Bush Ad Criticizes Democrats On Defense
Doctrine of Preemption Is Touted as Effective
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4956-2003Nov21.html
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said yesterday that a central tenet of President Bush's reelection campaign will contrast his doctrine of preemptive strikes on terrorists with what Gillespie called Democrats' willingness to wait for the aftermath of an attack on the United States.
The strategy is designed to portray Democrats as weak on defense and to suggest that President Bill Clinton could have been tougher on terrorism, GOP officials said. Democrats called it an attack on their patriotism and noted past pledges by Bush not to politicize the war on terrorism.
The party unveiled the theme in Bush's first ad of the campaign, which is to begin running in Iowa tomorrow. Over funereal music, the ad opens with a clip from Bush's State of the Union address in January in which he raised the specter of a chemical or biological attack on U.S. soil. Then, the screen fades to stark lettering: "Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists," the type says. "Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others." The word "terrorists" turns red.
Then viewers are urged to call Congress and "tell them to support the President's policy of preemptive self-defense." Bush has developed his preemption doctrine, a policy of attacking potential enemies before they can hit the United States, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The ad's menacing tone contrasts with the warm, biographical spots that typically kick off a campaign. Bush's strategists have become concerned that the war on terrorism, which they consider his greatest political strength, could become a liability if the casualties and chaos continue in Iraq. "The president is more vulnerable on the issue of the war, and that is a source of concern," a presidential adviser said. "We're under assault, and we need to do something."
In a reminder of how much the political terrain has changed since Bush's aides planned his campaign with the war on terrorism as their trump card, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said he welcomed a fight with Bush for the high ground on national security. Reprising Bush's "Bring 'em on" taunt in July to militants attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, Kerry said in New Hampshire, "I have three words for him he'll understand: Bring it on."
The GOP plans to spend $100,00 to air the 30-second ad, which was first reported by the New York Times, for three days surrounding a Democratic debate in Iowa on Monday. The Republican Party is likely to run an ad in conjunction with the next Democratic debate, in New Hampshire on Dec. 9, officials said. The Bush-Cheney campaign is likely to begin its ads early next year.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean used the ad as an inspiration for one of his novel fundraising appeals. Campaign manager Joe Trippi e-mailed more than 500,000 supporters to urge them to send $360,000 by Tuesday at midnight -- "$5,000 for every hour they are going to lie to the American people."
Gillespie said the ad, called "Reality," is designed to expose a difference of opinion between the parties on "whether or not a policy of preemptive self-defense approach is the best approach to protecting our national security."
"The president and Republicans believe that it's the appropriate approach, and Democrats do not," Gillespie said by telephone from Davenport, Iowa.
Without naming Clinton, Gillespie used an Oct. 28 memo to GOP activists to charge that Clinton's administration could have pursued terrorists more aggressively. "The bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole were treated as criminal matters instead of the terrorist acts they were," Gillespie wrote. "After September 11, President Bush made clear that we will no longer simply respond to terrorist acts, but will confront gathering threats before they become certain tragedies."
Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark retorted that the GOP "stole the election in 2000 and wants to steal patriotism from us, and we're not going to let them do it." He said the ad was off-base for suggesting that Democrats were attacking Bush for going after terrorists. "I'm attacking the president because he's not attacking terrorists," Clark said on a conference call from Spartanburg, S.C. "If you look at what's happening around the world today, including these recent blasts in Turkey, it's an indicator that the strategy of attacking Iraq had very little to do with the problem of terrorism."
Gillespie denied that he was impugning anyone's patriotism. "The rules of politics are not that they get to attack us for six months and we're not allowed to respond," he said.
Democrats circulated quotations from White House pledges not to politicize the war, including Bush's statement at a news conference in March 2002 that one of the two lessons he learned from the Vietnam War was that "politics ought to stay out of fighting a war."
"There was too much politics during the Vietnam War," Bush said then. "There was too much concern in the White House about political standing."
The Democratic National Committee plans to air its own ad in conjunction with the Iowa debate, with strategist and television actor James Carville appealing to supporters to call a toll-free number to donate "if you've had enough of George W. Bush."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Pledged Secrecy to New York
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4809-2003Nov21.html
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks promised two months ago to keep secret the names and other personal details revealed in transcripts of emergency calls made by New Yorkers on the day of the terrorist strikes, according to a letter disclosed yesterday.
The letter was designed to ease the concerns of New York officials, who have refused to turn over the transcripts and other materials, citing privacy concerns. A spokesman for New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) has vowed to fight an attempt to obtain those transcripts via a subpoena authorized by the commission this week, setting the stage for a potential court battle as the panel races to complete its work by a May deadline.
The commission's director, Philip D. Zelikow, said yesterday that New York's objections were "disingenuous," given the commission's promises to guard the confidentiality of victims' dying words and other painful personal details.
According to a Sept. 23 letter sent to the New York legal office by commission general counsel Daniel Marcus, "we acknowledge the privacy interests of individual victims, their families, and first responders, and we will not disclose their names or personal information . . . in our public report without further consultation and agreement with the city or the individual in question."
Furthermore, Marcus wrote, all commission documents, including those obtained from New York, would be turned over to the National Archives under rules prohibiting disclosure of "personal, deliberative and other sensitive documents" for as many as 50 years.
Bloomberg press secretary Edward Skyler said in a statement issued Thursday that "it will take a court order to make the city violate the privacy of those we lost and those who responded to that horrific event." Skyler did not return telephone messages left at his office yesterday.
Skyler noted that the city had reached an agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology permitting it to review materials that "do not include the intensely emotional statements" of victims and their loved ones. He indicated that the city would be willing to make a similar agreement with the Sept. 11 commission.
The bipartisan, 10-member commission was created by Congress last year to investigate a wide variety of topics related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the actions of rescue personnel at the World Trade Center. The panel has also issued subpoenas for records to the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration, which have indicated they will comply with them.
New York has refused repeated attempts by media organizations and others to obtain copies of audiotapes and transcripts of emergency calls on Sept. 11, 2001, and interviews with firefighters afterward, arguing that painful details contained in those materials should be kept private.
Records held separately by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were released in August by court order. They included about 1,800 pages of transcripts of recorded telephone calls and radio transmissions.
--------
Privacy Is Primary Issue, Mayor Says of 9/11 Tapes
November 22, 2003
By WINNIE HU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/nyregion/22TAPE.html
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg vowed yesterday to challenge a federal subpoena requiring the city to turn over records of 911 calls from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said that the request was ghoulish, and that complying would invade the privacy of the victims' families.
A federal commission investigating the attacks announced on Thursday that it had issued a subpoena for the city's tapes and transcripts of emergency 911 calls. In a statement, the commission said that "the city's failure to produce these important documents has significantly impeded the commission's investigation."
On his weekly WABC-AM radio program, Mr. Bloomberg said that the tapes had captured firefighters and police officers in their final moments, and that their families felt strongly that the tapes should remain private. "I have an obligation to protect the families and their memories to the extent we possibly can," he said.
The mayor also questioned how the tapes would further the federal investigation. "I don't know why they don't get on with what they're really supposed to do," he said, "I think which is to try to find out how this event took place, what problems there were with security, or whatever, that allowed two planes to be taken over and flown and crashed into these buildings."
The commission is seeking more than the 911 tapes. It also wants the firefighters' oral histories, which tell of the emergency rescue operations and conditions in the two towers.
Another federal agency also requested full access to the documents and tapes, but agreed last month to inspect the materials after names and any references to the emotional state of the callers were removed. The agency also agreed not to take copies. City officials said that they had offered a similar arrangement to the commission, but that it was rejected.
The New York Times and some relatives of those who died in the attacks have sued to make all the materials public.
Alvin S. Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission, said yesterday that the commission shared the mayor's concerns about privacy. But, he added, the commission is exempt from having to turn over documents under the Freedom of Information Act, so it would be sure to keep the records confidential. He stressed that the material is essential to finding out what happened on Sept. 11.
City officials said they were concerned that the material could still become public at some point.
Mr. Bloomberg's aides said the city had not yet been served with the subpoena and its lawyers were planning to file a motion in federal court to have it dismissed.
If the city loses its court fight, Mr. Bloomberg said that he will turn over the records. "We'll do what the courts tell us to do," he said. "We're trying to say, if it doesn't add anything and it's really personal, come on guys, get on with it. This is just ghoulish to look at it, but if the courts say do it, we're a nation of laws, you have to do it."
Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, issued a statement yesterday praising the mayor's efforts. "We support the mayor in his concern to protect the families and the firefighters who gave their lives for our country that day," the statement said.
On a related issue, Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that he had wanted to wait before building a memorial at the World Trade Center site, but that speed had become an issue because of the larger redevelopment efforts there.
"It's not an easy thing," he said, "and given it's so big and so visible and so tragic what happened there, we are still grappling with trying to find something that will please everybody - that's probably not possible." The mayor previously said that he favors one of the eight finalists announced this week in the design competition, but he does not want to influence the selection process by saying which one.
-------- homeland security
Approach of Holidays Spurs Terrorism Alert
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5017-2003Nov21.html
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI last night issued a warning to law enforcement officials around the country to be particularly alert to the potential for a terrorist attack over the next 10 days, as the Muslim fast of Ramadan ends early next week and the Thanksgiving holiday approaches on Thursday.
"The U.S. intelligence community continues to receive and evaluate a high volume of reporting indicating possible threats against U.S. interests," the Department of Homeland Security said in last night's announcement of the directive to state and local officials.
"This reporting, combined with recent terrorist attacks, has created an atmosphere of concern in which increased vigilance here at home is prudent and may be key to deterring or disrupting terrorist attacks."
The department was referring to highly orchestrated attacks by suicide bombers in recent weeks on a residential compound in Saudi Arabia and on two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Turkey.
Last night, officials also elaborated on earlier warnings that the al Qaeda terrorist network might hijack cargo jets and use them as suicide weapons targeting liquid natural gas, chemical and other hazardous materials facilities. The warning also pointed out that al Qaeda has recently used multiple vehicles, including police cars and ambulances, in suicide bombings.
Officials said they are not raising the national threat alert -- following their recent practice even when their alarm is heightened in an effort to avoid making Americans jaded about warnings.
"We decided that with the convergence of these holidays, and the increase in recent attacks, we needed to ratchet up our advisory beyond putting out a piece of paper [only to officials] and to remind all Americans we're still at war," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview last night.
-------- immigration / refugees
Special Registration for Arab Immigrants Will Reportedly Stop
November 22, 2003
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/politics/22REGI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - The Homeland Security Department has decided to stop a program that required thousands of Arab and Muslim men to register with immigration authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said on Friday.
Hoping to hunt down terrorists, immigration officials fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed 85,000 Muslim and Arab noncitizens from November 2002 to May 2003 under the program. The effort, the largest to register immigrants in decades, required annual reporting. Men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria began going to immigration offices for a second round of registrations this month.
Officials have acknowledged that most of the Arabs and Muslims who have complied with the requirements had no ties to terrorist groups. Of the 85,000 men who went to immigration offices early this year, as well as tens of thousands screened at airports and border crossings, 11 had links to terrorism, officials said.
The program was sharply criticized by civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants. The critics said it did little to find terrorists and alienated the very communities that could help uncover terrorists. Advocates for immigrants have also complained that immigration officials have done little to publicize the second round, touching off waves of confusion and anxiety.
Government officials said questions had arisen about the effectiveness of the program. They said an announcement about ending it might be made as early as next week.
A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, William Strassberger, would not confirm any decisions on program, but acknowledged that it was being reviewed to determine whether it should end. The decision to discontinue the program, known as special registration, was first reported in The Washington Post.
"We're continuing to evaluate the special registration program for its effectiveness and efficiency and whether this is the best use of resources," Mr. Strassberger said.
He said the program might be superseded by an effort in which immigration officials at 115 airports and 14 seaports will begin collecting digital fingerprints and photographs from foreign visitors who enter the United States with visas. That program, which is scheduled to begin in January, is not be specifically directed at Muslims and Arabs, he said.
Advocates for immigrants said they were relieved to hear that the special registration program would end, but said many immigrants remained uncertain about complying with the second round of reporting.
"It's definitely a good sign that homeland security is looking into the matter, but people are still very confused," said Kareem Shora, a legal adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Lucas Guttentag, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the decision an admission of failure.
"The government's plan to terminate special registration for Arab and Muslim immigrants," Mr. Guttentag, head of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the A.C.L.U., said, "is an implicit acknowledgement that this was a failed, discriminatory program."
The government began registrations at airports and border crossings in October 2002, focusing on visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, as well as other people who seemed suspicious or had unusual itineraries. The special registration program was announced in November.
-------- justice
Moussaoui Defense Warns of 'Loophole'
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4981-2003Nov21.html
Attorneys for terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui accused the government of trying to create "a new loophole in our Constitution" by allowing national security demands to trump a defendant's right to a fair trial, according to court papers unsealed yesterday.
Moussaoui's attorneys were urging a federal appeals court to uphold a ruling last month by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria. She eliminated the death penalty as a possibility for Moussaoui, along with any evidence that he played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.
Brinkema took that step because the government refuses to let Moussaoui's attorneys interview captured al Qaeda leaders. Some of them have said Moussaoui played no role in the Sept. 11 assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but was to be part of a second wave of attacks.
The Justice Department has appealed the ruling, arguing that Moussaoui should still be executed for his role in the conspiracy that killed nearly 3,000 people. Prosecutors say that allowing Moussaoui or his attorneys to question al Qaeda figures would interfere with vital government interrogations and that allowing Brinkema's ruling to stand would encourage other terrorism suspects to try to avoid punishment in the same way -- by demanding access to al Qaeda detainees.
In the briefs unsealed yesterday, defense attorneys called the government's refusal to produce witnesses helpful to Moussaoui a "breathtaking and unprecedented" expansion of executive branch power.
"The government's interest in protecting national security cannot override a defendant's right to a fair trial," the lawyers said in the brief, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond. "The founders recognized that absolute power could never be placed in the hands of the President," even in time of war.
Brinkema issued her ruling in response to the government's refusal to produce three al Qaeda detainees sought as witnesses by Moussaoui's defense. She said that Moussaoui could still be tried on charges of participating in a broad al Qaeda conspiracy to attack the United States and that he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Moussaoui, a French citizen, was indicted in December 2001 on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda in the September 2001 attacks. Defense attorneys contend, and Brinkema agrees, that the three witnesses have information vital to his defense. Prosecutors say the witnesses actually implicate Moussaoui in the conspiracy.
The Moussaoui case has a heavy legal and symbolic importance to the Justice Department, which has made him a symbol of the need to extract punishment for Sept. 11. Federal prosecutors in Alexandria have interviewed thousands of family members of victims to prepare about 40 to testify at the trial, and prosecutors said in their briefs that although Moussaoui's rights deserve protection, "the criminal justice system ought to work for the victims as well."
Defense attorneys took exception: "Distilled to its essence, the government argument is that however unfair the process may be for the defendant . . . dismissal of the death notice was inappropriate because it will deprive the victims of their entitlement to the ultimate punishment."
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to deliver oral arguments to the 4th Circuit in Richmond on Dec. 3.
-------- police
FBI let innocents get death sentences: report
By Fox Butterfield
November 22, 2003
The New York Times
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/21/1069027333534.html
The FBI used murderers as informants in Boston for three decades, even allowing innocent men to be sentenced to death to protect the secret operation, a government report has found.
The FBI's policy "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement" and had "disastrous consequences", the report by the House Committee on Government Reform said.
More than 20 people were murdered by FBI informants in Boston from 1965, often with the help of FBI agents, it said.
But no FBI agent or official has ever been disciplined, the report said.
Separately, it said that William Bulger, then the president of the University of Massachusetts, gave "inconsistent" testimony to the committee last June about whether the FBI had contacted him in its search for his fugitive gangster brother, James Bulger, who is on the bureau's most wanted list.
James Bulger, known as Whitey, headed an underworld gang in Boston and was one of the FBI's star informants before he fled in 1995 after being tipped off by a bureau agent that there was a secret indictment against him.
While critical of Mr Bulger, the report stopped short of saying he had committed perjury.
Mr Bulger's lawyer, Thomas Kiley, said the committee's findings were "a total vindication on everything that matters" for his client.
The bureau, in a written statement, said: "While the FBI recognises there have been instances of misconduct by a few FBI employees, it also recognises the importance of human source information in terrorism, criminal and counterintelligence investigations."
To avoid future problems, the statement said, "the FBI has taken significant steps in recent years regarding the management and oversight of human sources of intelligence".
The FBI's policy of using murderers grew out of a belated effort by a former director, J. Edgar Hoover, to go after the Mafia, which Hoover had earlier denied even existed, the report said. So, in the early 1960s, the bureau began recruiting underworld informers in its new campaign.
The report focuses heavily on one episode, the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan, a small-time hoodlum who was killed by Jimmy Flemmi and Joseph Barboza, who had just been recruited by an FBI agent in Boston, Paul Rico.
The FBI knew the two men were the killers because it had been using an unauthorised wire tap and had heard Flemmi ask the Mafia boss, Raymond Patriarca, for permission to kill Deegan. A few days later, Deegan was shot dead.
The FBI was so intent on protecting its new informants, the report said, that it passed up a chance to try Patriarca for his involvement in the killing.
Instead, four men who had nothing to do with the killing were tried and convicted, with two sentenced to death and two to life in prison.
Two of the men died in prison and two had their sentences commuted and were freed after serving 30 years behind bars.
Hoover was kept fully informed about this murder and the wrongful convictions, the report said.
--------
Draft Report Questions FBI Bullet Analyses
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4810-2003Nov21.html
A draft report by government scientists at the National Research Council disputes the validity of an FBI method of matching bullets, potentially calling into question hundreds of criminal convictions that relied on such evidence, sources familiar with the findings said yesterday.
The report faults the FBI's practice of chemically comparing bullet lead from a crime scene to lead in unused bullets, contending that there is insufficient scientific basis to determine that bullets came from the same batch of lead, the sources said.
The FBI lab has conducted this sort of analysis for decades, and such analyses have often been used to link defendants to weapons used in crimes. The draft report, which remains subject to revision, casts doubt on the statistical data the bureau has used in some trial testimony, the sources said.
FBI laboratory chief Dwight E. Adams asked the National Academy of Sciences to examine the way the bureau analyzes bullet lead last year, after several analysts, including William A. Tobin, one of its former lab scientists, challenged the science undergirding the procedure.
The draft report shares Tobin's view that bullets from the same box or batch of lead may have highly variable chemical properties, and that a particular bullet may share similarities with bullets from batches produced elsewhere or at other times, the sources said.
A spokesman for the FBI said the bureau had not seen the draft and cautioned that its conclusions are not final. "We have not seen the report. We would want to know how they reached the conclusions they did," said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. While he stressed that the bureau itself "asked for the study and paid for it," he asserted that it believes its bullet comparison methodology is sound. "We're confident of what we're doing," he said.
Bresson also castigated Tobin, saying that while he has criticized FBI scientists for offering testimony in areas outside their fields of expertise, "now he is doing the very same thing." Bresson asserted that Tobin is not a metallurgical expert.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said officials there have not seen a final report and cannot say what impact it will have on criminal convictions in which such FBI evidence was used.
The council, the main operating agency for the National Academy of Sciences, declined to discuss the draft yesterday after some of its contents were reported by the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.
--------
FBI Gets More Time on Gun Buys
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4958-2003Nov21.html
The Justice Department has ordered the FBI to increase scrutiny of suspected terrorists who attempt to purchase guns after discovering that a dozen individuals on the government's main terrorist watch list have bought firearms in the last eight months, according to officials and documents.
Under the new rules, the FBI will have as long as three days to run additional checks on prospective gun purchasers listed on the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organizations File, a database of more than 10,000 names that includes al Qaeda operatives and other militants, according to a memo this week from acting Deputy Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr.
McCallum also indicated in the memo to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that only one prospective gun purchaser included on the terrorist list had been blocked from buying weapons since March. An FBI official said yesterday that 12 other suspects on the terrorist list were allowed to proceed with their purchases because they were not legally prohibited from buying firearms.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that a new program alerts FBI counterterrorism agents when suspects on its terrorist watch list attempt to buy guns, but that regulations based on Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's interpretation of the Brady gun-control law prohibit them from obtaining any substantive details if the transaction is approved.
Justice officials say that the gun-control law does not allow the sharing of information on lawful gun purchases, even if it would allow counterterrorism agents to investigate or try to locate people on the terrorist watch list. The agents are, however, allowed to track purchasers who are blocked from buying guns because of felony convictions, arrest warrants or other criteria. Gun-control advocates argue that Ashcroft's interpretation endangers the public.
McCallum's memo, along with a Justice Department letter to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), does not indicate that there will be any change in the ability of FBI agents to learn details about approved gun transactions by suspected terrorists. But they outline new procedures that will allow investigators more time to make sure the purchase cannot be stopped in other ways.
Lautenberg, who introduced legislation this week to expand the FBI's ability to investigate terrorism suspects who attempt to buy guns, said the new procedures fall short.
"The Justice Department treats it like a game, in which the FBI gets only three days to prove a negative before a terrorist gets to anonymously obtain firearms," Lautenberg said. "Why in the world does the FBI need to fight the Justice Department to find the location of a terrorist suspect who is obtaining weapons?"
The memo and letter do not provide any details about the 12 individuals listed on the terrorist watch list who were able to purchase weapons legally. But they indicate that another suspect on the list tried and failed twice to buy a weapon.
The first attempt was delayed because of a missing detail on a case record, giving authorities time to discover that an arrest warrant was pending. The same person apparently tried to buy a weapon a second time and was denied again.
-------- terrorism
INTELLIGENCE
Analysts See Terrorism Paradox: A Weaker Al Qaeda Despite Attacks
November 22, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/22TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - The recent surge in terrorist strikes on "soft targets" like consulates, banks and synagogues in places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia is worrying, but paradoxically reflects progress by the United States and Europe in disrupting Al Qaeda, especially its leadership structure, American and European intelligence officials said Friday.
"We continue to disrupt Al Qaeda's activities and capture more of their leaders, but the attacks are escalating," a senior counterterrorism official in Europe said. "This is a very bad sign. There are fewer leaders but more followers."
The officials said they regard Al Qaeda as less capable than before of striking at American embassies, military targets and landmarks that were the hallmarks of its campaign before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the terrorist threat has evolved, they said, into a much broader, more diffuse phenomenon than before, with a new strategy of attacks by loosely affiliated groups against highly vulnerable targets.
The shift to softer targets does not make Al Qaeda and its followers any less dangerous, the officials cautioned. They said there is deep concern here and in Europe that the United States and its allies are facing more - not fewer - terrorist foes than before. The killing and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders is failing, they said, to keep pace with the number of angry young Muslim men and women willing to participate in suicide attacks.
"It's inevitable that when you step on the anthill, there are going to be plenty of ants coming out the side," a senior American official said.
In a classified warning to law enforcement agencies late Thursday, the United States reiterated its concern about Al Qaeda's "continued desire to plot or plan terrorist attacks with an emphasis on U.S. interests abroad," federal officials said.
The State Department issued a new global terror warning Friday, saying that it saw "increasing indications" that Al Qaeda is planning to strike American interests abroad. It also said that it could not rule out another Qaeda attack within the United States, one "more devastating" than the Sept. 11 attacks.
Intelligence and counterterrorism officials in Europe said Friday that several recent attacks, in Istanbul and Jakarta, were engineered by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, not by Al Qaeda itself. Several officials said this suggests that Al Qaeda might no longer have the capacity to organize attacks and has instead become an inspiration to new and existing groups with similar goals and ideology.
"Al Qaeda, as such, is too busy trying to survive right now," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. "Al Qaeda is more or less brain dead. I don't think they are extremely efficient at planning and coordinating new attacks."
Despite that cause for optimism, the intelligence officials said they are troubled by evidence suggesting that more young militant men are becoming terrorists than ever before. The men are joining groups inspired by the occupation of Iraq and the exhortations to fight by Osama bin Laden, who is seen as a hero to many disaffected Muslims.
"These people have found a new motivation with the aggression of the United States against the brethren in an Arab country," one official said. "If you follow what is being said on the Web sites and by other groups with similar goals to Al Qaeda, they are all trying to ride the wave and trying to raise new recruits through this motivation. And it's working."
In a private memorandum to associates last month, in which he warned of a "long, hard slog" ahead in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised similar concerns. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front, also known as IBDA-C, is the Turkish terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for Thursday's attacks against the British Consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul. The group, founded in the mid-70's, is a violent opponent of Turkey's secular government and its ties to the European Union and the West.
Several senior counterterrorism officials in Europe, however, said that they are uncertain that the group has strong ties to Al Qaeda. One intelligence chief said that Al Qaeda does not usually time its attacks to coincide with political events, as the suicide bombers on Thursday seemed to do in striking British targets during President Bush's state visit to Britain.
But a senior counterterrorism official took exception to that assessment, saying that the coordinated nature of the suicide bombings, occurring within five minutes and a few miles of each other in Istanbul on Thursday, was the hallmark of an Qaeda terrorist operation.
Senior counterterrorism officials in Europe and the Middle East have grown increasingly concerned that smaller, harder-to-detect groups with loose ties to Al Qaeda, or even independent of it, have struck soft targets all over Europe. The trend was first seen in the early months of 2002, with attacks by local groups with loose Al Qaeda affiliations in Pakistan and Tunisia. The authorities also broke up attacks planned against United States military and diplomatic targets in Bosnia, Italy and Morocco.
Several officials have insisted that they are much more concerned with new terrorist groups in North Africa and Western Europe than with the leadership of Al Qaeda. The groups are actively recruiting young men, who were not necessarily trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the officials said.
"Al Qaeda is not my main headache," a senior official said. "The spontaneous groups that are sprouting up from the northern African community based in Europe, and going down the path of jihad, are what I'm most worried about. They are inspired by bin Laden, but this is not Al Qaeda. They are not there yet - they are not necessarily even ready to launch attacks - but these groups are raising the next generation of terrorists."
Douglas Jehl reported for this article from Washington and Don Van Natta Jr. from London.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Senate Energy Bill Is Blocked GOP Thwarted in Getting Floor Vote
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5016-2003Nov21?language=printer
A multifaceted, $31 billion energy bill ran into serious trouble yesterday when Senate opponents blocked it from reaching a vote, raising the possibility that months of negotiations and deal-making will produce no bill this year on a top priority for President Bush.
Republican leaders vowed to keep working on Senate holdouts in both parties, in order to allow a roll call before Congress adjourns for the year.
"This is too important for the American people to [have the Senate] desert this," Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said after a GOP effort to end debate on the measure failed, 57 to 40. Sixty votes are needed to end debate and allow a final vote on passage.
Backers need two more votes, because Frist switched to "no" in a last-minute procedural move to keep the measure alive. As the day wore on, finding those two votes appeared to be a considerable challenge.
Frist met with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to discuss strategies for saving the bill. Any changes would have to be approved by the House, which passed the energy bill Tuesday.
One option involves deleting a controversial provision that gives makers of the fuel additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) -- found to contaminate groundwater in some places -- partial protection from lawsuits. Deleting the provision would be a boon to trial lawyers, a key Democratic constituency, and House GOP leaders have signaled no willingness to yield on the question.
The energy bill's supporters say it would increase domestic energy production, provide new incentives for renewable fuels, stimulate investment in the overburdened electricity grid and create as many as 800,000 jobs. Tax and financial incentives are included for a proposed $20 billion pipeline to carry Alaskan natural gas to the Midwest.
The bill would require a doubling of ethanol fuel production from corn, a priority of farmers.
In one of the few partisan jabs of the day's debate, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said, "Democrats are leading a parade to kill the most important provision ever thought up for farmers."
But the divisions were more regional than partisan. Thirteen Democrats, most from farm states, joined 44 Republicans in a bid to end debate and bring the measure to a vote. Seven Republicans, 32 Democrats and one Independent voted to sustain the delaying tactic. Five of the Republicans voting no were New Englanders upset with the MTBE provisions for subsidies in the bill for coal and nuclear power.
Opponents of the bill acknowledge there are enough Senate votes to pass the legislation if it reaches a final roll call, which requires a simple majority.
In three days of debate, opponents denounced the bill for containing favors for dozens of special interests, and for providing a partial liability waiver for MTBE producers, who could face billions of dollars in lawsuits over the additive's alleged water contamination in dozens of communities.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told the bill's supporters: "Don't call yourself a fiscal conservative." Congressional budget analysts say the bill will cost about $31 billion over 10 years, including new spending and tax breaks.
GOP supporters said the bill is still alive, and Frist promised one more try to force a final vote.
Domenici said, "What we're going to do now in good faith is find out what we might do . . . to get [holdouts] to where they belong."
"There may be four or five out there that, with some adjustment in the legislation," can be won over, said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho). The bill before the Senate cannot be amended, but changes to it could be attached to other legislation making its way through in the final days of the session, GOP officials said.
Bush told reporters last night: "For the sake of our national security and economic security, the Senate has got to pass this bill."
But Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, "I think we have a good chance to keep this" opposition that is thwarting a final vote.
Deals could yet be possible. Mine workers who hold sway in West Virginia and Midwest coal mining states are pressing for a provision to shore up, through 2020, a depleted benefits fund for retirees and widows. The senators from West Virginia -- John D. Rockefeller IV and Robert C. Byrd, both Democrats -- voted to block final action on the energy bill.
But every move to appease one group of lawmakers invariably rankles another. Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.), for example, strongly opposes a proposal that would divert to the miners' retirement larger sums from a fund financed by mining companies to restore abandoned mining lands.
But that program will expire next year, and western lawmakers are wary of extending it because they say the land restoration aid is skewed to the East. Moreover, Rockefeller declined yesterday to make any commitment to change his vote even if the miners' welfare issue is addressed in the bill.
Numerous environmental organizations applauded yesterday's Senate action. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said the bill was a "deal with the devil" and would lead to more water pollution.
A Sierra Club lobbyist thanked several senators for their votes as they left the chamber yesterday. The club issued a statement calling on senators to "stand strong to rebuff repeated attempts by the administration to pass this terrible piece of legislation."
Virginia's senators -- George Allen and John W. Warner, both Republicans -- voted yesterday to end debate and allow a final roll call on the energy bill. Maryland's senators, Democrats Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes, voted to continue the debate.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thousands protest Iraq war in Italy demos
Saturday, 22-Nov-2003
Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/dl/Qitaly-iraq-protest.RYsR_DNM.html
ROME, Nov 22 (AFP) - Thousands of demonstrators marched through the Italian capital Rome and in other Italian cities on Saturday to protest at the war in Iraq and to demand more job security.
An effigy of conservative Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was carried at the head of the demonstration in Rome above a placard that read: "I promised you one million jobs ... in Iraq."
Other placards waved by the protesters read: "A wage for one and all," and "Out of Iraq! No to military spending, yes to welfare spending."
The march was organised by the Network for Income and Welfare Rights, a group of organisations representing the unemployed and workers on short-term non-renewable contracts.
Opposition Communist and Green party members also took part in the march.
"Today the pacifists are returning to the streets to meet the unemployed and those with no job security to demand a reduction in military spending, the withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq and the introduction in Italy of benefits for low-paid workers," said Green lawmaker Paolo Cento.
Thousands of demonstrators also turned out in Milan, the country's economic and financial capital, and in Florence.
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