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NUCLEAR
Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
Rocky Flats Contractor Fined for Radioactive Contamination
El Baradei Says A.Q.Khan Just Tip of Atomic Iceberg
Khan's nuke network sparks proliferation fears
Malysia leader's son, Libyan arms tied
PM vows 'no favours' probe into son's alleged Libyan nuclear link
Malaysia Factory Counters Nuclear Charges
Malaysia marches to '2020' economy
Australia's Uranium and Who Buys It
Inquiry into Gulf illness urged
Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff
Returning Vilseck troops get depleted uranium questions
U.S. Helps Pakistan Safeguard Nuclear Material
Pakistan: anger over nuclear leak pardon
Parties Want Pakistan Nuke Leaks Probed
Atom Scientist Given Pardon by Musharraf
Pakistani Scientist Is Pardoned
U.S. Defends Pardon of Nuclear Trafficker
Mossad mulled killing Vanunu
Koreas Pledge to Help Nuclear Talks Succeed
China, U.S. Differ Over N. Korea Weapons
Charm offensive
U.N. Nuclear Chief Warns of Global Black Market
U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Post Another High Performing Year
Rocky Flats Contractor Fined for Radioactive Contamination
Spending From Now To Doomsday
U.S. Embassy in Iraq to Be the Biggest
MILITARY
Syria Said to Send Arms Again to Lebanon Guerrillas
No regrets from Mikhail Kalashnikov at designing the universal weapon
Mission to Mongolia
WARREN ZIMMERMANN (1934-2004) - A DIPLOMAT WITH BLOOD ON HIS HANDS
British officers knew on eve of war that Iraq had no WMDs
What we were told, what we know now and the unresolved issues
Citing Arms, Tory Leader Says Blair Should Quit
MPs back motion for Britain to report US for arming Saddam
Halliburton to Counter Critics With Commercial Ad
Navy Contract Hurts EDS Earnings;
Beijing Urges Bush to Act to Forestall Taiwan Vote
Iranian Council Refuses Again to Overturn Ban on Candidates
Doubts Grow About Accounts of Attack on Iraqi Ayatollah
Top Iraqi Cleric Said to Survive Attempt on Life
U.S. Plan to Transfer Power In Iraq May Shift Drastically
When Israelis say, 'Hell no, we won't go'
Sharon May Shift Gaza Strip Settlers to the West Bank
Bribery Inquiry May Impede Sharon's Gaza Pullout Plan
At Least 39 Killed in Bomb Blast in Moscow Subway
CIA says no to scapegoat role over elusive Iraq weapons
Spying under scrutiny
Tenet Concedes Gaps in C.I.A. Data on Iraq Weapons
Tenet Defends CIA's Analysis Of Iraq as Objective, if Flawed
CIA Chief Defends U.S. Iraq Weapons Intelligence
In the Words of the C.I.A. Director
CIA chief wrong on plant closure in Malaysia
War shortages
Pentagon Calls Off Voting by Internet
Bush Stands Firmly Behind His Decision to Invade Iraq
Hollywood propaganda
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bush Names Panel to Examine Intelligence on Iraq Weapons
Bush Sets Up Iraq WMD Intelligence Panel
Scalia's Trip With Cheney Raises Questions of Impartiality
Scalia Joined Cheney on Flight
A Shrinking Death Row Rulings Contribute to Md. Decline
New York City Wants Easing of Patriot Act
One More Slap at a Prying Eye
Senate Offices Open Again as Ricin Inquiry Continues
Ricin Probe Looks to Truckers for Help
Frist Staffer Quits Over Judiciary Probe
Pentagon to Alter Military Tribunal Rules
ENERGY
US Panel Says Hydrogen Car Is 25 Years Down the Road
Report Questions Bush Plan for Hydrogen-Fueled Cars
OTHER
Most States Expect Pollution to Rise if Regulations Change
Mercury Threat To Fetus Raised EPA Revises Risk Estimates
ACTIVISTS
Feb. 24: Stop the Corporate Invasion of Iraq!
-------- NUCLEAR
Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
February 2004
World Nuclear Association,
2/6/04
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.htm
- Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily but not dramatically, with over 30 reactors under construction in ten countries.
- Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region.
- Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
- Plant life extension programs are decreasing the need for new capacity.
Today there are some 440 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries, with a combined capacity of 360 GWe. In 2002 these provided 2574 billion kWh, over 16% of the world's electricity.
Although some countries, notably Japan, China, India, Russia and the Republic of Korea, intend to continue major nuclear power construction programs, the rate of growth of installed nuclear generating capacity over the next ten years is expected to be low.
About 30 power reactors are currently being constructed in 11 countries (see Table), notably China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia. Construction is well-advanced on many of them.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) forecasts that the total installed nuclear capacity in 2015 will be little more than that in 2000, - 370 GWe, with the nuclear share of world electricity output decreased from 17% in 1997 to 13% in 2015.
INCREASED CAPACITY
Increased nuclear capacity in some countries is resulting from the uprating of existing plants. This is a highly cost-effective way of bringing on new capacity.
Numerous power reactors in USA, Belgium, Sweden and Germany, for example, have had their generating capacity increased. In Switzerland, a program is being undertaken to increase the capacity of its five reactors by 10%. In the USA the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved 96 uprates since 1977, a few of them "extended uprates" of up to 20%.
Spain has a program to add 810 MWe (11%) to its nuclear capacity through upgrading its nine reactors by up to 13%. For instance, the Almarez nuclear plant is being boosted by more than 5% at a cost of US$ 50 million. Some 519 MWe of the increase is already in place.
Finland has recently boosted the capacity of the Olkiluoto plant by 23% to 1680 MWe. This plant started with two 660 MWe Swedish BWRs commissioned in 1978 and 1980. It is now licensed to operate to 2018. The Loviisa plant, with two VVER-440 (PWR) reactors, has been uprated by almost 100 MWe (11%).
NUCLEAR PLANT CONSTRUCTION
Most reactors currently planned are in the Asian region, with fast-growing economies and rapidly-rising electricity demand.
At least six countries with existing nuclear power programs (Finland, Russia, China, India, Japan and South Korea) have plans to build new power reactors (beyond those now under construction). In addition, the program to provide North Korea with two South Korean 1000 MWe PWRs is proceeding. Of countries without any present nuclear capacity, Iran has construction well advanced on its first unit.
In all, some 35 power reactors with a total net capacity of about 37,000 MWe are planned and a similar number are proposed. Rising gas prices and greenhouse constraints on coal have combined to put nuclear power back on the agenda for projected new capacity in both Europe and North America.
In Finland, the government has decided to proceed with construction of a fifth reactor, this has been approved by parliament, and a contract has been let.
In Russia, there are six reactors under construction and due for completion by 2010. Five further reactors are then planned to replace some existing plants, and 19 further reactors are planned to add new capacity by 2020. This will increase the country's present 20.8 GWe nuclear power capacity to 49.3 GWe about 2020. In addition about 5 GW of nuclear thermal capacity is planned.
In Ukraine, much of the finance for completing two stalled but largely-built reactors has recently been pledged, and these will replace lost output from Chernobyl.
Nuclear power will continue to play a major role in the future electricity supply mix in both South Korea and Japan.
In addition to the two reactors under construction, South Korea plans to bring a further eight, giving total new capacity of 11,100 MWe, into operation by the year 2015. Ulchin-5 & 6, 1000 MWe Korean Standard Nuclear Plants (KSNP), are due for completion in 2004-5. Following them are planned Shin-Kori-1 & 2 and Wolsong-5 & 6, to be improved KSNP designs. Then come Shin-Kori-3 & 4, the first of the Advanced PWRs of 1400 MWe, and two more near Ulchin. These APR-1400 designs have evolved from the US System 80+ which has US NRC design certification, and have been known as the Korean Next-Generation Reactor. Cost is expected to be US$ 1400 per kilowatt, falling to $1200/kW in later units with 48 month construction time.
Japan has three reactors under construction. It also has plans and, in most cases, designated sites and announced timetables for a further 14 power reactors, totalling over 17,000 MWe, and some of these are undergoing governmental approval. Early in 2001 the major utility Tepco deferred plans for 12 major fossil fuel plants but maintained its schedule for four new nuclear plants.
China, now with eight operating reactors, is well into the next phase of its nuclear power program. Four new reactors - Qinshan-2 & 4 and Lingao-1 & 2, started up in 2002, then Qinshan 5, a 650 MWe Canadian-designed CANDU reactor, started in mid 2003. Construction is advanced on Qinshan 3 (610 MWe, PWR), at Qinshan, and two Russian 950 MWe PWRs at Jiangsu Tianwan in Lianyungang. These are expected to start up from mid 2004 to 2006, and will to add some 2535 MWe to the present 6000 MWe nuclear capacity. China plans to keep increasing its nuclear capacity.
India has nine reactors under construction (or almost so) and expected to be completed by 2010. This includes two large Russian reactors and a large prototype fast breeder reactor as part of its strategy to develop a fuel cycle which can utilise thorium.
Nuclear power plant construction in Iran was suspended in 1979 but in 1995 Iran signed an agreement with Russia to complete a 1000 MWe PWR at Bushehr, where a further unit is also planned.
Indonesia has completed the feasibility study for its first 1800 MWe nuclear power station. This was deferred indefinitely but has lately been revived. Vietnam is also considering its first nuclear power venture.
Egypt and Turkey have for decades included a nuclear power plant in their electricity plans. A site has been selected in each country and a number of feasibility and other studies carried out. Turkey however has indefinitely deferred its first plant.
PLANT LIFE EXTENSION
Most nuclear power plants originally had a nominal design lifetime of up to 40 years, but engineering assessments of many plants over the last decade has established that many can operate longer. In the USA more than 15 reactors have been granted licence renewals which extend their operating lives from the original 40 out to 60 years, and operators of most others are expected to apply for similar extensions. In Japan, plant lifetimes up to 70 years re envisaged.
When the oldest commercial nuclear power stations in the world, Calder Hall and Chapelcross in the UK, were built in the 1950s they were very conservatively engineered, though it was assumed that they would have a useful lifetime of only 20-25 years. They were then authorised to operate for 50 years but due to economic factors are closing earlier. Most other Magnox plants are licensed for 40-year lifetimes.
The Russian government in 2000 extended the operating lives of the country's 12 oldest reactors from their original 30 years, and recently the extension was quantified as 15 years.
The technical and economic feasibility of replacing major reactor components, such as steam generators in PWRs and pressure tubes in CANDU heavy water reactors, has been demonstrated. The possibilities of component replacement and licence renewals extending the lifetimes of existing plants are very attractive to utilities, especially in view of the public acceptance difficulties involved in constructing replacement nuclear capacity.
On the other hand, economic, regulatory and political considerations have led to the premature closure of some power reactors, particularly in the United States, where reactor numbers have fallen from 110 to 103.
POWER REACTORS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Start Operation| COUNTRY/ORGANISATION | REACTOR | TYPE | MWe (net)
2004 | China NNC | Qinshan 3 | PWR | 610
2004 | Russia | Kalinin 3 | PWR | 950
2004 | Korea RO | Ulchin 5 | PWR (KSNP) | 950
2004 | China NNC | Tianwan 1 | PWR | 950
2005 | Korea RO | Ulchin 6 | PWR (KSNP) | 950
2005 | Japan | Higashidori 1 (Tohoku) | BWR | 1067
2005 | Japan | Hamaoka 5 | ABWR | 1325
2005 | Ukraine | Khmelnitski 2 | PWR | 950
2005 | China NNC | Tianwan 2 | PWR | 950
2006 | Iran | Bushehr 1 | PWR | 950
2006 | Ukraine | Rovno 4 | PWR | 950
2006 | Japan | Shika 2 | ABWR | 1315
2006 | Russia | Kursk 5 | RBMK | 925
2006 | India | Tarapur 4 | PHWR | 490
2006 | Taipower | Lungmen 1 | ABWR | 1300
2007 | India | Tarapur 3 | PHWR | 490
2007 | India | Rawatbhata 5 | PHWR | 202
2007 | Romania | Cernavoda 2 | PHWR | 650
2007 | India | Kudankulam 1 | PWR | 950
2007 | India | Kaiga 3 | PHWR | 202
2007 | India | Kaiga 4 | PHWR | 202
2007 | Taipower | Lungmen 2 | ABWR | 1300
2007 | Russia | Volgoodonsk 2 | PWR | 950
2008 | India | Kudankulam 2 | PWR | 950
2008 | India | Rawatbhata 6 | PHWR | 202
2008 | Russia | Balakovo 5 | PWR | 950
2009 | Russia | Beloyarsk 4 | FBR | 750
2010 | Russia | Balakovo 6 | PWR | 950
2010 | India | Kalpakkam | FBR | 440
2010?? | North Korea | Sinpo 1 | PWR (KSNP) | 950
@ Latest announced year of proposed commercial operation.
The World Nuclear Power Reactor table gives a fuller and (for current year) possibly more up to date overview of world reactor status.
Some of the Power Reactors planned or on order
start operation | start construction | COUNTRY | REACTOR | TYPE | MWe (each)
2007 | resumed | USA | Browns Ferry 1 | BWR | 1065
2008 | resumed | Argentina | Atucha 2 | PHWR | 692
2009 | 2004 | Japan | Tomari 3 | PWR | 912
2009 | 2005 | Finland | Olkiluoto 3 | PWR | 1600
2009-10 | 2005 | Japan | Fuikishima 7& 8 | PWR | 1325
2008-9 | 2004? | RO Korea | Shin-Kori 1 & 2 | PWR (KSNP) | 950
2009-10 | 2003? | RO Korea | Shin-Wolsong 5 & 6 | PWR (KSNP) | 950
2011 | 2005 | Pakistan | Chashma 2 | PWR | 300
2011-12 | 2004 | Japan | Tsuruga 3 & 4 | APWR | 1500
2011 | 2005 | Japan | Shimane 3 | ABWR | 1375
2010-11 | 2005? | RO Korea | Shin-Kori 3 & 4 | APR (KNGR) | 1350
2012 | 2006 | Japan | Ohma | ABWR | 1350
2010-11 | 2004-5 | Japan | Higashidori 1-2 (Tepco) | ABWR | 1320
2012+ | 2007 | Japan | Higashidori 2 (Tohoku) | ABWR | 1320
2012 | 2006? | China | Lingdong 1 & 2 | PWR | 1000
2012 | 2006? | China | Sanmen 1 & 2 | PWR | 1000
2015 | RO Korea | near Ulchin x2 | APR (KNGR) | 1350
India | Rawatbhata 7 & 8 | PHWR | 490
India | Kaiga 5 & 6 | PHWR | 490
@according to latest announcements
Sources:
UIC/WNA information papers
ENS NucNet and Nucleonics Week, various.,
Nuclear Engineering International, handbook
-------- accidents and safety
Rocky Flats Contractor Fined for Radioactive Contamination
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
Febrary 6, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-06-09.asp#anchor3
Repeated violations of Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear safety rules and procedures at the former nuclear weapons manufacturing facility Rocky Flats has drawn a proposed civil penalty of more than $520,000 for the Kaiser-Hill Company, LLC, the managing contractor at the department's Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site.
Kaiser-Hill's responsibilities include the decommissioning of the Rocky Flats site, which lies between Denver and Boulder, Colorado.
The events included a May 2003 fire in a glovebox undergoing decommissioning, a March 2003 ventilation airflow reversal that spread radioactive material throughout several rooms, and a March 2003 radioactive contamination spread from an inadequately secured containment sleeve.
Several workers received doses of radiation, which the DOE says were below the federal limits, but there was no release of radioactive material outside of the facilities.
The DOE investigation identified deficiencies with radiological controls, procedural compliance, training of the workers, and failure to implement effective corrective actions to address previous similar issues.
The DOE is proposing to assess Kaiser-Hill a civil penalty in the amount of $522,500. Partial mitigation of the civil penalty was applied to only one violation due to the contractor's comprehensive and timely corrective actions.
Mitigation was not applied for the remainder of the civil penalty due to the contractor's ineffective or incomplete identification of the issues, failure to report to DOE or ineffective corrective actions.
The DOE says the enforcement program is designed to promote proactive efforts by contractors to correct procedural violations so that more serious events are prevented. The preliminary notice of violation will become final in 30 days unless the violations are denied with sufficient justification.
For almost 40 years, nuclear weapons parts were produced at Rocky Flats. The industrial facility used radioactive materials and more than 8,000 chemicals. Rocky Flats stopped weapons production in 1989, and cleanup of contamination at the site began in 1992. From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats workers used plutonium to build nuclear weapons triggers, called pits.
In 1996 the DOE decided to close Rocky Flats by the end of 2006, critics say without first figuring out the requirements for a real cleanup, but only allotting an inadequate fixed sum of $7 billion which must cover removal of weapons-grade material and bomb-production waste to site security, and decommissioning and demolition of buildings.
Environmental remediation, or cleanup of soil, air, and water, gets done with funds left over, says the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center - $470 million, or only seven percent of the $7 billion total.
----
El Baradei Says A.Q.Khan Just Tip of Atomic Iceberg
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
February 6, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23721/story.htm
VIENNA - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said yesterday the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb was not working alone in creating an illicit network to sell nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
"Dr. (Abdul Qadeer) Khan was not working alone," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters, saying he had help from people in many different countries. "Dr. Khan is the tip of an iceberg for us."
Khan publicly confessed to leaking nuclear secrets on Wednesday, but said that the Pakistan government and military knew nothing of his black market activities.
ElBaradei said he was not even sure Khan was the one in charge of a nuclear black market created to skirt sanctions and sell sensitive technology to countries subject to embargo.
"I don't know whether he (Khan) was the head. He was clearly an important part," he said.
"We're still in the process of investigating this whole network of supply, so we haven't really seen the complete picture. I think that's really our number one priority."
He said Pakistan was being very helpful in providing the agency with information needed to help crush the nuclear black market though ElBaradei said he wanted more information from Islamabad.
----
Khan's nuke network sparks proliferation fears
February 06, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040205-092927-8779r.htm
The existence of an underground market for nuclear equipment and technology sparked fears yesterday that atomic and other weapons of mass destruction could fall easily into the hands of terrorists and states with the money to buy them.
David Kay, the former U.S. chief weapons inspector for Iraq, accused Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan of running "a Sam's Club for nuclear weapons."
Mr. Khan has admitted spreading weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
"We need to unravel this foreign procurement network that is operating around the world," Mr. Kay told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He said he was dismayed that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday had decided to pardon the scientist.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Mr. Khan had not been working alone.
"There were items that were manufactured in other countries, items that were reassembled in different countries," he told reporters at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Mr. Kay said the idea that someone such as Mr. Khan could outsource weapons production to countries such as Malaysia was of grave concern.
CIA Director George J. Tenet, under fire over intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, said yesterday that U.S. intelligence had penetrated Mr. Khan's network through a series of "daring operations".
"We discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network. We tagged the proliferators. We detected the network, stretching across four continents, offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran," he said.
Working with British intelligence, "we pieced together the picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies, its agents, its finances and manufacturing plants on three continents," Mr. Tenet said in a speech at Georgetown University.
He praised the intelligence breakthroughs that revealed the extent of nuclear weapons and missile programs in North Korea, Iran and Libya, adding that Mr. Khan's operation "was shaving years off the nuclear-weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya."
Gen. Musharraf let Mr. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, off the hook after he admitted on national television that he had peddled the technology on the black market. Some in Washington think the pardon was part of a deal.
"This is the biggest break we've had," said one State Department official, as Mr. Khan disclosed the extent of his weapons-technology proliferation.
"He has already affected a lot of things, like North Korea" and its use of centrifuges in its nuclear-weapons program, the official said on the condition of anonymity. "It gives credibility to our assertions on North Korea."
Malaysia said yesterday that it was looking into reports that a company controlled by the prime minister's son was linked to the international black market and in supplying components to Libya's nuclear program, the Associated Press reported.
Mr. Tenet said Malaysian authorities had shut down one of Mr. Khan's network's largest plants.
The United States has introduced to the U.N. Security Council a resolution to ban the transfer of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology and materials to nonstate groups and rogue governments, but the council is a long way from approving the draft, diplomats say.
"I would say it's in abeyance," said one council envoy.
• Betsy Pisik contributed to this report from New York.
-------- asia
Malysia leader's son, Libyan arms tied
February 06, 2004
By Rohan Sullivan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040205-082245-3616r.htm
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Police are investigating whether a Malaysian company controlled by the prime minister's son supplied components destined for Libya's nuclear weapons programs.
National police Chief Mohamed Bakri Omar said yesterday that Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn. Bhd., or Scope, a subsidiary of Scomi Group Bhd., produced centrifuge components that were intercepted on their way to Libya in October.
The announcement came amid revelations of a complex international black market in nuclear parts and designs that has been linked to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who gave the Islamic world its first nuclear bomb.
Mr. Khan visited Malaysia several times in recent years, including to attend the wedding of the reputed middleman in the deal, a Malaysian official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium for a variety of purposes, including weapons production. They also are used in many other industries for nonnuclear purposes.
The CIA and Britain's MI6 intelligence agency informed Malaysia in November of a deal involving Scope and a Dubai-based businessman who acted as a go-between "in supplying certain centrifuge components from Malaysia for Libya's uranium enrichment program," the national police chief said in a statement.
Wooden boxes with centrifuge parts and bearing Scope's name were found in five containers seized in October from a ship in Italy headed for Libya, he said.
Scomi is a midsized company that supplies specialized tools for the oil and gas, automotive and general components industries.
Kamaluddin Abdullah, 35, the only son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is the company's largest shareholder, although he has no management role. He could not be reached yesterday.
Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Najib Razak promised the investigation "will be very thorough and very transparent."
Chief Mohamed Bakri said the foreign intelligence services identified the middleman as Sri Lankan B.S.A. Tahir, who was cooperating in the investigation but was not in custody. Scope, too, was cooperating fully, he said.
In a separate statement, Scomi said Mr. Tahir arranged for it to be contracted to make "14 semi-finished components" for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries, in a deal worth $3.4 million.
The company said Gulf Technical never identified its intended use of the components.
A Scomi spokeswoman said yesterday that the group isn't obliged to inform the government of the export of such components beyond routine customs procedures.
Malaysia, a fast-developing, mostly Muslim country in Southeast Asia, is a signatory to international nuclear-weapons nonproliferation treaties.
Chief Mohamed Bakri said the police investigation so far indicated that "no company in Malaysia is capable of producing a complete centrifuge unit because it requires high technology and extensive expertise in the field of nuclear weapons."
The parts seized in the Libya shipment also could be used in petrochemical, water treatment and health applications such as molecular biology for protein separation, he said.
In Pakistan, government and intelligence officials indicated that Malaysia's involvement may be wider than the single shipment addressed in the national police chief's statement. Mr. Khan, who founded Pakistan's nuclear program in the 1970s, occasionally ordered "disused equipment" to be sent to Malaysia for reconditioning before it was shipped to Iran, Libya and North Korea, Pakistani officials told AP on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Najib, the defense minister, told AP yesterday that Malaysia has no ambitions to be a nuclear power: "Absolutely not."
----
PM vows 'no favours' probe into son's alleged Libyan nuclear link
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)
Feb 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040206052531.f3e517kh.html
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has told police to investigate "without fear or favour" allegations that a company controlled by his son was involved in supplying parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme, reports said Friday.
Abdullah was quoted by the New Straits Times as saying he would "not interfere" in the probe of Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn. Bhd. (SCOPE), which allegedly supplied centrifuge components for Libya's uranium-enrichment programme.
SCOPE is a unit of listed oil and gas firm Scomi Group, in which the premier's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, is the biggest shareholder.
"I have directed the police to carry out the investigations without fear or favour," Abdullah said.
He noted that the components produced by SCOPE were "generic" and could be used for a multitude of non-nuclear purposes.
Abdullah said he was not worried about Malaysia being linked to an international black-market nuclear weapons proliferation syndicate exposed by the admission of Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he transferred know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"If we know the truth, we should not be worried. I hope that the investigations will reveal the truth. The police are working with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," he added.
The premier said he did not know whether reports that Khan had visited Malaysia were true but had ordered police to investigate.
Scomi, which has said it was never told of the end-use of the components, on Friday invited the media to visit its factory in central Selangor state.
The company has said the contract to manufacture 14 semi-finished components for Gulf Technical Industries LLC (GTI) in Dubai was arranged by Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A. Tahir in 2001.
It said the last consigmnent was shipped in August last year and there had been no order since.
Police late Wednesday said they had launched a probe after US and British intelligence services told them last November about SCOPE's role and identified Tahir as the middleman.
The intelligence revealed that five containers allegedly containing centrifuge components were seized from a ship, BBC China, in Taranto, Italy, on October 4.
Police said Tahir and SCOPE were "co-operating fully" in the probe and denied reports that Tahir was in custody.
The New Straits Times quoted intelligence agency sources as saying that the owner of GTI, which ordered the components from SCOPE, was a British citizen named Peter Griffin.
Raw materials for the components were sourced in Singapore from a subsidiary of a German company called Bikar Metalle Germany, the sources said.
They said US, British and Malaysian intelligence services and the IAEA were investigating the two links.
----
Malaysia Factory Counters Nuclear Charges
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer
Feb 6, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MALAYSIA_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- An engineering company accused of supplying equipment destined for Libya's nuclear program opened its factory Friday to show how it could have unwittingly contributed to the international black market in atomic technology.
Malaysia's government also rejected CIA Director George Tenet's assertion that Scomi Precision Engineering was one of the largest plant's servicing a nuclear black market.
"To say it is the largest part of a network is totally inaccurate," a government official told The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity. "It is coming from a CIA director who is discredited - he screwed up the intelligence going into Iraq."
Officials with Scomi Precision Engineering, whose majority shareholder is the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said the parts that the CIA alleges were produced for Libya are indistinguishable from components its makes for the auto, oil and gas industries.
"To me, they were just normal parts," factor manager Che Lokman Che Omar said. "I have been using these machines for 15 years, and I have made many more difficult parts." The CIA and Britain's MI6 informed the Malaysian government last November that they had seized centrifuge components in boxes marked with the company's name from a ship in Italy headed for Libya, authorities have said.
Centrifuges are sophisticated machines used in a variety of industries to separate fluid components according to mass. They can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons production.
Police are investigating the Malaysian company and a middleman who arranged the deal as part of a widening international inquiry into a global nuclear black market triggered by Pakistan's admission that its top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
A spokeswoman for the company, Rohaida Ali Badaruddin, said the company did not seek to determine the end use of equipment it sold or check the backgrounds of customers. She said no export permit was required from the government to make the shipment.
U.S. and European officials have told AP that the components from Malaysia were highly sophisticated and would have few uses except for nuclear enrichment.
The company is a precision-engineering subsidiary of the Scomi Group, whose majority shareholder is Kamaluddin Abdullah, 35, the prime minister's only son.
The company made "14 semi-finished components" for Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries and shipped them in four consignments between December 2002 and August 2003, under a deal worth $3.4 million negotiated by a Sri Lankan middleman named B.S.A. Tahir.
The CIA and Britain's MI6 said the deal involved supplying centrifuge components for Libya's uranium enrichment program.
Malaysian and Western officials say Tahir is an associate Khan, the Pakistani scientist.
Tenet made his comments Thursday in a speech at Georgetown University to defend prepare intelligence.
"Now, as you know from the news coming out of Pakistan, Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow and several of his senior officers are in custody. Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the network's largest plants. His network is now answering to the world for years of nuclear profiteering," Tenet said.
----
Malaysia marches to '2020' economy
February 06, 2004
By Ioannis Gatsiounis
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040205-082239-4795r.htm
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - In 1991, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, seeking to convert this resource-rich agrarian country into an export-driven manufacturing one, set the goal of creating a fully developed country by the year 2020.
Around the capital are reminders: "2020" carved into highway hedges and flickering from neon signs. Now it is clear the country is well on its way to the goals proposed by Mr. Mahathir, who earned a degree at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore and practiced the healing arts before entering politics.
The evidence includes a multibillion-dollar administrative capital, clean, new rail systems snaking around glass-encased office towers and a growing middle class flocking to suburbs with names like Cyberjaya. Malaysia even boasts Southeast Asia's biggest shopping mall.
This, however, is but one dimension of the plan. Mr. Mahathir, who stepped down in October after 22 years in power, also called for orderly "social, spiritual, psychological and cultural" growth, which many analysts say has not happened.
Some blame the deteriorating public education system, which incorporates an affirmative-action program that favors the majority Muslim Malays and other bumiputras, or "sons of the soil." Others say Malaysians have become complacent, basking in the symbolic glow of new skyscrapers instead of tackling the important work ahead.
But an overlooked impediment to the realization of Vision 2020, some analysts say, is Malaysia's state-controlled media. All the major news outlets are controlled by the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, whose leaders have smothered dissent. Last year, Malaysia ranked near the bottom of the press-freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders.
Jomo K.S., a professor of political economy, advises against equating development with press freedom. "The fastest developing country in the world is China, and their press freedoms are among the worst in the world," Mr. Jomo observes.
But Edmund Terence Gomez, a political and economics analyst at the University of Malaya says: "You can't develop properly if you can't have real dialogue on important issues."
By most accounts, Malaysia's news outlets consistently sidestep the nation's most pressing issues - rampant corruption from the judiciary to the private sector, occasional police brutality, a growing sense of disenfranchisement among rural Malays, and strained communication among the various races.
Others are concerned with how lack of press freedoms affects Malaysians' mental and intellectual development.
"The intellectual tradition in this country is very weak," said Chandra Muzaffar, president of the International Movement for a Just World. News outlets, he said, deserve some of the blame.
"They are not helping to create an environment for a thinking generation to develop. They are making sure people don't probe and don't analyze."
Malaysian press opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has delayed confronting these issues and has abetted the ruling Muslim party's grip on power, said Khalid Jaafar, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lumpur.
"What you're seeing is self-serving anti-Americanism, which is intended to divert attention from the problems here - it props up the government," he said.
Indeed the government is concerned about losing support to the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which promises to bring about a more Islamic country, governed by a strict form of Shariah law. In the last general election, PAS won control of two states, and by some estimates, 50 percent of Malays younger than 30 now support the opposition.
Editors at Malaysian newspapers say they do not intentionally promote intolerance and are dedicated to getting at the truth. The problem, they say, is government pressure. The government maintains the right to revoke printing licenses and has seen to it that several journalists have been fired.
The latest casualty came in November, when Abdullah Ahmad, editor in chief of the English-language New Straits Times group, was fired for a report he wrote on the policies of Saudi Arabia.
"We push the boundaries where we can," said a political columnist at the New Straits Times, "but we live with reminders of the consequences, so the process is slow. ... Our best chance at freeing the press is through legal channels." By most accounts, however, that is likely a long way off, even with the changing of the guard.
While new Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is thought to be more receptive than his predecessor, Mr. Mahathir, he has yet to issue a comment on press restrictions. His recently appointed deputy, Najib Abdul Razak, endorses the draconian Internal Securities Act, which allows for violators of the act to be jailed indefinitely without charge.
Zainah Anwar, executive director of Sisters of Islam, a women's advocacy group, said that if editors truly want to see a more liberal press, they will have to stand up.
"It's the responsibility of the media to push the parameters of press freedoms," she said, "and our journalists and editors have not done that enough."
But some are.
Malaysiakini.com, an independent online daily, consistently brings the ruling elite to task. It has encountered resistance, most notably last year when the police raided Malaysiakini's offices and confiscated 19 staff computers - despite Mr. Mahathir's promise that he would not tamper with online content.
The virtual newspaper continues to operate and boasts a daily readership of 50,000. Its boldness and vigor, some say, has caught the mainstream press off guard and finds it scrambling to practice "real journalism," as Mr. Jaafar of the Institute for Policy Research put it, or risk losing readership.
Ahirudin Attan, editor of the government-backed Malay Mail ("The Paper that Cares"), said online publications like Malaysiakini debunk the myth that Malaysia has no press freedom.
In a column recently published in the local state-controlled Nuance, he wrote: "When they invented the Internet and Malaysians started surfing and polluting the websites, the whole issue about press freedom was settled ... surf some individual websites run [by] ex-journalists and journalist-wannabes. Tell me if that's not absolute press freedom."
Steven Gan, Malaysiakini's editor, said: "The Internet alone cannot bring about democracy."
The opposition PAS party has its own print newspaper, Harakah. But after its upset election victories, the federal government forced it to change from a biweekly to a bimonthly, vitiating its ability to weigh in on issues. Mr. Gan's staff frequently is barred from press conferences, "for asking the relevant questions," as he puts it.
The average Malaysian, though, said Azizah Haji Hamzah, associate professor of media studies at the University of Malaya, has "no problem with the press the way it is." Many Malaysians say they think a free press would destabilize society. Moreover, they say, the country is not mature enough for a liberated press - an excuse held over from British colonial days, and propagated by the ruling elite ever since.
Some Malaysians point to a difference in values. They contend that a free press, as defined in the West, would not work here, and that the docility of the local press is not out of tune with what the public wants.
Mr. Muzaffar of the International Movement for a Just World disagrees:
"The need for transparency and accountability are not exclusive to [any particular] culture. And if you believe in justice and care about the disadvantaged, one needs to go and write about it."
-------- australia
Australia's Uranium and Who Buys It
February 2004
World Nuclear Association,
2/6/04
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf48.htm
- Uranium is part of Australia's mining heritage, though only three mines are currently operating. Two more are under development.
- Australia's uranium reserves are the world's largest, with 28% of the world's total. Production and exports have recently averaged almost 7500 tonnes of uranium per year.
- Australia's uranium is used solely for electricity. It is supplied under arrangements which ensure that none finds its way to countries such as Iraq or North Korea or into nuclear weapons.
- In the five years to mid 2003 Australia exported 34,506 tonnes of uranium with a value of over A$ 1.9 billion to eleven countries around the world.
The existence of uranium ore in Australia has been known since the 1890s. In the 1930s ores were mined at Radium Hill and Mount Painter in South Australia to recover minute amounts of radium for medical purposes. As a result a few hundred kilograms of uranium were also produced and used as a bright yellow pigment in glass and ceramics.
Uranium ores as such were mined and treated in Australia from the 1950s until 1971. Radium Hill, SA, Rum Jungle, NT, and Mary Kathleen, Queensland, were the largest producers of uranium (as yellowcake). Production ceased either when ore reserves were exhausted or contracts were filled. Sales were to supply material primarily intended for USA and UK weapons programs at that time. However much of it was used in civil electricity production. See also UIC Former Uranium Mines paper.
THE SECOND PHASE OF MINING
The development of civil nuclear power stimulated a second wave of exploration activity in the late 1960s. New contracts for uranium sales (to be used for electric power generation) were made by Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd., Queensland Mines Ltd., and Ranger Uranium Mines Pty. Ltd., in the years 1970-72. Successive governments (both Liberal Coalition and Labor) approved these, and Mary Kathleen began recommissioning its mine and mill in 1974. Consideration by the Commonwealth Government of additional sales contracts was deferred pending the findings of the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, and its decision in the light of these. Mary Kathleen recommenced production in 1976.
The Commonwealth Government announced in 1977 that new uranium mining was to proceed, commencing with the Ranger project in the Northern Territory. This mine opened in 1981.
In 1979, Queensland Mines opened Nabarlek in the same region of Northern Territory. The orebody was mined out in one dry season and the ore stockpiled for treatment from 1980. A total of 9207 tonnes of uranium was produced and sold to Japan, Finland and France, 1981-88. The mine site is now rehabilitated.
At the end of 1982 the Mary Kathleen mine in Queensland was depleted and finally closed down after 4072 tonnes of uranium had been produced in its second phase of operation. This then became the site of Australia's first major rehabilitation project of a uranium mine, which was completed at the end of 1985 at a cost of some A $19 million.
In the 1983 federal election the Australian Labor Party (ALP) won government and in 1984 the ALP National Conference amended the Party platform to what became known as "the three mines policy", nominating Ranger, Nabarlek and Olympic Dam as the only projects from which exports would be permitted. Provisional approvals for marketing from other prospective uranium mines were cancelled. This policy persisted until the Liberal-National Party Coalition government came to power in 1996.
Also in 1983 the Australian Government banned uranium exports to France, but then agreed to purchase uranium from Nabarlek which was under contract to French utilities. In 1986 the embargo was lifted and in 1988 the Ranger contract with France was signed. However, in 1995 new contracts with France were banned and this policy briefly survived the change of government in 1996.
The Mines
Ranger opened in 1981 at a production rate of approximately 2800 tonnes per year of uranium and has since been expanded to 4240 tU/yr capacity. Sales are to Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Sweden, UK, Canada & USA. Ranger is owned by Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA), now a subsidiary of Rio Tinto.
During 1988 the Olympic Dam project, then a joint venture of Western Mining Corporation and BP Minerals, commenced operations. This is a large underground mine in central South Australia, producing copper, gold and uranium. Annual production capacity for uranium has been expanded from 1500 to 3900 tonnes U, with sales to USA, Canada, Sweden, UK, Belgium, France, Finland, South Korea and Japan. It is now owned by WMC Ltd.
Both Ranger and the now-closed and rehhabilitated Nabarlek mines are on aboriginal land in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory, close to the Kakadu National Park (in fact the Ranger leases are surrounded by the National Park). Ranger is served by the township of Jabiru, constructed largely for that purpose. During the operation of Nabarlek mine, employees were based in Darwin and commuted by air.
Aboriginal people receive royalties of 4.25% on sales of uranium from Northern Territory mines. The total received is now over A $167 million, mostly from Ranger.
The Olympic Dam mine is on formerly pastoral land in the middle of South Australia. A town to accommodate 3500 people was built at Roxby Downs to service the mine.
Following the 1996 change in government policy, three other projects were brought forward:
- Jabiluka, NT - Honeymoon, SA - Beverley, SA
Jabiluka will be an extension of the Ranger operation and will take combined production to 5000 tU/yr. The last two are small in situ leach operations.
Beverley started operation late in 2000. It is Australia's first in situ leach (ISL) mine and is licensed to produce 1000 tU/yr. In 2002 it produced 633 tonnes U and in 2003, 608 tonnes U.
Honeymoon received government approval to proceed with mine ISL development in November 2001.
Collectively these three projects are likely to increase production capacity to over 10,000 tonnes per year of uranium.
See also UIC papers Australia's Uranium Mines and Prospective Mines.
[Graphs]
URANIUM EXPORTS FROM AUSTRALIA
Australian exports over the last four years have averaged almost 7500 tonnes per year of uranium, providing about 25% of world uranium supply from mines. Uranium comprises 42% of the country's energy exports (4066 PJ in 2002-03) in thermal terms.
Australia's uranium is sold strictly for electrical power generation only, and safeguards are in place to ensure this. Australia is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state. Its safeguards agreement under the NPT came into force in 1974 and it was the first country in the world to bring into force the Additional Protocol in relation to this - in 1997.
In the five years to mid 2003 Australia exported 40,693 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate (34,506 tU) with a value of over A$1.9 billion. The nations which currently purchase Australia's uranium are set out below. All have a large commitment to nuclear power:
The USA generates around 30% of the world's nuclear power. Much of its uranium comes from Canada, but Australia is a major source. Japan and South Korea however are important customers due to their increasing dependence on nuclear.
Customer countries' contracted imports of Australian uranium oxide concentrate (U3O8) may be summarised as follows, (but see also the reactor table):
USA: c 3000 tonnes per year - 104 reactors (supplying 20% of electricity).
Japan: c 3000 tonnes per year - 54 reactors (supplying 34% of electricity)
South Korea: c 1000 tonnes per year - 17 reactors (39% of electricity)
EU: about 800 tonnes per year, including:
Spain: 9 reactors (29% of electricity)
France: 59 reactors (77% of electricity)
UK: 31 reactors (23% of electricity)
Sweden: 11 reactors (44% of electricity)
Germany: 19 nuclear reactors (31% of electricity)
Belgium: 7 reactors (58% of electricity)
Finland: 4 reactors (31% of electricity)
Australia is a preferred uranium supplier to world, especially East Asian, markets. It could readily increase its share of the world market because of its low cost reserves and its political and economic stability.
Australia has over 40% of the world's lowest-cost uranium resources (under US$ 40/kg). Nearly all of Australia's 667 000 tonnes of Reasonably Assured Resources of uranium alone (to US $30/lb U3O8 or $80/kg U) are in the under US$ 40/kg U category. This compares with Kazakhstan (327 000 t), Canada (315 000 tonnes), South Africa (231 000 tonnes) and Namibia (144 000 tonnes). The following table shows these plus Estimated Additional Resources.
- Reasonably Assured Resources plus Estimated Additional Resources - category 1, to US$ 80/kg U, 1/1/01, from OECD NEA & IAEA, Uranium 2001: Resources, Production and Demand. Brazil, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russian figures above are 75% of in situ totals.
-------- depleted uranium
Inquiry into Gulf illness urged
Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
Friday February 6, 2004
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1142227,00.html
Calls for an independent inquiry into the plight of veterans with Gulf war illness intensified yesterday after the collapse of their eight-year compensation battle against the Ministry of Defence.
Lord Morris of Manchester, a supporter of the veterans, said he would deliver a letter to the prime minister calling for an inquiry and ex gratia payments to veterans suffering from a range of illnesses after service in the 1991 Gulf war.
As revealed in the Guardian yesterday, the Legal Services Commission is expected to withdraw funding for the claim by more than 2,000 ex-service personnel suffering from symptoms including neurological problems, headaches, depression, muscle weakness, joint and muscle pain, sleep disturbance, skin rashes and shortness of breath.
Former troops from several allied forces who served in the Gulf have about twice the normal rate of ill health. Several possible causes, including depleted uranium from munitions, a cocktail of vaccinations and anti-nerve agents, have been suggested.
But their lawyers have told the LSC, which administers legal aid, that there is not enough scientific evidence to prove that their illnesses were due to their service. Evidence of negligence on the MoD's part is also scant.
Paul Tyler, Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall and a member of the Royal British Legion Group, said: "We are now absolutely determined that we need urgently to press the case for an independent inquiry."
The collapse of the legal battle means that "the government can no longer pass the buck to the courts", said Mr Tyler.
"The fact that the legal case has petered out in no way implies that the illnesses have petered out - far from it."
----
Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff, coalition forces etc
UMRC Information Bulletin
February 6, 2004
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk>
Warning of uranium contamination risks to NGO staff, Coalition forces, foreign contract personnel and civilians in Iraq
February 6, 2004 - Recently completed laboratory analyses show two members of Uranium Medical Research Centre's (UMRC) field investigation team are contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU). The two field staff, one from Canada and the other, Beirut, toured Iraq for thirteen days in October 2003; five months after the cessation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's aerial bombing and ground force campaign. Using mass spectrometry, UMRC's partner laboratory in Germany measured DU in both team members' urine samples.
The UMRC team surveyed US and British controlled combat areas and bomb-sites in southern Iraq, including Baghdad, An Nasiriyah, As Suweiriah and Al Basra (details can be found at UMRC.net, Abu Khasib to Al Ah'qaf: Field Investigation Report). The conditions responsible for the team's DU contamination are considered to be inhalation of resuspended ultra-fine soil and dust particles saturated with uranium and airborne uranium oxides and metallic particulate. Uranium was used in anti-tank penetrators, suppression ordnance and bunker-defeat warheads deployed during the 26 days of Operation Iraqi Freedom by both US and UK forces. The contamination of UMRC's team members occurring over a two-week period, many months after the main conflict, represents a risk to civilians, non-governmental organisations' staff, Coalition armed forces and foreign contractors and diplomatic staff.
In 1997, UMRC was the first study group to detect DU in the urine of Canadian, British and US troops who served in Gulf War I. The urinary excretion of battlefield uranium was identified six years following exposure. In January 2004, the US Department of Veterans Affairs admitted it had detected DU in the urine of US forces who are not retaining DU shrapnel, in 2000, eight years after Desert Storm. In 2001 and again in 2002, UMRC measured high concentrations of artificial uranium containing the synthetic isotope, 236U, in Afghan civilians exposed to the detonation plumes of bombs deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom.
In November 2003, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) released a formal statement to the Guardian disclaiming UMRC's Operation Telic findings of high levels of radioactivity in British-led battlefields. The MOD stated unequivocally that battlefield uranium residues remain stable inside defeated Iraqi tanks and cannot be made biologically available to humans. Since then, the MOD has found unusually high concentrations of uranium excreted in the urine of its 1st Armoured Division troops who served in Basra (September 2003, UK DU Oversight Board Meeting minutes, Gulf Veterans Illnesses Unit, UK Ministry of Defence). The MOD's recent findings in its troops now deployed back to Germany, coupled with the contamination of UMRC' s staff demonstrate the need to initiate immediate solutions to protect exposed civilians and foreign personnel in Iraq.
Preliminary results of UMRC's laboratory analysis of field samples of civilian urine, soils and water samples indicate uranium contamination in several Iraqi cities and battlefields. Details of UMRC's findings from US and British controlled battlefields and bombsites will be released later this month (February 2004). UMRC has offered its assistance to the United Nation's Environment Program (UNEP) to guide UNEP's post-conflict study team to radiologically contaminated bombsites and battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. UMRC urges UNEP to undertake immediate studies and lead the implementation of a radiation protection program for Iraqi and Afghan civilians as well as a supervised environmental clean-up program, as early as possible.
For information: T Weyman Iraq Field Team Lead Info@UMRC.net
----
Returning Vilseck troops get depleted uranium questions
By Rick Scavetta,
Stars and Stripes European edition,
Friday, February 6, 2004
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20287
Editor's note: Stars and Stripes reporter Rick Scavetta is embedded with the 94th Engineer Battalion, a Vilseck, Germany-based unit that has returned from Iraq after a yearlong deployment. This is the third in a series of articles on the soldiers' return to Germany.
VILSECK, Germany - A questionnaire on troops' exposure to depleted uranium raised a few eyebrows this week as engineers returning from Iraq began their second day of the U.S. Army Europe reintegration program.
The survey was one part of the medical session, during which soldiers from the 94th Engineer Battalion also gave blood samples for HIV screenings and received tuberculosis skin tests.
The series of questions on depleted uranium read somewhat like this:
• Were you near an armored vehicle that was struck by depleted uranium?
• Were you in or near an Abrams tank when it was hit with depleted uranium munitions?
• Did you routinely enter vehicles with depleted uranium dust to perform maintenance, recovery or intelligence gathering?
Most of the soldiers checked blocks stating they hadn't encountered any of that. But the survey brought questions about why the military was asking.
"They're trying to figure out their liability so they don't get sued down the line," said Spc. John Wissinger, 34, of Denver. He said he was around burning vehicles in Iraq but wasn't sure what type of munitions set them afire.
After the checklists were signed, the engineers took off their uniform tops and lined up, each holding a glass vial. Medics from the Vilseck Health Clinic, augmented by soldiers from a stateside Reserve unit, worked the needles.
Just a few combat veterans winced at the flash of blood entering the small tube. Most were content to do whatever the Army asked so they could go about their personal business.
"B.B. Bell says do it, so we've got to do it," said Cpl. Stanley Osinski, 24, of Boston.
Meanwhile, the engineers discussed taking advantage of some exclusive offers for returning troops.
For example, the bowling center on base offered three free games. A local cantina donated a large cappuccino and 24 minutes of free Web surfing. The coffee was a great idea, but the Internet was "no dice," said Spc. Donald Bunn, 25, of North Hampton, Ohio. "They said it wasn't working."
Most troops shrugged at the 20 percent off purchases at the Arts & Crafts Center, but the free hour at the auto shop would come in handy for tuning up cars left in storage for a year.
For those without cars, the base outdoor recreation program gave out mountain bikes for the first week back.
The travel company on post gave $10 off the entrance fee to Neuschwanstein, one of Bavaria's most famous castles. Unfortunately, the offer was good only until Jan. 25.
Troops joked about their blood samples - many of them have been partying each night since their return.
"I'm hung over and had about three hours of sleep," said Spc. Ethan Coder, who added that the mandatory training was "like a wedge that doesn't fit."
Soldiers talked about how one soldier already was charged with driving under the influence. A couple of fights broke out in the barracks, but nothing serious.
Pfc. Eric Schrobilgen, 19, of Dubuque, Iowa, sported a small shiner near his right eye, but could not figure out how he got it. His first night back, he drank vodka and some beers. Sometime later he fell in the woods on post, possibly the cause of his injury. He slept most of the next day and was feeling fine, he said.
Female soldiers joined the partying, but had to fend off advances from fellow troops, said Pfc. Amanda Jackson, 19, of Roanoke, Va., who stayed up all night at her barracks in nearby Grafenwöhr. At one point she cried, she said, because her boyfriend in Vilseck had not come to see her. But she joined in and drank some wine.
Her friend Stephanie Meade, 22, of Chestertown, N.Y., drank heavily and called her mom, she said. Engaged to a Marine at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Meade also found herself turning away drunken guys, she said.
Back in Baghdad, guys would use awful pickup lines such as, "Hey, where's that unit patch from?" Or, "Let's go take a walk." Back in Vilseck it was more direct, Meade said. They would simply ask, "You want to see my room?" "You feel sorry for them," Meade said. "They are so pathetic."
While the nights may be for revelry, the days are reserved for business.
During the week of half-day sessions, each troop carries three photocopied pages titled USAREUR Individual Reintegration Checklist. The lengthy list of sections is divided up in typical military fashion, with line items labeled by category - 2.1.10 and 2.1.11, etc. Each corresponds with mandatory tasks.
Soldiers need a sign and stamp from officials after each day's sessions to prove that the troops received training.
Supervising the checklist collection was Sgt. Alberto Blanco, 27, of the Bronx, N.Y., who returned from Iraq early because of a death in the family.
Blanco, who underwent a similar reintegration program, knows his returning comrades have other things on their minds.
"I'm just making sure they do the right thing," Blanco said. "This is a USAREUR requirement. If they don't fill out everything, they can't go on leave."
------- india / pakistan
U.S. Helps Pakistan Safeguard Nuclear Material
Fri February 06, 2004
By Carol Giacomo,
(Reuters) Diplomatic Correspondent
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4305756
WASHINGTON - The United States is working with Pakistan to protect its nuclear technology from falling into the hands of extremists, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
"We have had discussions with Pakistan on the need for Pakistan to safeguard its technology and its nuclear material. We are confident they are taking the necessary steps," the official told Reuters.
He commented after NBC Television's "Nightly News" program reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, American nuclear experts grouped as the "U.S. Liaison Committee" have spent millions of dollars to safeguard more than 40 weapons in Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"Meeting every two months, they are helping Pakistan develop state of the art security, including secret authorization codes for the arsenal," the network reported.
But the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that U.S. law and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, a cornerstone of efforts to curb the spread of weapons, "prevent any direct involvement with (Pakistan's) nuclear weapons."
"So we've had discussions with them generally about how they safeguard nuclear material," he said.
"We don't want their materials to get into the wrong hands but won't go over the edge of our law and the NPT," he said.
The reports about the U.S. role in Pakistan came in the midst of revelations that the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold nuclear secrets to Libya and two members of President Bush's "axis of evil," North Korea and Iran.
After confessing on television to blackmarket nuclear technology dealings and absolving Pakistan's military and government of blame, Khan was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf in an apparent effort to lay the controversy to rest.
The United States has strongly defended Musharraf's handling of the scandal, reflecting a balancing act between its usual aggressive stance on punishing proliferation and its firm support for the Pakistani leader, a key ally in the U.S. anti-terror war.
Pakistan, like South Asian rival India, tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
The United States and the other four members of the world nuclear club -- Russia, France, Britain and China -- in the past have expressed alarm at this development.
But most concern has focused on Pakistan because of fears that Islamic fundamentalists may overthrow Musharraf -- the target of two recent assassination attempts -- and gain control of the nuclear bomb.
Since the 1998 nuclear tests, U.S. officials and experts have debated the extent to which they can provide India and Pakistan advice about safeguarding their nuclear technology.
Neither country is a member of the NPT and hence is not entitled to any assistance that might advance their nuclear weapons capability.
The United States recently got around this with India by offering safety assistance to New Delhi's civilian nuclear program, which is aimed at power generation. ((Reporting by Carol Giacomo, editing by Anton Ferreira; Reuters messaging: carol.giacomo.reuters.com@reuters.net)
----
Pakistan: anger over nuclear leak pardon
PM - Friday, 6 February , 2004
Reporter: Edmond Roy,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1039926.htm
MARK COLVIN: Pakistan's opposition parties have called for a nation wide strike following the confession and pardon of the country's top nuclear scientist on charges of selling nuclear technology.
Much of the rest of the world may be convinced of the guilt of Abdul Qadeer Khan, but opposition leaders have described the saga as an unnecessary humiliation of Pakistan's scientists. They're calling for an independent investigation into the affair.
At the same time, the CIA has revealed that it was American and British spies who exposed the disgraced national hero, after penetrating his covert nuclear smuggling ring which stretched across three continents.
Edmond Roy reports.
EDMOND ROY: The script according to Islamabad was simple. Dr Adbul Qadeer Khan apologises on national television, blaming only himself, a grim and solemn general Musharraf expresses his shock but decides to pardon him.
There Pakistan's leaders hoped the matter would end. Instead it set off a new round of discussion, recriminations and allegations.
First off the rank was the Islamic alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which until now had backed General Musharraf, and which owes its existence to him. The alliance called for a countrywide strike to protest against what it called the "humiliation of the nation's nuclear scientists."
Among its leaders is the Jammat-i-Islami's Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
QAZI HUSSAIN AHMED: Actually until these charges are proved in the Court, the nation will not believe that he has done something illegal.
EDMOND ROY: That is unlikely to happen, now that the dictatorial pardon is in place. Also unlikely to happen is any investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Pakistan's nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.
KHURSHID MAHMUD KASURI: Now we will cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency. Now what is International Atomic Energy's function? Let's be very clear. They wish to investigate whether Iran's declaration is correct or not, that's what IA is doing.
It's not investigating Pakistan's program. We will not allow them under any situation whatsoever to come and peep into our programs. These are our national secrets. We will not allow them.
EDMOND ROY: So much for the international community's attempts to get to the bottom of the nuclear black market.
There were more revelations today, this time from CIA Director, George Tenent. According to Mr Tenent, it was US and British spies who over several years penetrated the covert nuclear smuggling network across three continents.
Alongside that came news that a Malaysian firm controlled by the Prime Minister's son was being investigated by special branch police following allegations that it had helped supply centrifuge components to Libya - which raises the intriguing question, just how much nuclear technology is out there on the blackmarket, and how many countries have access to that?
Outside the spotlight, at this stage at least, are such countries as China, which reportedly helped Pakistan design its first bomb, and Saudi Arabia, which pumped billions of dollars into Pakistan's nuclear development.
But equally intriguing is the reaction of the United States to the machinations in Islamabad.
But as South Asia expert Sandy Gordon from the Australian Defence Force Academy puts it, the United States does not have much of a choice.
SANDY GORDON: They really need to work closely with the Pakistani authorities now to be able to ascertain what went out there and possibly where it went and by which routes, and in order to do that, they need to have a compliant Pakistan authority to do that. That's the important thing from their point of view right now.
They also of course need Pakistan to work closely with them in terms of their objectives in Afghanistan. That is absolutely vital to them, so they're not in a position where they can twist Pakistan's arm too hard on this one. So they've come up with a compromise.
EDMOND ROY: What does this mean for the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
SANDY GORDON: I think the regime whereby the "nuclear club" can sit on their nuclear weapons and even further develop them and expect that morally they can persuade other countries not to proliferate, I think that's clearly failed and we need to look at it again.
We need to go back to some sort of rollback, which had started so well under STAR (Strategic Arms Reductions) but appears to have gone into the sand now. So I think there's a question mark over the whole NPT regime at the moment.
MARK COLVIN: Sandy Gordon from the Australian Defence Force Academy with Edmond Roy.
----
Parties Want Pakistan Nuke Leaks Probed
February 6, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Opposition parties on Friday urged a parliamentary inquiry into the sale of Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, a day after the president sought to defuse tensions by pardoning the disgraced father of the country's weapons program.
Meanwhile, an Islamic party's call for nationwide protests Friday to support Abdul Qadeer Khan failed to arouse widespread sympathy, with businesses mostly ignoring a plea for a nationwide shutdown.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan on Thursday after the scientist's televised apology a day earlier, saying Khan sold nuclear secrets for personal gain. The move avoided a trial for Khan, considered by many a national hero for giving Pakistan its nuclear deterrent against rival India.
A public investigation also could have exposed high-level military involvement in spreading nuclear technology, a claim that Musharraf denies. However, many question how Khan sold weapons secrets -- and sometimes used military cargo planes to ship the goods -- without at least tacit official approval.
The opposition Pakistan Peoples Party said Friday that Khan's confession didn't answer questions about the responsibility of intelligence and military officials for securing the nuclear program.
``The matter will not end with the so-called confession of Dr. A.Q. Khan and the so-called pardon by Gen. Musharraf,'' said Farhatullah Babar, a senator and spokesman for the party.
``We do not believe in the veracity of the steps taken by Gen. Musharraf,'' said Sadique al-Farooq, spokesman for the opposition Pakistan Muslim League party. ``He has actually tried to play a game to save his skin and the skin of his predecessors in the armed forces and the intelligence agencies.''
Meanwhile, relatives of other scientists and security officials detained in the probe called for their release, after Musharraf said Khan was fully responsible for the leaks.
``There lies no justification, moral or legal'' to still hold detained scientists and engineers, a relatives' group said in a statement. At least six people remain in custody, but Musharraf said Thursday no decision had been made on their cases.
Khan's pardon was greeted with relief Friday in Pakistani media. The Dawn newspaper wrote in an editorial it would ``serve to lessen the intensity of the trauma to which this country has been subjected for several months.''
The pardon also drew no criticism from the United States, despite its professed concern over the spread of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states -- the reason given for the war in Iraq. Analysts said Washington was leery of publicly criticizing Musharraf, an important partner in the war on terror in neighboring Afghanistan.
Across the country, protests called by the hard-line Islamic opposition coalition Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal against what it called the ``humiliation'' of Khan attracted only scattered crowds.
At least 50 protesters were arrested for blocking roads with burning tires and clashes with police ahead of a planned rally in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, said Tariq Jamil, city police deputy inspector general. No injuries were reported.
About 1,000 MMA supporters rallied in the northwestern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where coalition leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed claimed to have spoken Thursday by telephone with Khan -- who is being guarded under tight security at his home in the capital, Islamabad.
Ahmed quoted Khan as saying: ``What I was made to do, I was told to give a sacrifice for the nation. I rendered a sacrifice for the nation. And I am ready to give sacrifice for the nation anytime.''
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Atom Scientist Given Pardon by Musharraf
February 6, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/asia/06STAN.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Feb. 5 - Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, granted a full pardon on Thursday to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, a day after Dr. Khan appeared on television and confessed to sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
As a result, Dr. Khan, 67, will not face prison, a fine or any other punishment.
In a 90-minute news conference at army headquarters here, General Musharraf said that Pakistan would not hand over all documents from its investigation to international nuclear inspectors. He said it would not order an independent investigation into the Pakistani Army's role in the proliferation, calling the idea "rubbish." And he said he would never allow United Nations supervision of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
"Negative to all three," General Musharraf said, raising his voice."It is an independent nation. Nobody comes inside and checks our things. We check them ourselves."
The White House praised General Musharraf for breaking up the network linked to Dr. Khan, which appears to have been one of the largest ever discovered, but made little mention of the pardon and declined to say whether it would insist that Pakistan sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. [Page A9.]
For General Musharraf, the news conference was a supreme test of political skill. Having satisfied Wednesday international demands for an investigation, he switched to a defiant tone on Thursday, reaching out to a domestic audience and asserting that, unlike Libya, which had agreed under pressure to give up its nuclear program, Pakistan would stand firm.
Explaining his decision to pardon the scientist, General Musharraf said that Dr. Khan "is still my hero, he is still high in the sky for me." He said the scientist's role in helping Pakistan develop nuclear bombs to counter those of India, its longtime rival, was grounds for leniency.
"No one can negate it, no one can cancel it, no one can disprove it," he said, referring to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, which remains a source of enormous national pride. "This hero has given us grace and respect."
Later, however, the general acknowledged that Dr. Khan had clearly benefited financially from his dealings, pocketing large sums to pay for a lavish standard of living and palatial homes.
The general, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, also declared himself and senior army commanders free of any wrongdoing in connection with Dr. Khan's activities. "No government or military official has been found involved in the activity of proliferation," he said.
American officials have said Pakistani nuclear aid flowed to Libya as late as last fall. Opposition political parties and Pakistani military experts have said it is nearly impossible that the army did not at least tacitly approve of the smuggling.
In Pakistan on Thursday, the issue was not whether Pakistan had done too little to aid international inspectors, it was whether it had done too much. Opposition political parties attacked General Musharraf's decision to have Dr. Khan read a confession on national television on Wednesday, calling the statement coerced and humiliating.
A coalition of hard-line Islamic parties has called for a national strike on Friday to protest the treatment of Dr. Khan, whose reputation appears not to have been greatly tarnished. In local news reports, many Pakistanis said that Dr. Khan had been forced to make a false confession under American pressure. The extent of the strike could provide a sense of whether the government's deal with Dr. Khan plays well, or backfires.
Throughout his news conference, General Musharaf said he had not given in to American pressure by mounting an investigation into Dr. Khan's activities. "Nobody is pressuring me," he said. "We are acting independently."
Reconciling international demands for an investigation with domestic demands that Dr. Khan not be scapegoated presented General Musharraf with one of the most difficult political problems he has faced as president. His reversal of Pakistan's support for the Taliban after the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and new peace talks with India led to his being criticized for his association with the United States. He narrowly survived two assassination attempts in December.
A close aide to General Musharraf and a senior official in a pro-Musharraf political party said negotiations with Dr. Khan in the last week led to a simple deal. If Dr. Khan apologized on national television, he would not be prosecuted.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the leader of a pro-Musharraf political party, the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam, conducted the secret negotiations with Dr. Khan, a senior party official said. The deal's elements - the request for a pardon, public apology and granting of the pardon - came together this week. The official said the deal aimed to avoid a public backlash against the government, prevent opposition political parties from turning Dr. Khan's case into a political issue, and to prevent details of China's nuclear weapons assistance to Pakistan from becoming public.
A senior member of the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam, told a Pakistani journalist that Chinese officials had expressed a desire for the inquiry to end quickly. The senior party official said government officials did not fear that Dr. Khan would name top army officials if prosecuted. They feared he would publicly detail China's assistance - an embarrassment to a crucial ally that Pakistan considers a strategic counterweight to India.
Western nonproliferation experts believe China has provided Pakistan with a nuclear warhead design, ballistic missile aid and help with a plutonium production reactor.
But a close aide to General Musharraf said concerns about China and incriminating information from Dr. Khan were not factors in the pardon. But, he said, fears of a public backlash were. The aide, and a cabinet minister, said that in the last several days they were barraged with demands from a broad spectrum of Pakistani society that Dr. Khan not be punished. The close aides said that criticism of General Musharraf for his American ties would have been cemented.
"Everybody thinks we're under pressure," said the close aide, referring to the United States. "It would have been a disaster."
Dr. Khan became head of Pakistan's uranium-enrichment program in 1975, a year after India detonated its first atomic bomb. In the next 25 years, as head of the Khan research laboratories, he was a powerful and virtually untouchable force in Pakistani policy and public life.
Reports of corruption, the close aide said, led General Musharraf to remove Dr. Khan from his post in March 2001, but the government did not sound international alarms.
"When this was discovered 9/11 had not happened," the aide said, referring to a period when General Musharraf was politically isolated. "We were not very comfortably placed in the community of nations."
General Musharraf clearly played to his domestic audience during the news conference, which was later broadcast on national television. He spoke in Urdu, Pakistan's primary language, and wore his commando uniform. When he addresses a Western audience, he wears a business suit and speaks in English.
Knowing that Pakistan faced being declared a rogue state if it did not act, the general said he faced an agonizing choice. "Is Pakistan important or the hero important?" He said: "Pakistan is important."
His voice choked with emotion at one point, he described his dismay when first shown the evidence against Dr. Khan. He said "we make such heroes larger than life," but "they are only human."
After avoiding several questions about Dr. Khan's palatial homes and business dealings, General Musharraf said one thing motivated the scientists.
"They were doing it for money," he said. "They had a lust for wealth."
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Pakistani Scientist Is Pardoned
President Won't Submit To Nuclear Inspections
By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15115-2004Feb5.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 5 -- Pakistan's president pardoned nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan on Thursday for selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya and said the country would not submit to outside inspections of its nuclear facilities.
In a combative 90-minute news conference, the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said Khan was "still my hero" for helping Pakistan develop a nuclear bomb and described the scandal as an unfortunate but perhaps inevitable byproduct of the crash program to develop a nuclear capability during the 1980s and 1990s. Musharraf said Khan had been given near-total autonomy in the running of the country's main nuclear weapons plant and consequently was able to conduct a side business in nuclear proliferation without knowledge of the Pakistani military.
Musharraf said that granting Khan such wide latitude was "the right way to do it" and that "otherwise we could not have progressed" to the point of conducting a successful nuclear test in 1998 and countering the nuclear threat from arch-rival India.
"Dr. A.Q. Khan has made Pakistan a nuclear power," said Musharraf, who dressed for the occasion in a camouflage army jacket and khaki trousers tucked into the top of black paratroop boots. "I want to protect his honor."
Musharraf said Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would not open its nuclear facilities to outside inspections but would be willing to share the results of its investigation into Khan's activities with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"This is a sovereign nation," he said. "No document will be given. No independent investigation will take place, and we will not submit to any United Nations coming inside here."
Musharraf's announcement of the pardon came a day after Khan admitted on state-run television that he and some subordinates at the Khan Research Laboratory, where uranium is processed for nuclear weapons, provided nuclear secrets to foreign nations beginning in the late 1980s. Khan agreed to confess in exchange for the government pledging that he would not be prosecuted for transactions that investigators said have brought him millions of dollars. Musharraf accepted Khan's clemency plea on the recommendation of the cabinet.
The revelations have done little to diminish Khan's stature in Pakistan, and Musharraf has been under heavy public pressure not to punish him. At a tea for journalists after the news conference, Musharraf said the government would make no effort to confiscate any of Khan's profits.
"Let him live with his money," he said with a smile.
Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, a key figure in Pakistan's nuclear hierarchy, said he hoped that Musharraf's pardon would bring the episode to a close. "From the government side, this was the final official version of the controversy," he told reporters. "We hope this will all be over in a week's time."
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the investigation "by the government of Pakistan demonstrates their commitments to addressing the issue of proliferation, and this proliferation is no longer. The actions of Pakistan have broken up this network, and that's important."
But Musharraf's domestic political opponents did not let the matter drop, accusing him of humiliating Khan and of dealing unfairly with 10 of Khan's laboratory colleagues who remain in detention and whose fate has not been decided. Notwithstanding the pardon, hard-line religious parties vowed to press on with plans for a nationwide protest on Friday.
Pakistan launched its investigation in November after the IAEA presented it with evidence that Pakistani scientists had provided components and technical assistance for making high-speed centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for a nuclear device. U.S. officials separately expressed concern that Pakistanis had a barter deal with North Korea, exchanging technology and expertise for help with ballistic missiles. Libya subsequently owned up to having a nuclear program that also appeared to have received help from Pakistan.
At his late-afternoon news conference, held on the grounds of his official army residence in the city of Rawalpindi near here, Musharraf suggested that by cooperating with the IAEA, Iran and Libya had betrayed Pakistan.
"Muslim brothers did not ask us before giving our names," he complained.
Under house arrest for the last several weeks, Khan, 67, has told investigators that his dealings with foreign nuclear programs were conducted with the tacit approval of senior military commanders, including Musharraf, according to a friend of the scientist and a senior investigator.
Musharraf acknowledged that "no army chief can deny that he was in the chain of decision-making" in the nuclear program, but he asserted that neither he nor any other chief of staff had been aware of Khan's proliferation activities.
Musharraf said the probe had established that Khan began selling nuclear secrets in the 1980s. "All the proliferation, unfortunately, was under the supervision or orders of Dr. A.Q. Khan," he said.
Musharraf subsequently acknowledged, during his chat with reporters after the news conference, that Khan could have continued trading on his nuclear expertise even after he was forced into retirement from the laboratory in 2001.
Asked for his opinion on the motive of Khan and others implicated in the probe, Musharraf replied, "Money, obviously."
Musharraf said that in deciding to pardon Khan in exchange for his televised confession and apology, he had attempted to shield him from further public disgrace. But he added, "One has to balance between international requirements and shielding."
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U.S. Defends Pardon of Nuclear Trafficker
February 6, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-nuclear-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday strongly defended Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, despite his pardon of a disgraced scientist who sold nuclear secrets to Libya and members of President Bush's ``axis of evil,'' Iran and North Korea.
Reflecting a balancing act between its usual aggressive stance on punishing proliferation and its firm support for Musharraf -- a key ally in the U.S. anti-terror war -- the White House said Pakistan has proved its intent through action.
``This proliferation network is no longer. The actions of Pakistan have broken up this network,'' spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One enroute back from an event in South Carolina, where Bush gave a speech.
He said Musharraf provided assurances that his government itself was not involved in any kind of proliferation activity and ``we value those assurances and those actions.''
McClellan deflected questions about why Pakistan, which tested a nuclear weapon in 1998, should not be forced to join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and submit to rigorous international inspections like other countries.
``All countries should take steps to confront proliferation. Pakistan is doing that by their actions. Pakistan is acting to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction technology,'' McClellan said.
After confessing to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea and absolving Pakistan's military and government of blame, top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was pardoned by Musharraf in an apparent effort to lay the explosive controversy to rest.
COMPLICITY QUESTIONED
But many Pakistanis believe Musharraf and top military officers were complicit in the illicit nuclear transfers.
Meanwhile, criticism of Bush is mounting for going along with what some Americans also consider a ``charade.''
The administration seems to believe that accepting the Khan pardon is a ``political necessity'' because Musharraf has been a loyal ally in the anti-terror war and is under tremendous pressure from opponents, including two recent assassination attacks, said David Albright, who heads the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
But this could ``backfire'' because scientists involved in the Pakistani program may decide there is little to lose by going out and making money selling nuclear secrets, he said.
``Musharraf should have been more aggressive about bringing some of them to trial,'' Albright added.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone charged that Musharraf ``likely knew that the (nuclear) exchanges took place and is not being honest about his connection'' to Khan's activities.
In a statement to the U.S. Congress, the New Jersey Democrat urged Bush to reimpose sanctions on U.S. aid to Pakistan lifted after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
A senior U.S. official said Washington would study whether sanctions were warranted but noted this is a lengthy process.
Bush seems unlikely to re-impose sanctions. But if Congress forced him to act, it could affect millions of dollars. Bush's new fiscal year 2005 budget proposes $700 million for Pakistan, up from $395 million in 2004, congressional sources said.
A number of countries extending from Europe, Asia and beyond have been implicated in a nuclear weapons black market of middlemen and parts producers linked to Khan and Washington expects all countries to crack down on illicit technology transfers within their borders, U.S. officials said.
They said the middlemen who helped Iran, North Korea and Libya acquire sensitive nuclear technology operated in Germany, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Dubai, Switzerland, South Africa -- and possibly other states as yet undisclosed.
-------- israel
Mossad mulled killing Vanunu
By Reuters / Haaretz
February 6, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/391343.html
The Mossad spy agency considered killing nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu in 1986, but decided instead to abduct him for trial on treason charges, a former Mossad director told Reuters yesterday. Shabtai Shavit, who masterminded the "honey trap" that snaked Vanunu after he told a British newspaper about his work at Dimona atomic research center, said he feared the ex-technician intends to spill more secrets on his release from prison in April.
"I would be lying if I said the thought [assassination] did not go through many of our minds," Shavit said, recalling Mossad debates after the Sunday Times interview that blew away Israel's official policy of ambiguity about its nuclear capabilities. "But Jews don't do that to other Jews. He was a traitor, so in accordance with Jewish morality and Jewish law he paid for it with imprisonment," Shavit said.
Vanunu, 49, embraced Christianity and anti-nuclear activism after being fired from the Dimona reactor. He spoke to the newspaper on the promise of undisclosed payment. In jailhouse letters he has vowed to keep campaigning to expose Israel's non-conventional capabilities.
Vanunu's revelations, and 60 accompanying photographs, led independent experts to conclude Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads - making it a military superpower.
Israeli officials, who point out that most Arab countries are still formally in a state of war with Israel, make no apologies for the assumed arsenal though they never confirm its existence.
Fearing more secrets could become public knowledge when Vanunu winds up his 18-year jail term on April 21, Shavit has been calling for him to be legally silenced.
"I propose gagging this man," said Shavit, who retired from Mossad in 1996 and now chairs the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center.
According to security sources, the Justice Ministry might confiscate Vanunu's passport to prevent him leaving the country, and subject any press interviews he gives to military censors. Any attempt by him to discuss state secrets could mean a new trial.
-------- korea
Koreas Pledge to Help Nuclear Talks Succeed
February 6, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea pledged on Friday after ministerial talks to work together for the success of multilateral negotiations in late February on ending the beleaguered North's nuclear programs.
The Seoul meeting had been marked by testy exchanges that experts said showed Pyongyang felt increasingly cornered in the world community, especially following revelations this week that a top Pakistani scientist had sold it nuclear technology.
The two Koreas will join the United States, China, Russia and Japan in the Chinese capital in a second round of six-party nuclear talks set to begin on February 25.
``South and North agreed to cooperate for a fruitful second round of six-party talks to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully,'' said a joint statement issued after three days of inter-Korean ministerial talks in Seoul.
The 13th set of cabinet-level contacts since the capitalist South and communist North began their cautious reconciliation process four years ago began just hours after North Korea announced a long-awaited date for the six-way talks.
But the upbeat mood soon dissipated as the significance of the revelations from Pakistan sank in.
``North Korea is in a difficult situation, in a jam,'' said Kim Sung-han, a North Korea-U.S. relations expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS).
He said the dramatic confessions by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, had undercut Pyongyang's efforts to deny the existence of a clandestine uranium enrichment program that was the catalyst for the nuclear dispute.
North Korea has yet to issue a reaction to Khan's statements.
``North Korea definitely feels a difference in temperature now,'' said Kim after South Korea rebuffed the North Korean delegates' efforts to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington with well-rehearsed calls for ``ethnic cooperation.''
NORTH REBUFFED
The North's chief delegate, Kim Ryong-song, sought to blame the United States for the relatively slow pace of inter-Korean economic projects and accused Seoul of colluding with Washington.
``To get drawn into the cooperation against the North is to drive the nation to mutual destruction,'' Kim said Wednesday.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, Kim's counterpart, chided him for creating unnecessary trouble.
``If our relations deteriorate, it will only be damaging to the North,'' Jeong said.
South Korea told the North its security concerns and need for economic assistance would be dealt with once the nuclear problem was resolved, said Shin Un-sang, the South Korean spokesman.
The two sides agreed to try to hold new military talks, although there was no guarantee the North would follow through.
South Korea's version of the statement said the two would hold military talks between generals as soon as possible with the intention of convening defense ministers' talks to follow up a one-off meeting in September 2000.
But North Korea, where the secretive military is the paramount authority, issued a statement saying only that both sides would propose military talks to their military authorities.
South Korea's Shin said the general-level talks would first take up preventing military clashes in the Yellow Sea, where a series of naval clashes have killed dozens of sailors.
``But North Korea is usually lukewarm toward any exchanges between the militaries,'' Shin said.
The North's 1.1 million-strong military, the world's fifth largest, has nearly twice the number of active forces of South Korea.
The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armed truce that has not been replaced by a peace treaty.
North Korea, which has suffered dire food shortages over the past decade and a famine thought to have killed at least a million people, requested 200,000 tonnes of fertilizer at the talks. South Korea promised to consider the request, Shin said.
The ministers also agreed to hold a new round of reunions of families divided since the Korean War at the end of March and set May 4-7 as the dates for the next cabinet-level talks. Both the reunions and the ministerial talks will be held in North Korea.
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China, U.S. Differ Over N. Korea Weapons
February 6, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-China-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- China and the United States disagree over a key part of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, a U.S. official said Friday, a dispute that could give the North Koreans a diplomatic boost in sensitive talks later this month.
China has refused to accept the U.S. contention that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons based on highly enriched uranium, the official said. North Korea has acknowledged it has a plutonium-based program but denies it is developing a uranium-based one.
The administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. diplomats have told Beijing its position is not helpful.
American negotiators are concerned that China's stand could benefit Pyongyang heading into six-party talks to be held Feb. 25 in Beijing on the overall North Korean nuclear program.
Besides the United States and North Korea, the discussions also will include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
The Bush administration is seeking a complete and verifiable elimination of the North's nuclear capability. Officials have said it is difficult to see how such an agreement can be reached if Pyongyang continues to maintain that it has no uranium program.
The Bush administration says that intelligence information confirmed the uranium program in 2002, and that a senior North Korean official acknowledged its existence in October of that year during a meeting with U.S. diplomats.
But North Korea has since denied making any such statements and apparently is hoping that China, by casting doubt on the U.S. contentions, will help discredit them.
Chinese officials could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
The Bush administration has frequently praised China for its leadership role in attempts to resolve the North Korea nuclear impasse. Beyond that, China has said it supports the U.S. goal of a Korean peninsula without a nuclear program.
North Korea says it is willing to dispose of its plutonium-based program, the only one it claims to have.
China and the United States have other differences involving North Korea, but they do not appear to be as serious. China, for example, has suggested the United States make concessions in its approach to the North.
It also has been more enthusiastic than the United States over North Korea's willingness to freeze its plutonium-based program.
In December, Secretary of State Colin Powell called that proposal ``positive,'' but the administration has since played down its significance.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said last week, ``We're not seeking or asking for a freeze. We're looking for elimination of the programs.''
Strained U.S. relations with North Korea worsened considerably in 2002 when U.S. officials said intelligence information disclosed a uranium-based program.
U.S. officials said the program violated a 1994 North Korean pledge not to develop nuclear weapons -- part of a broader commitment that also included freezing its plutonium-producing program and placing it under international inspection.
After denying the administration's assertions in 2002, North Korea became increasingly confrontational. Over time, it expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, restarted an idle nuclear reactor and said it had begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods to produce plutonium.
Multilateral talks in Beijing in April and in August of 2003 on the nuclear impasse were inconclusive. Officials have indicated they expect no major breakthroughs in the talks later this month.
The United States believes North Korea already has one or more plutonium-based nuclear weapons and is concerned that, if left unchecked, the country could develop many more, giving it the potential to blackmail adversaries or export its nuclear technology.
-------- mideast
Charm offensive
February 06, 2004
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Libya's ambassador to the United Nations mounted a charm offensive in Washington this week at the National Prayer Breakfast and in meetings with members of Congress.
Ambassador Ali Abdessalam Treki is trying to convince U.S. leaders that the mercurial Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, is sincere in his goal of normalizing diplomatic relations with the United States, which still lists Libya as a terrorist nation.
Mr. Treki told Embassy Row yesterday that Col. Gadhafi's cooperation with American arms inspectors and Libya's pledge to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction are the most dramatic examples of the North African nation's desire to restore contacts with the United States.
"This is a good gesture to prove we are sincere," he said.
CIA Director George J. Tenet said yesterday that the Libyan development also is an example of a U.S. intelligence success. Speaking at Georgetown University, he said American and British intelligence agents knew details of Libya's nuclear-weapons program and "penetrated" its foreign nuclear-supplier network.
"It was only when we convinced them that we knew Libya's nuclear program was a weapons program that they showed us their weapons design," he said.
Mr. Treki's trip to Washington is the first visit since his appointment as U.N. ambassador in October and the first by a Libyan diplomat to a prayer breakfast, he said.
Mr. Treki also used his visit to renew contacts with American oil executives, who are eager to return to Libya, he said.
"We need the friendship of the American people. We don't look at Americans as a country with colonial ambitions," he said.
Mr. Treki also praised President Bush's $15 billion program to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.
"We are very happy with this policy," he said, adding that it will help create greater unity in Africa, which is one of Libya's goals.
-------- terrorism
U.N. Nuclear Chief Warns of Global Black Market
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16406-2004Feb5.html
VIENNA, Feb. 5 -- Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, represented "the tip of an iceberg" in an illicit nuclear supply network that has connections in many countries, the chief of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday.
The Khan case "raises more questions than it answers," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director. He said existing safeguards had failed to stop the spread of nuclear technology, and he called for urgent international cooperation to police a global black market whose reach is unknown.
"We need to know who supplied what, when, to whom. Dr. Khan was not working alone," ElBaradei told reporters at his headquarters in Vienna one day after Khan publicly admitted to providing nuclear weapons expertise and supplies to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
Investigators are pursuing leads in Japan, Malaysia, Germany and two still-unidentified European countries, IAEA officials said.
ElBaradei said IAEA investigators were also reviewing an allegation that a representative of Khan's offered to provide Iraq with designs for a nuclear bomb and uranium enrichment equipment for $5 million on the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Iraqi authorities rejected the proposal as a scam.
"Maybe in hindsight it was not a scam," ElBaradei said. "But thank God they did not act on it."
ElBaradei described the U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as an affirmation of the U.N. inspections process. He said the White House should allow the IAEA to return to Iraq and finish its work.
ElBaradei said a recent report by a former chief U.S. weapons inspector, David Kay, "validated what we have thought, that inspections were working."
Kay's conclusion that Iraq had not rebuilt its nuclear program "strengthened my conviction that we need to go back to Iraq and stop this hullabaloo and bring the issue to closure," ElBaradei said, referring to the debate over the prewar extent of Iraq's nuclear program and U.S. intelligence about it.
"We are the ones who have the credibility, and we know every person there," ElBaradei said. "And I think we can bring that issue to closure as early as anybody else could."
The black market in nuclear components was uncovered in discussions with Iran and Libya. Both countries have revealed secret sources of supplies for programs that long went undetected by foreign intelligence services or international organizations.
The IAEA was among the outside institutions that passed information about the network to the Pakistani government. Pressed by the Bush administration, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, ordered the detention and interrogation of senior weapons scientists who worked with Khan, often called the father of his nation's nuclear weapons program.
ElBaradei, noting that the supply network had representatives in at least five countries, said evidence that a Malaysian company had produced sophisticated parts for enriching uranium raised concerns about factories elsewhere peddling such goods outside the public eye.
Malaysian police have said Scomi Precision Engineering, known as SCOPE, had manufactured components for Libya's fledgling nuclear program. SCOPE is a subsidiary of Scomi Group Berhad, a publicly traded conglomerate whose principal shareholder is a son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The parent company said the parts were ordered by Gulf Technical Industries, a company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Scomi Precision Engineering said in a statement that it made "14 semi-finished components." The parts were shipped to Dubai in four batches between December 2002 and August 2003 in a deal worth $3.4 million.
ElBaradei said the revelations showed that informal rules designed to prevent suppliers from aiding nuclear weapons aspirants were "kaput." He said only 38 countries take part in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a voluntary alliance.
"You need a complete overhaul of the export control system. It is not working right now," said ElBaradei, who called news about the clandestine supply network "the most dangerous thing we have seen in proliferation in many years."
Special correspondent Azhar Sukri in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Post Another High Performing Year, Industry Tells Wall Street
NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2004
NuclearEnergy Institute
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=4&catid=542
The nuclear energy industry starts 2004 performing at electric industry-leading levels of efficiency and reliability, and is continuing to invest in efforts geared toward building new nuclear power plants later this decade, industry leaders told Wall Street analysts here today.
"This industry is completely focused on securing its future - making the investments necessary today so that we'll be well-positioned to serve our customers, shareholders, and bondholders in the years ahead," said Don Hintz, president of Entergy Corp. and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) board of directors.
NEI President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Colvin told analysts that preliminary data from 2003 shows that the nation's 103 nuclear power plants produced 762 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity. Nuclear power generation in 2002 was a record-high 780 billion kwh. The plants' average capacity factor-a measure of efficiency-is estimated between 89 and 90 percent in 2003, after a record-high 91.9 percent in 2002.
"We expect these small year-to-year ups and downs in total nuclear plant output," Colvin said. He emphasized that the dip in output was due primarily to extended plant shutdowns for capital improvements and inspections. "To the extent that small declines in annual output are the result of major equipment replacement projects, we should be encouraged," Colvin said.
Although 2003 cost data is not yet available, the industry anticipates the average production cost (fuel costs plus operations and maintenance) will be about the same as 2002's 1.7 cents/kwh.
"A small increase in costs will not affect the competitive position of a nuclear power plant or its profitability. With even a modest increase in cost, nuclear plants remain safe, competitive and profitable," Colvin said.
The industry continues to increase capacity at nuclear power plants, Colvin said. "With more than 2,000 megawatts of power uprates authorized by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) over the past three years, and another 2,000 megawatts expected over the next several years, we continue to gain additional value from our existing assets."
Nuclear power plants operating in 31 states provide electricity to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses. They provide about 75 percent of the electricity generated by sources that don't emit pollutants into the atmosphere.
As the U.S. economy continues to grow, demand for electricity will increase.
"Our nation must meet the growing demand with a diversified portfolio of fuels and technologies, including nuclear energy," Colvin said. Accordingly, the industry continues to progress toward new nuclear power plant orders.
Several years ago, the industry launched a program to help create a favorable business climate in which companies can order new nuclear plants. This comprehensive, multi-year program is designed to address licensing and regulatory issues and the development of new nuclear plant designs and financing, Colvin said.
Entergy's Hintz told analysts, "Probably the most difficult hurdle to building new plants is breaking the inertia - building the first new plants, and demonstrating that we can manage the licensing process and achieve our cost and schedule targets. Nuclear power is a solid business. And that's why we are investing time and money and management resources in building a foundation for the future and for this industry."
The comprehensive energy policy legislation pending in the U.S. Senate provides financial incentives for advanced reactors and continued investment in research and development for advanced nuclear technologies. The legislation also includes Price-Anderson Act reauthorization. "Passage of the energy bill this year is essential if the industry is to start down the road of expanding America's diverse energy infrastructure to ensure energy security and a cleaner environment for the future," Colvin said.
With regard to challenges facing the industry, the nuclear industry has long recognized that some metals and other materials in certain plant applications require dedicated management by plant operators to maintain high safety levels. The industry this year will dedicate $60 million to industry-wide programs that proactively prioritize and resolve material management issues.
Colvin told analysts that nuclear plant security continues to be a high priority for the industry, saying, "Our goal is to provide the highest level of protection possible for a commercial facility."
Nuclear power plants have enhanced security in several areas since Sept. 11, 2001, and will have invested about $1 billion by the end of this year in post-Sept. 11 security enhancements. These enhancements include: moving security perimeters farther out; installing new barriers and plant access authorization systems; increasing the size of security staffs and enhancing all aspects of training. "We will continue to work with the NRC and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure nuclear power plants remain the best protected industrial facilities," Colvin said.
-------- colorado
Rocky Flats Contractor Fined for Radioactive Contamination
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
Febrary 6, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-06-09.asp#anchor3
Repeated violations of Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear safety rules and procedures at the former nuclear weapons manufacturing facility Rocky Flats has drawn a proposed civil penalty of more than $520,000 for the Kaiser-Hill Company, LLC, the managing contractor at the department's Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site.
Kaiser-Hill's responsibilities include the decommissioning of the Rocky Flats site, which lies between Denver and Boulder, Colorado.
The events included a May 2003 fire in a glovebox undergoing decommissioning, a March 2003 ventilation airflow reversal that spread radioactive material throughout several rooms, and a March 2003 radioactive contamination spread from an inadequately secured containment sleeve.
Several workers received doses of radiation, which the DOE says were below the federal limits, but there was no release of radioactive material outside of the facilities.
The DOE investigation identified deficiencies with radiological controls, procedural compliance, training of the workers, and failure to implement effective corrective actions to address previous similar issues.
The DOE is proposing to assess Kaiser-Hill a civil penalty in the amount of $522,500. Partial mitigation of the civil penalty was applied to only one violation due to the contractor's comprehensive and timely corrective actions.
Mitigation was not applied for the remainder of the civil penalty due to the contractor's ineffective or incomplete identification of the issues, failure to report to DOE or ineffective corrective actions.
The DOE says the enforcement program is designed to promote proactive efforts by contractors to correct procedural violations so that more serious events are prevented. The preliminary notice of violation will become final in 30 days unless the violations are denied with sufficient justification.
For almost 40 years, nuclear weapons parts were produced at Rocky Flats. The industrial facility used radioactive materials and more than 8,000 chemicals. Rocky Flats stopped weapons production in 1989, and cleanup of contamination at the site began in 1992. From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats workers used plutonium to build nuclear weapons triggers, called pits.
In 1996 the DOE decided to close Rocky Flats by the end of 2006, critics say without first figuring out the requirements for a real cleanup, but only allotting an inadequate fixed sum of $7 billion which must cover removal of weapons-grade material and bomb-production waste to site security, and decommissioning and demolition of buildings.
Environmental remediation, or cleanup of soil, air, and water, gets done with funds left over, says the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center - $470 million, or only seven percent of the $7 billion total.
-------- us politics
Spending From Now To Doomsday
By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page E01
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17598-2004Feb5.html
You can imagine the howls of laughter and derision, particularly from Republicans, if somebody were to suggest that the way to solve some pressing social problem was to create a federal department and throw a lot of money at it.
Yet when the Bush administration proposes to fight global terrorism by establishing the Department of Homeland Security and increasing spending government-wide on homeland security by 130 percent over three years, not only has nobody batted an eyelash, but members of the loyal opposition have been tripping over themselves to complain that it isn't enough.
Indeed, for all the noise this week over budget and deficits, there has been virtually no discussion about either the need or effectiveness of lavish new spending for the Pentagon and Homeland Security.
"Nobody is in the mood right now to challenge the idea that we have to spend a lot more on defense and homeland security right now," said Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlon.
What's going on here, I fear, has more to do with smart politics than smart policy. From politicians to academics to journalists, nobody wants to be accused of being "soft on terrorism."
Let me admit that I have no idea whether we really need to ramp up spending in these areas as much as has been proposed. At the same time, I know there are good reasons to question it.
Let's begin with pure logic. To support throwing a lot more money at defense and homeland security, you either have to believe that the people at the Pentagon and Homeland Security are somehow more clever than those at all those agencies where such strategies have failed, or that the problem of terrorism is unique in being solved by more spending. There is no evidence for either proposition.
Then there is the extensive economic literature showing that people routinely overreact to low-probability risks with high impacts (a nuclear bomb lobbed into Times Square) with a tendency to spend way too much money to achieve small reductions in such risks.
Finally, there is the anecdotal evidence that the "waste, fraud and abuse" is not limited to social programs.
There are, for starters, those embarrassing revelations that Halliburton Co. may have overcharged for food and fuel in Iraq. Or the fact that, even two years after it was identified as a "lesson learned," we still can't seem to get the CIA and domestic law enforcement agencies to work off a single set of terrorist suspects.
As for all that money desperately needed for "first responders," Washington Post reporters Jo Becker, Sarah Cohen and Spencer S. Hsu recently found instances in which it was used to buy leather jackets for District police officers, install security alarms in the office of Prince George's County prosecutors and arm every Virginia trooper with an M-4 automatic rifle. Will you really feel safer once every cop and firefighter in Dubuque has a fancy new radio, a full suit of protective gear and certification in handling biological and chemical agents?
In money terms, however, all this pales when put up against the Pentagon's runaway procurement budget. Instead of following through on its promise to transform the military into a more flexible, mobile, high-tech fighting force to combat terrorism and rogue nations, the administration now says we have to do all that while going ahead with production of new fighter planes, helicopters, submarines and missile defense shields designed to counter threats and overwhelm enemies that no longer exist.
Twenty years ago, when Japanese imports began to threaten its existence, General Motors threw billions into robots, computers and ill-advised acquisitions without first rethinking the processes by which it designed, built and marketed cars. In the end, much of the money was wasted.
Now it looks as though politicians of both parties are determined to make the same mistake responding to the terrorism threat: confusing spending more with spending smart.
Steven Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.
----
U.S. Embassy in Iraq to Be the Biggest
JIM KRANE
Associated Press
Fri, Feb. 06, 2004
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/7893877.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The next U.S. Embassy in Iraq, scheduled to open in July, will eventually become the biggest American diplomatic mission in the world, U.S. officials say.
While the future U.S. diplomatic presence in Baghdad is still in the planning phases, officials here agree that an enormous American contingent - of 3,000 or more U.S. employees - will be required in Iraq long after July 1, when the United States plans to turn over sovereignty to Iraqis.
"It most likely will be the largest in the world for some time," a U.S. official in Washington said Friday on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Francis Ricciardone, is supervising the embassy's creation. But Ricciardone, a career diplomat, is unlikely to be tapped as U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
The next ambassador - the first official U.S. representative since Ambassador April Glaspie departed Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait - is expected to be a Bush political appointee.
William Cavness, a State Department official in Baghdad, said opening a new embassy involves "huge construction projects" and difficult negotiations over how many people would have diplomatic status.
There have been no decisions on staff levels yet but "it's going to be very big," he said.
Currently the largest U.S. embassies are in Cairo and Moscow. The Baghdad embassy is expected to surpass those because many of the myriad American officials already in Iraq are expected to stay on.
Cavness said the location of the new embassy has yet to be decided.
One proposal under discussion would make a small, U.S.-flagged building in Baghdad the official building but that site would house little of the true diplomatic presence.
Instead, most Americans would remain posted inside the heavily fortified green zone in Baghdad. The Republican Palace could remain the focus of U.S. diplomatic activity, but because of its negative image as the seat of Saddam's 23-year dictatorship, the State Department is loathe to declare it the U.S. Embassy.
The previous U.S. Embassy was closed in 1990 when the United States broke diplomatic relations with Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. After the 1991 Gulf War and until the U.S. invasion in April, U.S. affairs were handled at the nearby Polish Embassy.
The current U.S. presence in Iraq includes thousands of officials from the departments of State, Defense and Commerce, along with intelligence agencies, the U.S. Agency for International Development and several others. Officials have said many will remain in Iraq with diplomatic status.
However, others, such as political appointees who worked on the Bush election campaign in 2000 and who have no experience in the Middle East, will be replaced, officials in Washington and Baghdad said.
Many Department of Defense officials working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which will be dissolved on June 30, worry they will fall under control of the Department of State. The two federal departments are often rivals on policy matters.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Syria Said to Send Arms Again to Lebanon Guerrillas
February 6, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/middleeast/06SYRI.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - Syria has resumed weapons transfers to anti-Israel guerrillas based in Lebanon, including a covert shipment of weapons from Iran smuggled aboard a Syrian cargo plane that had delivered earthquake relief, American and Israeli officials say.
The officials said a Syrian government plane that carried aid to Iran in late December had loaded up with small arms and possibly explosives intended for Hezbollah and Hamas, militant groups carrying out armed attacks against Israel.
"The supply flights seem to have restarted for Hezbollah and Hamas," a State Department official said.
The Bush administration has repeatedly demanded that Syria halt the flow of weapons to the radical groups, saying that only then would Washington consider an improvement in relations. Administration officials are now preparing a report on policy toward Syria that could lead to new sanctions against Damascus under the Syria Accountability Act approved last year by Congress.
The reports of the weapons shipment appear to derail hopes among some American officials and experts on Syria that the government of President Bashar al-Assad might take a cue from Libya and reach out to the United States and other Western nations. Except for Lebanon, which is controlled by Syrian proxies, Syria is surrounded by pro-American governments, with more than 130,000 allied troops across the border in Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who met with Mr. Assad last summer, told The Washington Post this week that the Syrians "need to take a hard look at what's happening in their neighborhood and see whether or not they want to modify some of their policies."
Mr. Powell's spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said Mr. Powell had been explicit about the need truly to crack down on terrorists, "not just close the office, but make it impossible for them to operate."
Phone calls to the Syrian Embassy for comment were not returned Thursday.
Mr. Assad took power three years ago after the death of his autocratic father, and officials and experts say he is still trying to consolidate his authority. Damascus has made a series of overtures to Washington, cooperating in talks with the Iraqi Governing Council and Kurdish groups and expressing hopes for closer ties with Washington, which lists Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism.
On a visit last month to Turkey, President Assad discussed the possibility that the Turkish government might help mediate between Washington and Damascus.
"They are definitely on a new path, and the messages they gave to the U.S. are all positive," a Turkish official said, adding that his government is ready to sponsor talks.
Also on the positive side, officials say, Syria has cooperated with the United States in identifying and arresting members of Al Qaeda's terrorist network.
The officials say intelligence provided by Syria resulted in the thwarting of at least two attacks against American interests in the last year, one in Bahrain and one in the United Arab Emirates.
In addition, Syria has made suspects available for interrogation by the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency, intrigued by the results from these encounters, has urged policy makers to avoid unduly antagonizing the Syrians, the officials said.
In an interview with The New York Times in November, Mr. Assad called on the United States to reinitiate talks between his nation and Israel. But when Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, issued a direct invitation last month, Syria backed away, complaining of "media maneuvers."
Relations between Syria and Israel have been especially tense since October, when Israeli warplanes bombed a suspected terrorist training camp in Syria, about 15 miles northwest of Damascus. American intelligence reports said the site was being prepared for use by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, officials said.
Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria, said Mr. Assad was trying to reposition himself in a regional landscape that had changed.
"There is certainly a reassessment going on in Damascus about its policy approach toward the United States and the region," Mr. Djerejian said. "They're reaching out now in a way they never have."
Administration officials are eager to point out that Syria stands to benefit from a prosperous Iraq next door, with the numerous prospects for trade and investment, but they say Mr. Assad may not feel he has the political strength to confront an old guard of anti-American advisers.
Mr. Assad's ambivalence seemed on display in his interview with The Times. He said Syria had already complied with many American demands, yet he was quick to criticize the American-led alliance's difficulties in Iraq. He said any thought of Iraq as a regional model had disappeared for most Syrians in the face of the continuing violence there.
"I think before the war on Iraq, some thought about this," he said. "Most of them now think this is a bad example of bringing democracy."
----
No regrets from Mikhail Kalashnikov at designing the universal weapon
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Feb 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040206013819.x1razpkv.html
The rifle bearing his name has proliferated through conflicts the world over, but Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov feels no remorse. The blame, the 84-year-old Russian says, lies with politicians.
"If I am reborn I would again become a designer," the world's most famous gun maker told AFP on the sidelines of a global arms fair in New Delhi.
"And if Mother Teresa admonishes me in heaven then I will take her hand and say, 'Dear Mother, it is not the fault of the designer because it was built in defence of Russia and it is bad politicians who must be blamed for the arms proliferation.'"
Kalashnikov, drafted into the Soviet army in 1938, designed his first sub-machinegun while on leave after being wounded fighting the Germans in October 1941. He built a second model of the assault rifle within a year.
The Soviet military adopted Kalashnikov's AK rifles in 1949 and since then 70 million of the robust but lightweight guns have been manufactured around the world. Mozambique even has a Kalashnikov on its flag.
The self-taught Kalashnikov, who went from being a railway worker to a colonel, said he was yet to test an assault rifle which can outperform the battle-hardy AK series.
"I am still waiting for a designer who is better than me and if I find one I will shake his hand," Kalashnikov said.
But the Russian conceded he felt a "heavy heart" when Muslim fighters armed with his invention killed at least 15,000 Soviet soldiers to end Moscow's 1979-1989 occupation of Afghanistan.
"I always stood for peace. My invention was to keep Germans away from Russia but they fell into other hands," he said.
He denied that his rifle had helped fuel insurgencies such as against Indian rule in Kashmir and against Russian forces in Chechnya.
"It is not that the world would not have changed if there were no AK-47s as these people would have adopted some other weapons but I reiterate that it is the bad politicians who should be blamed for these problems," Kalashnikov said.
More than 50 armies have adopted the Kalashnikov and 20 countries have built variance, but the half-century-old technology has also been reproduced to varying standards for illegal arms bazaars across the globe.
The ageing gunmaker has been showered with awards from the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia. He said he now invested his time "managing all these medals and honours that are in my house and inspecting my bronze statue that has been put up in my town."
"I spend my days replying to hundreds of letters, most of them are positive and some are hostile. People from even the United States want my autographs and I think they are sold to collectors for 100 dollars apiece."
But Kalashnikov insisted there was more to him than the weapon synonymous with his name.
"Please don't think I spent a lifetime designing just guns. Music is better than gunfire and, also remember, I have special love for good-looking women and good wine," he said.
-------- asia
Mission to Mongolia
February 06, 2004
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage praised Mongolia for its cooperation in the war on terrorism and help in the reconstruction of Iraq, as he visited the Central Asian nation earlier this week.
Mr. Armitage met with President Natsagiin Bagabandi, Prime Minister Nambaryn Enkhbayar, Foreign Minister Luvsan Erdenechuluun and Deputy Foreign Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold, the Mongolian Embassy in Washington said.
Mr. Armitage "expressed the sincere thanks to the Mongolian government for supporting the U.S.-led war against international terrorism and for its contribution to the postwar Iraqi reconstruction by sending its military peacekeepers," the embassy said.
He also signed a bilateral and regional cooperation agreement with Mongolia.
-------- balkans
WARREN ZIMMERMANN (1934-2004) - A DIPLOMAT WITH BLOOD ON HIS HANDS
by Srdja Trifkovic
February 6, 2004
Chronicles Magazine
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST020604.html
Warren Zimmermann, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia before its breakup and civil war, died on February 3 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69. Zimmermann, a career Foreign Service officer, was named ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1989 by the first President Bush. Zimmermann was recalled from Belgrade in 1992 when U.N. sanctions were imposed on what remained of Yugoslavia, and two years later he resigned from the Foreign Service over what he felt was President Clinton's reluctance to intervene forcefully enough on the Muslim side in the Bosnian war. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Zimmermann ranked among the finest U.S. career ambassadors and described him as an eloquent defender of human rights: "Ambassador Zimmermann's passing is a great loss to American diplomacy and to our State Department family."
What the obituaries do not state, however, is that in March 1992 Warren Zimmermann materially contributed-probably more than any other single man-to the outbreak of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The facts of the case have been established beyond reasonable doubt and are no longer dosputed by experts.
Nine months earlier, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, a move that triggered off a short war in Slovenia and a sustained conflict in Croatia where the Serbs refused to accept Tudjman's fait accompli. These events had profound consequences on Bosnia and Herzegovina, that "Yugoslavia in miniature." The Serbs adamantly opposed the idea of Bosnian independence. The Croats predictably rejected any suggestion that Bosnia and Herzegovina remains within a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia. Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader, had decided as early as September 1990 he argued that Bosnia-Herzegovina should also declare independence if Slovenia and Croatia secede. On 27 February 1991 he went a step further by declaring in the Assembly: "I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty." The process culminated with the referendum on independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina (29 February 1992). The Serbs duly boycotted it, determined not to become a minority in a Muslim-dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the end just over 62 percent of voters opted for independence, overwhelmingly Muslims and Croats; but even this figure was short of the two-thirds majority required by the constitution. This did not stop the rump government of Izetbegovic from declaring independence on 3 March.
Simultaneously one last attempt was under way to save peace. The Portuguese foreign minister José Cutileiro-Portugal holding at that time the EC Presidency-organized a conference in Lisbon attended by the three communities' leaders, Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, and the Croat leader Mate Boban. The EU mediators persuaded the three sides that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be independent but internally organized on the basis of ethnic regions or "cantons."
The breakthrough was due to the Bosnian Serbs' acceptance of an independent and internationally recognized state, provided that the Muslims give up their ambition of a centralized, unitary one. Izetbegovic appeared to accept that this was the best deal he could make-but soon he was to change his mind, thanks to Warren Zimmermann. When Izetbegovic returned from Lisbon, Zimmermann flew post haste from Belgrade to Sarajevo to tell him that the U.S. did not stand behind the Cutileiro plan. He saw it as a means to "a Serbian power grab" that could be prevented only by internationalizing the problem. When Izetbegovic said that he did not like the Lisbon agreement, Zimmerrmann remembered later, "I told him, if he didn't like it, why sign it?" A high-ranking State Department official subsequently admitted that the US policy "was to encourage Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan." The New York Times (August 29, 1993) brought a revealing quote from the key player himself:
The embassy [in Belgrade] was for recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina from sometime in February on," Mr. Zimmermann said of his policy recommendation from Belgrade. "Meaning me." ... Immediately after Mr. Izetbegovic returned from Lisbon, Mr. Zimmermann called on him in Sarajevo... "He said he didn't like it; I told him, if he didn't like it, why sign it?"
After that moment Izetbegovic had no motive to take the ongoing EC-brokered talks seriously. Only had Washington and Brussels jointly insisted on an agreement on the confederal-cantonal blueprint as a precondition for recognition, he could have been induced to support the Cutileiro plan. But after his encounter with Zimmermann Izetbegovic felt authorized to renege on tripartite accord, and he believed that the U.S. administration would come to his assistance to enforce the independence of a unitary Bosnian state.
The motives of Zimmermann and his political bosses in Washington were not rooted in the concern for the Muslims of Bosnia as such, or indeed any higher moral principle. Their policy had no basis in the law of nations, or in the notions of truth or justice. It was the end-result of the interaction of pressure groups within the American power structure: Saudis and other Muslims, neocons, Turks, One-World Nation Builders, Russophobes... all had their field day. Thus the war in the Balkans evolved from a Yugoslav disaster and a European inconvenience into a major test of "U.S. leadership." This was made possible by a bogus consensus which passed for Europe's Balkan policy. This consensus, amplified in the media, limited the scope for meningful debate. "Europe" was thus unable to resist the new thrust of Bosnian policy coming from Washington.
While Europe resorted to the lowest common denominator in lieu of coherent policy, Zimmermann was giving finishing touches to a virulently anti-Serb, agenda-driven form of Realpolitik that was to dominate America's Bosnian policy. Just as Germany sought to paint its Maastricht Diktat on Croatia's recognition in December 1991 as an expression of the "European consensus," after Zimmermann's intervention in Sarajevo Washington's fait accomplis were straightfacedly labeled as "the will of the international community." Just as the EU has lived with the consequences of its acquiescence to Herr Genscher's fist-banging in Maastricht, Europe has felt the brunt of the new American agenda in foreign policy. It was resentful but helpless when the United States resorted to covert action-with the support of Turkey and Germany-to smuggle arms into Croatia and Bosnia in violation of U.N. resolutions. Zimmermann's torpedoing of the EU Lisbon formula in 1992 started a trend that frustrated the Europeans, but they were helpless.
Cutileiro was embittered by the US action and accused Izetbegovic of reneging on the agreement. Had the Muslims not done so, he recalled in 1995, "the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less loss of life and land." Cutileiro also noted that the decision to renege on the signed agreement was not only Izetbegovic's, as he was encouraged to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by foreign mediators." This was echoed by Ambassador Bissett, who has opined that the United States undermined every peace initiative that might have prevented the killing: "It appeared that the United States was determined to pursue a policy that prevented a resolution of the conflict by other than violent means."
More than a decade after the event it cannot be denied that Warren Zimmermann's role in Bosnia's descent to war was crucial. In early 1992 most Muslims were prepared to accept a compromise that would fall short of full independence-especially if full independence risked war-but he encouraged Izetbegovic to take a leap in the dark.
Zimmermann's subsequent role as an advocate of a military intervention on the side of the Muslims was seedy but predictable; ditto the lies, half-truths and distortions contained in his book on the Yugoslav conflict (Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers). The Washington Times was wrong when it claimed in an otherwise insightful piece that the Lisbon agreement "was scuttled by hapless Mr. Zimmermann, who encouraged [Izetbegovic] ... to reverse himself and withdraw." In reality there was nothing "hapless" about Zimmermann's action. It was as coldly premeditated, and as tragic in its consequences, as Bismarck's game with the Ems telegram in 1870, or William Walker's stage-managed "massacre" at Racak in January 1999, or Albright's cynical setup at Rambouillet a month later. No doubt when these two "eloquent defenders of human rights" meet their maker the Secretary of State of the day will also assure us that their passing is "a great loss to American diplomacy and to our State Department family."
-------- britain
British officers knew on eve of war that Iraq had no WMDs
FRASER NELSON and JASON BEATTIE,
Friday, 6th February 2004
Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=518&id=136082004
BRITISH intelligence officers learned on the eve of the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had not assembled his chemical weapons and it was highly doubtful if he could deploy any within 45 minutes.
The Foreign Office yesterday admitted that the joint intelligence committee (JIC) warned in March last year that "the intelligence on the timing of when Iraq might use chemical and biological weapons was sparse".
This disclosure came as a senior Israeli politician claimed that Mossad, its intelligence agency, knew before the war that the 45-minute claim was "an old wives' tale" - but decided against telling Britain or the United States.
In a further blow to the British government, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, has said he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons.
The events unfolded as Lord Butler of Brockwell, a former head of the civil service, was asked by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, to lead a six-month investigation into whether British intelligence was accurate in the run up to the war.
The Foreign Office yesterday released its official response to the Commons intelligence and security committee - admitting that the confidence behind No10's dossier in September 2002 had fast eroded. The JIC's report in March 2003, which came as British and US troops were lining the Iraqi border ahead of invasion, added that "intelligence on deployment" of chemical and biological weapons "was sparse".
It said: "Intelligence indicating that chemical weapons remained disassembled and that Saddam had not yet ordered their assembly was highlighted."
It also said that the 750km range al-Hussein ballistic missiles, which it had warned could reach British bases in Cyprus, "remained disassembled and that it would take several days to assemble them".
No 10 said it believed yesterday's disclosures by the Foreign Office had no impact on the case for war made in its September 2002 dossier, even though Mr Blair had told MPs that some of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons were ready to fire "within 45 minutes of an order to do so". The Scotsman yesterday detailed how this heavily drew on old CIA reports.
The tight terms of reference outlined by the government yesterday for an inquiry into British intelligence dismayed the Liberal Democrats, who refused to take up the place they were offered on the committee in protest.
Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem defence spokesman, said: "This deals neither with the workings of government nor with the political decision making."
Michael Howard, the Tory leader, said the Lib Dems have misunderstood the arrangement, which he sees as an opportunity to steer the new inquiry towards No10.
"I am confident that these terms of reference cover the use made by the government of the intelligence," he said. "Indeed, I was told that was what the Prime Minister wanted them to do."
No10, however, flatly disagreed. "This committee is not a substitute for Cabinet government and for parliament, and for decisions taken by elected politicians," said Mr Blair's official spokesman.
Yossi Sarid, a member of Israel's foreign affairs and defence committee, said yesterday Mossad knew Saddam's regime was in disarray. "It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," he said. "Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have."
----
What we were told, what we know now and the unresolved issues
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
06 February 20047
Independent (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=488330
Michael Howard, the Tory leader,called yesterday for Tony Blair to resign after the Prime Minister admitted that he did not know the Government's claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes referred simply to battlefield munitions.
As Mr Howard labelled Mr Blair's failure to ask key questions about the intelligence "a gross dereliction of duty", Downing Street revealed that Mr Blair did not know the truth until the summer, after the military conflict. Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, said he knew, and said the reason he had not told the Prime Minister was that there was no point of controversy about it.
The 45-minute claim appeared in the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's capabilities and inferred that the chemical and biological weapons could be delivered by long-range missiles. It prompted newspaper headlines suggesting British interests in Cyprus were at risk. The Government did nothing to correct that impression.
Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD at the Ministry of Defence, said this week that there was widespread disquiet in the intelligence community over the representation of the claim. The controversy, which the Government hoped had been lanced after Lord Hutton exonerated it last week, is gathering pace.
WHAT WE WERE TOLD
The Government's dossier, published in September 2002, cited the 45-minute claim no fewer than four times. It was deemed so important to Tony Blair's case that it was highlighted in his own foreword, in the executive summary and twice in the body of the text.
The wording varied slightly, but the strongest formulation was in the body of the text: "The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so."
Mr Blair's own use of the phrase came almost immediately after claims about the threat posed by Saddam's ballistic missile programme. He made it clear it was the basis for his belief that Iraq was a "serious and current threat".
Mr Blair followed up with a speech to Parliament on the same day in which he again underlined the 45-minute claim. The dossier concludes, he said, "that Saddam ... has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons which could be activated within 45 minutes".
That afternoon, the Evening Standard's headline shouted "45 MINUTES FROM ATTACK", with a photo of ballistic missiles that could be used to attack long-range targets.
The next day, The Sun had the headline "45 MINUTES FROM DOOM". The story began: "British servicemen and tourists in Cyprus could be annihilated by germ warfare missiles launched by Iraq, it was revealed yesterday. They could thud into the Mediterranean island within 45 MINUTES".
WHAT WE KNOW NOW
MI6 first received a so-called CX report, containing raw intelligence, on 29 August.
Thanks to Andrew Gilligan's report in May last year, we learned that the intelligence came in late and was single-sourced. The Hutton inquiry discovered that David Kelly had been the source for both of these claims.
It later emerged that the information had been relayed by an Iraqi general to an exiled Iraqi opposition activist described as "reliable" by MI6.
The raw intelligence was translated into a formal assessment by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on 5 September which was then revised on 9 September. "Intelligence indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20-45 minutes," the final assessment read.
The Intelligence and Security Committee, the only parliamentary body to have looked at the raw intelligence and the assessments, concluded last year that the wording "did not precisely reflect the intelligence provided" by MI6.
"The JIC did not know precisely which munitions could be deployed from where to where and the context of the intelligence was not included ... this omission was then reflected in the 24 September dossier."
Worse still, the MPs discovered that the claim was assessed by some in MI6 to refer to short-range munitions and not long-range missiles.
The report said: "The claim ... was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before. As the 45-minutes claim was new ... the context of the intelligence and any assessment needed to be explained." The battlefield context "should have been highlighted in the dossier".
The Hutton inquiry also shed more light on the claim. We learned that Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, biological and chemical branch of the MoD's Defence Intelligence Staff, had formally complained to his bosses that he and his staff could not accept its inclusion, as worded, in the dossier.
The Government obviously wanted the dossier to make waves. We learnt that Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, sent an e-mail to Alastair Campbell, No 10's former director of communications, asking "What will the headline be in the Standard? ... What do we want it to be?"
We also discovered that Mr Campbell had been responsible for the claim in the body of the text being strengthened. An early draft of the dossier stated that the Iraqi military "may be able" to deploy the weapons in 45 minutes. Following an e-mail from Mr Campbell to John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, the sentence was changed to "are able" to deploy.
Mr Blair, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and a raft of ministers said yesterday that the claim was not important. But the headlines in two of Britain's most influential papers ensured the public had a stark impression of the dossier's 45-minutes point. Furthermore, it now appears that the reason Mr Blair subsequently dropped the claim on the eve of war was because he was told that MI6 suggested it referred to battlefield weapons.
Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary, revealed in his diaries that he had a conversation about Saddam's arsenal with Mr Blair on 5 March. Mr Cook had been briefed by MI6 that Iraq had no WMD in the sense that they could strike strategic cities. But it probably had "several thousand battlefield chemical munitions" and Mr Cook asked if Mr Blair worried they would be used against British troops. Mr Blair's response was: "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly to use." So Mr Blair did appear to know on the eve of war that the 45-minute claim was groundless and had been advised that it referred to battlefield weapons.
Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, said to Lord Hutton that the 45-minutes claim had been given "undue prominence" in the dossier.
UNRESOLVED ISSUES
The credibility of the Iraqi general and the Iraq opposition activist who relayed the 45-minutes intelligence must be in serious question. American intelligence experts were highly suspicious of information coming from exiles in the US and the UK because they were so desperate to oust Saddam.
Dr Jones has called on the Government to publish the intelligence submitted to MI6, not just on 45 minutes but also on claims that Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons. He suggested that only then would the public see just how threadbare intelligence was.
It is unclear why Mr Hoon failed to tell Mr Blair that the claim related to battlefield weapons. Mr Hoon has mysteriously forgotten exactly when he was first made "aware" of the headlines and when exactly he asked about it.
Mr Hoon says there was no public controversy about the 45-minute point but that is because no one knew the claim was controversial. It was only after Mr Gilligan's report and Dr Kelly's suicide that light was shone on the whole area.
Is Mr Blair again distancing himself from the intelligence services in the hope of scapegoating them over the fact that WMD have not been found?
If Mr Blair did not know about the battlefield point in September 2002, he has to explain why he didn't ask his intelligence chiefs what it referred to. Troops were massing at the time. Was it a slip of the tongue that led Mr Blair to tell MPs that he didn't know the battlefield point on 18 March?
Military chiefs repeatedly told former ministers that they didn't feel Iraq posed an imminent threat. No one in the Government has answered the obvious point that Saddam could not have used any weapons against Western targets or Israel because nuclear retaliation would be swift.
Most crucial, why does Mr Blair insist that the 45-minute point was not important? Dr Jones has made the point that the claim is one of the few in the dossier that declares that WMD existed. The only other clear claim that WMD existed was the equally controversial intelligence that Saddam continued to produced chemical weapons.
----
Citing Arms, Tory Leader Says Blair Should Quit
February 6, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/europe/06BRIT.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, Feb. 5 - The leader of Britain's Conservative Party, Michael Howard, called on Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday to resign, charging that Mr. Blair had failed to ask fundamental questions about Saddam Hussein's weapons before taking the country into war.
Mr. Howard's assault on Mr. Blair came after the prime minister's admission in Parliament on Wednesday that he was unaware that intelligence suggesting Mr. Hussein could activate chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes referred to short-range battlefield weapons, not to strategic weapons that could threaten British and American forces in nearby countries.
Though Mr. Howard's challenge is not yet a serious political threat to Mr. Blair, whose Labor Party has a commanding position in Parliament, it suggests that the Tory leadership senses vulnerability in the record of prewar decision-making Mr. Blair laid out this week. As a new inquiry is getting under way to examine how intelligence was used in the period leading up to the war, Mr. Howard's call for Mr. Blair's resignation could also stir new rebellion within the prime minister's party. In any case, it was another indicator that Mr. Blair's political troubles are not yet over.
Mr. Blair's defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, appeared before a parliamentary defense committee Thursday to try to contain the criticism over Mr. Blair's admission. Mr. Hoon said that while he had personally inquired in his department for a clarification of what kind of weapons could be activated in 45 minutes, when he received the answer that it referred to short-range weapons he did not pass it on to Mr. Blair, and Mr. Blair made no inquiry of his own about it.
"It was not a significant issue," Mr. Hoon asserted.
Mr. Howard, traveling to Portsmouth on Thursday, told reporters: "I am accepting what the prime minister told us at face value: he said he never knew, he never bothered to ask this question. If I were prime minister and I had failed to ask that basic question before committing our country to war, I would be seriously considering my position."
Asked if that meant he was calling on Mr. Blair to resign, he replied, "Yes."
----
MPs back motion for Britain to report US for arming Saddam
IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent
February 06 2004
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/9438-print.shtml
A cross-party group of 78 MPs has signed an early day motion calling on the British government to report the United States to the UN Security Council for supplying lethal toxins to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. The motion, tabled by Austin Mitchell, Labour MP for Great Grimsby, lists evidence drawn from the US Senate's own archives that the White House approved the transfer of samples of anthrax, botulism and other biowar-capable substances in breach of the Geneva biological and toxin weapons convention.
Between 1985 and 1990, the US government granted licences for the export of 771 "dual use" items worth more than £1bn, including chemicals used for manufacturing mustard gas and hi-tech components for military communications and guidance systems.
The senate archives record that none of the biological samples sent to Iraq's various ministries for "research purposes" had been attenuated or weakened and were capable of being reproduced at full strength for warfare purposes.
Saddam used chemical munitions on enemy troops during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict and killed 5000 Kurdish civilians with mustard gas at Halabja in northern Iraq in 1988.
Sam Gejdenson, a former chairman of the US house sub-committee on foreign affairs, said: "The US spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam had almost whatever he wanted. We continued to approve this equipment until just a few weeks before he invaded Kuwait in 1991."
Mr Mitchell's motion "requests the UK government to exercise its power to report these sales to the UN Security Council."
Early day motions (EDMs) are tabled to allow back-bench MPs to express their opinions on particular subjects and to canvass support for their views. As a general rule, the EDMs can only be debated if they receive the support of more than half of all MPs.
Mr Mitchell's EDM 300 will remain valid for a year to allow time for him to gather the 330 signatures he needs. He already has the backing of Glenda Jackson, Sir Teddy Taylor, George Galloway, Dennis Skinner and Frank Dobson among many prominent figures in parliament.
The full extent of America's clandestine support for Saddam in his war with Iran was first revealed by Senator Donald Riegle, who coined the phrase "Gulf war syndrome" and linked it with experimental inoculations on allied troops in 1991.
-------- business
Halliburton to Counter Critics With Commercial Ad
Says Iraq Contracts Were Deserved
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17593-2004Feb5.html
Halliburton Co. fired back at its political critics yesterday, introducing a television commercial that declares it was awarded lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts "because of what we do, not who we know."
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said in a statement that the ad, which features Halliburton chief executive David J. Lesar, addresses "misstatements and wrong information put forward recently in the presidential political campaigns." She declined to comment on where the ad would appear or how much the company is spending on the marketing campaign.
"We are clearing up the record," she said in the statement. "We are very good at what we do, and we have done it for 60 years for both Republican and Democratic administrations."
Democratic presidential contenders Howard Dean, John Kerry and Al Sharpton have criticized the Houston-based company, where Vice President Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000, after reports that the Pentagon was probing possible overcharges on its contracts in Iraq. Kerry, for example, accused the company in December of "shameful war profiteering." Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who dropped out of the running this week, has called for a special investigation.
Halliburton and its KBR unit have been fighting such allegations for months, first on costly gasoline imports into Iraq and most recently for dining hall meals that a subcontractor never served. Without admitting wrongdoing, the company has agreed to refund the government $33.4 million.
The new ad opens with Lesar saying, "You've heard a lot of Halliburton lately. Criticism is okay. We can take it. Criticism is not a failure. Our employees are doing a great job. We're feeding the soldiers. We're rebuilding Iraq. Will things go wrong? Sure they will. It's a war zone. But when they do we'll fix it. We always have -- for 60 years for both political parties."
Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said such advertising campaigns rarely work. "It's a noble effort but you can't imagine it will be very effective. Even in the best of times, advertising is difficult. But when you're putting forth a point of view that is controversial and self-serving, it's met with a skeptical view."
--------
Navy Contract Hurts EDS Earnings;
Firm Takes $559 Million Charge
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17143-2004Feb5.html
A costly outsourcing contract with the Navy continues to afflict Electronic Data Systems Corp., which reported a $354 million quarterly loss yesterday.
The Plano, Tex., company took a charge of $559 million to write down costs it does not expect to recoup building the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, a massive network linking computer users in both military branches. The $6.9 billion contract, which requires EDS to make a large upfront investment in computer hardware, software and time, has been weighing on the company's results for several years.
EDS said it is working closely with the Navy to hold down costs on the contract and announced a series of measures to increase management's supervision and decrease the risk of further losses.
"We are continuing to put EDS's house in order," said chief executive Michael H. Jordan.
Yesterday's loss compares with a profit of $360 million for the same period last year. Revenue rose to $5.8 billion from $5.5 billion a year ago. The half-billion-dollar charge for the contract is the second EDS has taken; it took a $334 million charge early last year.
"At this point, the contract is so problematic that if they can get the money out, people will be happy," said Joseph A. Vafi, an analyst for Jefferies & Co. in San Francisco. He added that it is still unclear whether the contract will ever be profitable.
As part of the plan to stop the cash hemorrhage, EDS said it will delay the final installation of the system at military bases. That will control costs, Vafi said, but it also means that EDS will eventually get less cash out of the contract than originally projected. Vafi said EDS told analysts yesterday that the contract will return about $1 billion less in cash over the life of the contract. Also, EDS said the team overseeing the Navy contract will now report directly to the president and chief operating officer, Jeffery M. Heller.
Natalie A. Walrond, an analyst for Pacific Growth Equities LLC in San Francisco, described the EDS results as "very negative."
EDS stock closed at $23.29 yesterday, up 22 cents. Fourth-quarter results were released after the market closed.
-------- china
Beijing Urges Bush to Act to Forestall Taiwan Vote
February 6, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/asia/06TAIW.html?pagewanted=all
BEIJING, Feb. 5 - China is putting pressure on the Bush administration to intervene more decisively to prevent Taiwan from holding a referendum on relations with the mainland, calling the planned vote a "dangerous provocation" that could lead to a confrontation.
Beijing sent a mission to Washington this week to urge the United States to take more concrete steps to rein in Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said. Mr. Chen has repeatedly played down statements from President Bush and the State Department expressing opposition to the referendum plan.
The Chinese effort reflects growing concern in Beijing that the Taiwan problem is becoming more acute, even though Mr. Chen recently softened the language of his proposed referendum and offered to resume talks with China if he wins re-election on March 20. Some officials and analysts are alarmed that Mr. Chen has pushed ahead with the plebiscite despite American opposition.
A Foreign Ministry official, who declined to be identified by name, said a request for more active intervention was conveyed to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who visited Beijing late last week. The official said a further appeal to the United States to take firmer steps to derail the referendum was relayed by Chen Yunlin, the head of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council, or cabinet, who met State Department officials in Washington this week.
Asking the United States to play an intermediary role with Taiwan breaks a longstanding taboo in Beijing, where officials have often criticized Washington for meddling in relations between China and Taiwan. As such, it shows how limited China's options are for dealing with the matter, which some analysts here fear could lead to a military clash if its is not resolved soon.
"The United States has taken the right attitude toward the problem and realizes the motives of Chen Shui-bian," said Xu Bodong, an influential expert on Taiwan affairs in Beijing. "But American opposition has not been very firm and I'm afraid that this is leading to a serious misunderstanding in Taiwan."
The request puts the Bush administration in an awkward position. When Mr. Bush expressed his concern about Mr. Chen's referendum plan in December, during a visit to Washington by the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, he was criticized by neoconservatives and some pro-Taiwan members of Congress who maintain that the United States should support Taiwan against mainland China.
But the administration is determined to prevent a flare-up over Taiwan at a time when it is focused on Iraq. The administration is also depending heavily on China to help resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. Just this week, China announced that it had arranged a new round of multilateral talks involving North Korea to be held in Beijing beginning later this month.
It is unclear whether the Bush administration is willing to take tougher steps against Mr. Chen if he continues to pursue the referendum plan, as appears likely. The pro-Taiwan lobby in Washington firmly opposes Chinese calls to curtail arms sales to Taiwan and limit contacts between American and Taiwanese officials. Mr. Bush has greatly increased arms sales and allowed a broader range of official contacts.
At issue is Mr. Chen's plan to place questions on the March presidential ballot addressing Taiwan's ties with China. Under the current wording, voters would decide whether to increase military spending if China does not remove missiles aimed at Taiwan. A second question would ask whether voters favor opening negotiations with Beijing.
While the questions seem relatively innocuous, China has argued that Mr. Chen is trying to set a precedent of putting issues of sovereignty to a popular vote, potentially paving the way for a formal vote on Taiwanese independence. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to wage war to prevent independence.
The Bush administration, reiterating longstanding policy, says it opposes unilateral steps to disrupt the status quo, and has backed China's view that a referendum of the sort Mr. Chen has proposed would upset it.
Administration officials have stuck to that position despite repeated appeals from Taiwan, which has said that the referendum is not intended to alter the status quo. Mr. Armitage reiterated the administration's concerns during his visit to China last week, even after Mr. Chen revised the wording.
Chinese military officials this week described the revised referendum as a major challenge to Chinese sovereignty, signaling that the Beijing leadership could respond harshly if Taiwan refuses to back down.
A prominent article in this week's issue of Outlook, a weekly current affairs magazine, carried essays by two senior scholars with military rank, both of whom made clear that the military would treat Taiwan's insistence on holding the referendum as a step toward independence.
"Chen Shui-bian's persistence in pursuing this provocative referendum shows that he is absolutely dead set in going down the road of independence," Col. Luo Yuan of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences wrote. "He must not make a big miscalculation and mistake restraint for weakness."
Policy statements on sensitive topics like Taiwan cannot be published in major newspapers or magazines in China without high-level approval.
Yet Beijing is also eager to avoid steps that could end up strengthening Mr. Chen's bid for re-election and hurting his opponent, the Nationalist Party leader, Lien Chan. Mr. Lien says he favors improving relations with mainland China and has accused Mr. Chen of jeopardizing Taiwan's security by challenging Beijing to an unnecessary duel.
-------- iran
Iranian Council Refuses Again to Overturn Ban on Candidates
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17093-2004Feb5.html
ISTANBUL, Feb. 5 -- Hopes for a negotiated solution to Iran's seesawing electoral crisis crashed on Thursday when an appointed oversight panel again refused to reverse its disqualification of most reformist candidates seeking to run in parliamentary elections this month.
Under a compromise negotiated this week to salvage the legitimacy of the Feb. 20 vote, the Guardian Council -- a 12-member panel with the power to screen candidates and veto legislation -- was to have given rubber-stamp approval to about 600 candidates that it disqualified last month. Instead, the council approved 55.
"The council was required to forward that list to the Interior Ministry without any intervention," Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of Iran's largest reformist party and brother of Iran's elected president, told reporters.
As a result, Khatami said, a pledge by reform parties to boycott the elections still stands. "The February 20th elections will not be legal and free," he said. "My party will not participate in this election."
Other reformers called the outcome a betrayal and evidence of "a parliamentary coup," in the phrase of a joint statement issued by lawmakers.
The latest developments brought the conflict back to where it began more than three weeks ago, when the Guardian Council rejected 3,600 of 8,000 candidates for the 290-seat legislature, including more than 80 incumbents.
That was more than five times the rejection rate of the previous election cycle, when reformers won a landslide victory and took control of parliament. Over the next four years, however, most of the lawmakers' efforts to loosen the grip of the religious state on Iranians' lives were thwarted by the conservative clerics who control the appointed institutions that outrank the elected government in Iran's theocratic system.
The stalemate steadily eroded public interest in politics. Even before the disqualification flap, the prospect of low voter turnout gave the conservatives hope of recapturing control and perhaps even the presidency, which comes open in 2005.
But the boldness of the Guardian Council -- with the apparent acquiescence of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- has recast every scenario, analysts said.
The question now is whether elections will even take place. All 28 of Iran's governors have disavowed administering ballots that they consider illegal. Officials of the Interior Ministry, which has federal responsibility for running the election, have issued similar warnings. Both groups have offered resignations to President Mohammad Khatami, who has all but vanished from the scene this week.
More than 120 lawmakers have already resigned, handing in their resignations in a display of communal sacrifice that appeared to stir Tehran residents who had watched daily sit-ins and other reformist protests with only mild interest.
Meanwhile, Khamenei, who holds ultimate authority in Iran, insisted this week that the Feb. 20 elections would go forward. He also warned officials against refusing to administer it in a stern speech before an audience of hard-liners chanting warnings of their own.
-------- iraq
Doubts Grow About Accounts of Attack on Iraqi Ayatollah
February 6, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/middleeast/06CND-SIST.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 - The American military has learned from people close to Iraq's most powerful spiritual leader that accounts of an assassination attempt against him on Thursday were "a fabrication," a senior military official said today.
Contradictory reports about a possible attack on the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the southern holy city of Najaf continued to circulate throughout the country.
The American official said the military had no further information on how reports of an attack began. Early indications of an attack came from the spokesman for a prominent Iraqi politician and from security guards for the ayatollah, the reclusive leader of Iraq's 15 million Shiites.
The official added, though, that the American military did not have "eyes on the ground to say definitely what happened."
The politician, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said in a telephone interview today that he could not confirm or deny reports of an assassination attempt. On Thursday night, his spokesman, Ali al-Shapoot, said there had been an attack on the ayatollah, who is calling for immediate direct elections in Iraq against the wishes of the Bush administration.
Some security officials for Ayatollah Sistani also told news organizations on Thursday night that there was an attempt on the ayatollah's life. Radio Sawa, a regional station operated by the American government, reported earlier in the day that threats had been made against him, and that the cleric had moved to a safe location. The radio report was possibly the first public mention of a threat of some kind. Dr. Rubaie, a neurologist, said today that "an incident" had taken place on Thursday morning that involved Ayatollah Sistani. When Dr. Rubaie went to the cleric's small home in Najaf in the afternoon, he said, Ayatollah Sistani appeared "fit" and "not shaken."
"There was a heightened sense of security at his house," Dr. Rubaie said, adding that a small metal gate had been erected at the entrance to the narrow alleyway leading to the ayatollah's home.
The mouth of the alleyway, just blocks from the golden-domed shrine of Ali, one of the holiest pilgrimage sites for Shiites, is usually watched by a couple of plainclothes guards. Ayatollah Sistani, 73, rarely leaves his home. He occasionally receives worshipers, politicians and other religious leaders.
A reporter for The Associated Press who visited the alleyway today noted that there was nothing unusual there.
When asked how he learned about the incident, Mr. Rubaie said he did not want to answer and abruptly cut off the telephone interview.
There appeared to be some confusion today among Ayatollah Sistani's representatives as to what had happened the previous day. Early this morning, a man answering the telephone at the cleric's office in Najaf said reports of an attempted assassination were lies. Nooraddin Mousawi, the brother of the ayatollah's representative in Baghdad, said in an interview this afternoon that the Baghdad office could not confirm or deny whether there had been an attack and was awaiting word from Najaf.
Hamid al-Kaffaf, the ayatollah's representative in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera, the Arab-language television network, that no one from the ayatollah's office confirmed the assassination attempt. He said the ayatollah had increased security precautions in the last two weeks because the cleric's office had received "confused information" that there might be attacks.
He added that the people spreading rumors of the attack were trying to interfere with the pending visit of a United Nations team that is expected to assess the feasibility of direct elections for a transitional national assembly. Ayatollah Sistani has called for such elections by June 30, the date for the handover of Iraqi sovereignty, but he has said he might back down from his demands if the United Nations team says holding quick elections is impossible.
Dr. Rubaie said the ayatollah's office might be playing down the incident so Ayatollah Sistani would not be the focus for future attempts.
--------
Top Iraqi Cleric Said to Survive Attempt on Life
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15963-2004Feb5.html
BAGHDAD, Feb. 5 -- Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential religious leader, survived an assassination attempt Thursday in the sacred Shiite Muslim city of Najaf, an aide said.
The incident was shrouded in conflicting reports and denials, reflecting the intense interest that Iraqis and foreigners have in Sistani, a pivotal figure in the country's transition from U.S. occupation to Iraqi rule. The reclusive cleric serves as the supreme religious authority for Iraq's Shiites, who account for a majority of the country's 25 million people, and has emerged as a pivotal figure in its politics.
"Sayyid Sistani is very well and in very good health," said Jaffar Bassam, a representative of Sistani's office in London, referring to the ayatollah with an Arabic honorific.
Bassam, reached by telephone, said he could not confirm the attempt on Sistani's life and was awaiting more information. But a security official with Sistani's office in Najaf, who identified himself only as Abu Abdullah, said the attempt occurred between 11:30 a.m. and noon. Sistani, who has not appeared in public in more than six years, was outside of his home when he was fired on with AK-47 assault rifles, Abu Abdullah said.
A second official, Ali Waad, said four suspects were captured and that some people were wounded in an exchange of gunfire.
Residents in Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, said there was confusion in the streets over the circumstances of the attempt, and as the day wore on representatives from Shiite religious parties and Sistani's own officials denied that any incident had taken place. The confusion was heightened by conflicting reports carried on the local Najaf television station. At 7 p.m., Ghadeer Television broadcast a message congratulating Sistani on his safety. Two hours later, the station carried a denial that there had been an attempt on his life.
Thursday afternoon, after the assassination attempt was said to have occurred, Sistani received guests at his home. Among them was Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council and a frequent visitor of Sistani's, who said the ayatollah was "safe and sound." A spokesman for Rubaie, Ali Shabout, said in Baghdad that Sistani had been moved to a "safe place" in Iraq for "security reasons."
An attempt to kill Sistani could have far-reaching repercussions in Iraq. By far the most influential figure among Shiites, he nevertheless faces resentment within more radical Shiite currents. The most prominent among them is led by Moqtada Sadr, a junior cleric whose father vied with Sistani for influence before being assassinated in 1999. As Iraq begins devising a post-occupation government, differences between the country's major groups -- Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds, who are also Sunnis -- have sharpened, and some Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders have voiced worries over the implications of Sistani's growing influence.
If confirmed, the assassination attempt would be at least the third on the 73-year-old religious leader and the first since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April. Sistani's aides have said the most serious attempt on his life occurred in 1997, when two men in turbans entered his office before evening prayers. Before Sistani appeared, they opened fire with pistols hidden in bags, killing a worker who served tea and wounding another assistant. The assailants then fled.
Since then, Sistani is not known to have left his home, a two-story brick building down a winding alley near the Imam Ali Shrine, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred sites. Since soon after the war, armed guards have been posted at the entrance to the alley, which is blocked by a metal barricade. Located near hotels for Shiite pilgrims, a bookstore and barbershops, the office is unmarked except for leaflets pledging support for Sistani's political demands.
Through most of his career, Sistani has rigorously eschewed politics, avoiding a fate that befell dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other more assertive clerics during Hussein's rule. But in the vacuum that ensued after Hussein's fall, Sistani has delivered religious judgments with sweeping political implications.
In June, he insisted that the body writing Iraq's constitution must be elected, forcing the U.S. administration to scrap its original plan for a political transition. He then objected to the alternative, announced Nov. 15, that outlined a series of caucuses in Iraq's 18 provinces that would choose representatives for a transitional assembly. That body would, in turn, choose a provisional government that would take power by June 30, formally ending the U.S. occupation.
But in December, Sistani said that any assembly must be elected by a direct, nationwide vote. His calls brought tens of thousands of supporters into the streets of Iraq's two largest cities last month. Both Sistani and the U.S. administration are now awaiting the findings of a U.N. mission charged with determining whether elections are possible and, if not, devising alternatives.
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Plan to Transfer Power In Iraq May Shift Drastically
By Colum Lynch and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17262-2004Feb5.html
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 -- The U.S. plan to hand over power in Iraq is increasingly likely to undergo major changes rather than merely "refinements" because of increasing skepticism about the June 30 deadline for creating a provisional government and erosion of support for the proposal to use caucuses to select it, according to senior U.S. and U.N. officials.
The Bush administration still publicly clings to its transition plan, but a U.N. team scheduled to arrive in Iraq as early as Friday has been given a free hand to present its own blueprint for the country's political transition if it determines elections cannot be held by June in Iraq, U.S. and U.N. officials said.
In a sign of their growing anxiety, U.S. officials have also crafted some dramatically new ideas, in the hope of bringing a smooth conclusion to the struggling occupation. The list has been shared with the United Nations, the officials added.
One option is extending the June 30 deadline for installing an Iraqi government to allow enough time for the direct elections demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading cleric. There is already talk about a hypothetical extension to Jan. 1, 2005.
This could mean that the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority would stay longer, which could carry political costs for President Bush in an election year and anger Iraqis who want an end to foreign occupation, U.S. officials conceded.
In a reflection of the full range of options on the table, another alternative is to end the occupation as planned on June 30 but to delay the selection of a provisional government until direct elections can be held. In that scenario, the authority would turn over power to an interim body, possibly by expanding the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council to make it large enough to serve as a national assembly, or by calling a national conference of Iraqi leaders -- similar to the loya jirga in Afghanistan -- to select a sovereign body to rule until elections, U.S. officials said.
The original plan agreed to on Nov. 15 calls for 18 regional caucuses to select a national assembly that would then pick a leadership and cabinet. But the plan was quickly challenged by Sistani, leading the administration to offer to consider "refinements." Now, however, the proposal is so widely questioned and already so delayed that U.S. officials concede much more will have to be done to salvage it.
"We are now open to enough refinements that the transition plan is not necessarily going to look like a caucus or act like a caucus when it eventually happens," an administration official said. "But we have to have a handoff, and working out that part is tricky. And there's no consensus yet on an alternative."
A well-placed U.S. official said the issue is so sensitive that it has become a "radioactive topic."
Bush told Annan at a meeting this week in Washington that he is committed to the current deadline. But a senior State Department official said that United States is now willing to let the United Nations determine what will work.
"We [have] enough respect for the U.N. that we know it may present options that are not June 30," the official said. "We're still thinking about making June 30 -- and not not making June 30. And we've conveyed that to the U.N. . . . But we can't rule out that they may come back with something different about what we can do by June 30 or by another date."
The United States is "open" to almost any option leading to a political transition that has broad Iraqi support, said one U.N. official who tracks the issue. "We are looking at the whole plan, the whole transition right now," the official said. "There are no restrictions. What they have didn't work, so we have to try something else. The caucuses cannot be fixed."
The Bush administration's decision to grant the United Nations the authority to negotiate the terms of Iraq's political transition marks the third time in a year that it has been forced to redraw the map for Iraq's political future.
The United States appointed the Iraqi Governing Council last summer to lead the country's transition to self-rule. Facing criticism from within Iraq that the group was not sufficiently representative to form a credible government, U.S. authorities shifted gears, reaching an agreement with council members on Nov. 15 to hold caucuses to select a provisional government.
That plan has come under attack by Sistani, who said it would exclude too many Iraqis from the political process. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, reversed course again, asking U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at a Jan. 19 meeting in New York to send a team to Iraq to broker a deal pledging to abide by it.
Annan said Wednesday that the new team will reconsider the prospects for elections or see whether "we can refine the caucus system or come up with any other option that will be acceptable to the Iraqis."
Senior U.N. officials said that the team will remain in Iraq for up to 10 days and try to arrange a meeting with Sistani and other ethnic, religious and tribal leaders. It will return to New York to present Annan with the findings.
One senior U.N. official noted that the United Nations is not seeking to sell to the Iraqis a specific plan for a political transition.
The U.N. team "will genuinely be going in with an open mind," the official said, adding that there are no "predetermined outcomes" on how the country's political transition would proceed. "We will want to take a hard look at elections and a hard look at alternatives and would want to know what Iraqis think."
Wright reported from Washington.
-------- israel / palestine
When Israelis say, 'Hell no, we won't go'
By Bradley Burston,
Haaretz Correspondent
Fri., February 06, 2004 Shvat 14, 5764
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=390807&displayTypeCd=1&sideCd=1&contrassID=2
Its simply chilling name has a distinct ring of George Orwell, but when the army of the one of the world's most military-conscious nations creates a conscience committee, nothing is that simple. It has been eight years since the IDF conscience committee was set up. But the need for a such a body has deepened dramatically amid the moral complexities of the war in the territories and a consequent steep rise in the awareness of the pilots, elite commandos, grunts and draftees who have come forward - some quietly, some openly - to say that hell no, they won't go.
Although pacifism and refusal to serve have been in evidence since Israel was born in war in 1948, the issue has always been of extreme sensitivity in a country in which formally universal military service has left an indelible mark on the development of language and culture, on the conduct of commerce, and on the vocabulary and practice of statecraft.
The issue came to the fore once again this week, as the army continued to struggle in myriad ways with its relationship to its "sarbanim," a term ill-rendered into English as "refuseniks."
Refusal to serve, and attitudes toward those who refuse, have long functioned as a sensitive barometer of Israeli society as a whole. When Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit), a movement of sarbanim, arose during then-defense minister Ariel Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, those who refused to fight in protest over the controversial war were widely condemned as traitors, their manhood was questioned, and their act was interpreted as granting aid, comfort and encouragement to Israel's enemies.
Clearly, in the interim, and especially in the three years of the war in the territories, something has changed.
"When you speak to the young, you see that for them, refusal has become an option," says Haaretz commentator Lily Galili. "This one wants to be a pilot, and this one wants to refuse. It is nearly the same level of choice - either this or that.
"This legitimacy seen in the act of refusal is something new in Israeli society," Galili says.
If the climate has changed, many of the arguments against refusal have not. As in 1982, when members of Peace Now took a "serve now, protest later" position that included reserve duty in Lebanon interspersed with participation in anti-war demonstrations at home, many leftists oppose refusal on principle.
Their arguments are many, including the strong impact that individual officers and soldiers have on the moral behavior of the army as a whole, especially in their contact with, and treatment of, Palestinian civilians.
They note that in many areas of the territories, the IDF effectively operates as an amalgam of countless local militias, whose behavior can be exemplary or execrable, depending on the attitudes and actions of on-site commanders and troops.
Leftist opponents of refusal have also voiced fears that if the government undertakes wholesale evacuations of settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, right-wing soldiers could embrace refusal as well, declaring their opposition to participating in any action aimed at harming settlements.
Apart from Arab legislators, only two leftist Knesset members have gone on record as supporting refusal: Zehava Gal-On and Roman Bronfman, both of Meretz.
At the same time, the wider left, led by academics and some political activists, as well as the public at large, have softened their former blanket opposition to refusal. "A majority still opposes refusal, but there has begun to be a recognition of a democratic right to refuse, a difference in nuance, but a difference nonetheless," says Galili.
"People say that they view the phenomenon of refusal as dangerous, but that they understand that the right exists in a democratic society."
That right has increasingly been put to the test.
At the outset of the intifada, when Ehud Barak's Labor government broke historical precedent by sending battle tanks and helicopter gunships to attack Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza, there was a sharp rise in the number of Israelis declaring their refusal to serve in the territories.
It has been argued that the refusal movement was later blunted by the spate of suicide bombings aimed at the hearts of cities in Israel proper.
But the course of refusal can more accurately be described as cyclical, with a number of peaks, such as during the 2002 Defensive Shield operation in the West Bank, Galili observes.
More recently, the issues raised by refusal, and the sensitivity to its possible consequences, riveted the Jewish state when 27 Israel Air Force pilots signed a letter of protest declaring that they would no longer participate in targeted assassinations. The air strikes, while directed at terror warlords, have claimed large numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties.
The army said this week that of the 27 pilots, 15 no longer do reserve duty, two or three have retracted their public declarations, and the remainder have been dismissed from reserve duty.
In late December, 13 reserve soldiers and officers in the army's ultra-prestigious Sayeret Matkal unit signed a letter declaring their refusal to serve in the territories.
"We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians," read the letter addressed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "and we will no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise."
On Wednesday, Yoni Ben-Artzi, convicted of refusing an order to enlist in the IDF, was summoned to appear for a fourth time before the conscience committee, charged by the army with determining the sincerity of potential conscripts who refuse to serve on the grounds of pacifism.
Formally, Israeli law as interpreted by Supreme Court decisions recognizes across-the-board pacifism as grounds for refusing army service. The conscience committee has been little inclined to accept claims of pacifism as genuine, however. In eight years, out of some 180 applicants to the committee, only six have been recognized as pacifists.
Although the great majority of conscience hearings have been held without public notice, the Ben-Artzi case has received particular attention, as the defendant's aunt is Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sara.
The military tribunal that convicted Ben-Artzi included in its ruling a rare and acrid criticism of the conscience committee, which had accepted a military prosecutor's description of Ben-Artzi as having "feigned pacifism."
A year ago, in response to criticism by the High Court of Justice, a civilian - a philosopher by profession - was added to the formerly all-military panel.
Much more common than youths who declare themselves pacifists are those who choose selective refusal. These fall into two general categories. The first are those who are willing to serve in the army, but refuse to serve in the territories. The second refuse to be conscripted at all unless and until the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza comes to an end.
The army this week ordered that five youths in the latter category, who have served more than a year in military prisons, be transferred to a civilian prison, a step that their lawyers and parents have hotly contested, disputing the army's claims that the sarbanim are dangerous, and arguing instead that it is the civilian jail that holds the most danger.
By far the most widespread form of the phenomenon is entirely unrecognized by army statistics, Galili says. This is "gray refusal," in which sarbanim quietly find means within the army to serve as they choose. This category may include transfers or changes of role within the IDF, or military discharges or exemptions for youths and reservists declared "inappropriate for service."
IDF Major General Gil Regev, head of the army's personnel division, sparked controversy this week when he testified before a Knesset committee on the issue of refusal, which he acknowleged had spread over the past three years.
Taking as his unit of measure the number of soldiers jailed for refusal, Regev said Tuesday that there had been a marked drop in refusal over the past year. In 2002, 100 reservists and 29 officers were sentenced to jail terms for refusing to serve in the territories.
Last year, by contrast, only 18 reserve officers and eight officers did jail time for comparable refusal, Regev said.
The figures were quickly and hotly disputed, however, in part because they did not reflect the fact, acknowledged by Regev, that many individual soldiers have discreetly received consent from their commanders to be relieved of specific duties or transferred away from duty in the territories.
The Yesh Gvul organization, which backs sarbanim, countered that Regev's figures were plain wrong. According to the group, the army jailed a total of 76 people, 11 of them officers.
The group also said that said that 79 soldiers and 18 officers had added their names to the Courage to Refuse [service in the territories] letter in 2003, and that the number of high-school sarbanim had risen to 500.
Has the phenomenon of refusal had a substantive impact on Israeli policymaking, and of the conduct of the war and the occupation?
The question is a difficult one to answer definitively. However, Galili states, "Over the recent period, we have all taken notice that there have been fewer 'liquidations' [assassination missions] launched by the air force.
"Under no circumstances can I state a cause-and-effect relationship as a result of the pilots' letter, but in practice there has been a drop."
--------
Sharon May Shift Gaza Strip Settlers to the West Bank
February 6, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/middleeast/06CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Feb. 6 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may seek to move settlers from the Gaza Strip to settlements in the West Bank under his plan for "unilateral disengagement" from the Palestinians, officials in his office said today.
The idea underscores that Mr. Sharon envisions a swap of sorts - giving up most of the Gaza Strip, but holding on to large chunks of the West Bank.
Mr. Sharon argues that, with Tel Aviv in sight of some West Bank towns, Israelis would be in danger if Israel turned over the West Bank, which, like Gaza, it occupied in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
Palestinian officials contend that they could not build a viable state in Gaza and a West Bank broken up by blocs of Israeli settlements.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that any proposal to move settlers from Gaza to the West Bank "undermines the basic foundation of peace." He added, "The settlements in the West Bank are as much an obstacle to peace as the settlements in Gaza."
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that Mr. Sharon would seek American approval to expand West Bank settlements, which he will argue are sure to be annexed by Israel as part of any eventual peace deal.
Successive American administrations have resisted Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Gaza as impeding peace. Under the peace initiative sponsored by the Bush administration, the road map, Israel is supposed to halt settlement growth, while the Palestinians are supposed to begin dismantling militant groups.
The peace initiative calls for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in 2005, defined by borders negotiated between the two sides.
But no substantive negotiations are under way, and Mr. Sharon argues that the Palestinian leadership has not proved a credible partner in bilateral arrangements or talks. Palestinian officials say that Mr. Sharon is seeking to avoid negotiations for fear of having to yield too much territory.
Mr. Sharon says he will pursue his unilateral plan only once he judges that the road map has failed. His associates say his plan could go into action over the summer.
Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, said he told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during a meeting on Thursday that Mr. Sharon's plan would not replace a peace deal creating a Palestinian state.
Instead, he told Israel Radio, "We see this as part of the implementation of the understanding acceptable to both us and the Americans." He called it a "station along the way" to a final agreement.
Mr. Sharon proposes evacuating up to 17 of the 20 Gaza settlements, as well as some isolated settlements in the West Bank. The barrier Israel is now building against West Bank Palestinians would then separate the two populations, according to this plan.
About 7,500 Israeli settlers live in fortified enclaves in the Gaza Strip, among more than 1.2 million Palestinians. In the West Bank, about 230,000 settlers live in 125 settlements, among more than 2 million Palestinians.
In the past, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have explored the idea of exchanging territory occupied by some of the large settlements for similar amounts of land inside Israel.
--------
Bribery Inquiry May Impede Sharon's Gaza Pullout Plan
February 6, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/middleeast/06MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Feb. 5 - The Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon here on Thursday as part of a bribery investigation that could impede his plan for "unilateral disengagement" from the Palestinians and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The investigation, into whether an Israeli developer bought Mr. Sharon's influence to advance a project in Greece, has been under way for months, and Mr. Sharon has been questioned before. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The investigation moved to the center of Israeli politics last month with the indictment of the developer, David Appel. He was charged with trying to bribe Mr. Sharon with about $700,000, most of it paid to Mr. Sharon's son, Gilad, whom he hired to consult on the project.
The indictment quoted Mr. Appel as telling Mr. Sharon that his son would make a lot of money. Justice officials are looking into whether there is evidence to indict Mr. Sharon and his son.
In a measure of the political strain the inquiry is now causing the prime minister, his announcement on Monday of plans to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip was seen by commentators across the political spectrum as an attempt to shift attention elsewhere. He denied any connection.
The continuing investigation, and news leaks, could weaken Mr. Sharon as he tries to accomplish his most difficult feat as prime minister: rallying domestic and international support to impose a separation plan on the Palestinians that would involve evacuating up to 17 settlements in Gaza and others in the West Bank.
Some leading members of his Likud Party have not announced whether they will support a possible evacuation. But Mr. Sharon received the backing on Thursday of his defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. Mr. Mofaz told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, "Evacuating the Gaza Strip would ensure greater security for Israeli residents than they have now."
That argument represents a stunning about-face for Likud politicians, who traditionally contended that settlements in Gaza were a cornerstone of Israeli security, and that to evacuate any while violence continued was to reward terrorism. Mr. Mofaz is not an elected member of the Israeli Parliament and owes his post in government to Mr. Sharon.
Mr. Sharon says that he will pursue his unilateral plan if he judges that the Bush administration's peace initiative, the road map, has failed. He says the governing Palestinian Authority has not proved itself a credible partner for negotiations.
Palestinian officials accuse him of deliberately undermining the Palestinian Authority to avoid negotiations that might force him to yield more territory.
Conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are increasingly chaotic. In Gaza on Thursday, four members of the Preventive Security force, which is controlled by Muhammad Dahlan, got into a dispute with the commander of the police, Ghazi al-Jabali. They attacked Mr. Jabali's headquarters with guns and at least one explosive, wounding 11 police officers in a gun battle that lasted 90 minutes, Palestinian officials said.
The Israeli inquiry - into what is known here, rather salaciously, as "the Greek island affair" - now dominates political gossip, particularly inside Mr. Sharon's Likud faction, where maneuvering is under way to succeed him.
It may be months before prosecutors decide whether or not to indict the prime minister. Mr. Sharon has said he will continue to serve "at least until 2007," when elections are scheduled.
One deputy minister in the government, Zvi Hendel, a Gaza settler and member of the ultranationalist National Union party, has said of a Gaza withdrawal, "The extent of the pullout will correspond to the depth of the investigation." Likud politicians and settlers have speculated that Mr. Sharon is seeking to curry favor with prosecutors, widely believed on Israel's right wing to be from the left.
Mr. Sharon was questioned at his official residence in Jerusalem for two and a half hours by at least four members of the International Criminal Investigations unit of the Israeli police. He cooperated fully, a police official said, adding that there were no plans now to question him again.
The indictment accused Mr. Appel of trying to bribe Mr. Sharon beginning in the late 1990's, when he was foreign minister in a previous government. But Mr. Appel told Channel Two television here on Wednesday that when Mr. Sharon was foreign minister, "he didn't know about anything that is tied to this, not from me at least."
-------- russia / chechnya
At Least 39 Killed in Bomb Blast in Moscow Subway
February 6, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/europe/06CND-BLAS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW, Feb. 6 - A bomb exploded inside a crowded subway train during the morning rush today, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 130 in what officials said was the latest in a series of terrorist attacks linked to the war in Chechnya.
The bomb - said to be hidden inside a backpack or bag - ravaged the second car of the train as it left the Avtozavodskaya station in southeast Moscow and headed toward the city's center at 8:45 a.m. The blast shattered the train's windows, rent its metal seats and bars, and hurled bodies and body parts from the train.
Hundreds of passengers - some of them bloodied and dazed - staggered hundreds of yards through smoke-filled tunnels to reach safety. As they emerged, they described a scene of fear, confusion and carnage deep beneath the heart of the Russian capital.
"I saw five bodies near the tracks and some metal parts," said Anna Kolmykova, 51, who was riding two or three cars behind the one that was struck. Police officers who happened to be in her car helped escort the survivors out.
"Those officers warned us about the bodies and pieces of metal so that we would not stumble," she said, her face smeared with black soot.
President Vladimir V. Putin, appearing with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, responded indirectly, as he did on Dec. 9, when a suicide bomber killed herself and five others in front of the National Hotel, only a few hundreds feet from the Kremlin itself.
Mr. Putin did not address today's bombing in detail, but called for an intensified international effort to combat terrorism. "It is the plague of the 21st century," he said in televised remarks.
It was not immediately clear who placed the bomb on the train - and whether it was a suicide attack - but it was clearly intended to inflict maximum bloodshed and exploit the darkest fears of Muscovites.
Russia has endured a wave of terrorist bombings stemming from the long, bloody war in Chechnya, but never before has so deadly an attack struck the city's subway. The Metro, as it is called, is the world's busiest with more than eight million passengers a day and a source of city pride.
"This makes me feel just awful," said Ilya Blokhin, 31, a doctor who was aboard the train. "If they are starting to blow up Metro trains, what is next?"
In televised remarks later from the Kremlin, Mr. Putin blamed the wave of terror on Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader who served as the republic's president from 1997 until the outbreak of the second Chechen war in 1999.
Mr. Maskhadov has denied ordering attacks, and his chief envoy, Akhmed Zakayev, denounced today's attack in a telephone interview from London. Mr. Zakayev acknowledged, however, that Mr. Maskhadov could not control those in Chechnya who would organize attacks.
"These actions in Moscow against civilians are in no way of benefit to us," he said.
As he has before, Mr. Putin ruled out any talks with Chechnya's separatists, despite calls from Mr. Zakayev and others for a negotiated settlement.
"Russia does not negotiate with terrorists," Mr. Putin said. "Russia eliminates them."
Mr. Putin's remarks - at once determined, but also indirect - appeared intended to minimize any political damage from the continued violence and fear that gnaws at the country.
Mr. Putin, who rose to power as the second war in Chechnya unfolded, faces re-election on March 14. While he is universally expected to win, he finds himself presiding over a conflict that continues to exact a deadly toll far beyond the battered Chechen republic.
With Friday's bombing, there have been 13 terrorist attacks in the last year, most of them suicide bombings. More than 260 people have died in the attacks, including at least 62 in Moscow itself.
Irina M. Khakamada, a former parliamentary deputy who has launched a quixotic presidential campaign, said that the Kremlin's military and political efforts in Chechnya, including a referendum and presidential elections in the republic last year, had proved ineffective at ending the violence.
"The peace process that is under way is not guaranteeing people's security," she said in a radio interview on Ekho Moskvy.
As they have after each of the terrorist attacks here, officials announced that they had increased security at airports and at subway and railroad stations across Moscow and in other major cities, including St. Petersburg.
There appears to be little, however, the authorities can do to halt the attacks, especially those carried out by bombers willing to die.
According to officials, witnesses reported seeing a man and a woman who appeared to be from the Caucasus, where Chechnya is located, carrying suspicious bags. It was not clear whether the bombing was a suicide attack, but the authorities later released a composite sketch of the man, suggesting he was not among those killed.
Some politicians called for even tougher measures.
Dmitry O. Rogozin, the new vice speaker of parliament and a leader of the nationalist party Motherland, called for a state of emergency and suggested that next month's election be postponed. Without referring to Chechens directly, he blamed "an ethnic criminal community" with loyalists in Moscow.
"The enemy is here, inside," he told Interfax.
Officials warned that the death toll could still rise. By tonight, more than 110 people remained hospitalized, some of them with grave injuries. At Sklifosovsky Hospital, the city's main critical care center, a typed list of 36 of the wounded hung on the front door.
The bomb struck on the Green Line, which courses through the city center from northwest to southeast. At rush hour, the subway is always packed, with passengers jostling shoulder to shoulder.
The force of the bomb - estimated at roughly 11 pounds of dynamite - shredded bodies, complicating the grim task of counting the dead, let alone identifying them.
The survivors were evacuated from the stations on either side of the wrecked train, Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya, pouring out into public squares choked with ambulances and rescue workers. Ms. Kolmykova, the 51-year-old passenger, described people trudging out of the train in darkness with their clothes and hair scorched, but she said there was little panic.
The bombing, though, struck a deep chord in her that went beyond simple fear. She said she wanted to emigrate to Italy, which she had visited recently, because Russia had become a country where normal, peaceful life is out of reach.
"I feel so offended for us, for our country," she said. "I want to emigrate not only because of fear. It is a complex of things. Just look at our pensioners. My mother is 77, she is sick and she has to beg for the medicines that she needs and that were prescribed. And in Italy I saw 90-year olds, happy, laughing and dancing."
-------- spies
CIA says no to scapegoat role over elusive Iraq weapons
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Feb 06, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040206064529.xqxpbf20.html
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq raises troubling questions about the quality of US intelligence despite CIA chief George Tenet's refusal to let the spy agency be scapegoated, experts said Friday.
Experts said the lack of deadly weapons found in Iraq so far also raised questions about how the White House used pre-war intelligence to support the US-led invasion of Iraq.
CIA head Tenet struck a delicate balance here Thursday, refusing to take the heat as scapegoat amid doubts over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq while also moving to try to protect President George W. Bush.
Tenet, who has led the Central Intelligence Agency for almost seven years, defended its record in a rare public address, saying the CIA had never said weapons of mass destruction in Iraq posed an "imminent threat."
Yet he did not go so far as to criticize the US-led war, as some opposition Democrats and others who opposed the conflict might have hoped.
Analysts "never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests," Tenet said in an address at Georgetown University.
"No one told us what to say or how to say it," he stressed.
Still, by saying there had never been any pressure to deliver an assessment of an imminent threat from Iraq, he appeared to suggest that authorities interpreted the intelligence they were given as just such a threat.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said: "Director Tenet raised additional new doubts about the accuracy of statements made by senior Administration officials to convince Congress to authorize the war in Iraq.
"There is no more serious issue that any member (of Congress) will confront than the decision to place our troops in harm's way."
The Bush administration "presented an overall imminent threat," said researcher Marcus Corbin of the Center for Defense Information.
"The intelligence was skewed, no question," he said. "Whatever the intellignce, the administration pushed it much further.
"I think it's pretty lame to put the blame on foreign intelligence, Corbin added. "If we had to distribute the blame, it would probably be 90 percent administration and only 10 percent intelligence."
Corbin added that "if a government is not getting good intelligence, it usually means, to a certain extent, that it is not listening.
"If your consumers are pressing for particular answers, that message usually gets across one way or another."
Tenet acknowledged some intelligence gaps on Iraq in the run-up to the war, particularly involving "human assets" -- spies on the ground.
He also acknowledged that some intelligence found to have been false had not been discarded. And he acknowledged underestimating the Saddam Hussein regime's nuclear potential.
"He admitted to human deficiencies and that foreign intelligence reports found their way in (to) the national intelligence estimate of October of 2002, reports that were later proven to be a fabrication or discredited. Very preoccupying," remarked Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism operations chief.
But these problems do not seem to explain in and of themselves the gap between the Bush administration's portrayal of the situation just before the war, and the fact that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq.
The administration's position has not been helped by new remarks by the former US weapons inspector, David Kay.
"To me, it's clear Iraq had no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons at the time of the war," Kay told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here Thursday.
In a report released last month, the Carnegie Endowment said the Bush administration had "systematically" misrepresented and exaggerated the threats presented by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Later on Friday the White House is due to name a special independent commission to probe the hiatus between pre-war US intelligence and the failure to find any WMD stockpiles.
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Spying under scrutiny
The need is for intelligence to be accurate -- and politically independent.
By Jim Bencivenga
csmonitor.com
February 6, 2004,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0206/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt
After Thursday's speech by CIA chief George Tenet in defense of his agency, political fallout continues from what The Christian Science Monitor calls the "swirl of accusation and rebuttal over prewar assessments of Iraqi weapons." But what will remain, and outlast any single British or American administration, are two questions that go to the heart of how espionage works in a democracy.
First: are intelligence officials and their findings free of political manipulation and coercion? Second: is the quality and effectiveness of intelligence adequate for national leaders to make sound decisions on security issues, not the least of which might be going to war?
These are not academic questions. Citizens on both sides of the Atlantic are looking for more than just "who knew, or didn't know what," and "when did they, or didn't they know it?" on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The Montana Missoulian frames the discussion this way: On one hand are doubts about the intelligence leaders have to work with.
The Vietnam War was one big intelligence failure. The Bay of Pigs was an intelligence fiasco. The Cuban missile crisis turned out well, but it wasn't until many years later that officials found out the CIA was wrong in concluding there were no nuclear warheads yet in Cuba when President Kennedy confronted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
On the other hand, people only trust their leaders so far.
"The argument seems to be that it is better to overestimate the danger than underestimate it and, in the memorable words of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, have the evidence of a mistake be a mushroom cloud forming on the horizon. [Yet]...With Americans dying on a regular basis in Iraq, it is certain that Bush's Democratic opponent - Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts is now the front runner - will hammer away that the Administration hot-wired the intelligence.
In light of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the performance of intelligence agencies around the world will be under the microscope long after US presidential elections this November.
President Bush todoay announced seven members of a bipartisan commission to conduct a year-long review of US intelligence gathering, particularly about Iraq. Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona, who ran against Bush in the 2000 GOP primaries, told CNN he thinks every attempt ought to be made to keep politics out of the commission's work.
Writing for nationalreviewonline, columnist Jeb Babbin says that it is critical these inquiries not lose sight of the primary goal - improving the performance of all facets of spying.
"Did we go to war on a false pretense? That's the political theme of the year, and it's the most damaging kind of question, because to answer it correctly (i.e., "no") requires proof of a negative: that our intelligence community didn't blow it. There is no comfort to be found in the fact that the intelligence agencies of many nations concluded the same thing: that Saddam's WMD disclosures were perfect nonsense, that Iraq had chemical weapons ready to use, and that it was working hard at getting nuclear weapons. ... For while President Bush's presidency may stand or fall on the political question, the substantive and equally important question is how to improve our intelligence agencies' performance."
Australia was the first to request a comprehensive review of its intelligence apparatus. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation says that the report on Australian intelligence was completed prior to the Iraq war, and was required before the Australian government decided to join the war.
It happens that, in the US, the Patriot Act is currently up for renewal. Passed in the aftermath of 9/11, it is intended to essentially strengthen the powers of US intelligence agencies. Even its critics agree it accomplishes that, but in highly controversial ways. Congressional deliberations about the Patriot Act are likely to receive even closer scrutiny in light of Mr. Tenet's speech.
Comments by chief US weapons inspector David Kay, made after he resigned his post, may echo in Congressional chambers as the Patriot Act is debated because the law reflects a closer linking of domestic and international espionage efforts.
"It turns out we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that's most disturbing," said Mr. Kay. He says that an independent inquiry is necessary, "not only for what happened in the past but so we can reply on any intelligence in the future." He adds that evidence about Iraq's WMD was lost in the looting which followed the fall of Baghdad. Reports the Times of London, Tenet agrees with Kay's analysis.
The West in general, and America in particular, finds itself in a new war as it deals with terrorism, writes Andre Gerolymatos, on the failure of intelligence in the recent Balkan war. What is needed, he says, is a way to gather intelligence on this new threat without undermining the very principles upon which democracy rests.
Unlike the Cold War environment, the world of terrorism is unpredictable, scattered and almost universal in terms of location. In most cases the terrorist is an enemy without a face, an opponent without form who strikes from any direction using any guise. The American intelligence agencies, essentially designed for the Cold War, are at a tremendous disadvantage with this agile and lethal enemy.
In fact, the Chinese military historian Sun Tsu, wrote two and one half thousand years ago that 'All warfare is based on deception.' Evidently, this lesson is clearly understood by international terrorists and sadly has been recently overlooked by the American intelligence community as well as the agencies of other Western powers.
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Tenet Concedes Gaps in C.I.A. Data on Iraq Weapons
February 6, 2004
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06TENE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that American spy agencies may have overestimated Iraq's illicit weapons capacities, in part because of a failure to penetrate the inner workings of the Iraqi government.
In an address at Georgetown University, Mr. Tenet presented a steadfast defense of American spy agencies and their integrity. The speech was the first attempt by Mr. Tenet to provide a comprehensive accounting of the gaps between prewar intelligence on Iraq and what has been found on the ground there, which critics have called a major intelligence failure.
"When the facts on Iraq are all in, we will be neither completely right nor completely wrong," Mr. Tenet told a gathering of students and faculty that had been arranged at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency on less than 48 hours notice.
Mr. Tenet's presentation, though careful and calibrated, was more candid and less defensive than any previous government comment on the issue. In offering what he called a "provisional bottom line," he said American spy agencies "were generally on target" in prewar warnings about Iraq's missile and unmanned aerial vehicle programs, but "may have overestimated the progress" that Iraq was making toward the development of nuclear weapons.
Mr. Tenet also made it clear that the failure so far to find chemical and biological weapons in Iraq had raised serious questions about the prewar intelligence that the stockpiles existed, though he said he believed that Iraq intended to develop such weapons and had the capacity to produce them on short notice.
He insisted that intelligence agencies had acted independently of policy makers, and noted that intelligence analysts had never portrayed Iraq as presenting an imminent threat to the United States before the American invasion last March. "No one told us what to say or how to say it," he said.
Later Thursday, some Democrats, including Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, seized on that statement as evidence that President Bush had no foundation for his prewar claim that Saddam Hussein's government was "a grave and gathering danger."
With teams still hunting in Iraq for illicit weapons and information about them, Mr. Tenet cautioned repeatedly in his speech that it was too soon to draw firm conclusions.
Mr. Tenet made it clear that the prewar assessment that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons was based to a significant degree on reports relayed by a friendly foreign government from human sources whose information the United States has still been unable to corroborate.
"We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum," Mr. Tenet acknowledged, saying that American agents remained "on the periphery" of Iraq's illicit weapons activities. "What we did not collect ourselves, we evaluated as carefully as we could," he added. "Still, the lack of direct access to some of these sources created some risk - such is the nature of our business."
Mr. Tenet's speech was the most detailed presentation on the issue by a United States official since last October, when David A. Kay, then the chief American weapons inspector, issued an interim report on his findings. It came after new statements from Dr. Kay, who left his post last month, have forced administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to grapple in public for the first time with the possibility that prewar judgments might have been mistaken.
In Charleston, S.C., on Thursday, President Bush acknowledged, in his most specific reference yet to the issue, that American inspectors in Iraq "have not yet found the stockpiles of weapons that we thought were there." After resisting appeals for an independent inquiry, Mr. Bush plans on Friday to reverse himself and appoint an bipartisan commission to assess the threat from Iraq and the broader question of how to use intelligence to combat proliferation, terrorism and other threats.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, would be a member.
In their tone, Mr. Tenet's remarks on Thursday were very different from those of a year ago, when in strong and unwavering testimony to Congress he spoke of a "solid foundation of intelligence" on illicit weapons programs in Iraq.
He nevertheless went to new lengths to portray American intelligence in other areas as active and reliable, by making public new details of American successes in unraveling evidence of links between Pakistani scientists and the Libyan nuclear program. He said American spies had played a crucial part in penetrating what he called the black market for nuclear weapons in which a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had a pivotal role, and added that Malaysian authorities "have shut down one of the network's largest plants."
[However, a senior Malaysian official said Friday that the government had not shut down the plant of Scomi Precision Engineering, which produced centrifuge parts sent through Dr. Khan's network to Libya. A spokeswoman for the company said it was operating normally.]
Until Thursday, Mr. Tenet had not spoken in public since last May. He and his aides decided only this week to enter the debate about intelligence on Iraq after Dr. Kay said he believed that Iraq did not possess large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the time of the American invasion last March, and that intelligence agencies owed Mr. Bush an apology for their misjudgments.
Mr. Tenet sought to distance himself from Dr. Kay's conclusions, saying it was too soon for anyone to say anything with certainty about Iraq's prewar stockpiles. He insisted that the C.I.A. had honored its obligation to play an independent role in the prewar debate, saying that it had not been influenced by administration officials seeking to build a case for the American invasion.
In speaking out, Mr. Tenet was clearly seeking in part to pre-empt the criticism of the intelligence agencies' performance on Iraq that is spelled out in a classified draft report prepared by the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was reviewed for first time on Thursday by members of the panel.
"Did we clearly tell policy makers what we knew, what we didn't know, what was not clear, and identify the gaps in our knowledge?" Mr. Tenet asked. "We are in the process of evaluating just such questions, and while others will express views on the questions sooner, we ourselves must come to our own bottom lines."
Mr. Tenet said he gave the highest marks to prewar estimates that Mr. Hussein's government was expanding its missile program in violation of United Nations resolutions, a conclusion that he said was "generally on target." He said that intelligence agencies had also been right in detecting the development of a prohibited unmanned aerial vehicle, though "the jury is still out" on whether either of the two unmanned aerial vehicle programs under way in Iraq were intended for the delivery of biological weapons, as the intelligence community believed.
Mr. Tenet was less upbeat in his conclusions about the prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.
While the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 said Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, Mr. Tenet said his current view was that Iraq "intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point."
On biological weapons, Mr. Tenet contradicted recent remarks by Dr. Kay and said there was still "no consensus" within the intelligence community as to whether mobile trailers discovered in Iraq after the war were for making biological weapons, as the intelligence agencies initially concluded, or for making hydrogen, as many intelligence analysts now believe.
He said he currently believed that Iraq "intended to develop biological weapons" but that "we do not know if production took place."
On chemical weapons, which intelligence agencies had judged with "high confidence" that Iraq possessed, Mr. Tenet said the United States had "not yet found the weapons we expected." He said his "provisional bottom line" was that Mr. Hussein's government "had the intent and the capability to convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production" even though "we have not yet found the weapons we expected."
In an interview Thursday on CNBC, Dr. Kay said he believed that Mr. Tenet had underscored the need for an independent commission on Iraq because "he opened up considerable space between him and the case that was made for war before we went to war."
Mr. Rumsfeld, who was heading to Munich Thursday for a security meeting, said: "David Kay properly said, in his judgment, we're about 85 percent complete. Tenet basically said what I said: that there's work yet to be done."
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Tenet Defends CIA's Analysis Of Iraq as Objective, if Flawed
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17286-2004Feb5?language=printer
CIA Director George J. Tenet argued forcefully yesterday that, months before the war in Iraq, intelligence agencies gave policymakers objective, apolitical judgments on Iraqi weapons, including caveats and details of where analysts disagreed in their assessments.
Defending the agency for the first time since his own weapons expert said prewar intelligence on Iraq was "all wrong," Tenet acknowledged that the CIA made misjudgments but said the agency worked hard to provide a careful and nuanced assessment regarding weapons of mass destruction.
"Let me be clear: Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate," he said. "They never said there was an imminent threat."
In a speech at Georgetown University, Tenet defended his analysts as "dedicated, courageous professionals." But he also revealed that the postwar work of U.S. weapons experts in Iraq has cast doubt on numerous judgments made by the CIA in a classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was circulated to Bush administration policymakers.
Some of those judgments -- involving the status of Iraq's nuclear program, mobile biological weapons labs and unmanned aerial vehicles for the dispersal of biological weapons -- were portrayed as evidence by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during his presentation to the United Nations one year ago.
Tenet did not directly address the question of whether top administration officials went beyond the CIA's assessments as they built a public case for going to war with Iraq, as many Democrats have charged.
Tenet said recent assertions by his former chief weapons hunter, David Kay, that U.S. intelligence had also missed proliferation programs in Libya and Iran were "misstatements." White House officials in recent days have echoed Kay's concerns, and President Bush has said he will appoint an independent commission to look at the broader issue of proliferation intelligence, not just whether the CIA erred on Iraq.
"I welcome the president's commission looking into proliferation," Tenet said. "We have a record and story to tell."
To rebut the charge that the agency missed proliferation activities, Tenet disclosed a series of previously secret operations to penetrate and disrupt clandestine weapons-smuggling rings involving the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, as well as clandestine nuclear programs in Libya and Iran. [Story, Page A18.]
Tenet also revealed for the first time that reports by two informants working for foreign intelligence services weighed heavily in his thinking as he assessed the gravity of Iraq's weapons threat. The information came to Tenet while his team was putting together the NIE in the fall of 2002 and continued into 2003 as the buildup to war began.
A senior intelligence official said that the two sources Tenet mentioned worked for different countries, and that U.S. officials independently validated what one of them said. The official declined to name the countries but, when asked, confirmed that neither was Israel. Tenet said the foreign services had determined the informants to be "established and reliable."
Tenet said the first source, who had direct access to Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, told of how Iraq "was aggressively and covertly developing" a nuclear weapon, and that Hussein's Nuclear Weapons Committee had assured the Iraqi leader that once the country obtained fissile material, "a bomb could be ready in just 18 to 24 months."
The same person said that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons, and that equipment used to produce insecticides under the U.N. oil-for-food program had been diverted to covert production of chemical weapons.
The second person, Tenet said, told his handlers that Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons, and that prohibited chemicals were being manufactured at dual-use facilities, meaning factories normally used for industry.
"Now, did this information make a difference in my thinking? You bet it did," Tenet declared. "Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports at the time? Absolutely not."
Much of Tenet's speech yesterday was a progress report, a "provisional bottom line," that juxtaposed prewar judgments with the facts found so far in Iraq. He said final judgments must wait until the Iraq Survey Group finishes its work. Tenet said there remains a solid consensus about Hussein's intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction and missiles or other delivery systems capable of striking his neighbors and the United States, and a consensus about his efforts to conceal these programs from U.N. inspectors.
But overall, Tenet's speech indicated there is less consensus on some key issues that led analysts to believe Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, had reconstituted its nuclear program and had the means of firing those weapons at its enemies.
Tenet noted the CIA's October 2002 NIE report estimated that Hussein could have a nuclear weapon within a year if he could immediately obtain weapons- grade materials, plutonium or enriched uranium. If he had to produce the material himself, it would take him until 2007 to 2009, the report said, although U.S. analysts disagreed whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program after U.N. inspectors destroyed equipment in 1991. Kay reported in October that he believed the Iraq nuclear program was only rudimentary.
Yesterday, Tenet said that "we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making" on nuclear weapons, although he maintained that Hussein wanted them and "intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point."
Tenet also addressed the question of Iraq's biological weapons. The CIA's October 2002 estimate said there was "active" work going on to create biological weapons and described them as "larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf war." It also said there was "high confidence" that Iraq had such weapons.
Tenet repeated Kay's findings from October that there were unexplained laboratories and safe houses maintained by Iraq's intelligence service, which he said had equipment for chemical and biological research. He said such facilities and talent could allow Iraq to resume production.
But, he said, "we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we found weapons."
The CIA's 2002 NIE said Iraq possessed mobile labs capable of producing "an amount of [biological weapons] agent equal to the total that Iraq produced in the years prior to the Gulf War." Discussing the three trailers that have been found since the end of fighting, Tenet said yesterday: "There is no consensus within our community over whether the trailers were for that use or if they were used for the production of hydrogen."
Tenet also touched on the issue of chemical weapons. In 2002, the CIA report judged Iraq's chemical weapons capability to be weaker than it was in the early 1990s but said Hussein "has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF [cyclosarin] and VX." It also said Iraq "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of CW [chemical weapons] agents -- much of it added in the last year."
Tenet yesterday admitted that there was "high confidence" before the war that Iraq had these stocks but that investigation has yet to turn up physical evidence of chemical production. Kay has reported that the program was stopped in the 1990s.
Here, Tenet said his "provisional bottom line" assessment is that Hussein "had the intent and the capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production."
Tenet's speech did not quell criticism from Democrats that the administration's prewar statements on Iraq were exaggerations that went beyond conclusions drawn by the CIA. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) insisted that Bush's soon-to-be-named commission look at "how was this intelligence used or perhaps abused."
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CIA Chief Defends U.S. Iraq Weapons Intelligence
February 6, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-usa-cia.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA Director George Tenet, in his first public defense against criticism that U.S. intelligence on Iraq was flawed, said on Thursday that while analysts had concluded Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction they never called that an ``imminent'' threat.
Tenet fired back in a speech at Georgetown University at critics who said the White House pressured intelligence analysts to skew their findings to support an intent to go to war.
``They (the analysts) never said there was an 'imminent' threat,'' Tenet said. ``Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests.''
Tenet added: ``No one told us what to say or how to say it.''
President Bush did not use the word ``imminent'' to describe the threat from Iraq leading up to the war, but called it a ``grave and gathering danger.''
Administration officials in making the case for a pre-emptive strike said the United States could not afford to wait until the threat was on its doorstep.
Democrats who are trying to win the White House away from Bush in this year's presidential election seized on Tenet's comments as a sign that the administration had hyped the threat from Iraq.
``Today, the CIA Director, George Tenet, admitted that the intelligence agencies never told the White House that Iraq posed an imminent threat,'' Sen. John Kerry who is running for president said. ``But that's not what the Bush White House told the American people,'' he said.
NOT YET VERIFIED
While boosting the intelligence agencies, Tenet also acknowledged that their estimates on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons had not yet been verified by evidence found in a post-war Iraq. He advocated waiting for the search for banned weapons to be completed before drawing firm conclusions.
``When the facts of Iraq are all in, we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong,'' Tenet said.
Bush in South Carolina on Thursday defended his decision to go to war.
``We know Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush said. ``Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq,'' he said.
The controversy over whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction flared recently after former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons existed.
Bush has agreed to set up an independent commission to investigate the intelligence, and Tenet said he welcomed it. The Senate and House intelligence committees are conducting separate inquiries, and the CIA is doing an internal review.
PREWAR VS. POST
Intelligence analysts said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon, but believed that he wanted it and could have had one within a year if Iraq had acquired fissile material, Tenet said. ``We do not yet know if any reconstitution efforts had begun but we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making,'' he said.
The prewar intelligence estimate said Iraq had biological weapons and an active development and production program.
``Iraq intended to develop biological weapons,'' Tenet said. ``But we do not yet know if production took place -- and just as clearly -- we have not yet found biological weapons.''
The prewar intelligence report said ``with high confidence'' that Iraq had chemical weapons, and that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric tonnes of chemical agent, Tenet said.
``Saddam had the intent and the capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.''
WORKING SPIES
The CIA director also sought to dispel criticism that the agency had relied too heavily on technical methods such as satellites to collect intelligence on Iraq, and had needed more spies on the ground. But he acknowledged that despite aggressive efforts to penetrate Iraq, ``our record was mixed.''
The CIA relied on emigrants and defectors and a ``steady stream'' of information from a ``trusted foreign partner,'' which was not identified, Tenet said.
``To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human sources, but a blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the world is dead wrong,'' he said.
CIA spy successes were logged elsewhere in the world.
A spy led the agency to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, Tenet said.
U.S. intelligence agencies had been aware for some time of the activities of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who this week confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, he said.
``Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring operations over several years,'' Tenet said.
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EXCERPTS
In the Words of the C.I.A. Director: 'Why Haven't We Found the Weapons?'
February 6, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06TTEX.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - Following are excerpts from a speech on Thursday by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, as transcribed by Federal News Service Inc.
. . . Much of the current controversy centers on our prewar intelligence summarized in the National Intelligence Estimate of October of 2002. National estimates are publications where the intelligence community as a whole seeks to sum up what we know about a subject, what we don't know, what we suspect may be happening and where we differ on key issues.
This estimate asked if Iraq had chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. We concluded that in some of these categories Iraq had weapons and that in others where it did not have them, it was trying to develop them. . . .
But before we start, let me be direct about an important fact. As we meet here today, the Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important search for people and data. And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished. The men and women who work in that dangerous environment are adamant about that fact. Any call that I make today is necessarily provisional. Why? Because we need more time and we need more data. . . .
Let me turn to the nuclear issue. In the estimate, all agencies agreed that Saddam Hussein wanted nuclear weapons. Most were convinced that he still had a program, and if he obtained fissile material, he could have a weapon within a year. But we detected no such acquisition. We made two judgments that get overlooked these days.
We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009. Most agencies believed that Saddam had begun to reconstitute his nuclear program, but they disagreed on a number of issues, such as which procurement activities were designed to support his nuclear program. But let me be clear, where there are differences, the estimate laid out the disputes clearly.
So what do we know now? David Kay told us last fall that, quote, "The testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons." End of quote. Keep in mind that no intelligence agency thought that Iraq's efforts had progressed to the point of building an enrichment facility or making fissile material. We said that such activities were a few years away. Therefore, it's not surprising that the Iraqi Survey Group has not yet found evidence of uranium enrichment facilities.
Regarding prohibited aluminum tubes, a debate laid out extensively in the estimate, and one that experts still argue over - Were they for uranium enrichment or conventional weapons? - we have additional data to collect and more sources to question. Moreover, none of the tubes found in Iraq so far match the high-specification tubes Baghdad sought and may never have received the amounts needed. Our aggressive interdiction efforts may have prevented Iraq from receiving all but a few of these prohibited items.
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon; he still wanted one; and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point. But we have not yet found clear evidence that the dual-use items Iraq sought were for nuclear reconstitution. We do not yet know if any reconstitution efforts had begun, but we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making.
Let me turn to biological weapons. The estimate said that Baghdad had them, and that all key aspects of an offensive program, research and development, production and weaponization were still active, and most elements were larger and more advanced than before the gulf war. We believed that Iraq had lethal biological weapons agents, including anthrax, which it could quickly produce and weaponize for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives.
But we said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal.
What do we know today? Last fall the Iraqi Survey Group uncovered, quote, "significant information, including research and development of biological weapons, applicable organisms, the involvement of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in possible biological weapons activities and deliberate concealment activities." All of this suggests that Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of biological weapons agents.
The Iraq Survey Group found a network of laboratories and safe houses, controlled by Iraqi intelligence and security services, that contained equipment for chemical and biological research, and a prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing for biological weapons agents that were not declared to the United Nations. It also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and the talent to resume production, but we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we found weapons. Until we get to the bottom of the role played by the Iraqi security services, which were operating covert labs, we will not know the full extent of the program.
Let me also talk about the trailers discovered in Iraq last summer. We initially concluded that they resembled trailers, described by a human source, for mobile biological warfare agent production. There is no consensus within our intelligence community today over whether the trailers were for that use or if they were used for the production of hydrogen. Everyone agrees that they are not ideally configured for either process, but could be made to work in either mode.
To give you some idea of the contrasting evidence we wrestle with, some of the Iraqis involved in making the trailers were told that they were intended to produce hydrogen for artillery units. But an Iraqi artillery officer says they never used these types of systems and that the hydrogen for artillery units came in canisters from a fixed production facility. . . .
I must tell you that we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources about mobile biological weapons production before the war. Because we lacked direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences.
My provisional bottom line today: Iraq intended to develop biological weapons. . . .
Let me now turn to chemical weapons. We said in the estimate with high confidence that Iraq had them. We also believed, but with less certainty, that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric tons of agent. That may sound like a lot, but it would fit in a few dorm rooms on this campus and . . . they're not very big rooms.
The work done so far shows a story that is similar to that of his biological weapons program. Saddam had rebuilt a dual-use industry. David Kay reported that Saddam and his son Uday wanted to know how long it would take for Iraq to produce chemical weapons. However, while some sources indicate Iraq may have conducted some experiments related to developing chemical weapons, no physical evidence has yet been uncovered. We need more time.
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam had the intent and capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production.
However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.
I've now given you my provisional bottom lines, but it is important to remember that estimates are not written in a vacuum. Let me tell you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as established and reliable.
The first, from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle, said Iraq was not in the possession of a nuclear weapon; however, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam had recently called together his nuclear weapons committee, irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon, because money was no object, and they possessed the scientific know-how. The committee members assured Saddam that once fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in 18 to 24 months. The return of U.N. inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.
The same source said that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides under the oil-for-food program had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production. The source said that Iraq's weapons of last resort were mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons, which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel; that Iraqi scientists were dabbling with biological weapons, with limited success, but the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real weapons program.
A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access to senior Iraqi officials said he believed production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place, that biological agents were easy to produce and hide, and that prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use facilities. The source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner circle believed, as a result of the U.N. inspections, Iraq knew the inspectors' weak points and how to take advantage of them. The source said that there was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure prohibited items would never be found.
Now did this information make any difference in my thinking? You bet it did. As this information and other sensitive information came across my desk, it solidified and reinforced the judgments that we had reached and my own view of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, and I conveyed this view to our nation's leaders. Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports?
Absolutely not.
Now I'm sure you're all asking, Why haven't we found the weapons? I've told you the search must continue, and it will be difficult. As David Kay reminded us, the Iraqis systematically destroyed and looted forensic evidence before, during and after the war. We have been faced with organized destruction of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories and companies suspected of weapons of mass destruction work. The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate rather than random acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are still being intimidated and attacked. . . .
I have a responsibility to evaluate our performance, both our operational work and our analytical tradecraft. So what do I think about all this today? Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past 10 years, it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions than the ones reached in October of 2002. However, in our business simply saying this is not good enough.
We must constantly review the quality of our work. For example, the National Intelligence Council is reviewing the estimate line by line. Six months ago, we also commissioned an internal review to examine the tradecraft of our work on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and through this effort we are finding ways to improve our processes. For example, we recently discovered that relevant analysts in the community missed a notice that identified a source that we had cited as providing information that in some cases was unreliable and in other cases fabricated. We have acknowledged this mistake. . . .
Among the questions that we as a community must ask are, Did the history of our work, Saddam's deception and denial, his lack of compliance with the international community and all that we know about this regime cause us to minimize or ignore alternative scenarios? Did the fact that we missed how close Saddam came to acquiring a nuclear weapon in the early 1990's cause us to overestimate his nuclear or other programs in 2002?
Did we carefully consider the absence of information flowing from a repressive and intimidating regime, and would it have made any difference in our bottom-line judgments? Did we clearly tell policymakers what we knew, what we didn't know, what was not clear and identify the gaps in our knowledge?
We are in the process of evaluating just such questions. And while others will express the views on these issues sooner, we ourselves must come to our own bottom line patiently. . .
--------
CIA chief wrong on plant closure in Malaysia
Raymond Bonner NYT / IHT
Friday, February 6, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/128425.html
SHAH ALAM, Malaysia Did American intelligence get it wrong? And on something that was visible without sophisticated satellites or cloak-and-dagger work, but to the naked eye?
In his speech in defense of American intelligence-gathering at Georgetown University on Thursday, the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, pointed to what he described as success against the black-market nuclear proliferation network run by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the network's largest plants," Tenet said. He repeated the assertion when answering a question: "The Malaysian government has closed the facility."
Categorical. Unequivocal. But, it appears, wrong. And if this was one of the networks "largest" plants, it does not appear to have been a very threatening network.
"It's business as usual," said Rohaida Ali Badaruddin, as she led a group of reporters, mostly Malaysian, through the spanking-clean, highly modern, air-conditioned Scomi Precision Engineering facility on Friday afternoon. The company has been accused of being part of the network that made the centrifuge components on a ship, the BBC China, that was seized last October on its way to Libya.
"We are still doing our manufacturing - milling, turning, cutting," said Badaruddin, the director of communications for the Scomi Group, the parent company of Scomi Precision Engineering, which has only 24 employees.
The factory's manager, Che Lokman Che Omar, said that the parts were "not very sophisticated, not very complicated." He added, "I have made more difficult parts many times before."
If someone came along today and wanted the same parts that were seized on the ship, the company could make them, he and Badarrudin agreed.
And might not have any reason to be suspicious - just as the company was not suspicious the first time.
In 2001, Scomi Group, a chemical, oil and gas trading and manufacturing company, was approached by a Dubai company, General Technical Industries, with an order for 14 centrifuge components. Scomi was in an expansion mode and decided to use this opportunity to set up Scomi Precision Engineering, Badaruddin said.
A two-year contract, worth about $3.5 million, was signed in December 2001, and the company began working in an airy 3,100 square-meter, or 33,000 square-foot, facility in the massive industrial park in Shah Alam, about 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, north of Kuala Lumpur. It bought modern machines from Britain, Japan, France and Taiwan.
It also needed the raw materials and bought high-quality aluminum from a German company, Bikar Metalle, through its Singapore subsidiary, Bikar Metal Asia. As the investigation into the nuclear network has expanded, and Scomi's involvement has become public, the Malaysian government on Friday tried to shift the focus to Singapore. It leaked the name of Bikar Metal Asia, which was prominently mentioned on the front page of the New Straits Times, the Malaysian newspaper that is controlled by the ruling party.
In Singapore on Friday, the managing director of Bikar Metal Asia, Thorsten Heise, confirmed that his company had sold aluminum tubes to Scomi Precision Engineering. But he said that his company had no idea what they were going to be used for. "If you sell your car, and someone uses it to commit a crime, are you responsible?" he asked. He was visibly angry and said that he was considering legal action against the New Straits Times for ruining his company's reputation.
Scomi officials also said that they had no idea where the components they were making were going to end up. They were so-called dual-use items, which means that they had legitimate uses as well, in this case in the oil and gas industry.
The company invited journalists to tour the plant to show that the company has nothing to hide, Badaruddin said. It was a striking display of corporate openness, even more so in a country and region where corporate and public officials are not accustomed to aggressive reporting.
-------- us
War shortages
February 06, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Inside the Ring
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
As the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Georgia carries out Pentagon orders to reorganize itself into lighter, quick brigades, it is also noting lessons learned from the last war.
We've obtained a one-page internal document that lists some of the division's shortfalls during its fast march north from Kuwait to Baghdad.
•About 6,500 of the division's 18,000 soldiers lacked night-vision goggles.
•Eight in 10 wheeled vehicles lack weapons mounts.
•The division needs hand-held global positioning system (GPS) sets for each soldier, as well as Q-37 radars to locate the source of enemy fire.
--------
Pentagon Calls Off Voting by Internet
By Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17147-2004Feb5.html
The Pentagon has canceled plans to collect votes over the Internet from military personnel and civilians abroad for this fall's presidential election because of security concerns.
The $22 million pilot project was intended to be used by about 100,000 voters from 50 counties in seven states. State election officials said they were told late Wednesday that it would not be used to count votes included in election results.
Computer-security specialists released a report last week saying the Internet and personal computers are so inherently vulnerable that the entire election could be undermined. That report was followed by requests from the overseas wings of both the Republican and Democratic parties not to be used as "guinea pigs" in a system where their votes might not be secure.
Overseas voters will be able to cast Internet ballots as part of a test intended to learn more about online voting. But to cast an actual vote in the presidential election, they will have to fill out and return the traditional paper absentee ballots.
The greatest security concern is the personal computer of the individual voter, said Paul W. Craft, an election official from Florida, one of the participating states. A virus or other hidden program in a voter's computer could monitor keystrokes and intercept -- or change -- votes. "They decided they could not mitigate that risk sufficiently for the 2004 election. We would not have used it unless they addressed that risk," he said.
The other states in the experiment are South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, Arkansas, Washington and Hawaii. Craft said he supports continuing the experiment. Sticking to an arbitrary deadline can lead to unnecessary risks, he said, but taking time to fully develop the system could pay off in the long run.
Florida's 2000 election debacle led to calls for upgrading voting technology and improving collection of ballots from overseas voters. Internet voting has grown as an attractive choice, because it is easy and does not require purchasing expensive voting equipment.
R. Michael Alvarez, a California Institute of Technology political scientist who has a $1.8 million grant to monitor the project, wants to see the Pentagon's experiment continue.
"As a scientist trying to study it, I hope it will be used in ways that allow us to test it, with demonstration voting or mock voting or whatever, to get a closer look at the claims that have been raised about security," said Alvarez, who is co-director of the CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project.
This year's experiment will make possible a more thorough technology test, said James McAvoy, spokesman for Accenture eDemocracy Services, the consultant developing the system. If there is no risk of election results being affected, the experiment can include a team of hackers trying to attack it, he said. The developers can then find out whether their security measures are sufficient.
"The demonstration is a way for us to prove that the Internet is viable, valuable and secure enough to use for casting absentee ballots," he said.
The security specialists who criticized the project were invited to participate in Alvarez's review.
"It's all the credit to them for inviting us onto the security panel when they anticipated we would say negative things about it, and then taking our advice that seriously. It's really incredible," said Avi Rubin, an associate professor of computer science and the technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
No spokesman from the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which is based in the Pentagon, was available for comment yesterday afternoon.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Stands Firmly Behind His Decision to Invade Iraq
President Says Foes Would Have Left Hussein in Power
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15698-2004Feb5.html
CHARLESTON, S.C., Feb. 5 -- President Bush edged closer Thursday to admitting that some of his prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein may have been mistaken, but he defiantly defended his decision to invade Iraq and said he would do it again.
"Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq," Bush told a handpicked crowd of applauding supporters on a Charleston Harbor dock.
He lashed out at critics, including Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and other Democratic presidential candidates, and leveled a sharp accusation that until now he has left to his party and his campaign. "If some politicians in Washington had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power," he said. "All of the Security Council resolutions and condemnations would still be issued and still be ignored -- scraps of paper amounting to nothing."
The president, who faces a reelection test in nine months, added: "I will protect and defend this country by taking the fight to the enemy."
In the months before the war, Bush said the Iraqi government was "a threat of unique urgency," and he called Hussein "a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible."
Thursday's speech was Bush's most detailed defense of his decisions since David Kay resigned last month as chief of the Iraq Survey Group -- the CIA-led weapons-hunting team -- and declared that he did not think Iraq had stockpiles of unconventional weapons on the eve of war. Bush repeated his contention that Iraq was "a gathering threat" but acknowledged that U.S. troops have not discovered what he expected.
"The facts are becoming clearer," Bush said. "As the chief weapons inspector said, we have not yet found the stockpiles of weapons that we thought were there. Yet, the survey group has uncovered some of what the dictator was up to."
Hussein, he said, had "the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction," "the scientists and technology in place to make those weapons," "the necessary infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction" and "the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction."
"And Saddam Hussein had something else," Bush said. "He had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against innocent Iraqi citizens."
The morning was raw, with wind whipping his hair, script and overcoat. Moments before the speech, the White House staff had to get the Coast Guard to reposition a cutter anchored behind him because it had drifted out of position and was no longer providing a perfect backdrop.
The speech launched a three-part campaign by a White House hoping to regain the offensive on national security issues, at a time when polls have shown Bush's job-approval rating dipping below 50 percent for the first time in his presidency.
On Friday, Bush plans to sign an executive order creating a nine-member, bipartisan commission to study the prewar intelligence on Iraq and the broad problem of proliferating unconventional weapons. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will be a member, Republican officials said. White House aides also discussed a possible spot for Kay, the officials said. Officials also plan to talk to former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.).
As the third step in the campaign, Bush plans to appear Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," his first Sunday talk-show appearance as president.
"There's a lot of background noise and second-guessing going on in Washington," a senior administration official said. "We view this whole debate as an opportunity for the president to speak from the heart about the decisions he has made and why America is safer."
Bush's remarks amounted to a reply to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who told The Washington Post on Monday that he did not know whether he would have recommended an invasion knowing Iraq had no prohibited weapons.
The president began speaking just minutes after CIA Director George J. Tenet defended his own actions in a speech at Georgetown University, declaring that his intelligence analysts had accurately reported that Hussein's government posed a danger.
Bush, whose speech was built around his homeland security plans and safety measures for containerized cargo, arrived in the Republican-leaning state two days after a Democratic primary that was won handily by Sen. John Edwards (N.C.). Bush generally does not use "Hail to the Chief" at his events, but a stirring rendition welcomed him to the podium at the Port of Charleston.
"September the 11th, 2001, was a lesson for America -- a lesson I will never forget, and a lesson this nation must never forget," Bush said. "We cannot wait to confront the threats of the world, the threats of terror networks and terror states, until those threats arrive in our own cities."
Bush renewed his assertion that Iraq had posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, even though nine months of hunting has turned up no nuclear, chemical or biological stockpiles. "We had a choice: either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend the American people," he said. "Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."
Some Republican officials fear the weapons controversy could hurt Bush's credibility with voters, and here in Charleston he tried to recast the decisions on Iraq as emblematic of his leadership.
"When you're the commander in chief, you have to be willing to make the tough calls and to see your decisions through," Bush said. "America is safer when our commitments are clear, our word is good and our will is strong. And that is the only way I know how to lead."
--------
Hollywood propaganda
Alex Cox
Friday February 6, 2004
The Guardian
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1141509,00.html
I tend to avoid American films, for obvious reasons. I was born in the 1950s and grew up during the 1960s and early 70s, when the last great American films, perhaps the last great films of the cinema - Dr Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, 2001, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider and The Wild Bunch - were made.
During the mid-70s I watched as oil companies and other megacorporations took over the studios and began to dictate content. Living in Los Angeles in the early 80s, I observed the takeover of the last independent studio, 20th Century Fox, by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. I read the paid advertisements in Variety, signed by Steven Spielberg among others, protesting Murdoch's union-busting, monopolistic practices. And I watched as Spielberg and his Hollywood pals fell silent, and went to work for Murdoch after the 20th Century deal went through.
I took this all as par for the multinational course, as I did in 2003 when the Film Council chose to give lottery money earmarked for British films to Murdoch instead. I focused on other stuff that seemed more important: strangely, most of this was in print, rather than at the pictures or on TV. Apart from Shrek, I went for several years without seeing a single American feature. But in 2000, aboard one of those long flights from London to Los Angeles, I saw an American film that, in the the light of subsequent events, seems worthy of mention.
Deterrence was made in the late 1990s: the Clinton era. I don't think it ever played in Britain, and I doubt it saw much of a distribution in the cinema in the US. But I suspect it played quite a lot on late-night cable, particularly on Murdoch's Fox Network, since it ties in to an apocalyptic rightwing fantasy that has become our reality. Sad to say.
I watched Deterrence only because my feature of choice, John Ford's My Darling Clementine, was unavailable. Casting around to see what else was up there (and wishing to avoid anything called Young Americans or American Beauty at all costs), I stumbled upon this low-budget, would-be thriller about nuclear war.
Deterrence is Dr Strangelove for the 21st century. It tells the story of an American president who drops a hydrogen bomb on Iraq. At the start there are faint reminders of Wag the Dog (the last half-decent US film I can recall, though when Clinton destroyed an African pharmaceutical factory to distract from l'affaire Lewinsky, Wag the Dog ceased to be seen). But Deterrence concludes with a quite different, nay unique, message: that the US has the right to initiate a nuclear war against any enemy at any time, because the US is cleverer, and the US will win.
I must declare partiality. I am old-fashionedly horrified by nuclear weapons, land mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells and all the pathetic big-guy-with-small-dick inventory that Clinton and Bush and Blair seem to love. That's what my film Repo Man was about: not car thieves or the wonder of punk, but the horror of the neutron bomb, and of the obscene fact that a loony-tune like Reagan or Thatch could launch us all into a nuclear hell, in minutes. That's what the song Broken English was about too. Anyway, if you're in love with weapons of mass destruction, read on. You're going to want to rent this film.
In Deterrence it is 2005. A US vice-president, whom fate has made a cardboard character, a presidential candidate and a Jew, finds himself stuck in a snowbound Colorado diner during a snowstorm. The son of Saddam Hussein decides to invade Kuwait, just as his dad did. The US president threatens nuclear retaliation. Saddam's son does likewise. There is some speculation as to the unelected president's sanity, as there was regarding General Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove. The owner of the diner (a black man) shoots the decorated army officer (white) who holds the briefcase containing the nuclear codes. The black man is immediately gunned down by two secret service agents (white as snow).
The troubled presidential candidate takes the risk of looking through "binoculars which might destroy his retinas if the codes haven't been changed" (a fantasy, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, although its editors once proposed that the commander in chief should have to hack off the arm of his military assistant before starting the third world war. No such "moral technology" in fact prevents someone in the White House from declaring thermonuclear armageddon at any time). Bright-eyed, the prez sends a B2 bomber towards its target, Baghdad. Saddam's son retaliates with Cruise and other missiles destined for Washington, Athens, Rome.
But, surprise! None of the Iraqis' weapons work! They all land harmlessly without exploding, or crash into the sea thanks to a cunning plot on the part of the Americans and the French - of all people - to sell the Iraqis' faulty nuclear gear. The B2 bombing mission works perfectly (even though the film-makers get their technology wrong and show us stock footage of a Stealth bomber instead of Northrop's flying wing), and Baghdad's millions are incinerated just like their predecessors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The self-sacrificing presidential candidate decides to withdraw from the presidential race. But no matter. America has won the peace via death from above! Hooray!
Deterrence is directed by one Rod Lurie. I suspect - based on the mise en scène - that he has previously shot some episodic TV. The actors are modestly talented and unknown, with the exception of Timothy Hutton, playing a spooky, Mandelsonesque spin doctor. The only non-American actor, in the role of the Iraqi ambassador, is credited as "Uzi Gal". Given that these two words are the names of firearms, I suspect this is a nom de cinema, which perhaps tells us something about the film-makers' attitude to the millions who are incinerated for the feelgood finale.
Given the genesis of the American war plan against Iraq, is it unreasonable to view this bellicose, not-very-good "entertainment" from 1999 as part of a larger strategy - involving Hollywood - to dehumanise Iraqis, lower the nuclear threshold and prepare for war? After all, Hollywood movies have for the past three decades sought to convince us that the American way is the only way, and that - as Alan Parker tells us - there is no hope for Little England, or for any British films that don't ape the American model. Forget that Enigma code reality rubbish; get ready for the Yanks Who Saved Dunkirk!
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bush Names Panel to Examine Intelligence on Iraq Weapons
February 6, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/international/middleeast/06CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - President Bush named former Senator and Governor Charles Robb of Virginia and senior federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman today to be co-chairmen of an independent, bipartisan commission to examine American intelligence-gathering.
Mr. Robb, 64, is a Democrat, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and the son-in-law of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. Judge Silberman, 68, was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He also served in the Justice Department in the Nixon and Ford Administrations.
The President also named five members of the commission, and said that two more appointments could soon follow. The commission, he said, will help make sure that "American intelligence is as accurate as possible for any challenge in the future."
The other members he named today were Senator John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona; Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale University; Admiral William O. Studeman, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Patricia M. Wald, a former chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals who also served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
"Members of the commission will issue their report by March 31, 2005," Mr. Bush said. "I've ordered all departments and agencies, including our intelligence agencies, to assist the commission's work. The commission will have full access to the findings of the Iraq Survey Group."
The Iraq Survey Group is hunting for deadly weapons in Iraq but has found none so far.
It was clear from the makeup of the commission he named today that Mr. Bush was striving to convince official Washington, and the American people, that the panel will indeed be independent. Mr. Cutler, who is 86, has long been a confidant of Democratic administrations. And Mr. McCain, while sharing Mr. Bush's Republican affiliation, is an outspoken maverick on many issues and competed against him for the 2000 presidential nomination.
Today's announcement, at which the President declined to answer questions, came a day after George J. Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, conceded there were gaps in C.I.A. intelligence-gathering leading up to the Iraq war. But he also vigorously defended the integrity and competence of the agency and the intelligence world in general.
The pressure to establish an independent panel became irresistible after David A. Kay, the former chief weapons inspector, told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently that "it turns out we were all wrong, probably," about the perceived threat of unconventional weapons in Iraq, which was the administration's basic justification for the war.
Intelligence failures have been a leading subject on Capitol Hill of late, and on the campaign trail as well, with the Democratic presidential candidates repeatedly criticizing and questioning the Bush administration's policy in Iraq and the intelligence findings that helped to form it.
While other studies of American intelligence lapses have been ordered by past administrations, none has taken place at the level of a presidential commission like the one Mr. Bush announced today. Nor have they operated in the midst of a heated political debate over whether the president was steered wrong by imperfect intelligence, or whether the Administration manipulated the intelligence to find the evidence that would justify the decision to go to war, as some Democrats have charged.
Until recently, Mr. Bush said he would await the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, which was asked to find Iraq's unconventional weapons and which Dr. Kay led until last month. But it quickly became clear, White House officials said well in advance of today's announcement, that that position was untenable.
Several other inquiries into American intelligence are underway. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been conducting an inquiry into American intelligence-gathering in connection with the Iraq military campaign, but the purview of the commission announced by Mr. Bush today will apparently go far beyond those of the other inquiries.
--------
Bush Sets Up Iraq WMD Intelligence Panel
February 6, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-bush.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under strong political pressure, President Bush created a bipartisan commission on Friday to investigate flaws in the intelligence cited in launching the Iraq war and gave it until well after the November presidential election to report.
Democrats immediately questioned the independence of the panel since its members were handpicked by Bush. Bush had initially been cool to a commission and agreed to it under pressure from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
To chair the panel Bush chose former Virginia Gov. Charles Robb, a Democrat, and appeals court judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican who worked in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.
Bush, in a hastily arranged appearance in the White House press briefing room, noted that former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay had not been able to confirm prewar intelligence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
``We are determined to figure out why,'' Bush said.
``We're also determined to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate as possible for every challenge in the future,'' he said, also directing the group to review intelligence about North Korea, Iran, Libya and Afghanistan.
Claims that Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons were the main reason cited by Bush for the Iraq war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops have died.
Bush is scrambling to limit the political fallout from Kay's revelations that almost all the prewar intelligence about Iraq's suspected unconventional weapons was wrong.
He gave the commission until March 31, 2005, to report back, meaning the results will not be known until after November when voters decide whether to give him a second term. Democrats want it sooner.
``If there is a major threat posed by these weapons, we should have that information in 90 days, not a year from now,'' said Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark.
Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said the panel's mandate was overly broad. ``A more narrowly focused effort could be completed, and corrective action taken, in a much shorter time,'' he said.
Other commission members are Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain; Lloyd Cutler, White House counsel for former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; Yale President Richard Levin, a Democrat; retired Adm. William Studeman, former deputy director of the CIA under former President George Bush; and former appeals court judge Pat Wald, who was appointed to the bench by Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Two more members are yet to be named.
The executive order that Bush signed laying out the objectives of the commission said the panel will assess whether the U.S. intelligence community is sufficiently organized, equipped, trained and funded to identify threats.
It did not give the commission a specific mandate to examine whether the Bush administration exaggerated the Iraq threat, which Democrats wanted.
But White House officials did not rule this out and suggested it would be up to commission members. ``This is an independent commission,'' said one White House official.
McCain, known as a maverick willing to speak out against his own party, pledged a thorough probe and said he did not think Bush willfully exaggerated the case for war.
``The president of the United States, I believe, did not manipulate any kind of information for political gain or otherwise,'' McCain told reporters in Munich, Germany.
'POLITICAL COVER'
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said the panel should look at ``the administration's statements and actions before the Iraq war.'' Bush and his top aides had charged that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, was trying to build a nuclear weapon, and had links with al Qaeda.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said the commission ``may provide President Bush with political cover, but it won't result in the investigation that the nation needs.''
At the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the use of flawed intelligence in the Iraq debate likely caused ``damage that will probably take some time to heal.''
``People are going to be very suspicious when one talks to them about intelligence, and they are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions,'' Annan told reporters during a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
A June 30 deadline for the transfer of power in Iraq appeared increasingly in question after Annan said the hand over could be put back if all sides agreed.
-------- courts
Scalia's Trip With Cheney Raises Questions of Impartiality
February 6, 2004
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06SCAL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - They may be old friends, but duck hunting together on a trip to Louisiana last month has brought Vice President Dick Cheney and Justice Antonin Scalia more than happy memories of a few days in the wild, bagging mallards and teal.
With Mr. Cheney as a defendant in a Supreme Court case involving his energy task force, legal ethics experts and Democrats in Congress say the trip, which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times, was inappropriate and should lead Justice Scalia to recuse himself from the case. A lawyer for one plaintiff, the Sierra Club, said he was considering a formal request to the court, asking that Justice Scalia recuse himself.
No evidence has emerged to suggest that Mr. Cheney and Justice Scalia discussed the case during their three days together, and no one has questioned their right to maintain a friendship. But critics have suggested that the timing of the trip, coming just three weeks after the court agreed to hear Mr. Cheney's appeal of an order requiring him to disclose members of an energy task force he led, created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest, prompting the calls for Justice Scalia to step aside.
"Frankly, I'm puzzled by it," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, in an interview on Thursday. "I know Justice Scalia well; he's a very intelligent person. He has to know that with similar tactics, in any state in the country, a State Supreme Court justice would have to recuse himself. It's Law School 101."
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and the chairman of the judiciary committee, declined to respond directly to the question of an appearance of a conflict. But he said in a statement that he was confident that Justice Scalia would "do the proper thing."
Mr. Cheney's office did not respond to questions sent by e-mail.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court said Justice Scalia was out of town and could not be reached for comment. However, in response to a question from The Los Angeles Times for an article on Jan. 17, Justice Scalia said, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned." He added, "Social contacts with high-level executive officials (including cabinet officers) have never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which those people are involved in their official capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity."
On Jan. 5, Mr. Cheney and Justice Scalia flew to Southern Louisiana to spend several days at a duck-hunting camp owned by Wallace Carline, a friend of both men and a Democrat, said the local sheriff, David A. Naquin of St. Mary Parish. Sheriff Naquin, who was involved in planning Mr. Cheney's visit, said the vice president, Justice Scalia and other friends of Mr. Carline hunted that afternoon and the next morning before rain cut their activities short.
After accounts of the trip circulated, Senator Leahy and another Democratic senator, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, wrote to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, questioning the appropriateness of Mr. Cheney's spending "extended time" in a social setting with Justice Scalia after the court agreed to hear an important case that involved the vice president as a defendant.
The letter suggested that "reasonable people will question whether that judge can be a fair and impartial adjudicator" of the case and asked what procedures were in place for justices to recuse themselves or, failing that, whether a justice could be removed if ethical issues arose.
Chief Justice Rehnquist answered several days later, saying ethical situations were covered by federal laws that govern judicial conduct. He said that the Supreme Court had no formal procedure for reviewing a decision by a justice in an individual case and that as long-standing court policy, individual justices decided for themselves whether it was proper to hear a case.
Recusals are not uncommon. Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University who specializes in ethics, said 14 cases were decided over the last four full terms by fewer than the full complement of nine justices. Justice Scalia has stepped aside from a case this term involving an appeals court decision that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional. Justice Scalia expressed a view about the decision before it was appealed.
David Bookbinder, the Washington legal director for the Sierra Club, said the trip "raises to another level" questions of whether Justice Scalia could fairly decide a case involving the vice president. Mr. Bookbinder said that the club would decide soon whether to ask Justice Scalia to recuse himself.
--------
Scalia Joined Cheney on Flight
Justice's Ride on Air Force Two Adds New Element to Conflict Issue
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17046-2004Feb5.html
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took a flight aboard Air Force Two with Vice President Cheney last month when the two men went on a hunting trip to Louisiana, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.
The report of the justice's presence on the vice president's aircraft comes as the Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case involving Cheney, who is seeking to block the release of records from his energy policy task force.
Some legal scholars have suggested that Scalia should recuse himself from the Cheney case because of the trip. But one of the two organizations opposing Cheney in the case, Judicial Watch, disagreed. "We will not be asking for Justice Scalia's recusal," said Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president. "We do not think there is a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict."
The other litigant suing Cheney, the Sierra Club, said it had not decided whether to seek Scalia's recusal. Sierra Club lawyer David Bookbinder said the presence of Scalia on the plane makes it appear he was accepting "valuable favors" from Cheney. "We understand why everybody in America is wondering why the appearance of impropriety has not been reached," Bookbinder said.
The decision is Scalia's to make. A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court said Scalia was traveling yesterday and unavailable for comment. Scalia, responding to the Los Angeles Times's initial report that he went duck hunting with Cheney, told the newspaper: "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."
A spokesman for Cheney said he could not confirm that the vice president and the justice traveled together.
Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity said that taxpayers would cover the cost of flying Scalia, standard procedure for Air Force Two passengers, but that the invitation from Cheney could add to appearances of a conflict of interest. "It does raise the level of closeness a little bit higher," Allison said. "It makes it seem more like Cheney was courting Scalia."
The Times, citing an airport worker and a sheriff, reported that Cheney, Scalia and a woman identified as one of Scalia's daughters disembarked from a small-jet version of Air Force Two on Jan. 5.
The Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport in Patterson, La., where the plane arrived, does not have commercial service.
The two men went hunting at a camp owned by Wallace Carline, the head of oil services company Diamond Services Corp. Cheney returned after two days, but Scalia stayed on for a few more days.
In December, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Cheney case after a petition by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who said a lower court order against Cheney represented an intrusion into executive branch authority. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club are seeking documents from Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group. The task force developed President Bush's energy policy in 2001 and was criticized by environmentalists as doing the bidding of corporate interests.
-------- death penalty
A Shrinking Death Row Rulings Contribute to Md. Decline, Reflecting U.S. Trend
By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17291-2004Feb5?language=printer
The number of inmates on Maryland's death row has fallen by half in less than 31/2 years, and after a court hearing yesterday on the Eastern Shore, their ranks dropped into the single digits for the first time since the 1980s.
Neither executions nor exonerations account for the decrease from 18 to 9. The state has not put anybody to death since 1998, and no one confronting that possibility back then has walked out of prison because of exculpatory evidence such as DNA.
Rather, the slow but steady attrition has been driven by a combination of other factors, from reversals in the cases to the impact of court rulings elsewhere. Victims' families, emotionally frayed by the years of appeals, have told prosecutors not to seek death in instances where inmates win resentencing. Life in prison without parole, a sentence not available to judges and juries in the past, has diverted some defendants who might have gotten the ultimate sanction.
The trend in Maryland reflects a nationwide decline in executions and the death row population in the past five years. Preliminary data indicate that 50 percent fewer capital sentences were handed down in 2003 compared with 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a D.C.-based organization that is critical of the system .
Even in Virginia, which once placed second only to Texas in executions annually, a shift has occurred. The state put to death just two people last year. None of the 27 men and one woman currently facing that fate there has an execution date on the calendar.
Law professor Scott Sundby of Washington and Lee University considers the turnaround stunning. "If you'd talked to me five or six years ago, I would have predicted a steady escalation in sentencing and particularly in the execution rate. But clearly that's not happened," he said. "The crosscurrents, like El Niño, have changed, and they've dramatically changed the climate."
The case of Kenneth Collins, who yesterday escaped a death sentence in favor of life plus 40 years, illustrates how those currents can carry lives in different directions. Collins, 29, was found guilty of robbing and murdering Wayne Breeden after the young bank executive withdrew money from a Baltimore County automated teller machine in 1986. All efforts to appeal the conviction were denied at state and federal levels.
Then last June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the sentence of another Maryland inmate, Kevin Wiggins, because his trial attorney failed to adequately investigate a horrific childhood that might have swayed a jury against capital punishment. The decision had immediate implications for Collins, whose original attorney called no witnesses at any point in his trial and did no background check for similar mitigating details.
At his hearing in Somerset County, where the case was moved because of pretrial publicity nearly 16 years ago, Circuit Court Judge Daniel Long denied Collins's petition for a new trial but agreed to resentence him. Prosecutors, in deference to Breeden's family, did not push for death. His widow and daughter, an infant when her father was killed, did not want to endure another round of the protracted, agonizing uncertainty that attends capital cases.
"We certainly told them it could be another 16 years," said Baltimore County Deputy State's Attorney Stephen Bailey. "The family has been steadfast in their desire to see justice meted out, but this puts you back to square one."
It was the second time in less than two months that the Baltimore County office, which pursues more capital convictions than any in the state, had agreed to a reduced sentence because of relatives' change of heart. In late December, Courtney Bryant, a former death row inmate, received life in prison with no possibility of parole for the fatal 2000 stabbing and beating of James Stambaugh Jr., 21, a fast-food manager. Bryant's sentence had been overturned on appeal, with the state's highest court finding that the trial judge should have more specifically accounted for the defendant's age at the time of the crime. He was 18.
Many relatives, Stambaugh's father among them, "simply lose faith that the system will carry out a sentence they believe was justly imposed," Bailey said. Yet death penalty detractors such as Peter Keith, a former prosecutor who now represents Collins, believe the cases at issue have "serious problems."
Eugene Winder, who in 1998 bludgeoned his fiancee and her grandparents and then torched their house, was spared when the state Court of Appeals concluded that he had been coerced into confessing. Joseph Metheny benefited when the same justices determined that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of robbing his victim; without the robbery charge as an aggravating circumstance in the slaying, the death penalty no longer applied.
Eugene Colvin-el remains the single Maryland death row inmate in the group to have his sentence commuted. Supporters contended that prosecutors had only circumstantial evidence linking him to the 1980 slaying of an elderly Florida woman who had been visiting her daughter in Pikesville for the Jewish high holy days. Then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) intervened a week before the scheduled execution in June 2000.
"I believe that Colvin-el committed this crime," Glendening announced, "but I do not have the same level of absolute certainty" as in other clemency pleas he had considered -- and rejected.
Only two men have joined death row since June 2000, and with the subtractions far exceeding additions, the roster has shrunk sharply. One additional departure, through lethal injection, could be Steven Oken. His attorneys concede he is nearing the end of appeals in the 1987 rape and murder of a Baltimore County newlywed.
The census could rebound. Wiggins and another prisoner set for resentencing in Anne Arundel County might again receive death. Baltimore's first capital trial in six years began last week, in the alleged retaliatory killing of a city police officer .
Still, no one expects a significant influx of death row prisoners.
"I think that's light-years away," said Michael Stark, the Washington and Maryland regional director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "At this point, it is just as likely that we could get abolition."
The legislative debate continues in Maryland and Virginia, surprisingly so given the two states' vastly different histories. Virginia's General Assembly is weighing whether to make it easier for felons to bring new evidence into court and whether to ban the execution of minors. In Annapolis, lawmakers not only are proposing repeal of the death penalty but measures to expand its use to those who commit serial killings or who silence a witness through murder.
Kent Scheidegger, of the pro-death-penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, believes that nationally, the "fatigue factor" that follows repeatedly delayed executions will fade once issues and appeals play out. The drop in the country's homicide rate is as likely an influence as any in the decreased sentencings, he said, adding, "That's the kind of reduction in the death penalty I like to see."
Other experts predict that things will stay unsettled. The judicial system is feeling its way far more cautiously, they suggest. It could be further buffeted when the Supreme Court hears arguments this fall on whether juveniles should be excluded from death sentences, as it found for the mentally retarded two years ago. With so much in flux, "things get put in a holding pattern," said Maryland Solicitor General Gary Bair.
The court of public opinion also will have an impact. A University of Maryland study last year identified racial and geographic disparities in the state's system, concerns that in 2002 prompted Glendening to impose a moratorium on executions. Headlines about DNA-related exonerations underscore unease about fairness. And in one of the biggest stories of 2003, then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois overturned all capital sentences there for fear that innocent people might be executed.
"It's such a complex issue, with so many legal, political and public relations dimensions," law professor Sundby said. "A major development in any of these areas can dramatically alter where you think the trend is going."
-------- homeland security
New York City Wants Easing of Patriot Act
by Jim Lobe
February 6, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=1893
New York, the city most affected by the 9/11 attacks almost two and a half years ago, has become the latest U.S. municipality to formally urge major reforms to the USA PATRIOT Act to eliminate threats to basic civil rights and due-process protections.
The New York City Council voted Wednesday to urge local agencies not to subject New Yorkers to secret detentions without access to counsel and the New York Police Department (NYPD), in particular, to protect the free-speech rights of individuals and refrain from enforcing federal immigration laws or engage in racial or ethnic profiling.
The measure, known as Resolution 60, was approved by voice vote and also calls upon the New York delegation in Congress to "actively work for the repeal of those sections of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) and related federal actions that unduly infringe upon fundamental rights and liberties."
"The city of New York - perhaps more than any city in America - is keenly aware of why we are engaged in a war on terror," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "With its diverse population, it is fitting and proper that the nation's largest city has joined millions across the country in demanding that America can, and must, be both safe AND free," she added.
Passage of the resolution came two weeks after the Los Angeles City Council passed a similar resolution by a 9-2 margin. The Jan. 21 vote was depicted as a direct rebuff to President Bush, who had called for extending and expanding the Patriot Act during his State of the Union Address the night before.
In so doing, Los Angeles, the country's third largest city, and now New York have joined a growing list of 250 municipalities, counties and states encompassing nearly 50 million people across the country that have approved measures over the past two years that urge far-reaching reform of the USAPA to ensure basic rights and due process.
Other jurisdictions that have approved such resolutions include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, the nation's second largest city, as well as small communities from Alaska to North Carolina and Maine. The state legislatures of Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont have also approved similar measures.
The main focus of their objections includes the sweeping powers given to the Justice Department to round up, detain, and summarily deport immigrants without filing charges or providing them with access to attorneys, or, in some cases, even to their family members; the use of racial and ethnic profiling by federal agencies in targeting suspects; and the granting of unprecedented powers to the FBI to secretly obtain information with little or no judicial review about individuals, ranging from their financial records to their book-borrowing patterns from local libraries.
Late last year, the Bush administration indicated it will seek a further expansion of those powers in a new act, as well as an extension of the USAPA beyond its December, 2005, expiration date. At the same time, the administration managed to push through new powers for the FBI enabling it to search and seize business records without court approval from securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that, in the government's eyes, has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Under the 2001 USAPA, such powers were limited to business records held by banks, credit unions and similar financial institutions.
The ACLU, a leader in national and grassroots efforts to oppose the USAPA's more far-reaching provisions and related legislation, has been joined by a wide coalition of other groups from across the political spectrum. Indeed, some of the strongest opposition to USAPA has come from the political right, including Americans for Tax Reform and the Eagle Forum, among others.
The coalition's common denominator has been the fear that USAPA has upset the delicate balance between security and liberty and now threatens individuals' privacy and constitutional freedoms.
More than 90 organizations had endorsed the New York resolution, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the New York Public Library Guild, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. At the council's hearings held earlier, a number of family members of NYPD and NYFD officers who died on 9/11 testified in support of the resolution.
"The fact that the resolution passed in New York City, site of the devastating 9/11 attacks, sends a resounding message that New Yorkers are not willing to trade their freedom for policies that do not make them any more safe," said Laura Murphy, head of the ACLU's Legislative office here. "The City of New York paid a higher cost than most cities, but New Yorkers are standing up and refusing to sacrifice their fundamental freedoms."
Among the 34 cosponsors of the resolution was Council Member Alan Gerson, whose district includes the site of the World Trade Center.
The impact of the City Council's vote on security is likely to be put to a major test when the Republican National Convention meets in New York Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Large-scale protests are expected.
----
One More Slap at a Prying Eye
Friday February 6,
Business Week
http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/040206/tc20040269706_tc073_1.html
On Jan. 29, Utah pulled out of MATRIX, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, a database that allows law-enforcement officials to comb through information on individuals held by the state and commercial establishments. Utahans evidently were enraged to discover that the police could create dossiers that include a person's birth and marriage certificates, car registration, and address and credit history -- with one click of a button.
According to published reports, one man complained that he had received unwanted marketing solicitations based on information he had shared only with the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles. Other locals were seized by an amorphous fear of a system that, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), amounted to "a body blow to the core American principle that the government will leave people alone unless it has good reason to suspect them of wrongdoing." Former Governor Mike Leavitt caught plenty of grief for having signed onto the program without alerting the public or even, apparently, his lieutenant governor, Olene Walker, who has since succeeded him.
Utah isn't the only state to back out of the controversial data-sharing plan. On Jan. 30, Georgia withdrew amidst a swirl of privacy concerns. Last September, California's attorney general declared that the system "offends fundamental rights of privacy." Of the 13 states originally involved in the MATRIX, only six -- Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Michigan -- remain. (Four withdrew citing costs that could run to $1.8 million per year.)
BIRTH OF BIG BROTHER. There's no doubt that MATRIX raises privacy red flags, though after an extensive briefing by the Florida Law Enforcement Dept., which is spearheading the project, I believe that it's little more than an efficient way to query multiple databases.
The real furor over MATRIX demonstrates something much more important -- and surprising: Privacy advocates have gained a lot of ground in the two years since September 11. And the pendulum is swinging back in their favor.
It was in those dark days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that many of the Big Brother programs were born. At the federal level, there was Total Information Awareness (TIA), the brainchild of former Admiral John Poindexter that aimed to combine every American's bank records, tax filings, driver's license information, credit-card purchases, medical data, and phone and e-mail records into one centralized database that could be scanned for suspicious behavior (see BW Online, 12/18/02 "Snooping in All the Wrong Places").
RECORD CHECK. Around the same time, we now know, the National Aeronautic & Space Agency (NASA), began research into a similar concept -- which it developed using Northwest Airlines (NasdaqNM:NWAC - News) passenger data (see BW Online, 1/28/04, "Putting a Stop to Fly and Tell"). These and other programs were attempts to make databases so intelligent that they could identify terrorists without human intervention.
Indeed, that was one of the ideas behind the MATRIX, as Mark Zadra, chief of investigation at the Florida Law Enforcement Dept., now says. In the weeks after September 11, Boca Raton database outfit Seisint, with the help of the FBI, the former Immigration & Naturalization Service, and the Secret Service, did develop software designed to unveil suspicious behavior, which it presented to the MATRIX board of directors in 2002, according to Zadra.
In early 2003, however, the MATRIX program's board of directors, which includes representatives from participating states, rejected the software, concerned that it was both too crude and that it would raise serious privacy issues. "The MATRIX is not whirring away at night to create a list of suspects that is placed on my desk every morning," says Zadra. "All it does is dynamically combine commercially available public data with state-owned data (such as driver's license information, sexual-predator records, and Corrections Dept. information) when queried. I can't imagine any citizen getting angry that we're using the best tools available to efficiently and effectively solve crimes."
CLOSING LIBRARY FILES. Neither can I. Still, the public is starting to demand less intrusive security and more transparency. Witness the Security & Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act, a bill sponsored by Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) that was introduced last October. It aims to curb the most objectionable sections of the Patriot Act, the sweeping law passed just weeks after September 11 that expanded law enforcement's right to tap phones, monitor e-mail correspondence, and conduct secret searches (see BW Online, 11/29/01, "Uncle Sam Needs Watching Too").
The SAFE Act would, among other things, roll back "sneak-and-peek" searches that allow a search to take place without notifying the target. It would also establish expiration dates on nationwide search warrants and prohibit law enforcement from obtaining library records without cause. On Jan. 30, Attorney General John Ashcroft warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush will veto any legislation that curtails the Patriot Act.
Even if he does, challenges to government privacy invasions are bubbling up elsewhere. For instance, privacy activists are turning up the heat on the newest version of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, or CAPPS 2. On Jan. 27, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Admiral James Loy was questioned about CAPPS 2 before a hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States. During his two-hour testimony, Loy acknowledged that 14.5% of all passengers are currently designated as "dangerous" and that CAPPS is "gameable" and might be compromised.
TRANSPARENCY NEEDED. Overseas, the European Union is threatening to stop cooperating with U.S. data collection if more privacy protections aren't put in place pronto. In particular, government sources close to the negotiations say the EU wants proof that Homeland Security's privacy office is independent and not subject to political pressures.
There's still a long way to go before the U.S. reaches an acceptable balance between privacy and public safety. First, as I've noted many times, the Bush Administration should abandon the notion that technology can unearth terrorists. Second, all government agencies that collect information need to be upfront about what they're doing and how they're doing it, rather than allowing programs with spooky names, such as MATRIX and Total Information Awareness, to be outed by privacy activists. Maybe they'll learn from MATRIX's demise. It's about time.
----
Senate Offices Open Again as Ricin Inquiry Continues
February 6, 2004
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06POIS.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - Senate office buildings began reopening Thursday as investigators said they still had not determined how the poison ricin got into the mailroom of the Senate majority leader on Monday.
Hundreds of Congressional staff members, eager to return to desks that had been off limits for days, clustered outside the entrances to the Russell Senate Office Building across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol and streamed in when the doors opened just after noon.
Officials said the collection of unopened mail, the decontamination of the office and the environmental testing of the Senate buildings were all proceeding smoothly and more quickly then they had expected. As a result, the Capitol police reopened the Hart building Thursday evening, ahead of schedule.
The Dirksen building, where the poison was discovered, is scheduled to reopen no later than Monday morning, but officials were trying to get it back in business sooner as well.
"Substantial progress continues to be made to reclaim the building," Chief Terrance Gainer of the Capitol police said. "We really are moving along very nicely."
Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the testing, said ricin had not been detected anywhere except in the fourth-floor mailroom of the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, where it was first spotted by a Congressional intern about 3 p.m. Monday.
"We have not found a hot letter at this point in time," said Michael Mason, assistant F.B.I, director in charge of the Washington field office. "In terms of how it was delivered to that room, it is open to your imagination."
With no letter in hand, investigators seemed to be considering the idea that the substance may have arrived in another way. "The possibilities for the delivery mechanism, whether it is a person or a letter or a package, is open," Chief Gainer said.
Mr. Mason described the criminal investigation as "still in its infancy." The law enforcement officials acknowledged that the Secret Service had not immediately informed them of a ricin-contaminated letter directed to the White House in November, but they said new procedures put in place since then would prevent future communication gaps. "From my perspective, this is water over the dam," said Mr. Mason.
But Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said lawmakers of both parties were "very frustrated about the way that whole matter was handled."
"There's no reason why information that vital should be withheld," Mr. Daschle said. "It affects our own ability to cope with circumstances similar to those, here on the Hill."
Medical officials said none of the dozens of staff members who were in the vicinity of where the ricin was discovered had shown any symptoms of exposure.
--------
Ricin Probe Looks to Truckers for Help
Officials Seek Out Radio Shows, Web Sites for Clues to Mailing of Poison
By Marilyn W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17228-2004Feb5.html
In its nationwide hunt for the person who sent ricin through the mail and uses the name "Fallen Angel," federal officials have sought help from trucker talk-radio shows and Web chat sites that have attracted heated debate about trucker safety regulations that took effect Jan. 4.
Law enforcement officials say they have also begun scouring the rosters of trucking companies nationwide, trying to develop leads from a flimsy set of clues. In a typed note left along with a small vial of ricin at a mail facility in Greenville, S.C., in mid-October, the perpetrator has claimed to be a "fleet owner of a tanker company" with "easy access to castor pulp," from which the deadly poison ricin is made.
A second letter, retrieved Nov. 6 from a mail facility that serves the White House, contained an identical letter and a similar vial of ricin powder. Authorities revealed that mailing this week, after ricin was discovered in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Last week, at the request of the FBI and the Department of Transportation, Dale Sommers, host of the popular "Truckin' Bozo" radio show broadcast out of Cincinnati, spent three nights on the air appealing to the person who planted the ricin package in the facility near the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.
Sommers said he was contacted by FBI agents in Greenville, including Martin Brown, who is heading the investigation there, and by Heather Hollowell with the Transportation Department's inspector general's office in Washington, who asked that he broadcast information about a $100,000 reward posted for information leading to an arrest.
Tom O'Neill, a spokesman for the FBI office in Columbia, S.C., said agents have been following trucker Web sites and trucker-oriented radio programs, including Sommers's show and another popular radio show hosted by "Satellite Cowboy" Bill Mack. Mack's producer, Ken Johnson, said the show has mentioned the ricin matter but has not focused discussions on it.
Sommers said the message left in Greenville -- which warned federal authorities not to expand the time truckers must spend resting in sleeper berths from eight hours to 10 hours -- makes it clear that the person is either a "trucker or someone who is affected by these new rules."
He said discussion of the regulations, including the sleeper-berth language, has dominated discussion on his show since last April, when they were published after extended study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety division of the Department of Transportation. They were the first major changes in rules regarding trucker hours of service in 60 years.
Transportation officials have estimated that the new regulations, which are designed to give truckers more rest time, will save 75 lives and prevent 1,326 fatigue-related injuries each year, as well as cut down on property losses.
Although transportation officials have said the rules are being well received by truckers and will lead to significant safety improvements, Sommers said the federal agency "is far out of touch with the American trucker. They really have no idea what's going on out there."
In his broadcasts last week, Sommers said he urged the ricin mailer to turn himself in before anyone is killed by the poison.
"I tried to tell him or her to turn yourself in -- that the longer they have to look for you, the angrier they'll be," Sommers said. He said he is worried that the White House letter was the act of a "copycat" who read about the events in Greenville.
Sommers's show attracts 12 million to 15 million listeners nightly. He gained attention in the D.C. area sniper case of 2002, when he broadcast details that helped a trucker at a Frederick County, Md., rest stop identify the snipers' vehicle.
Sommers said he assumes the bureau is tapping the station's phone lines and closely monitoring its nightly broadcasts. He said his on-air appeals attracted one especially suspicious call from a trucker parked at a rest stop -- a woman working for a mail transport carrier who seemed to have extensive knowledge about the mail delivery system to federal government offices in Washington.
Andy Beck, a spokesman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said that although some truckers may dislike the new regulations, the department has received an overwhelmingly positive response in calls to a toll-free hotline it set up to handle truckers' questions. The rules went into effect Jan. 4, but Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta declared a 60-day phase-in period before enforcement begins.
Beck said the phone line has logged 5,500 calls, with the majority of questions concerning the sleeper berth provisions, the definition of a 14-hour workday and procedures for logging hours.
-------- justice
Frist Staffer Quits Over Judiciary Probe
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17164-2004Feb5.html
The counsel on judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has resigned in response to a probe of how Republican staff members gained access to Democratic computer files on President Bush's most controversial choices for the federal judiciary.
Aides to Frist said the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who has been on leave pending outcome of the inquiry, was accepted last week and takes effect today.
Miranda's resignation comes in the midst of an investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, with help from the Secret Service and forensic experts, into whether GOP staffers improperly or perhaps illegally tapped into Democratic strategy memos on a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee members of both parties. The activity continued for months, and reports of the memos' contents appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times.
Miranda was on the committee's GOP staff until he joined Frist's staff last February as the top aide on judicial nominations. Miranda's computer was one of several seized or examined as part of the investigation.
The probe was launched after Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) complained that lifting materials from their computer files amounted to theft. Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) joined in their request for an investigation.
Hatch made a preliminary inquiry of his own, placed a junior-level committee aide on leave (he subsequently quit and returned to school) and described himself as "mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch."
Some conservative advocacy groups have criticized Hatch and denied any impropriety on the part of Miranda and other GOP aides. They said scrutiny should focus instead on contents of the Democratic files. Miranda did not return phone calls to his Washington home, but he told the Knoxville News Sentinel in a story posted yesterday on its Web site that he left Frist's office "so as not to distract the majority leader from pursuing the needed legislative agenda for the American people." He said he had done nothing wrong and expects to be cleared.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Pentagon to Alter Military Tribunal Rules
U.S. to Tell Attorneys When Listening In on Talks With Guantanamo Clients
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17260-2004Feb5.html
In response to complaints from civil libertarians, Pentagon officials said yesterday that they will change some of the rules governing the work of lawyers representing alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters before military tribunals.
Under the new rules, attorneys for the defendants who will be tried before the special military courts at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be notified when their conversations with clients are electronically monitored by military officials, a Pentagon source said. The old rules had not clarified whether the defense lawyers would be informed about such eavesdropping.
The government's ability to listen in on attorney-client talks was one of many provisions of the tribunal rules denounced by human rights groups, some foreign officials and legal organizations such as the American Bar Association.
With rare exceptions, conversations between defense attorneys and their clients are confidential under military and civilian law. Last year, when military officials drew up the rules allowing the electronic monitoring of attorney-client sessions, some defense lawyer groups said they would refuse to participate.
Yesterday, some legal experts welcomed the rule changes but said they do not go far enough.
"These are certainly positive changes, and not simply cosmetic changes, but they're unlikely to have much impact" in persuading defense attorneys to take part in the tribunals, said Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert who represents a U.S. Army Muslim chaplain who was stationed at Guantanamo Bay and is accused of security breaches. A much larger inequity in the rules, he said, is that convictions can only be appealed up the Pentagon's chain of command to the president, instead of to civil courts.
"These changes don't alter the fundamentals of that equation in the rules," Fidell said.
Air Force Maj. John Smith, spokesman for the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, said: "We're tweaking and making some clarifications and modifications to the rules. . . . I think the changes will be well received." The altered rules will be announced soon, he said.
Some military lawyers, including a number of Defense Department lawyers assigned to the tribunals, also have voiced concerns about the regulations. To date, six of the 680 detainees at the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay have been designated eligible to stand trial before military tribunals.
One previous rule will remain: It requires that the monitoring of attorney-client conversations be undertaken only for security or intelligence reasons, and any information derived will not be given to the prosecution. But the new regulations include a provision that only military officials responsible for security, and not prosecutors, can order such eavesdropping, sources said. A bureaucratic wall will be erected to prevent migration of that information to the prosecution, one official said.
The old rules suggested defense lawyers could not ask for trial delays for personal or professional reasons, but the new rules allow that. The previous procedures suggested private defense lawyers would be constrained in working on the cases with their home offices, but the new rules make clear that they may do so.
Military officials say the rules allowing listening in on attorney-client sessions are comparable to procedures governing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons when it confronts security problems or assists in intelligence investigations.
Twenty civilian lawyers have applied to represent defendants before tribunals, which the Pentagon calls commissions. Only four have passed background checks that will allow them to take part, officials said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
US Panel Says Hydrogen Car Is 25 Years Down the Road
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
February 6, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23722/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Though the Bush administration has pegged pollution-free, hydrogen-powered cars as the way to curb the nation's addiction to crude oil, the government's top science advisors on Wednesday said the vehicles won't be readily available for another 25 years.
In 2003, President Bush launched a $1.2 billion initiative to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by developing hydrogen-powered fuel cells to run cars and trucks as well as homes and businesses.
The administration wants to have the hydrogen cars on the market and available to consumers at an affordable price by 2020.
However, the report by a panel at the National Academy of Sciences shows that Americans should not hold their breath waiting for the cars to arrive in showrooms.
"In the best-case scenario, the transition to a hydrogen economy would take many decades, and any reductions in oil imports and carbon dioxide emissions are likely to be minor during the next 25 years," said the academy, an independent group that makes scientific recommendations to Congress.
The emissions-free vehicles would cut pollution and emit water as their only by-product. Automobiles currently emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that scientists have linked to global warming.
The Bush administration's 2005 budget request asked Congress for $228 million to develop cars that run on hydrogen fuel and the service stations to support them, up 43 percent from the 2004 request.
An Energy Department spokesman was not available to comment on the report.
Environmental groups said the government needs to take quicker action to reduce gasoline use by boosting mileage requirements and curb growing emissions from new gas-guzzling SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans.
"We simply can't bank on hydrogen alone to cut our dependence on Middle East oil or fix the global warming problem," said Antonia Herzog at the Natural Resources Defense Council, pointing out that Americans will buy 450 million new cars and trucks before the hydrogen car is available.
--------
Report Questions Bush Plan for Hydrogen-Fueled Cars
February 6, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/06HYDR.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - President Bush's plan for cars running on clean, efficient hydrogen fuel cells is decades away from commercial reality, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.
Promoting the technology in his State of the Union address a year ago, Mr. Bush said a hydrogen car might be available as the first vehicle for a child born in 2003. On Monday, the Energy Department included $318 million for both fuel cells and hydrogen production in its 2005 budget. "Hydrogen is the next frontier; a hydrogen economy is where the world is headed," said Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy.
The Bush administration anticipates mass production of hydrogen cars by 2020. But the academy study, released Wednesday, said some of the Energy Department's goals were "unrealistically aggressive."
Fuel cells produce electricity by putting hydrogen through a chemical process, rather than burning, and their exhaust consists solely of water and heat. Some scientists think they have great promise, not only because they are clean, but also because the hydrogen can be produced from solar or wind power, thus reducing oil imports and the emission of gases that cause global warming.
But the least-expensive methods of hydrogen production use fuels like coal or natural gas, and those create pollution, experts say. Hydrogen is also difficult to ship and store. In addition, power from fuel cells is far more costly than the same amount of power from a gasoline engine.
"Real revolutions have to occur before this is going to become a large-scale reality," said one of the report's authors, Dr. Antonia V. Herzog, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It very possibly could happen, but it's not a sure thing."
The report said battery-powered cars or hybrid cars, which use gasoline and electric motors, could turn out to be better choices. And over the next 25 years, the effects of hydrogen cars on oil imports and global-warming gas emissions "are likely to be minor," the report said.
A second pessimistic assessment came from Joseph J. Romm, the chief Energy Department official in charge of conservation and alternative energy in the Clinton administration. His book "The Hype About Hydrogen" will be published this spring.
"Fuel-cell cars will not be environmentally desirable for decades, because there are better uses for the fuels you can make the hydrogen out of," Mr. Romm said in a telephone interview.
Most hydrogen produced today is made from natural gas, he said, and using that gas to make electricity, and thus replace coal-based electric plants, would do more for the environment than using the gas to make hydrogen to replace gasoline. He said society would get more energy from a cubic foot of natural gas burned in a modern gas-powered electric plant than if it was converted to hydrogen.
Mr. Romm also said there is currently no way to deliver the hydrogen to vehicles. "People who want to build `hydrogen highways' and drive a hydrogen car in 10 or 15 years on a mass scale, are just kidding themselves," he said.
The Bush administration has shifted emphasis from a Clinton-era program to develop hybrid cars into a far more ambitious, long-term project to commercialize fuel cells.
Mr. Abraham, the energy secretary, said he had recently been host of a meeting of energy ministers from around the world, and they agreed that fuel cells offered promise for reducing pollution and dependence on imported energy. "I see it as not only a wise investment for America," Mr. Abraham said, "but really where the world is heading."
-------- environment
Most States Expect Pollution to Rise if Regulations Change
February 6, 2004
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/national/06ENVI.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 - A majority of state environmental officials believes that air pollution from coal-burning power plants would increase if the Bush administration's changes to the Clean Air Act were to take effect, according to a survey to be released on Friday by the General Accounting Office.
The administration has said the changes, originally approved in August, would have minimal impact on air pollution.
The survey, which was requested by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent, gathered responses from 44 states on the section of the Clean Air Act governing aging coal-burning plants, New Source Review.
Officials from 27 states said the administration's changes would increase emissions, while officials from 5 states said it would cut them. Officials from the other 12 states that responded said emissions would remain the same or were unsure about the impact.
"State and local authorities know best, and the vast majority say that these rule changes take us backward, not forward, in cleaning our skies and improving public health," Mr. Lieberman said.
The report highlights the tensions between the Environmental Protection Agency and a number of states, concentrated in the Northeast, since the administration started pushing the changes at the urging of industry.
Fourteen states, including New York, and several cities have sued the E.P.A. to block the new policy. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit barred the changes from taking effect in late December pending the resolution of a court case, in part because the changes were likely to cause irreparable harm.
The Bush administration has said the changes would reduce confusion and bureaucracy in the upgrading of power plants. But officials from 30 states said the changes would result in continued uncertainty.
State officials from 29 states said the changes' main benefits would be to give the utility industry increased flexibility.
Indeed, the E.P.A. said when it first announced the rule changes that it would hold off pursuing a number of cases against power companies, since those cases would no longer be valid. After the court suspended the changes in December, though, Michael O. Leavitt, the E.P.A. administrator, said the agency could continue to investigate the cases.
E.P.A. officials have said they are pushing other, more comprehensive policies to reduce air pollution.
"We have proposed a rule that will require power plants to reduce their emissions by 70 percent," said Cynthia Bergman, a spokeswomen for the agency, referring to a recent proposal that would create market-based trading in acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide and smog-causing nitrogen dioxides.
-------- health
Mercury Threat To Fetus Raised EPA Revises Risk Estimates
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17241-2004Feb5.html
A new government analysis nearly doubled the estimate of the number of newborn children at risk for health problems because of unsafe mercury levels in their blood. Environmental Protection Agency scientists said yesterday that new research had shown that 630,000 U.S. newborns had unsafe levels of mercury in their blood in 1999-2000.
The key factor in the revised estimates is research showing differences in mercury levels in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn children. In a Jan. 26 presentation at EPA's National Forum on Contaminants in Fish, in San Diego, EPA biochemist Kathryn R. Mahaffey said researchers in the last few years had shown that mercury levels in a fetus's umbilical cord blood are 70 percent higher than those in the mother's blood.
"We have long known that the effects of methyl mercury on the fetal nervous system are more serious" than on adults, Mahaffey said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But we did not routinely measure [umbilical] cord blood. We had thought that the mother and the fetus had the same level."
Jane Houlihan, a vice president of the Environmental Working Group, noted that the study "for the first time . . . calculated the number based on children's blood levels, not mothers'. The EPA analysis is showing that even if even if the mother is below the danger zone, she can give birth to a baby that's over the limit."
Mercury, a heavy metal, is a highly toxic substance that can seriously damage neurological tissue. Poisoning can lead to learning disabilities, lower intelligence and overall sluggishness. Fetuses, infants and young children are especially vulnerable. Recent advisories from EPA and the Food and Drug Administration have cautioned pregnant women on the dangers of eating tuna and other large predatory fish and shellfish, whose tissues absorb elevated levels of mercury.
EPA has said the largest U.S. sources of mercury contamination are coal-fired power plants, whose annual atmospheric emissions contain 48 tons of mercury. Much of it drifts into the ocean.
The Bush administration is proposing a new regulation requiring power plants to cut mercury emissions 29 percent by 2007 and 70 percent by 2018. Environmental advocates say the industry can achieve significantly deeper reductions.
Mahaffey, a top scientist in EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, said she began developing her new estimates of the number of infants at risk by studying research published last year from New Jersey and Maine. The information helped her revise the formula used to extract data from a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999-2000 on mercury levels in pregnant women's blood.
The new formula showed that one out of six pregnant women had mercury levels in their blood of at least 3.5 parts per billion, sufficient for levels in the fetus to reach or surpass the EPA's safety threshold of 5.8 parts per billion. In 1999-2000, the last year for which government data are available, this meant that 630,000 children were at risk instead of the original estimate of 320,000.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Feb. 24: Stop the Corporate Invasion of Iraq!
Friday, February 6, 2004
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2199
On February 24, protest Halliburton, Bechtel, and the other corporations that are making millions in Iraq, and speak out for Iraqi workers' rights and self-determination.
WHAT: International day of protest to end the corporate invasion of Iraq and support Iraqi workers' rights
WHEN: Tuesday, February 24
WHERE: In your city, at the offices of Halliburton, Bechtel, or another war profiteering company (Click here to find a war profiteer in your community)
Following on the heels of the military invasion of Iraq, another invasion began: a corporate invasion by Halliburton, Bechtel, and other U.S. companies that were awarded millions in "reconstruction" contracts. Nine months into the occupation, Iraqi schools are still in disrepair, electricity is intermittent, and the water is not safe to drink.
Qualified Iraqi businesses say they are shut out of the reconstruction of their own country and some 70% of Iraqi workers are unemployed. But the contracts for U.S. companies -- especially ones with close ties to the Bush administration - keep getting fatter, even as Halliburton is suspected of overcharging the U.S. up to $61 million for fuel in Iraq, and the Pentagon has accused Bechtel with doing "horrible" work.
At the same time, the occupation administration has essentially put Iraq up for sale. In September, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued an "order" that allows for the privatization of Iraqi state companies, 100% ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories by foreign companies, and 100% expropriation of profits by foreign firms operating in Iraq. While the U.S. saw fit to approve these drastic changes to Iraqi economic laws, which very well may violate international law, it chose not to make any changes to Iraqi labor laws. In a period in which Iraqi workers are organizing throughout the country, the CPA left in place a Saddam Hussein-era law that forbids workers in state-owned enterprises (where the majority of Iraqis work) from forming unions. They have also repeatedly detained or harassed workers who are demonstrating for jobs or better pay.
TAKE ACTION - ORGANIZE A FEB. 24 PROTEST AT THE LOCAL OFFICE OF HALLIBURTON, BECHTEL, OR ANOTHER WAR PROFITEERING COMPANY
Please join the international day of action against the corporate invasion of Iraq by organizing a Feb. 24 rally at Halliburton, Bechtel, MCI or another war profiteering company that has offices in your city. (See below for a list of actions that are already in the works.) If these companies don't have an office in your city, protest in front of the federal building or at another well-trafficked downtown location.
The protests don't have to be big - even a few people holding up signs in front of a Halliburton local office would be great! Ideas for slogans include: Bring Halliburton and Bechtel Home, Stop the Corporate Invasion of Iraq, Support Iraqi Workers' Rights, Iraq is not America's to Sell, Iraq for the Iraqis, Privatization is not Liberation, No Blood for Corporate Profits, US Corporations get Freedom-Iraqi Workers Get Saddam's laws, etc.
Tell us about your planned protest so we can publicize it as part of the national day of action. Click here to list your event on the UFPJ website, or call Global Exchange at 415-575-5555.
RESOURCES
Click here for the US Labor Against War report on companies that were awarded Iraq "reconstruction" contracts. Click here for a sample flyer. More resources coming soon!
PRELIMINARY LIST OF ACTIONS
Anchorage
4:30 PM Protest at Halliburton Offices, 6900 Arctic Blvd.
Sponsored by Alaskans for Peace and Justice and Alaska Action Center
Contact: Kate, justice@aks4peace.org
Boston
Protest at Parsons Corporation, 100 Summer Street, Time TBA
Sponsors: Massachusetts Peace Action, United for Justice with Peace
Contact: shelagh@masspeaceaction.org
Cape Coral, Florida
Protest details TBA. Contact us to help with the organizing!
Sponsor: Collier County Anti-War Coalition
Conact: Ian Harvey, mmediamaniac@yahoo.com, (239) 595-1359
Charlotte
Protest details TBA. Contact us to help with the organizing!
Sponsor: Charlotte Fellowship of Reconciliation
Contact: David Dixon, carolinasfor@yahoo.com
Chicago
An informational picketline is being organized outside the corporate offices of a major anti-union corporation currently reaping big profits in Iraq at U.S. taxpayer expense. Details TBA.
Sponsor: Chicago Labor for Peace, Prosperity and Justice
Contact: CLPPJ@aol.com
Los Angeles
Protest details TBA. Contact CodePink to help with the organizing!
Contact: CodePink: Women for Peace, 202-393-5016, (310) 827-3046, Claire@codepinkalert.org
New York City
12 Noon - 2 PM
Protest at Bechtel offices, 21 East 40th Street, Manhattan
Sponsors: CodePink: Women for Peace, War Resisters League
Contact: Nancy, codepinknyc@hotmail.com
Providence, RI
Protest details TBA. Contact us to help with the organizing!
Contact: Andrew Sawtelle, andrewsawtelle@riseup.net
Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill
4 PM, Protest at RTI (Research Triangle Institute) HQ
3040 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC
Sponsor: Student Peace Action Network
Contact: Dante Strobino, imastringbean@hotmail.com
San Francisco
Noon, Protest at Bechtel Corporate HQ
50 Beale Street (near Market), San Francisco
Join us for a lively, legal, nonviolent action against war profiteering and in support of labor rights for Iraqis.
Sponsors: AFSC, American Muslim Voice, CodePink, CorpWatch, Direct Action to Stop the War, Global Exchange, Global Women's Strike, Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane, United for Peace and Justice, US Labor Against War, and others.
Contact: sideshowjeff@hotmail.com or (415) 575-5552.
Washington, DC
Protest details TBA. Contact CodePink to help with the organizing! Contact: Gael, CodePink: Women for Peace, 202-393-5016, gael@codepinkalert.org
NATIONAL SPONSORS
Sponsored by the Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers (Institute for Southern Studies), Citizen Works, CodePink, Democracy Rising, Direct Action to Stop the War, EPIC (Education for Peace in Iraq Center), Global Exchange, National Network to End the War Against Iraq, National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, United for Peace and Justice, US Labor Against War, War Resisters League, WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom), and others.
--
U.S. companies that have reconstruction contracts and their local offices
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/downloads/war_profiteers.doc.
Halliburton Energy Services, 6900 Arctic Blvd Anchorage AK
Baroid (Halliburton) 6900 Arctic Blvd Anchorage AK
Security Dbs (Halliburton) 715 L Street #1 Anchorage AK
Sperry-Sun (Halliburton) 5631 Silverado Way #G Anchorage AK
Dyncorp 8711 Beachwood Dr Anchorage AK
Halliburton Energy Services 1429 Minnie St. Fairbanks AK
Kellogg Bown & Root/Optimum Group 10 Inverness Ceneter Pkwy Ste 120 Birmingham AL
Dyncorp 301 Randolph Ave Se Huntsville AL
Brown & Root Services, 12832 Stemley Road, Aldot Division 4 Lincoln AL
Kellogg Brown & Root/Ciba Geigy Rd & Hwy 43 North McIntosh AL
Kellogg Brown & Root 2970 Cottage Hill Road Mobile AL
Computer Sciences Corporation 201 Technacenter Dr Montgomery AL
Baroid (Halliburton) 7778 Dauphine Island Pkwy Theodore AL
Bechtel 5651 West Talavi Blvd. Glendale, AZ
Bechtel Corp, 1880 E Morten Ave Phoenix AZ
Bechtel Corp, 4041 N Central Ave Phoenix AZ
Dyncorp Aerospace Technology 2730 E. Sky Harbor Blvd. Phoenix AZ
Baroid (Halliburton) 3820 E 4th St Tucson AZ
Csc-Dyncorp 2100 East Grand Avenue El Segundo CA
Computer Science Corporation 2100 E Grand Ave El Segundo CA
Dyncorp West Region Office 3855 Avocado Blvd La Mesa CA
Bechtel Corp, 16700 Valley View Ave La Mirada CA
Dyncorp Inc. 44073 Sierra Hwy Lancaster CA
Dyncorp 11200 Lexington Dr Los Alamitos CA
Bechtel Corp, 707 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles CA
Bechtel 2840 Howe Road, Suite E Martinez CA
Bechtel Corp, 2840 Howe Rd Martinez CA
Computer Sciences Corporation 1900 Garden Rd Monterrey CA
Dyncorp 2727 Hamner Ave Norco CA
Brown & Root Services, 790 E Colorado Blvd Ste 600 Pasadena CA
Brown & Root/Mgmt & Svcs 790 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 600 Pasadena CA
Dyncorp Information Systems 3310 El Camino Ave Sacramento CA
Bechtel 1230 Columbia St., Suite 400 San Diego CA
Brown & Root Services Corporation Naval Statio Bldg 118b San Diego CA
Computer Sciences Corporation 4045 Hancock St San Diego CA
Computer Sciences Corporation 9305 Lightwave Ave San Diego CA
Dyncorp 4025 Hancock St San Diego CA
Dyncorp BKD Operation 8996 Miramar Rd San Diego CA
Bechtel Corporate Headquarters 50 Beale Street San Fransisco CA
Bechtel Group Incorporated 50 Beale St San Fransisco CA
Bechtel Infrastructure Incorporated, 50 Beale St San Fransisco CA
Halliburton Energy Services 3445 N. Marksheffel Rd. Colorado Springs CO
Computer Sciences Corporation 1250 Academy Park Loop Colorado Springs CO
Dyncorp 1115 Elkton Dr Colorado Springs CO
Dyncorp Information Systems 985 Space Center Dr Colorado Springs CO
Halliburton Energy Services 410 17th St., Ste. 600, Denver CO
Dyncorp 303 E 17th Ave Denver CO
Dyncorp Inc. 2525 S Dayton Way Denver CO
Computer Sciences Corporation 1726 Cole Blvd Golden CO
Dyncorp Inc. 1711 Illinois St Golden CO
Dyncorp 143 Union Blvd Lakewood CO
Computer Sciences Corporation 55 Hartland St Hartford CT
Computer Sciences Corporation 100 Winnenden Rd Norwich CT
Bechtel 1015 15th Street, N.W., Suite 700 Washington D.C.
Brown & Root Services 1150 18th St. Nw, Ste. 200 Washington DC
Carlysle Group 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, Nw Ste. 220 South Washington DC
Bechtel Corp, 1015 15th St Nw Washington DC
Bechtel Corp, 1015 5th St Se # I Washington DC
Computer Sciences Corporation 23412 San Remo Dr Boca Raton FL
Dyncorp 11690 W State Road 84 Davie FL
Dyncorp 55 Georgia Ave Elgin AFB FL
Bechtel 17311 Alico Center Rd., Fort Myers FL
Bechtel Corp, 4540 Southside Blvd Jacksonville FL
Dyncorp 6801 Roosevelt Blvd Jacksonville FL
Dyncorp 8500 Westside Industrial Dr Jacksonville FL
Brown & Root Services, 501 Sw 27th Ave, Miami-Dade Comm College Miami FL
Dyncorp Inc. 414 Thomas Dr Panama City FL
Brown & Root Services 1200 W Leonard St, Escambia City Central Bldg Pensacola, FL
Bechtel 3910 N Us Highway 301 TAMPA FL
Bechtel Corp, 9950 Princess Palm Ave Tampa FL
Brown & Root Services, 1631 Lafrance St Ne Atlanta GA
Bechtel 4016 Flowers Rd Atlanta GA
Computer Sciences Corporation 2 Ravinia Dr Atlanta GA
Dyncorp 185 Southside Industrial Pkwy Se Atlanta GA
Kellogg/Brown & Root Fort Benning 2079 Belko Street Fort Benning GA
Dyncorp 4 Falcon Dr Peachtree City GA
Dyncorp 2343 Camelia Ct Savannah GA
Dyncorp 191 Andrew Dr Stockbriedge GA
Computer Sciences Corporation, 750 W Lake Cook Rd Buffalo Grove IL
Computer Sciences Corporation, 225 W Washington St Chicago IL
Computer Sciences Corporation, 125 S Wacker Dr Chicago IL
Computer Sciences Corporation, 8 Executive Dr Ste 300 Fairview Heights IL
Computer Sciences Corporation, 1 Tower Ln Villa Park IL
Bechtel, 8770 Commerce Park Pl Indianapolis IN
Computer Sciences Corporation, 3500 Depauw Blvd Indianapolis IN
Dyncorp, 6821 Pierson Dr Indianapolis IN
Dyncorp, 200 Arco Pl Independence KS
Halliburton Energy Services, 200 E. 1st St. #204 Wichita KS
Brown & Root Services, Bldg 2316 Brandenburg Station Rd Fort Knox KY
Dyncorp, 1244 Louisville Rd Frankfort KY
Bechtel Equipment Operations, 13157 Middletown Industrial Blvd., Ste. C Louisville KY
Dyncorp, 630 Knox Blvd Radcliff KY
Halliburton Energy Services, 1343 Queen Cathy Dr Baton Rouge LA
Baroid (Halliburton), 503 Gloria Switch Road Lafayette LA
Baroid (Halliburton), 110 Capitol Dr. Ste. 100 Lafayette LA
Halliburton Energy Services, 110 Capital Dr Ste 200 Lafayette LA
Baroid (Halliburton), 601 Poydras St #1500 Pan Am Bldg New Orleans LA
Baroid Plant (Halliburton), 8000 Jourdan Road New Orleans LA
Bechtel 451 D St, Boston MA
Bechtel 1 Meeting House Rd, Chelmsford MA
Dyncorp 10 Willard St, Quincy MA
Dyncorp 110 W Squantum St Quincy MA
Bechtel Corp, 70 INNERBELT RD,, Somerville MA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3465 Box Hill Corporate Center Dr Abingdon MD
Bechtel 300 W Lexington St Baltimore MD
Dyncorp 6480 Dobbin Rd Columbia MD
Computer Sciences Corporation 3 West Ln Elkton MD
Bechtel 5275 Westview Drive Frederick MD
Computer Sciences Corporation 7471 Candlewood Rd Hanover MD
Computer Sciences Corporation 7900 Harkins Rd Lanham MD
Computer Sciences Corporation 15245 Shady Grove Rd Rockville, MD
Bechtel Corp, 2367 Congress St Portland ME
Bechtel Inc. 4612 44th St Se Grand Rapids MI
Dyncorp 1225 Cooper St Jefferson City MO
Computer Sciences Corporation 301 W 11th St Kansas City MO
Computer Sciences Corporation 6360 I 55 N, Jackson Jackson MS
Dyncorp 365 Shop St Jackson MS
Halliburton Energy Services 2725 Hwy 11n, Industrial Park Laurel MS
Bechtel Corp, 1130 Kildaire Farm Rd Cary NC
Computer Sciences Corporation 2815 Coliseum Centre Dr Charlotte NC
Dyncorp Laboratories 4909 S Alston Ave Durham NC
Dyncorp 101 Southcenter Ct Morrisville NC
Dyncorp 2501 Aerial Center Pkwy Morrisville NC
Kellogg Brown & Root/Wake 3810 Falls Of Neuse Rd., Ste. D Raleigh NC
Dyncorp 87 Airport Rd Concord NH
Computer Sciences Corporation 100 Decadon Dr Egg Harbor Township NJ
Computer Sciences Corporation 501 Scarborough Dr Egg Harbor Township NJ
Computer Sciences Corporation 301 Harper Dr Moorestown NJ
Computer Sciences Corporation 2 Commerce Dr Moorestown NJ
Bechtel Corp, 5 W Passaic St Rochelle Park NJ
Bechtel Corp, 275 Hartz Way Secaucus NJ
Computer Sciences Corporation 300 Executive Dr Ste 300 West Orange NJ
Dyncorp RTS, 2617 Saint Andrews Ct Alamogordo NM
Baroid 2220 1st St. Nw Albuquerque NM
Dyncorp 1131 11th St Holloman AFB NM
Dyncorp HSD 2004 Chaves Ct Holloman AFB NM
Bechtel 3900 Paradise Rd Las Vegas NV
Bechtel 2621 Losee Road North Las Vegas NV
Computer Sciences Corporation 800 N Pearl St Ste 1 Albany, NY
Bechtel 21 East 40th Street, 6th Floor New York NY
Bechtel Corp, 21 E 40th St New York NY
Computer Sciences Corporation 103 E 125th St New York NY
Computer Sciences Corporation 200 Park Ave New York NY
Computer Sciences Corporation 37 E 28th St New York NY
Computer Sciences Corporation 255 E 5th St Ste 2210 Cincinnati OH
Computer Sciences Corporation 5885 Landerbrook Dr Cleveland OH
Dyncorp 3040 Prentice Dr Dayton OH
Computer Sciences Corporation 2600 Paramount Pl Fairborn OH
Dyncorp 3040 Presidential Dr Fairborn OH
Computer Sciences Corporation 1238 Ronald St Vandalia OH
Computer Sciences Corporation 999 Pine Ave Se Warren OH
Dyncorp 9266 Meridian Way West Chester OH
Bechtel Corp, 20922 N Triple Xxx Rd Luther OK
Halliburton Energy Services 210 Park Ave Ste 2000 Oklahoma City OK
Computer Sciences Corporation 3000 United Founders Blvd Oklahoma City OK
Halliburton Energy Services 601 S Boulder Ave Ste 300 Tulsa OK
Bechtel 8401 Ne Cascades Pkwy Portland OR
Bechtel Corp, 1510 Valley Center Pkwy Bethlehem PA
Nuclear Utility Services Laboratory 5350 Campbells Run Road Pittsburgh PA
Bechtel Corp, 2630 Liberty Ave Pittsburgh PA
Bechtel Corp, 2304 Salem Dr Pittsburgh PA
Dyncorp 221 3rd St Newport RI
Bechtel Corp, 2578 E Stone Dr Kingsport, TN
Dyncorp 4550 Swinnea Rd Memphis TN
Bechtel 100 Union Valley Road, Oak Ridge TN
Dyncorp Information Systerms LLC, 104 S Jefferson St Shelbyville TN
Brown & Root Services 505 East Huntland Drive #220 Austin TX
Brown & Root Services 7000 Cameron Road Austin TX
Bechtel Corp, 2800 S I H 35 Austin TX
Bechtel Inc. 2319 Westoak Dr Austin TX
Dyncorp 2060 Luna Rd Carrollton TX
Halliburton Energy Services 555 N. Carancahue, Ste. 775 Corpus Christi TX
Brown & Root Services 1444 Oak Lawn #100 Dallas TX
Bechtel Corp, 5429 Lbj Fwy Dallas TX
Bechtel Corp, 5429 LYNDON B JOHNSON FWY,, Dallas TX
Bechtel Corp, 1300 W Mockingbird Ln Lbby Dallas TX
Halliburton Energy Services 1100 Everman Road Fort Worth TX
Dyncorp 6500 WEST FWY STE 600,, Fort Worth TX
Halliburton Energy Services 500 Throckmorton St. Ste 1110 Forth Worth TX
Bechtel 3000 Post Oak Blvd. Houston TX
Halliburton Company 5 Houston Center, 1401 Mckinney, Ste. 2400 Houston TX
Halliburton 9950 Westpark Houston TX
Computer Sciences Corporation 18333 Egret Bay Blvd Houston TX
Brown & Root Services 7520 Mainland Dr San Antoio TX
Halliburton Energy Services 8610 N New Braunfels Energy Plaza Ii, Ste. 614 San Antonio TX
Computer Sciences Corporation 4606 Centerview San Antonio TX
Kellogg Brown & Root/Union Carbide Hwy 185 North Seadrift TX
Bechtel Corp, 960 Levoy Dr Salt Lake City UT
Dyncorp 5536 S 1900 W Salt Lake City UT
Dyncorp Inc. 2242 W North Temple Salt Lake City UT
Dyncorp Inc. 2150 W 700 N Salt Lake City UT
Csc-Dyncorp 6101 Stevenson Avenue Alexandria VA
Dyncorp 2550 Huntington Ave Alexandria VA
Dyncorp I & ET, 6101 Stevenson Ave Alexandria VA
Brown & Root Services 1550 Wilson Blvd Ste 400 Arlington VA
Brown & Root Services 1611 North Kent St Ste 508 Arlington VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 1901 N Moore St Arlington VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 2361 Jefferson Davis Hwy Arlington VA
Bechtel Corp, 21715 Filigree Ct Ashburn VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 95 Red Oak Ln Aylett VA
Dyncorp Information Systerms LLC, 502 E Piedmont St Culpeper VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 10530 Rosehaven St Fairfax VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 8613 Lee Hwy Fairfax VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3141 Fairview Park Dr Falls Church VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3160 Fairview Park Dr Falls Church VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 5113 Leesburg Pike Falls Church VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 7126 Carol Ln Falls Church, VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3170 Fairview Park Dr Falls Church, VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 21 Enterprise Pkwy Hampton VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3217 N Armistead Ave Hampton VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 3001 Centreville Rd Herndon VA
Dyncorp 2905 Fox Mill Rd Herndon VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 16349 Dahlgren Rd King George VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 5184 Potomac Dr King George VA
Bechtel Tyson's Corner, 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 900 McLean VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 6307 Courthouse Rd Prince George VA
Dyncorp 2000 Edmund Halley Dr Ste 1 Reston VA
Dyncorp 11400 Commerce Park Dr Ste 500 Reston VA
Kellogg Brown & Root 9 South 12th St., Ste. 300 Richmond VA
Kellogg Brown & Root/Dupont South End Commerce Rd Richmond VA
Computer Sciences Corporation 110 S 7th St Richmond VA
Dyncorp I & ET, 7420 Fullerton Rd Springfield VA
Dyncorp Security Technology 7942 Cluny Ct Springfield VA
Dyncorp 120 Airport Pkwy South Burlington VT
Dyncorp 457 Sw 148th St Burien WA
Bechtel 12131 113th Ave Ne Kirkland WA
Bechtel National, Inc 2435 Stevens Center Place Richland, WA
Computer Sciences Corporation 1806 Mahan Ave Richland, WA
Computer Sciences Corporation 17801 International Blvd Seatac WA
Halliburton Energy Services 900 Pennsylvania Ave, Ste 107 Charleston WV
Computer Sciences Corporation 1000 Corporate Centre Dr Fairmont WV
Bechtel Corp, 3058 Mount Vernon Rd Hurricane WV
Baroid (Halliburton) 1100 W Collins Dr Casper WY
Baroid (Halliburton) 102 Pasture Road Evanston WY
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