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NUCLEAR
Nuclear missile damaged in submarine base mishap
China brings homemade nuclear power plant online
DU---KUCINICH TO CALL FOR BAN ON MUNITIONS MADE FROM RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
Denmark reforms army, dismantles missile systems
Iranians to Resume Enriching Uranium
Alarm Raised Over Quality of Uranium Found in Iran
Iran's Khatami demands "realistic" approach from UN nuclear watchdog
IAEA Debates How Harshly to Censure Iran
Leaker of nuke secrets curbed
North Korea says doesn't care who wins U.S. election
GAO Urges Better Tests of Missile Defense System
Critics Tackle $10B Request for Missiles
Russia dislikes U.N. nuke resolution on Iran - diplomats
Scientist claims arms reduction is best defense
Nuclear missile damaged in submarine base mishap
Official: Missile Damaged at Sub Base
Moody's issues report on US nuclear power
Nuclear waste removal in S.C. criticized
Nuclear Waste Mismanagement
An Effort on Atomic Waste Is Called a Failure
Suit Claims Toxic Dust Hurt Waste Workers
MILITARY
Harare says Britain, U.S. planned coup
Roh Backers Seize S. Korean Parliament
Tex. Professor Gets Two-Year Prison Term in Plague Case
Missteps Led to Canceled Iraq Contract
Pentagon asks Justice Department to join Halliburton probe
Pentagon increases U.S. role in Haiti
U.S. Rules of Engagement Shift in Haiti
New Haitian Prime Minister Arrives, Vowing to Restore Unity
U.S. Concerned Iraqi Police Behind Attack
2 American Civilians Killed by Fake Iraqi Policemen
America Seeks Details on Gaza Withdrawal
Israeli Troops in Disguise Kill 5 Palestinian Gunmen in West Bank
Arafat Tentatively Backs Israeli Proposal for Troop Pullback
Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Prepare for First Meeting
Palestinians vow revenge attacks
CIA Chief Clueless on Neocon Intelligence Channel
Ex-Aide for Congress Is Charged for Being a Paid Agent for Iraq
Pentagon Pays Iraq Group, Supplier of Incorrect Spy Data
Discredited Iraqi exiles still land US spy funds
Pentagon Pressed for Iraq War's Costs
Nominee to Head Army Withdraws
Army Retraining Soldiers to Meet Its Shifting Needs
Donated Bodies Used in Land Mine Tests
"War president" Bush more focused on September 11 than Iraq
Judge Charged With Bias at War Crimes Trial in Sierra Leone
War crimes court opens in Freetown
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
$5 Million Settlement Ends Case of Tainted Texas Sting
Financial Agencies Criticize U.S.
Terror and Transatlantic Politics
Police Coverup Alleged After Mass Arrests
Freed Guantanamo prisoner denounces camp
Britain Frees 5 Citizens Sent Home From U.S. Jail
At Least 190 Dead in Madrid Terror Blast
Spain Struggles to Absorb Worst Terrorist Attack in Its History
Report Is Bleak for Whistle-Blowers
ENERGY
Energy Department Rolls Out Revised Hydrogen Plan
OTHER
Environmental lobby's efforts backfire
District To Widen Testing For Lead Problem
Group Is Suing Federal Agency Over Post-9/11 Health Hazards
ACTIVISTS
Military Families vs. the War
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear missile damaged in submarine base mishap
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 11, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040310-102901-8830r.htm
A U.S. Navy strategic missile was damaged during a mishap at a submarine base last year, nearly striking a nuclear warhead, according to defense officials.
The incident occurred at the Navy's Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific, known as SWFPAC, in Washington state on Nov. 7.
A crane lifting a Trident I C4 missile out its tube aboard the nuclear-missile submarine USS Georgia caused the damage, according to officials familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
As the missile was lifted out of the sub, its nosecone struck a ladder that had been mistakenly left inside the tube, the officials said.
The impact left a 9-inch gash that came within inches of hitting one of the missile's multiple nuclear warheads beneath the metal shroud.
Officials said there was no danger that any type of lifting accident could have triggered a nuclear blast, noting the warhead is protected from accidental detonation by locking devices.
However, the warhead has a plutonium pit surrounded by high explosives. The radioactive element could have potentially been released into the water or dock area if the accident were severe enough.
The submarine was undergoing routine maintenance at a covered pier at the submarine base near Silverdale, Wash. The facility is involved in extremely sensitive work related to nuclear-weapons maintenance and storage. It is standard practice for submarines returning from patrol to remove and inspect two of the 24 missiles aboard.
The commander of SWFPAC, Capt. Keith Lyles, was fired in December as the result of what the Navy said was a "lack of confidence" in him. Officials said the dismissal was the result of the mishap.
Pam Sims, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Strategic Systems Program office in Washington, declined to comment on the missile incident.
"We can't discuss the presence or absence of nuclear weapons aboard our installations," she said. "Therefore, it would be inappropriate to discuss any nuclear weapons-related incidents at SWFPAC."
Miss Sims said "safety is paramount in everything we do in the Navy and a primary focus of our leadership at every level of command."
"Navy leadership is continuously engaged in the performance of all commands, their missions and those responsible for the performance of those missions," she said. "When necessary, appropriate actions are taken to ensure that the highest Navy standards are upheld."
Other defense officials confirmed details of the incident, first reported on the Internet by former Navy officer Walter Fitzpatrick. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who lives near the base, said he learned details of the incident from employees at the base.
The damaged Trident missile is one of 24 deployed on the Georgia, an Ohio-class submarine. The missile is a three-stage, solid-fuel system and is armed with multiple, independently targeted nuclear warheads. It has a range of up to 4,600 miles.
The base, officially known as Naval Submarine Base Bangor, is located near Puget Sound and is the Navy's major strategic submarine base on the West Coast, as well as the home port for eight ballistic-missile subs.
The Georgia is slated to be converted from a nuclear-missile submarine to a non-nuclear cruise-missile model in 2005. The subwas commissioned in 1984. It is 560 feet long and weighs 18,750 tons. It has a crew of 154 sailors.
-------- china
China brings homemade nuclear power plant online
BEIJING (AFP)
Mar 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040311045534.1slbot9h.html
China brought online its third domestically built nuclear reactor Thursday, reflecting efforts at localizing technology and design in the nation's growing nuclear power industry, state press said.
The 600 megawatt reactor in eastern Zhejiang province joins a similar reactor that went online in April 2002 and forms the 1.8 billion dollar second phase project of the Qinshan nuclear facility, the China Daily said.
The two reactors will supply some 16 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to energy-short east China during their 40-year lifespan, the newspaper said.
A Chinese designed 300 megawatt reactor known as the Qinshan No. 1 reactor went online in May 1994 and is the first-ever Chinese designed presurized light water reactor.
A phase three project at Qinshan includes a pair of Canadian built pressurized heavy water reactors which are currently under construction.
China's nuclear power industry, although only providing a small percentage of its overall energy, is expected to be one of the world's fastest growing in the coming years.
In December, the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) and the Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp drafted tender documents for an additional four 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactors.
Foreign companies such as Electricite de France, Westinghouse of the United States and Japan's Mitsubishi have been scrambling for a piece of the action as Beijing works to meet rising energy needs.
The four 1,000 megawatt pressurized water nuclear power facilities will be located in Sanmen, in eastern Zhejiang province, and Lingdong, in southern Guangdong province in 2005.
The country has set an ambitious goal of having a nuclear capacity of 36,000 megawatts by the year 2020 -- four times its current level.
Nuclear power currently accounts for just 1.3 percent of China's electricity supply.
Eight of the 11 nuclear power plants currently operating or being constructed in China have been built by foreign companies.
At present, China has four French-made nuclear power reactors running in southern Guangdong province and an additional two other Russian-made reactors under construction in eastern Jiangsu province
-------- depleted uranium
DU---KUCINICH TO CALL FOR BAN ON MUNITIONS MADE FROMRADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
"This memo told us to be sure that we should only report our findings so DU munitions could always be used. IN OTHER WORDS LIE!" ~ Dr. Doug Rokke, a retired U.S. Army Reserve health physicist, distributed by The Salmon Valley Observer,03/15/04
For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2004
Contact:
Matt Harris: (o) 216.889.2004, (c) 216.403.3980,press@k...
Kucinich To Call for Ban on Munitions Made From Radioactive Materials
WHAT: Press conference
WHO: Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD
WHERE: University of Illinois, Champaign Campus, Illini Forum
WHEN: Monday, March 15th, 7:00 PM
Champaign, Ill. - Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich will hold a press conference about U.S. munitions made from radioactive materials (depleted uranium, or DU) manufactured in sites across the U.S. and used in U.S.-led wars beginning with the Gulf War in 1991. Joining Kucinich will be Dr. Doug Rokke, a retired U.S. Army Reserve health physicist, is one of the word's leading experts on the use of DU munitions.
Kucinich is expected to discuss the devastating health consequences suffered by American servicemen and women and their families and by innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere because of U.S. use of DU munitions.
Kucinich is also expected to demand that the U.S. cease manufacturing and using DU munitions; that it provide all necessary medical care to all persons who have been exposed to US munitions, military and civilian alike; and that the U.S. take full responsibility for performing complete environmental remediation wherever our military has used DU munitions.
"Depleted uranium weapons are an unacceptable threat to life, a violation of international law, and an assault on human dignity," says Kucinich. "We have an obligation to do what is right for our servicemen and women, for our children and our grandchildren and our grandchildren's children, and for all citizens of the world. We must ban the use of depleted uranium in our military and worldwide; we must provide medical care to all DU casualties; and we must clean up all the places where we've used this poison that has the power to kill for countless generations into the future."
Dr. Doug Rokke earned his Ph.D. in Physics and Technology Education at the University of Illinois, and served as a member of the U.S. Army Medical Command's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) special operations and teaching team during the Gulf War. Dr. Rokke, a confirmed DU poisoning casualty, has taught hazardous materials; field emergency medicine; nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare; education and training, counter-terrorism, and military operations courses for more than 20 years. Recently Dr. Rokke has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental science and engineering, nuclear physics, and emergency management.
For information about the National campaign:http://www.kucinich.us For Congressman Kucinich's Schedule:http://www.kucinich.us/schedule.htm To schedule an interview with Kucinich or spokesperson:jonathans@k... For information about the Illinois Kucinich campaign: Diego Alvarado, 309-275-5070,MrDiegoAlvarado@a...
--
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED ON DEPLETED URANIUM
Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D.
March 12, 2004
ABSTRACT: Depleted uranium munitions are used during combat because they are extremely effective. However, in winning these battles through use of uranium munitions we have contaminated air, water, and soil. Consequently, children, women, and men have inhaled, ingested, or got wounds contaminated with uranium.
Uranium is a heavy metal and radioactive poison. The toxicity is not debatable as the Director of the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute stated in a congressionally mandated report that "No available technology can significantly change the inherent chemical and radiological toxicity of DU. These are intrinsic properties of uranium " (Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium Use in the U.S. Army: Technical Report, AEPI, June 1995). The primary U.S. Army training manual: STP 21-1-SMCT: Soldiers Manual of Common Tasks states "NOTE: (Depleted uranium) Contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption." [Task number: 031-503-1017 "RESPOND TO DEPLETED URANIUM/LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS (DULLRAM) HAZARDS"]. Although, existing U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) directives require that prompt and effective medical care be provided to all exposed individuals (Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, 10/14/93) and the thorough clean up of dispersed radioactive contamination (AR 70048: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities"); United States, British, and Australian officials refuse to comply with these directives.
RECENT EVENTS.
The United States, England, and Australia have recently used extensive amounts of weapons made from uranium, commonly called depleted uranium in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans. Medical evidence and especially the birth defects in children born to parents in areas with DU contamination is an issue of significant concern. Depleted uranium (uranium 238) along with other contaminates of war have been implicated and medical evidence supports the fact that uranium contamination exposure results in adverse health effects.
Today; after the willful use of uranium munitions during Gulf War 1, during Balkans combat, in Afghanistan, and now during Gulf War 2; warriors and non-combatants are exhibiting serious adverse health effects from exposure to depleted uranium munitions contamination, conventional weapons residue, and released toxic industrial chemicals.
However, even though medical evidence exists to prove adverse health effects United States, British, Australian, Canadian, and NATO officials continue to state specifically that there are no known adverse health effects in individuals who were exposed to uranium and other contamination. That is a willful lie as verified by actual medical records of thousands of individuals affected by war created contamination. However, despite their formal stance the British Ministry of Defence recently have acknowledged that British serviceman who serve in Iraq may be exposed to depleted uranium contamination and can obtain medical testing upon re-deployment (http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_mod_warning_cards.html).
WHAT IS DU?
Depleted uranium (DU) which is 99.8% by mass U-238 is made from uranium hexaflouride, the byproduct of the uranium enrichment process. Recent documents released by the U.S. Department of Energy and the 1995 U..S. Army Environmental Policy Institute reports state that a small proportion of other toxic heavy metals and radioactive isotopes such as plutonium, neptunium, americium, and U-236 also are present. Although the 60 % of the ionizing radiation given off by gamma emissions from U-235 and U-234 was eliminated during the enrichment process, alpha particles at 4.2 Mev and 4.15 Mev that cause significant internal ionization with consequent cellular damage were proportionally increased and gamma and beta emissions from contaminants and daughter products still are present. The continuing incomplete statement that DU is 60% less radioactive than natural uranium simply ignores the serious internal damage caused by alpha particles that impact any cell! Alpha particle emission measurements show that the dose or exposure rate is in excess of 10000 counts per minute. DU is a serious internal hazard. Consequent inhalation, ingestion, and wound contamination pose significant and unacceptable health risks due to direct cell damage from alpha and beta particle and gamma ray emissions. Spent penetrators, DU fragments, and contaminated shrapnel emit beta particles and gamma rays at 300 mrem / hour and thus can not be touched or picked up without protection.
HOW IS DU USED BY THE MILITARY?
DU is used to manufacture kinetic energy penetrators- giant pencils or rods. Each kinetic penetrator consists of almost entirely uranium 238. The United States munitions industry produces the following DU munitions with the corresponding mass of uranium 238:
7.62 mm with unspecified mass
50 cal. With unspecified mass
20 mm with a mass of approximately 180 grams.
25 mm with a mass of approximately 200 grams.
30 mm with a mass of approximately 280 grams.
105 mm with a mass of approximately 3500 grams.
120 mm with a mass of approximately 4500 grams.
Sub-munitions / land mines such as the PDM and ADAM whose structural body contain a small proportion of DU. Cruise missiles with unknown quantity of DU Bunker buster bombs with unknown quantity of DU
Many other countries now produce or have acquired DU munitions. DU is also used as armor, counter weights, radiation shielding, and as proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy as a component of road and structural materials. All of these uses are designed to reduce the huge U.S. Department of Energy stockpiles left over from the uranium enrichment process.
It is important to realize that DU penetrators aresolid uranium 238. THEY ARE NOT TIPPED OR COATED! During an impact at least 40 % of the penetrator forms uranium oxides or fragments which are left on the terrain, within or on impacted equipment, or within impacted structures.
The remainder of the penetrator retains its initial shape. Thus we are left with a solid piece of uranium lying someplace which can be picked up by children. DU also ignites in the air during flight and upon impact. The resulting shower of burning DU and DU fragments causes secondary explosions, fires, injury, and death.
All individuals must ask if they would want tons solid uranium penetrators lying in their backyard? Does anyone want any radioactive contamination of any type lying in their backyard? The answer is simple- NO ONE!
OPERATION DESERT STORM DEPLETED URANIUM FRIENDLY FIRE AND COMBAT INCIDENTS INVESTIGATION FINDINGS
I was assigned to the 3rd U.S. Army Depleted Uranium assessment team as the health physicist and medic by order of Headquarters Department of the Army in Washington, D.C. What we found can be explained in three words: "OH MY GOD".
According to official documents each uranium penetrator rod could loose up to 70% of it's mass on impact creating fixed and loose contamination with the remaining rod passing through the equipment or structure to lie on the terrain. On-site impact investigations showed that the mass loss is about 40% which forms fixed and loose contamination leaving about 60% of the initial mass of the penetrator in the solid pencil form.
We found that standard radiacs will not detect his contamination. Equipment contamination included uranium fragments, uranium oxides, other hazardous materials, unstable unexploded ordnance, and byproducts of exploded ordnance. U.S. Army Materiel Command documents sent to us stated the uranium oxide was 57% insoluble and 43 % soluble and at least 50% could be inhaled. In most cases except for penetrator fragments, contamination was inside destroyed equipment or structures, on the destroyed equipment, or within 25 meters of the equipment. During the 1994 and 1995 Nevada tests we found DU contamination out to 400 meters from a single incident.
After we returned to the United States we wrote the Theater Clean up plan which reportedly was passed through U.S. Department of Defense to the U.S. Department of State and consequently to the Emirate of Kuwaiti. Today, it is obvious that none of this information regarding clean up of extensive DU contamination ever was given to the Iraqi's. Consequently, although there still are substantial radiation contamination hazards existing within Iraq these hazards have been ignored by the United States and Great Britain for political and economic reasons at the same time additional use of uranium weapons has occurred resulting in additional confirmed contamination.
Iraqi, Kosovar, Serbian, and other representatives have asked numerous times for DU contamination management and medical care procedures but this information has not been provided. Although residents of Vieques, who are U.S. citizens, also have asked for medical care and completion of environmental remediation DOD officials still refuse to complete these essential actions.
THE U.S. ARMY DEPLETED URANIUM PROJECT AND ITS OBJECTIVES?
The probable health and environmental hazards of uranium contamination were known before the Gulf War. A United States Defense Nuclear Agency memorandum written by LTC Lyle that was sent to our team in Saudi Arabia stated that quote:
"As Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), ground combat units, and civil populations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq come increasingly into contact with DU ordnance, we must prepare to deal with potential problems. Toxic war souvenirs, political furor, and post conflict clean up (host nation agreement) are only some of the issues that must be addressed. Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with possible exposure rates of 200 millirads per hour on contact." end quote.
This memorandum, the reports that we prepared immediately after the Gulf War as a part of the depleted uranium assessment project to recover DU destroyed and contaminated U.S. equipment, the previous research, and other expressed concerns led to the publication of a United States Department of Defense directive signed by General Eric Shinseki on August 19, 1993 to quote:
"1. Provide adequate training for personnel who may come in contact with depleted uranium equipment.
2. Complete medical testing of personnel exposed to DU contamination during the Persian Gulf War.
3. Develop a plan for DU contaminated equipment recovery during future operations."
It is thus indisputable that United States Department of Defense officials were and are still aware of the unique and unacceptable health and environmental hazards associated with using depleted uranium munitions.
Consequently, I was recalled to active duty in 1994 as U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project Director and tasked with developing training and environmental management procedures. The project included a literature review; extensive curriculum development project involving representatives from all branches of the U.S. Department of Defense and representatives from England, Canada, Germany, and Australia. We also completed basic research at the Nevada Test Site located 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, to validate management procedures.
The products of the DU project included: Three training curricula:
(1) Tier I: General Audience,
(2) Tier II: Battle Damage and Recovery Operations,
(3) Tier III: Chemical Officer / NCO;
(4) Three video tapes: (1) "Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness", (2) "Contaminated and Damaged Equipment Management", and (3) "Operation of the AN/PDR 77 Radiac Set";
(5) The draft Army Regulation: "Management of Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (currently AR 700-48, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 9/16/2002);
(6) an United States Army Pamphlet specifying "Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" and
(7) a redesigned radiac capable of finding and quantifying DU contamination.
Although these products were completed, approved, and ready for distribution by January 1996, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, British, German, Canadian, and Australian officials have disregarded repeated directives and have not implemented or only have implemented portions of the training or management procedures.
The training curriculum and management procedures have not been given to all individuals and representatives of governments whose populations and environment have been exposed to DU contamination as verified by U.S. General Accounting Office investigators in a report published during March 2000 and through personal conversations.
WHAT ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS HAVE BEEN OBSERVED, RECOGNIZED, TREATED, AND DOCUMENTED?
Deliberate denial and delay of medical screening and consequent medical care of U.S. friendly fire casualties who inhaled, ingested, and had wound contamination and all others with verified or suspected internalized uranium exposure limits recognition and verification of health effects still continues as of December 10, 2003.
Although we recommended immediate medical care during March 1991 and many times since then United States Department of Defense, the British Ministry of Defense, Canadian, Australian, United State Department, and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs officials are still refusing to provide thorough medical screening and necessary medical care for all DU casualties as required by their own written and published directives.
Dr. Bernard Rostker wrote to me in a letter dated March 1, 1999 that physicians and health physicists at the completion of the ground war decided that medical screening and care for uranium exposures was not required. Actual documents refute this!Today, individuals are sick (including me) and others are dead who were denied medical care even though I requested it in a letter dated May 21, 1997 which was sent to the Office of Surgeon U.S. Army Materiel Command and forwarded to Dr. Rostker.
Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, physicians, and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include: (a) Reactive airway disease, (b) neurological abnormalities, (c) kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, (d) rashes, (e) vision degradation and night vision losses, (f) gum tissue problems, (g) lymphoma, (h) various forms of skin and organ cancer, (I) neuro-psychological disorders, (j) uranium in semen, (k) sexual dysfunction, and (l) birth defects in offspring.
Today, health effects have been documented in uranium processing facility employees of and residents living near Puducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington. Employees of and residents living near uranium manufacturing or processing facilities in New York, Tennessee, Iowa, Massachusetts, and the four corners area of southwest Colorado also have repeatedly reported health effects similar to those reported by Gulf War DU casualties.
Iraqi and other humanitarian agency physicians are reporting the same health effects in exposed populations. Scottish scientists have verified that residents of the Balkans were excreting uranium in their urine. Dr. Assaf Durakovic (a retired U.S. Army Colonel) of the Uranium Medical Research Center has also verified extremely high uranium excretion rates in Afghanistan refugees. This demonstrates that depleted uranium (U-238) is mobile and contaminating, air, water, and soil just as specified in the October 1943 letter to General Leslie Groves.
Today, verifying correlation between uranium exposures and adverse health effects, except in only in a few cases, is difficult because of deliberate delays in required screening, a radio-bioassay and medical care. Screening involves the collection and analysis of urine, fecal, and throat samples within 24 hours of exposure as required in a October 1993 Department of Defense published directive. Today, months or years after exposure, only a small fraction of the sequestered uranium will be detected. This detectable fraction represents only the mobile or soluble portion and a very smal fraction of what is or was in the body. Terry Riordan's (a DU casualty) autopsy in Canada has revealed that sequestering is occurring and that the mobile fraction may not be representative of what is actually present.
Even when verified medical evidence attributing adverse health effects to DU exposures is available official recognition and documentation is limited. For example during 1994 and 1995 United States Department of Defense medical personnel at an U.S. Army installation hospital removed, separated, and hid documented diagnoses (including my own) from affected individuals and other physicians. Some medical records were retrieved during the fall of 1997, but, probably too late for many individuals. Today, this practice continues and consequently exposed individuals are not receiving adequate and effective medical care. This includes individuals whose required medical care has been requested and ordered many times.
The denial of medical care will continue as long as the United States, British, Canadian, NATO, and United Nations officials are permitted to ignore the emerging evidence and deny medical care to all individuals who have been or may have been exposed to depleted uranium (uranium 238), other isotopes, and other contaminants created as result of depleted uranium munitions use. The criteria describing exposures requiring medical screening within 24 hours of exposure and consequent medical care were specified in a message from Headquarters Department of the Army dated October 14, 1993. These exposures included:
"a. Being in the midst of smoke from DU fires resulting from the burning of vehicles uploaded with DU munitions or depots in which DU munitions are being stored.
b. Working within environments containing DU dust or residues from DU fires.
c. Being within a structure or vehicle while it is struck by DU munitions."
These guidelines must be applicable to all exposed individuals with care independent of military or civilian status. They must be implemented now!
Medical care must be planned and completed to identify and then alleviate actual physiological problems rather than placing an emphasis on psychological manifestations and continued testing. Children and others are sick and deserve care for the complex exposures that have resulted in health problems. Medical care for known uranium exposures should emphasize (concern in parentheses):
a. neurology (heavy metal effects)
b. ophthalmology (radiation and heavy metal effects)
c. urology (heavy metal effects and crystal formation)
d. dermatology (heavy metal effects)
e. cardiology (radiation and heavy metal effects)
f. pulmonary (radiation, particulate, and heavy metal effects)
g. immunology (radiation and heavy metal effects)
h. oncology (radiation and heavy metal effects)
i. gynecology (radiation, neurological, and heavy metal effects)
j. gastro-intestinal (systemic effects)
k. dental (heavy metal effects)
l. psychology (heavy metal effects)
m. chromosomal damage (systemic effects)
Many individuals with known exposures still have not received requested care. As stated during March 10, 2003 by Dr. Michael KilPatrick, U.S. Department of Defense, only 90 individuals (including myself) are receiving minimal medical care from physicians assigned to the Baltimore Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs Depleted Uranium program. That includes only a fraction of over 400 individuals with verified extremely high exposures as the Dr. Rostker's staff told members of the Presidential Special Oversight Board on September 28, 1998.
It is impossible to get proper care and treatment. IF YOU DO NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ASSESSMENT FOR THOSE WITH VERIFIED EXPOSURES AND HEALTH PROBLEMS THEN YOU CAN SAY DU DID NOT CAUSE ANY ADVERSE HEALTH PROBLEMS BECAUSE YOU NEVER SAW ANY HEALTH EFFECTS. SO MUCH FOR MEDICAL SCIENCE WHEN A COVER-UP IS DIRECTED BY POLITICIANS TO LIMIT LIABILITY.
The cover-up actions to avoid liability started with the infamous Los Alamos memorandum sent to our team in Saudi Arabia during March 1991. This memo told us to be sure that we should only report our findings so DU munitions could always be used. IN OTHER WORDS LIE!
A letter sent to General Leslie Groves during 1943 is even more disturbing. In that memorandum dated October 30, 1943, senior scientists assigned to the Manhattan Project suggested that radioactive materials; including uranium as confirmed during personal discussions with former Manhatten Project scientists; could be used to contaminate air, water, and terrain contaminant. According to the letter sent by the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee on the "Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon" to General Groves (October 30, 1943) inhalation of radioactive materials- dirty bomb, would result in "bronchial irritation coming on in a few hours to a few days". This is exactly what happened to those of us who inhaled DU dust during Operation Desert Storm and in U.S. soldiers in the Balkans.
The subcommittee went on further to state that "Beta emitting products could get into the gastrointestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air.
From the air, they would get on the mucus of the nose, throat, bronchi, etc. and be swallowed. The effects would be local irritation just as in the bronchi and exposures of the same amount would be required. The stomach, caecum and rectum, where contents remain for longer periods than elsewhere would be most likely affected. It is conceivable that ulcers and perforations of the gut followed by death could be produced, even without an general effects from radiation".
Today, although medical problems continue to develop; medical care is denied or delayed for all uranium exposed casualties while United States Department of Defense and British Ministry of Defense officials continue to deny any correlation between uranium exposure and adverse health and environmental effects. They contend that they can spread tons of solid radioactive waste (uranium 238) in anyone's backyard without cleaning it up and providing medical care. Their arrogance is astonishing!
Since 1991 numerous DOD and VA directives have required compliance with these recommendations. However even though DOD, VA, and UN officials know what should be done, visual evidence, photographic and video tape evidence, on site radiological measurements, personal experience, and published reports verify that:
1. Medical care has not been provided to all DU casualties.
2. Environmental remediation has not been completed.
3. Individuals are not wearing respiratory or skin protection.
4. Contaminated and damaged equipment and materials have been recycled to manufacture new products.
5. Training and education has only been partially implemented.
6. Contamination management procedures have not been distributed and implemented.
Consequently,
1. All DU contamination must be physically removed and properly disposed of to prevent future exposures.
2. Specialized radiation detection devices that detect and measure alpha particles, beta articles, x-rays, and gamma rays emissions at appropriate levels from 20 dpm up to 100,000 dpm and from .1 mrem/ hour to 75 mrem/ hour must be acquired and distributed to all individuals or organizations responsible for medical care and environmental remediation activities involving depleted uranium / uranium 238 and other low level radioactive isotopes that may be present. Standard equipment will not detect contamination.
3. Medical care must be provided to all individuals who did or may have inhaled, ingested, or had wound contamination to detect mobile and sequestered internalized uranium contamination.
4. All individuals who enter, climb on, or work within 25 meters of any contaminated equipment or terrain must wear respiratory and skin protection.
5. Contaminated and damaged equipment or materials should not be recycled to manufacture new materials or equipment.
6. The use of uranium munitions must cease immediately.
7. All individuals who may come in contact with uranium munitions or uranium munitions contamination must complete specific education and training on management of contamination and response to incidents involving uranium munitions.
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT?
All citizens of the world must raise a unified voice to force the leaders of those nations that have used depleted uranium munitions to recognize the immoral consequences of their actions and assume responsibility for medical care of all individuals exposed to uranium contamination and the thorough environmental remediation of all uranium contamination left as a result of combat and peacetime actions. The efforts of senior U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, British, Canadian, Australian, and United Nations officials to prevent acknowledgment of these problems and accept responsibility must be stopped! The overt retaliation against any of us who are attempting to get these same officials to comply with their own directives must stop. We can not continue to ignore the consequences of wartime contamination that include adverse health and environmental effects. I IMPLORE YOU TO ACT!
The Salmon Valley Observer in The Empire State
Charles Jenks, attorney at law President of the Core Group Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342 413-773-1633; fax 413-773-7507 charles@m... http://www.traprockpeace.org
-------- europe
Denmark reforms army, dismantles missile systems
COPENHAGEN (AFP)
Mar 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040311194136.fiuythca.html
Denmark intends to dismantle its "DeHawk" air defense missile system and its multiple rocket launch system (MLRS) as part of an ongoing project to reform its military, Defense Minister Svend Aage Jensby said on Thursday.
The reform, which Jensby described as "the most significant since the Second World War", is meant to concentrate the country's military resources around international operations rather than on territorial defense.
"NATO is in the midst of evaluating the future of this kind of air-defense system, and it would take major investment to maintain the standard of the DeHawk missiles," Jensby said in a debate on Danish TV2, where he attempted to justify Denmark's decision to abandon the missile system.
"The Cold War is over, and... there is no longer a threat of conventional war against the borders" of our country," he said.
This also explains Denmark's decision to dismantle the MLRS system, he said, insisting that surface-to-surface missiles are no longer needed "because there is no longer a threat of invaders... along the Danish coasts."
The two missile systems cost Danish tax-payers about two billion kroner (329 million dollars, 268 million euros), according to media reports.
The reformed military intends to invest in a number of other areas. It will, for instance spend 2.9 billion kroner annually, or 15 percent of its 19.1 billion kroner budget, on new equipment and material.
It will also continue to participate in the US-led next generation Joint Strike Fighter program, as it moves towards replacing its fleet of F-16, and will put aside nearly four billion kroner towards the construction of three new Viking submarines, Jensby said.
"I's wrong to believe that these submarines are meant to sink enemy ships. They will above all be used for information-gathering operations," Jensby said, pointing out that "the United States was very satisfied with the use of one of our submarines during the war in Iraq, due to its operational capabilities very close to the coast."
-------- iran
Iranians to Resume Enriching Uranium
Minister Discloses Military's Atomic Role
By Ali Akbar Dareini
Associated Press
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48000-2004Mar10.html
TEHRAN, March 10 -- Iran said Wednesday that it would resume enriching uranium and warned that it might quit cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which it accused of kowtowing to the United States at a crucial meeting in Vienna.
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani also said the Iranian military had built nuclear centrifuges for civilian use -- the first time the country has acknowledged that its military was involved in its nuclear program.
The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned that Iran risked undermining its efforts to convince the world that its nuclear intentions were peaceful.
"I think suspension is a good confidence-building measure, and Iran needs to do everything possible right now to create the confidence required," ElBaradei said Wednesday in Vienna, where the U.N. nuclear monitor's board of governors was meeting.
The agency's 35-nation board was preparing for a debate Thursday on whether Iran was living up to its pledge of full transparency on its nuclear program.
The United States, which suspects Iran is building a nuclear weapons program, wants a draft resolution on Iran to take a tough line because of evidence that it was developing this program secretly. But the Europeans want to acknowledge that Iran has made substantial steps toward openness.
The draft of the resolution said the agency noted "with the most serious concern" that Iran's declarations "did not amount to the correct, complete and final picture of Iran's past and present nuclear program." But it also praised Iran for signing an agreement that granted a free hand to IAEA inspectors.
Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, Pirouz Hosseini, said Iran was unhappy with the draft and accused the United States of putting pressure on the Europeans.
"We have never been involved in any nuclear weapons program . . . and the Americans don't want to accept the fact," Hosseini said.
In Tehran, the Iranian capital, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi accused the IAEA of failing to reciprocate.
"We take steps and expect the other side to take steps," Kharrazi said. "It can't go one-sided."
Kharrazi warned Britain, France and Germany -- whose foreign ministers visited Tehran last year to discuss the nuclear issue -- that Iran would stop cooperating with them if they failed to resist U.S. pressure at the Vienna meeting.
Kharrazi said Iran had a "legitimate right to enrich uranium" to fuel the nuclear reactor it is building to generate electrical power.
"We suspended uranium enrichment voluntarily and temporarily. Later, when our relations with the IAEA return to normal, we will definitely resume enrichment," said Kharrazi, who accused the IAEA of giving in to U.S. pressure.
"Unfortunately, the agency is sometimes influenced by the United States, while it should maintain its technical and professional identity," Kharrazi said.
The Reuters news agency reported from Vienna:
Libya signed an agreement Wednesday allowing the IAEA to conduct more intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities.
"This is a step by Libya to be clean of all nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction," Maatoug Mohammed Maatoug, the scientific research minister, said after signing the accord with ElBaradei.
ElBaradei said, "Libya's decision could be, and should be, a first step towards an Africa and Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction and at peace."
The protocol allows for IAEA inspectors to obtain short-notice access to any declared or undeclared sites where nuclear material may be present, in order to check for evidence of banned weapons activity.
Earlier in the day, the IAEA's governing board passed a resolution praising Libya for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
--------
Alarm Raised Over Quality of Uranium Found in Iran
March 11, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/middleeast/11NUKE.html
VIENNA, March 10 - United Nations nuclear inspectors have found traces of extremely highly enriched uranium in Iran, of a purity reserved for use in a nuclear bomb, European and American diplomats said Wednesday.
Among traces that inspectors detected last year are some refined to 90 percent of the rare 235 isotope, the diplomats said. While the International Atomic Energy Agency has previously reported finding "weapons grade" traces, it has not revealed that some reached such a high degree of enrichment.
The presence of such traces raises the stakes in the international debate over Iran's nuclear program and increases the urgency of determining the uranium's origin. If the enrichment took place in Iran, it means the country is much further along the road to becoming a nuclear weapons power than even the most aggressive intelligence estimates anticipated.
Iran has said that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, while the United States contends it has secretly tried to produce nuclear weapons. The atomic agency is expected to vote Friday on a resolution criticizing Iran for lack of candor about its nuclear efforts.
Iran has said that all of the highly enriched uranium found on its nuclear facilities was contamination that occurred before imported equipment arrived in the country. Iranian officials said they could not identify the origin of the contamination because the equipment was imported through middlemen in five countries.
I.A.E.A. officials said the contamination may have originated in Pakistan. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist, has admitted secretly supplying uranium enrichment equipment to Iran and other nations. The agency has asked Pakistan for permission to take environmental samples from its enrichment facilities to see if they match the weapons-grade traces in Iran. "Pakistan could let Iran off the I.A.E.A. hook," said a European diplomat here.
American officials argue that traces of such highly enriched uranium, regardless of their origin, are another disturbing clue to what they believe are Iran's hidden ends.
"What it shows is that they have a system that is capable of producing weapons grade uranium," said an American official speaking from Washington. "If it's an assembly that was removed from Pakistan or elsewhere, it's already battle tested," he said.
On Wednesday, Iran's defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, acknowledged for the first time that the Iranian military had produced centrifuges to enrich uranium, the Associated Press reported from Teheran. He said they were manufacturing unsophisticated models for civilian users. The admission came after the I.A.E.A. presented Iran with evidence that some of its nuclear activities were taking place on military bases.
"It's rather strange, don't you think, that the military gets involved in the electric-power generating business?" asked one senior American official. "Or that they forgot to mention this before, when they were `fully disclosing' all details of their program?" American officials are lobbying hard to keep international pressure on Iran.
An I.A.E.A. resolution on Libya, passed by the agency's board of governors on Wednesday, is part of that campaign. The resolution, negotiated by the United States, Britain and Libya in London last week, praises Libya for swiftly dismantling the nuclear weapons program discovered last year. But the resolution's key paragraph calls for the agency to report Libya's past breaches of the Nonproliferation Treaty to the United Nations Security Council.
"The trap is sprung," said a senior American administration official speaking from Washington, saying that the Libyan resolution sets a precedent for future I.A.E.A. resolutions on Iran. "It makes it very hard not to at some point address Iran's breaches by referring them to the Security Council," he said.
The United States has been lobbying since late last year to threaten Iran with Security Council scrutiny if it continued to withhold information on the scope of its nuclear program. Britain, France and Germany have resisted making an explicit threat for fear that it would anger Iran and hinder future cooperation.
Iran warned Wednesday that American-led criticism could "complicate" its relations with the I.A.E.A. "America is taking advantage of any opportunity to put pressure on Iran," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in Teheran, the Associated Press reported. "Unfortunately the I.A.E.A. is sometimes influenced in this regard."
Mr. Kharrazi was quoted as saying that Iran would resume enriching uranium for peaceful purposes once its relations with the I.A.E.A. "return to normal."
David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
--------
Iran's Khatami demands "realistic" approach from UN nuclear watchdog
TEHRAN (AFP)
Mar 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040311095713.cof0twdx.html
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has called on the UN's nuclear watchdog to adopt a more "realistic" approach in its dealings with the Islamic republic, repeating warnings that his government could cease cooperating with it.
In a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Khatami called for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to have a "realistic policy and not be influenced" by arch-enemy the United States, which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons.
"This is necessary for cooperation to continue between the IAEA and Iran," the president was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.
"Iran is ready to cooperate with the international community," Khatami said in his talks with Putin on Wednesday, and repeated assertions that Iran's nuclear programme is solely aimed at generating electricity.
Iran on Wednesday criticised European states for bowing to US pressure to condemn Tehran's atomic programme before the UN nuclear watchdog.
The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors is still debating at its Vienna headquarters a resolution on Iran, with a vote expected later in the week, and Iran has reacted angrily at the prospect of it facing condemnation.
The United States, which wants to take Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, agreed on a compromise text Tuesday with Britain, France and Germany, which have stressed the need to get Iran to cooperate with the international community over nuclear non-proliferation.
The text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, condemns Iran for failing to report such crucial technologies as advanced P-2 centrifuge designs for enriching uranium, possibly to weapons grade, despite it having claimed to have fully disclosed its nuclear program in a declaration to the IAEA last October.
But the draft resolution puts off any immediate reaction, such as declaring Iran to be in non-compliance with the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a move that would mean the issue being taken up by the UN Security Council, paving the way towards possible sanctions.
Russia is helping Iran build its first atomic power station, in the southern city of Bushehr, but has been under massive US pressure to scrap the lucrative deal.
--------
IAEA Debates How Harshly to Censure Iran
March 11, 2004
GEORGE JAHN
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Closing the books on Libya, a key U.N. atomic agency meeting turned to Iran on Thursday as it debated how harshly to censure Tehran for failing to fully expose its nuclear activities and dispel suspicions it wanted to make weapons.
The United States has compromised with Britain, France and Germany on a draft resolution that toned down criticism of Iran's continued nuclear secrecy and offered some praise of Tehran's record in opening activities to outside perusal.
But European diplomats said they hoped the final version to be adopted by the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency would be even less critical.
``We think the Americans are putting a lot of pressure on Europe,'' a European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Pirouz Hosseini, Iran's chief delegate, said most of the board -- ``including probably Russia and China'' -- opposes the ``tough language'' in the draft. He did not elaborate, and delegates from those countries would not comment.
Organizers said the next full session of the conference was postponed until Friday to give delegates time to meet informally and shape a resolution all could agree on.
The current draft is not as tough as Washington would have liked, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
``But it deplores Iran's behavior, and it notes with serious concern that what Iran said ... did not amount to the correct and full picture of their past and present nuclear program,'' the official said.
Later Thursday, nonaligned nations gave a revised draft to the Europeans and the United States striking whole passages from the original and substituting less critical phrasing in some cases.
There was no immediate reaction from the Americans. But signaling a possible deadlock, a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that the United States was only willing to accept ``cosmetic changes, not changes in substance'' to the draft.
The United States, which insists the Islamic republic has a nuclear arms program, has held up the example of Libya as a nation whose openness has reaped international rewards. On Wednesday, the IAEA board passed a resolution praising Tripoli for scrapping its nuclear weapons.
``A country that truly comes clean with the agency and truly cooperates ... gets a constructive response,'' chief U.S. delegate Kenneth Brill said Wednesday. ``Countries that seek to avoid providing the kind of cooperation that Libya has continue to be the subjects of intensified ... scrutiny.''
Iran asserts its nuclear programs are peaceful and has promised to cooperate with IAEA inspectors to dispel suspicions prompted by revelations last year that traces of uranium enriched to 90 percent, or weapons grade, had been found in the country.
However, new discoveries by IAEA inspectors of undeclared items and programs have cast doubt on Tehran's assertions it has no more nuclear secrets. Inspectors found that Tehran had plans to enrich uranium and had secretly conducted other tests with possible weapons applications.
The United States, along with Canada and Australia, wants strong condemnation of Iran. But the Europeans and nonaligned nations at the meeting seek to focus more on Tehran's cooperation with the U.N. atomic agency.
An IAEA report last month accused Tehran of hiding evidence of nuclear experiments and noted the discovery of traces of radioactive polonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons. The report also expressed concern about the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced P-2 centrifuge system for processing uranium.
Iran asserts its now suspended enrichment plans are geared only toward generating power. But on Wednesday, Iran announced plans to resume enrichment.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: http://www.iaea.org
-------- israel
Leaker of nuke secrets curbed
March 11, 2004
By Abraham Rabinovich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040310-101151-4291r.htm
JERUSALEM - Nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu, who will complete his 18-year prison sentence in April for having revealed some of Israel's nuclear secrets, will be denied a passport in order to prevent him from ever leaving the country, Israel Radio reported yesterday.
The decision was said to have been made at a meeting of senior officials called by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Tuesday night.
Mr. Sharon, however, rejected a request by the head of the Defense Ministry's security department, Yehiel Horev, to keep Vanunu locked up even after completion of his sentence. Mr. Horev asked that Vanunu be placed under administrative detention, which would permit his incarceration indefinitely without trial.
Instead, it was decided to use "certain supervisory means" to keep track of him, according to a statement by the prime minister's office. There have been unconfirmed reports that Vanunu will be kept under semi-house arrest, denied use of telephones and kept under constant guard.
Vanunu, who had worked as a minor technician at the Dimona nuclear plant, left for Australia after his dismissal from the job in 1986 and converted to Christianity. He then flew to London for interviews with the Sunday Times about the nuclear plant, where he had secretly made numerous photographs. The articles and photographs led to estimates that Israel had about 200 nuclear warheads.
The U.S. government does not acknowledge publicly that Israel has a nuclear arsenal. But in his new book, "Rumsfeld's War," Rowan Scarborough, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Times, reveals a Defense Intelligence Agency report that says Israel has about 82 deployable nuclear bombs and missiles.
A few days before the London Sunday Times story went to press, the Israeli Mossad had a female agent lure Vanunu to Rome where he was kidnapped, sedated and transported to Israel for trial. His confinement was mostly in solitary and the only visitors he has been permitted are first-degree relatives, his lawyer and a clergyman.
Security officials have recently met with Vanunu to sound out his intentions. According to reports in the Israeli media, he refused to answer most of their questions. However, family members have said that he told them he would not leak any more information.
During his interviews with the Sunday Times he had declined to give the names of co-workers, saying he did not want to endanger them and that the information was irrelevant.
A former senior official of the Shin Bet Security Services, Haim Ben-Ami, told Israel Television on Tuesday that Vanunu might be abducted if he left the country and forced to tell all he knew.
Most of Vanunu's family is said to have severed ties with him for having abandoned the Jewish faith. However, two brothers have remained in contact. One of them, Meir, is said to be living in Australia.
Tuesday's meeting on Vanunu, chaired by Mr. Sharon, was attended by senior legal and security officials, as well as a top official of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission.
-------- korea
North Korea says doesn't care who wins U.S. election
By Jane Macartney,
Asian Diplomatic Correspondent
11 Mar 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:4050157e:e08b912daf747880?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4542856
TAIPEI - North Korea dismissed any idea it wanted George W. Bush to lose November's U.S. presidential election, saying on Thursday the key for the winner -- Democrat or Republican -- would be to change policy towards Pyongyang.
A day earlier, the secretive communist state threatened to boost the nuclear deterrent it says it has and blamed the U.S. stance in recent six-party talks for forcing its hand. Washington dismissed the apparently tougher line from Pyongyang as rhetoric.
Analysts say little progress on curbing North Korea's nuclear programmes was now likely before the U.S. presidential elections in November, thus giving Pyongyang more time to try to develop a nuclear capability.
Pyongyang denied it could be stalling in six-way talks over its nuclear ambitions to see whether a more amenable Democratic U.S. president is elected, saying it did not care which party's candidate triumphed in the U.S. presidential election.
"Whoever (is) elected U.S. president should be willing to make a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK, drop the hostile policy toward it and express readiness to coexist with it," the official KCNA news agency said. The initials DPRK stand for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"This is a main point," it said.
"If the U.S. makes a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK, though belatedly, progress will be made in the settlement of the nuclear issue," KCNA said.
In Seoul, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator voiced hopes that initial working group meetings, which were agreed at the Beijing talks, could be held between April and June before a new round of six-party talks.
"We will make our best efforts to get the North Korean nuclear issue to a settlement phase through a third round of talks after holding one or two working group meetings during the second quarter of the year," Yonhap news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck as saying.
The United States has demanded the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of the North's nuclear programmes that are believed to involve both plutonium and uranium.
The North Korean statement on Wednesday voiced anger at such demands and followed similar shows of defiance since six-way talks involving the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia in Beijing last month.
"The reckless U.S. stance only pushes the DPRK to further increase its nuclear deterrent force," the state-run KCNA news agency on Wednesday cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
The impasse "does nothing bad to the DPRK as it will have time to take more necessary steps with increased pace", he said.
In Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said North Korea's latest statement did not reflect the position Pyongyang took at the negotiations.
U.S. officials say they believe North Korea already possesses one or two nuclear weapons and that the reclusive communist state could be making more.
ELECTION HOLD-UP
The United States has said it is in no hurry to put together a deal because it wants to take time to come up with an accord that will stick.
However, analysts on North Korea said the administration of Bush, who has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq, may prefer to intensify the pressure.
"The administration seems incapable of making any kind of deal or doing serious negotiations," said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korean expert at the Monterey Institute's Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in California.
Pinkston said he saw small signs of gradual convergence on the plutonium programme, although he expected no progress before the U.S. elections.
"The North Koreans are going to wait until after the election because they saw a big policy reverse after Clinton," he said.
In October 2002, the United States said the North had admitted to developing nuclear arms -- violating a Clinton-era agreement.
In early 2003, Pyongyang expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and removed their seals from a mothballed reactor.
"The far-fetched U.S. assertion about this programme is intended to attack the DPRK under that pretext just as it did against Iraq," KCNA quoted the North Korean spokesman as saying in a renewed denial of the existence of a uranium programme.
-------- missile defense
GAO Urges Better Tests of Missile Defense System
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47993-2004Mar10.html
The Pentagon has taken some steps toward more realistic testing of the antimissile system that it plans to deploy this year to protect the United States, but many aspects of the system remain to be tested, according to a congressional report.
The report, prepared by the General Accounting Office, expressed concern about a lack of test data showing whether the system can work using all its final parts instead of prototypes, and whether it can adequately identify warheads in a field of decoys. Also still to be demonstrated, the report said, are such actions as multiple launches of interceptors, nighttime intercepts and operations under adverse weather conditions.
The report, a copy of which was made available to The Washington Post ahead of public release today, focused on assessing the Bush administration's efforts against a list of 50 recommendations issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration by Philip Coyle, then the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator. President Bill Clinton decided in August 2000 not to proceed with deployment of the antimissile system pending further development and testing.
President Bush has substantially altered the program, expanding the scope of experimentation and committing the country to deploying a rudimentary national antimissile system by the end of 2004. Even so, most of the recommendations put forward by Coyle "are still relevant," the GAO report said, "because the technical challenges and uncertainty with developing, testing, and fielding effective defensive capabilities . . . remain significant."
"The administration hasn't gone through the technical and testing steps the way they've been advised to do by the Pentagon's own operations and testing people," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), who requested the GAO review. "The report very clearly indicates that there's not been enough progress to give us any sense of security and comfort that this system is at a place where it ought to move forward."
The report said construction of a "test bed" facility in Alaska will help bring more realism and complexity to a testing program whose eight flights have been limited to a single scenario -- a target missile has flown out over the Pacific from California and the interceptor has launched from the Marshall Islands. Greater attention also is being paid to improving the system's ability to distinguish enemy warheads from decoys, the report said.
But the report warned that test plans through 2007 do not include sufficiently challenging targets and decoys. It said the first attempt at launching two interceptors against two targets is not scheduled until 2007. And no plans exist to assess the effects of severe weather on the system's performance or to conduct flight tests "under unrehearsed and unscripted conditions," the report said.
The antimissile system, when activated, will rely on tracking data from an old surveillance radar in Alaska, called Cobra Dane. But the report noted that the radar will not have been tested in its new role and will lack the ability, even with software improvements being completed, to provide more than a rudimentary analysis of incoming missile threats.
--------
Critics Tackle $10B Request for Missiles
March 11, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic senators Thursday criticized the administration's budget request for the missile defense program, questioning anew whether the system will ever work. Supporters urged continued funding for the program still in development.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called the request for $10.2 billion ``truly staggering'' -- the largest single-year funding request for any weapon system in history -- and questioned the program as ``rudimentary and uncertain.''
It's double the amount being requested for custom and border protection for the United States, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said, asking: ``How will this help keep this country safe from terrorist threats we know exist?''
President Bush in late 2002 said that he would begin deploying what he called a limited system to defend the nation against ballistic missiles by 2004.
Though the first parts of the system are to be put into use while more advanced technology is still being developed, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time that it will likely stop ``a relatively small number of incoming ballistic missiles, which is better than nothing.''
``How many more billions of dollars should we spend'' before knowing whether it will work?'' Levin asked Thursday.
Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner, R-Va. countered that this is not the first time officials have been prompted by an ``urgent need'' to press a weapons system into service while it was still in development.
Warner said the committee should give the program ``the strongest of oversight'' but also the ``strongest of support.''
The first missile defenses are expected to go online sometime this fall, with six interceptor missiles in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, plus three more at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by the end of the year, the Missile Defense Agency said.
Their placements reflect the perceived threat of North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles. The 2005 proposed budget includes money to bring the total number of interceptors to 20.
The request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 is nearly $1.2 billion -- or about 13 percent -- higher than last year's.
-------- russia
Russia dislikes U.N. nuke resolution on Iran - diplomats
By Louis Charbonneau
(Reuters)
11 Mar 2004
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4546889
VIENNA - Russia dislikes the explicit reference to a military link to Iran's nuclear programme in a draft U.N. nuclear resolution backed by the United States and would like this section deleted, diplomats said on Thursday.
Earlier this week, the United States and the European Union's "Big Three" -- France, Britain and Germany -- reached a tentative agreement on an Australian-Canadian draft text that "deplores" Tehran's withholding of sensitive information from U.N. inspectors and highlights its possible military dimension.
Russia, which is helping Tehran build a $800 million nuclear power station in Iran, has objected and tried to soften every U.S.-backed IAEA resolution or statement on Iran in the past year. Russian U.N. delegates in Vienna declined to comment.
"Russia doesn't like this reference to the military and would like to see it out," said one diplomat. Another said Moscow's concerns about the text were "no surprise".
The draft resolution, to be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, stops short of referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions.
But U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was confident Iran would be warned it could face sanctions.
Iran accused Washington of "bullying" the IAEA and warned the resolution could "complicate" its ties with the watchdog.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which has 13 seats on the 35-nation IAEA board, also voiced concerns about the text, but Western states were working to bring them round. A non-aligned diplomat said NAM had suggested only "minor changes".
Moscow's concerns about the resolution come amid worries that President Vladimir Putin's downgrading of Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry to a state agency may kill off a plan to finish the nuclear reactor in Iran, removing a big stumbling block in Russia-U.S. ties, according to industry insiders in Russia.
The Atomic Energy Ministry has spearheaded the $800 million project in Bushehr, Iran, defying repeated U.S. accusations -- and the Kremlin's growing recognition of Washington's concerns -- that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
NUCLEAR MILITARY CONNECTION
The draft resolution cites IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's finding in his February 24 report on Iran that "most of the workshops used in Iran's centrifuge enrichment programme are "owned by military industrial organisations"".
But ElBaradei said: "That doesn't mean it is a military programme. We have seen many of these workshops situated in military sites."
Hardline states say that if the programme was a civilian power programme, it would be owned by oil-rich Iran's well-developed energy sector.
Diplomats said that if the IAEA board goes on the record acknowledging a possible military link, hardline critics of Iran like Washington will have more ammunition to argue that finishing Bushehr may lead to violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Moscow unwittingly supports a weapons programme.
"This is a theoretical concern, but it is one that the Russians have," one of the diplomats said.
Nuclear powers China, France, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the 1968 NPT, pledging they would "not in any way assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon state to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons".
Once Bushehr is complete, the fuel the reactor burns will contain plutonium, useable in weapons. Russia says it will eventually take back the fuel, but Washington fears Iran might divert it to extract plutonium before the fuel is returned.
(Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Maria Golovnina)
-------- terrorism
Scientist claims arms reduction is best defense
2004-03-11
inform
http://www.inform.kz/showarticle.php?lang=eng&id=70417
Stanford. March 11. Citing arms reduction and improved intelligence as the best methods against national security threats, Dr. Richard Garwin discussed nuclear weapons at Cubberley Auditorium last night.
Garwin - 2002 National Medal of Science Recipient and Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations - warned, "There will be terrorist nuclear explosions in cities."
The reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles from over 10,000 currently to 2,000 and then 1,000, Garwin said, would make terrorist acquisition increasingly difficult. He also noted the need to consolidate plutonium and highly enriched uranium into fewer sites, especially in Russia where the government does not have the resources to provide adequate security for its nuclear weapons, Kazinform news agency reports with reference to The Stanford Daily.
Although North Korea and Iran could be developing nuclear weapons, Garwin cited terrorism as the greatest threat to national security today.
"In New York, a nuclear explosion could kill up to 200,000 people," Garwin said. "There is a higher probability that a few people will use nuclear weapons without restraint not because of valid political reasons, but because they want to kill people."
To combat the threat, Garwin supports increased spending on diplomatic measures and intelligence. In particular, Garwin cited the cost of the Nunn-Lugar program which removed the nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus after the fall of the U.S.S.R. and destroyed over 5,000 nuclear weapons to date.
"We need to compare the $1 billion for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat reduction program with the $87 billion for less than a year in Iraq," Garwin said. "These are real weapons of mass destruction we are talking about here compared to the ones in Iraq that in my mind do not exist."
Bush has established the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to deal with the threat, but Garwin dismissed the PSI as "words but not actions."
"These issues will have higher priority after the first nuclear explosion in our cities," Garwin said.
Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation Dr. Christopher Chyba said that there is currently a debate about whether the United States should resume nuclear weapons testing to develop new warheads. Some contend that an "agent defeat" nuclear weapon, for example, could potentially destroy biological and chemical weapons without sending them up into the atmosphere.
Garvin is unconvinced.
"I have seen no calculation of doing what is advertised without releasing undestroyed material into the atmosphere," Garwin said.
Garwin also expressed disapproval over the U.S. Senate's failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) under the Clinton Administration. The CTBT would have banned all nuclear testing, extended the Non Proliferation Treaty indefinitely, and provided more international monitoring systems.
According to Garwin, senators voted against ratification because they thought nuclear testing would ensure the reliability and safe maintenance of current nuclear weapons and that the low level weapons testing would not be detectable in other countries.
Garvin does not see nuclear testing as necessary to ensure reliability.
"Eisenhower said that the failure to achieve a comprehensive test ban treaty was the greatest failure of his administration and of any administration," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear missile damaged in submarine base mishap
March 11, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040310-102901-8830r.htm
A U.S. Navy strategic missile was damaged during a mishap at a submarine base last year, nearly striking a nuclear warhead, according to defense officials.
The incident occurred at the Navy's Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific, known as SWFPAC, in Washington state on Nov. 7.
A crane lifting a Trident I C4 missile out its tube aboard the nuclear-missile submarine USS Georgia caused the damage, according to officials familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
As the missile was lifted out of the sub, its nosecone struck a ladder that had been mistakenly left inside the tube, the officials said.
The impact left a 9-inch gash that came within inches of hitting one of the missile's multiple nuclear warheads beneath the metal shroud.
Officials said there was no danger that any type of lifting accident could have triggered a nuclear blast, noting the warhead is protected from accidental detonation by locking devices.
However, the warhead has a plutonium pit surrounded by high explosives. The radioactive element could have potentially been released into the water or dock area if the accident were severe enough.
The submarine was undergoing routine maintenance at a covered pier at the submarine base near Silverdale, Wash. The facility is involved in extremely sensitive work related to nuclear-weapons maintenance and storage. It is standard practice for submarines returning from patrol to remove and inspect two of the 24 missiles aboard.
The commander of SWFPAC, Capt. Keith Lyles, was fired in December as the result of what the Navy said was a "lack of confidence" in him. Officials said the dismissal was the result of the mishap.
Pam Sims, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Strategic Systems Program office in Washington, declined to comment on the missile incident.
"We can't discuss the presence or absence of nuclear weapons aboard our installations," she said. "Therefore, it would be inappropriate to discuss any nuclear weapons-related incidents at SWFPAC."
Miss Sims said "safety is paramount in everything we do in the Navy and a primary focus of our leadership at every level of command."
"Navy leadership is continuously engaged in the performance of all commands, their missions and those responsible for the performance of those missions," she said. "When necessary, appropriate actions are taken to ensure that the highest Navy standards are upheld."
Other defense officials confirmed details of the incident, first reported on the Internet by former Navy officer Walter Fitzpatrick. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who lives near the base, said he learned details of the incident from employees at the base.
The damaged Trident missile is one of 24 deployed on the Georgia, an Ohio-class submarine. The missile is a three-stage, solid-fuel system and is armed with multiple, independently targeted nuclear warheads. It has a range of up to 4,600 miles.
The base, officially known as Naval Submarine Base Bangor, is located near Puget Sound and is the Navy's major strategic submarine base on the West Coast, as well as the home port for eight ballistic-missile subs.
The Georgia is slated to be converted from a nuclear-missile submarine to a non-nuclear cruise-missile model in 2005. The subwas commissioned in 1984. It is 560 feet long and weighs 18,750 tons. It has a crew of 154 sailors.
--------
Official: Missile Damaged at Sub Base
By MARK BRYANT
3/11/2004,
Associated Press
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/lateststories/index.ssf?/base/national-19/10790660465200.xml
SEATTLE (AP) - A ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead was damaged in November while it was being removed from a submarine at a naval base near Seattle, a defense official said Thursday, speaking the condition of anonymity.
There was no release of any radioactive material, the official said. Military experts quoted in newspaper stories about the Nov. 7 accident said the chances of a nuclear explosion were extremely remote.
The incident involved a Trident I C-4 missile as it was removed from a missile tube on the USS Georgia. Details were first reported on a Web site run by a former Navy officer.
"When I heard about this I couldn't believe it," Walt Fitzpatrick said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Fitzpatrick, who has had a running feud with the Navy for years over a career-ending reprimand, said he developed his information from conversations with people familiar with the incident. He would not name his sources.
His allegations were reported in The Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Sun of Bremerton and The Washington Times.
Four officers were relieved of duty because of the incident at the Naval Submarine Base Bangor on Hood Canal, 25 miles west of Seattle, the newspapers reported.
Officials at the base were unavailable for comment when the AP tried to contact them Thursday.
As the 34-foot missile was being hoisted into a protective canister by the weapons handling crew, its nose cone reportedly was damaged.
Fitzpatrick said an access ladder left in the missile tube cut a 9-inch hole in the nose cone. Crew members reportedly left the ladder in place after attaching the hoist, took a break, then failed to remove it when they started to haul out the missile, he said.
Phyllis Mann, director of Kitsap County's Emergency Management Division, said county and state records show no such incident was reported, as would be required.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose district includes the base, has contacted the Navy for a full briefing on the incident, a spokesman for the lawmaker said.
Associated Press Writer John Lumpkin contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Moody's issues report on US nuclear power
REUTERS USA:
March 11, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24236/newsDate/11-Mar-2004/story.htm
NEW YORK - Nuclear power operators in the United States have a stable rating outlook, Moody's Investors Service says, as they continue to improve the operating performance of their plants and offer cost competitive electricity.
Moody's also says the movement to concentrate plant ownership among fewer companies is a positive for the industry, as is the wave of plant operating license extensions that are either being granted or applied for. "Over the past 10 - 15 years there has been a noticeable upswing in nuclear power plant operating performance in the United States," says Moody's Vice President/Senior Analyst Kevin Rose, author of a new report on US nuclear power. "This has been supportive of the credit quality of the large owners of nuclear generating fleets."
"We note that the trend of improved performance has gone in parallel with the consolidation of ownership of nuclear plants in the US. For the most part, the higher degree of expertise that these operators posses lends itself to fewer and less serious operating problems, which are usually short in duration," says Rose.
Moody's generally views the movement towards concentrated ownership as supportive to credit quality because, first, it leads to companies with larger technical staffs and therefore greater expertise; second, it spreads shared knowledge across multiple plants; and, third, ownership of multiple plants reduces the impact, should there be a plant outage.
Moody's says that because NEI statistics show the average total running costs for nuclear power were about 2.2 cents per kWh in 2002, and performance continues to rise, nuclear power should continue to compete well against almost any form of power with perhaps the exception of hydro, which has no fuel costs.
"Existing nuclear plant owners, many state regulators, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appear to view the extension of nuclear power plant licenses as a viable low-cost alternative to the construction of fossil-fueled capacity," says Rose. He notes that the high capital costs of the nuclear plants pursuing license extension will have been largely depreciated and recovered through utility rate base during the initial 40-year license term.
Electric utilities that should choose to build new nuclear plants, however, could be challenged to maintain their creditworthiness, Moody's says in a separate report published at the end of last year. The NRC's approval of new designs, however, will undoubtedly lower capital costs for this construction. Prospects for investment in new nuclear plants, according to Moody's Senior Vice President Mo Ying Seto, will be influenced by the pace at which a permanent waste disposal facility is developed and completed.
Any new construction of plants is years away. Meanwhile, 23 nuclear units in the US have received NRC approval to operate for 20 years beyond their original expiration date, while 33 more have either filed for such approval or have stated their intention to do so.
Moody's will assess each strategy for extending the license life of a plant on its own merits.
"If the nuclear plant owners can continue to maintain the favorable track record with respect to capacity factors, energy output, economics, and other measures of plant performance, then credit quality for those entities should not be adversely affected by the costs of extending the plant's license life," says Rose.
-------- south carolina
Nuclear waste removal in S.C. criticized
Environmental group: Technicians failing at removing wastes
MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
Thu, Mar. 11, 2004
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/8157114.htm?1c
WASHINGTON - A multibillion-dollar program to deal with millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste at a nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina is failing because technicians cannot get the waste out of the tanks where it has been stored for the past half-century, an influential environmental group says.
The failure raises the likelihood that the wastes will cause further contamination of the Savannah River, which divides South Carolina from Georgia, and underground water supplies, said The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in a report due to be released today.
The Savannah River Site near Aiken has already leaked radioactive isotopes and chemical poisons into the water.
But the Energy Department insists that all is going according to plan, despite that a factory built to package the wastes in glass has produced nearly a third of the packages, but they contain only about 3 percent of the radioactivity at most.
The wastes are left over from production of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. For years the wastes were poured into underground tanks, mixed with chemicals to reduce acidity and to protect the tank walls. The result is that the tanks hold a mixture of sludges, salts and liquids.
The Energy Department's intention was to concentrate the radioactive wastes and mix them with molten glass. The material would then be shaped into logs that would be sealed in stainless steel containers and buried deep beneath the earth at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, to remain isolated for 10,000 years.
The less radioactive material left behind was supposed to be mixed with cement, into a mixture called "saltcrete," that would keep it from spreading.
But the chemical process chosen to wash the most radioactive materials out of the tanks created benzene, an explosive gas, and had to be scrapped. The Energy Department is working on a replacement process.
The institute's report also says the amount of radioactive cesium that the Energy Department now plans to leave behind in a single tank is five times larger than the amount it planned two years ago to leave in all 51 tanks combined.
The environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council won a lawsuit against the Energy Department in Idaho last year over the department's plan to leave large amounts of radioactive material behind in the tanks in Idaho, Washington state and South Carolina. The department has appealed.
----
Nuclear Waste Mismanagement Would Create High-Level Radioactive Waste Dump In Savannah River Watershed
Department of Energy Appears on Course to Abandon Environmental Commitments to Communities, States, Future Generations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 11, 2004
CONTACT: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Arjun Makhijani: 301-270-5500 Bob Schaeffer: 239-395-6773
http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/news2004/0311-01.htm
WASHINGTON - March 11 - Current waste management practices at the Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear weapons plant, near Aiken, South Carolina, threaten to make the watershed of one of the most important rivers in the southeastern United States into a high-level nuclear waste dump, according to a report issued today by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER).
The new report, Nuclear Dumps by the Riverside: Threats to the Savannah River from Radioactive Contamination at the Savannah River Site (SRS), also details tritium contamination of the Savannah River and the environmental injustice caused by SRS-related contamination to those who subsist on fish from its waters.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina produced more than one-third of the plutonium for U.S. nuclear bombs, almost all of the tritium, and other nuclear materials for the U.S. weapons program. Past waste dumping and mismanagement and a failure to implement a sound cleanup plan have created extensive water pollution beneath SRS as well as serious risks for water resources in the region.
"Current cleanup policies at SRS will very likely leave a million or more curies of radioactivity in high-level waste on the Savannah River Site," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, IEER president and principal author of the report. "The DOE is turning SRS into a de facto high-level radioactive waste dump."
"We are going to work in a bi-partisan way in the State of Georgia to hold the federal government's feet to the fire," said State Representative Nan Orrock, Majority Whip (D) of the Georgia House of Representatives. "The Department of Energy simply must not be allowed to put our most precious natural resource - water - at risk in this appalling way."
"All that we want is a bi-partisan measure to put back into funding the testing for tritium and other radioactive products in the river," stated Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah, Georgia). "My constituents drink this water."
"There are serious problems that need to be dealt with in an expeditious manner, properly and correctly," said State Senator Regina Thomas (D-Savannah/Chatham, Georgia). "There are contaminants in our water supply and the Department of Energy should create a cleanup plan so as to eliminate pollution of our water."
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is the most common water pollutant at SRS. "While it is well within federal safe drinking water standards, recent research indicates that tritium standards may not be adequate to protect pregnant women and developing fetuses from adverse health effects," explained Dr. Makhijani. "Tritium can produce multigenerational risks. The federal government needs to recover the buried wastes dumped decades ago that are still polluting the Savannah River, and to tighten tritium standards to protect those most at risk."
The IEER report finds that African Americans who rely on the Savannah River as a primary source of protein - that is, subsistence fishermen - are disproportionately affected by the consumption of radioactively-contaminated fish downstream of SRS. They consume about four times more fish than the maximum limit set by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
"We know that people are eating more fish than what is safepeople of color in particular," said Rev. Charles Utley, Central Savannah River Area campaign director for Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in Augusta, Georgia. "People whose diets depend on river fish caught downstream of SRS need to be told about the risks of fish consumption. And DOE needs to act to reduce the pollution of the river."
Despite the radioactive threats, the Energy Department has denied a request from the state of Georgia to continue funding radiation monitoring along the Savannah River, calling the state's program "redundant" because South Carolina also has a monitoring program. Unfunded, Georgia's program is set to end April 30, 2004.
"It's simply unacceptable that DOE has cut off environmental monitoring funds for the State of Georgia," said Sara Barczak, Safe Energy Director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Savannah, Georgia. "The DOE has created risks for the people of Georgia and put a burden on the
state and it should step up to the plate and assume its responsibilities by restoring the funds rather than tossing the problem into the laps of communities and state taxpayers."
The IEER report focuses on the daunting problem of managing and implementing a clean-up program for Cold War-era wastes; it does not examine the contamination that will result from new and proposed nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel production programs at SRS, including a tritium separation facility being built there, a proposed plant to make plutonium fuel for reactors, and a proposed plant to mass-manufacture plutonium bomb cores.
"It is unconscionable that this administration is pursuing unneeded, provocative nuclear weapons programs at SRS even before it has cleaned up the mess it created during the Cold War," said Ms. Bobbie Paul, Executive Director of Atlanta Women's Action for New Directions and board member of Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest. "Worse, the DOE is taking actions that are making the site into a huge, essentially permanent, radioactive waste dump. It should clean up its act and not even think about new bomb plants that would add to the burdens it has already created."
-------- us nuc waste
An Effort on Atomic Waste Is Called a Failure
March 11, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/politics/11DUMP.html
WASHINGTON, March 10 - A multibillion-dollar program to deal with millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste at a nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina is failing because technicians cannot get the waste out of the tanks where it has been stored for the last half-century, an influential environmental group says.
The failure raises the likelihood that the wastes will cause further contamination of the Savannah River, which separates South Carolina from Georgia, and underground water supplies, says a report due to be issued Thursday by the group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
The Energy Department, however, maintains that all is going according to plan, despite the fact that a factory built to package the wastes in glass has produced nearly a third of the packages and that they contain only about 3 percent of the radioactivity at most.
The wastes are left over from production of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. For years the wastes were poured into giant underground tanks and mixed with chemicals to reduce the acidity and protect the tank walls. The result is that the tanks now hold a mixture of sludges, salts and liquids.
The Energy Department's intention was to concentrate the radioactive components and mix them with molten glass. The material would then be shaped into logs that would be carefully sealed in stainless steel containers so they could be buried deep beneath the earth at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, and remain isolated for 10,000 years. The remaining, less radioactive material was to be left behind at the South Carolina plant after being mixed with cement, into a mixture called "saltcrete" that would keep it from spreading.
But the chemical process chosen to wash the most radioactive material out of the tanks also created benzene, an explosive gas, and had to be scrapped. The Energy Department is still working on a replacement process.
As one example of the problems cited by the institute, based here, its report says the amount of radioactive cesium that the Energy Department now plans to leave behind in a single tank is five times as large as the amount it planned two years ago to leave in all 51 tanks combined.
A different environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, won a suit against the Energy Department in a federal court in Idaho last year over the department's plan to leave large amounts of radioactive material not only in South Carolina but in Idaho and Washington State as well. The department has appealed.
The new report's principal author, Arjun Makhijani, president of the institute, said the Energy Department was turning the South Carolina plant, the Savannah River Site, into a "de facto high-level radioactive waste dump."
But Charles Hansen, assistant manager for waste disposal at Savannah River, said in a telephone interview that the glass factory there was dealing with waste from the oldest, most leak-prone tanks first and that these had less radioactivity in them than the newer tanks.
Jessie Roberson, the assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, said no tanks would be considered closed until outside regulators had concluded that the amount of radioactive material remaining inside did not pose a threat. She said plans were to remove 95 percent of the radioactivity.
The Savannah River Site has already leaked radioactive isotopes and chemical poisons into the water, although contamination remains well below the levels allowed by federal drinking water standards.
--------
Suit Claims Toxic Dust Hurt Waste Workers
Thursday March 11, 2004
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3850675,00.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A former tunnel worker at the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert sued government contractors Thursday, claiming the companies deliberately exposed employees to toxic dust at the Yucca Mountain project.
The civil lawsuit, filed in state court in Las Vegas, seeks class-action status and unspecified damages.
It claims the companies knew workers and visitors were exposed to dangerous levels of silica and other toxic dust during tunneling from 1992 to 1996.
``This lawsuit will expose an outrageous fraud against the work force and even the visitors at Yucca Mountain, one that's already killing people,'' said plaintiff Gene Griego, who worked as a tunnel supervisor at the Yucca Mountain site.
Griego, a nonsmoker who lives in Las Vegas, was diagnosed last year with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The lawsuit names Bechtel Corp. and its Nevada subsidiaries on the Yucca Mountain project, as well as Bechtel SAIC Corp. of Delaware.
A Bechtel spokesman declined comment on the suit Thursday.
Also named: Kiewit Group of Delaware; Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction of Delaware and subsidiaries; Morrison-Knudson, now known as Washington Group International of Delaware; and TRW Automotive Holdings of Delaware and subsidiaries.
The Energy Department developed the Yucca site and gained Bush administration and congressional approval in 2002 to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The agency plans to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year for a license to operate the waste site.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said Thursday that because the DOE was not named as a party to the lawsuit, it would not comment.
Joseph Egan, a McLean, Va.-based lawyer heading the case, also represents Nevada in its fight to stop the Yucca Mountain project in federal courts.
Egan said the three law firms handling the case expect to add more plaintiffs, including one who has contracted silicosis.
Silicosis is a chronic, progressive and incurable lung disease that can develop years after long-term exposure to silica dust. It can be debilitating or even fatal.
In January, Yucca Mountain project managers began a lung disease screening program for current and former workers, saying up to 1,500 of them may have inhaled airborne silica.
Last month, the Energy Department began investigating whether documents were altered to misrepresent potentially hazardous dust levels at the site.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Harare says Britain, U.S. planned coup
March 11, 2004
By Tim Butcher
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040310-101147-4827r.htm
JOHANNESBURG - Zimbabwe accused Britain, the United States and Spain yesterday of plotting a coup in the oil-rich African nation of Equatorial Guinea and threatened 67 suspected mercenaries arrested at the Harare airport with the death penalty.
Zimbabwean Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi said Simon Mann, the British leader of the group and a former member of the British Special Air Service, confessed under police questioning to a plan to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.
The leader of the small West African state said yesterday that he was certain the arrested men had been preparing to oust him. He also said President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had warned him that mercenaries were heading to his country.
The accusation by Zimbabwe is likely to further poison its relations with the West. It could be exploited by the regime of President Robert Mugabe, which constantly refers in the state-run media to "white, imperialist, British plots to destabilize Africa."
Zimbabwe says the arrested men planned to install Severo Moto Nsa, a dissident politician from Equatorial Guinea who leads a "government in exile" in Spain, and that some of the men were to be handed Cabinet positions. Mr. Mohadi said Mr. Mann had been paid $1.8 million to carry out the coup.
Zimbabwe raised the stakes when it said that if the 67 men were proven to be mercenaries, they would face the death penalty.
"They are going to face the severest punishment available in our statutes, including capital punishment," Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said.
In Equatorial Guinea, state television showed a man it said was the leader of a 15-strong "advance party" of mercenaries associated with the group arrested in Zimbabwe.
Speaking in English translated into Spanish, the man, who was identified as Nick du Toit, a white South African, admitted to a plot to remove the president.
"It wasn't a question of taking the life of the head of state, but of spiriting him away, taking him to Spain and forcing him into exile and then installing the government in exile of Severo Moto Nsa," he said.
Charles Burrows, senior executive of Logo Logistics, the British security firm that had chartered the aircraft that was seized, said Equatorial Guinea was one of its clients. But he denied accusations that 15 Logo employees working in Equatorial Guinea were preparing a coup.
The purported plot was revealed Sunday night when Zimbabwean authorities seized the plane and arrested the 64 men on board and three Logo employees who met it on the tarmac.
Mr. Burrows said the aircraft was delivering men and equipment to commercial mining sites in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
-------- asia
Roh Backers Seize S. Korean Parliament
March 11, 2004
By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SKOREA_POLITICS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Lawmakers loyal to President Roh Moo-hyun commandeered the National Assembly podium Thursday, physically blocking a vote in South Korea's first ever presidential impeachment bid.
Angry opposition leaders vowed to try again Friday, while one Roh supporter doused himself with gasoline outside parliament and set himself ablaze in protest.
The unprecedented leadership struggle comes just weeks before hotly contested parliamentary elections and as the country tries to balance tensions over North Korea's nuclear programs with fragile economic recovery.
The opposition Grand National and Millennium Democratic parties launched the impeachment bid earlier this week on grounds of illegal electioneering and incompetence. Roh has called it unfounded political posturing.
Opposition leaders said Thursday they had the two-thirds majority needed to pass the motion.
But as they moved to bring it before parliament, dozens of pro-Roh Uri Party members seized the chamber's podium and physically blocked National Assembly speaker Park Kwan-yong from calling a vote.
"We cannot convene the meeting under these circumstances. We will try to convene tomorrow," Park said. He warned he may have to call in parliamentary security to clear out the Uri Party loyalists.
Doing so would likely result in violent scuffles, once common in South Korean floor debate.
Outside parliament Thursday, a Roh supporter set himself on fire in protest of the impeachment move, police said. While he was rushed to a hospital, witnesses said, the man shouted: "Let's block impeachment!" He was reported in a stable condition.
Underlining the charged political atmosphere, police searched Thursday for a businessman who reportedly jumped off a bridge into a river after Roh denounced him during a televised news conference for allegedly trying to bribe Roh's brother.
The two opposition parties want Roh to publicly apologize for breaking the country's election laws when he called for "overwhelming support" for the Uri Party in the April 15 parliamentary elections.
Roh has no party affiliation, but has said he plans to join the Uri Party. The National Election Commission ruled Roh's infraction was minor, not warranting criminal charges.
Opinion polls indicate most South Koreans are against impeachment but still want Roh to apologize. Roh refused to do so Thursday, but said he might step down if the Uri Party fares poorly in the election.
"I want to resolve the question of whether the people trust me or not and the question of impeachment by making a bold decision according to the results of the parliamentary elections," Roh said. "The bold decision I will make includes the question of whether I will step down or not."
The Uri Party has 47 seats in the 273-member National Assembly. The Grand National and Millennium Democratic parties have roughly three-quarters of the assembly's total.
The opposition parties need a minimum of 181 votes for impeachment. They have until Friday evening to vote on whether to oust Roh from office or the bill automatically dies. If they do, Roh's powers will be frozen and the constitutional court will make a final decision on whether he must step down.
Roh's camp and the political opposition have been rocked by allegations they collected illegal campaign funds from businesses around the time of the 2002 presidential election.
Several close aides to Roh have come under scrutiny for alleged corruption, and in December, three were indicted on charges of collecting illicit funds in the campaign - although Roh has not been implicated.
-------- biological weapons
Tex. Professor Gets Two-Year Prison Term in Plague Case
Associated Press
Thursday, March 11, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47982-2004Mar10.html
LUBBOCK, Tex., March 10 -- A former Texas Tech University professor who started a bioterrorism scare when he reported plague bacteria missing last year was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.
Thomas C. Butler, 62, was also fined $15,000 and ordered to pay $38,000 restitution. He had agreed earlier to retire from the school and surrender his medical license.
Butler gave no reaction when the sentence was read. He remains free on bond but must report to federal authorities April 14.
The father of four had faced up to 240 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines for convictions that stemmed from an investigation after his report that 30 vials of the bacteria were missing from his lab in January 2003.
He later said he accidentally destroyed the samples, but during his trial he testified that he had no clear memory of destroying the vials and that they could have been destroyed during his cleanup of an accident.
Butler's attorneys had sought probation.
In January, after his conviction, Butler agreed to pay $250,000 to the school and retire. Last month, Butler voluntarily surrendered his medical license.
In December, a jury found Butler guilty of mislabeling a package that contained plague samples he sent to Tanzania and exporting them without authorization.
-------- business
Missteps Led to Canceled Iraq Contract
House Panel to Begin Hearings on Procedures;
Pentagon Awards 7 New Projects
By Mary Pat Flaherty and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48177-2004Mar10.html
Vague contract language, missing paperwork, staff turnover and general instability on the ground led to such flaws in a $327 million contract to outfit the new Iraqi Army that the work had to be canceled and rebid, according to a senior U.S. Army official involved in the contracting.
U.S. contracting officers working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad were imprecise in describing the work needed when they sought bids and they did not follow their own procedures for ranking offers, the Army official said.
The hostile setting and a Baghdad staff too small to do the job help explain the failures but there is "no excuse for doing this with a contract of this magnitude," said the Army official, who would speak only on background about the problems his office has uncovered.
The cancellation of what had been the largest non-construction contract yet awarded in the Iraqi rebuilding effort comes as the House Government Reform Committee is set to hold hearings today on contract coordination and management in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Defense Department announced yesterday that it had awarded seven contracts to support the Program Management Office in Baghdad, the entity that will oversee the spending of the $18.6 billion in supplemental reconstruction funding that Congress authorized last fall.
Retired Rear Adm. David Nash, who heads the Program Management Office, said the remaining 10 construction contracts will be awarded within the next 30 days, two months late.
"You can do things expeditiously but you still have to do it correctly," said Nash, who is testifying today before the congressional panel. "There's a balance."
The Iraqi Army contract, funded by U.S. tax dollars, was awarded in January to Nour USA Ltd., a Vienna firm. The firm's bid drew immediate formal protests from several losing companies and prompted U.S. Army lawyers and Pentagon-based officials to begin a review that led to the contract's cancellation Friday. The Washington reviewers could not reconcile the facts presented on the final evaluation sheets for bidders with information in the contract files and noticed missing documents, said the contracting officer, who added that he had not seen anything comparable during his 29 years in Army contracting.
Normally, he said, "the paperwork follows a consistent trail" that leads to the overall rating for bidders. "We couldn't track" the factors for the ranking, he said.
CPA officials in Baghdad declined to talk about the contract and referred all questions to the Army. However, Lt. Col. Joseph M. Yoswa, a Defense Department spokesman based in Washington for the CPA, said yesterday, "We have a much better capability of contracting here in Washington. We have the experience here -- not saying that the CPA and civilians and military in Iraq are doing things wrong. But they have a lot of pressure they are dealing with. Contracting is not a simple process, and this is important. We've got civilians on the ground doing work, and we're still in combat conditions. It's not easy."
The language used to describe the required work was so "ambiguous," the Army contracting official said, that it could have been held against the government by losing firms if the contract moved forward. The vague language, he said, may help explain the wide range of bids on the work made by 19 firms, ranging from Nour's $327 million to a high of more than $1 billion.
The contract's cancellation, the Army stressed, "is not a reflection on Nour or its capabilities."
In interviews, Nour USA said it won the contract based on merit and stood by its proposal. The company has drawn attention because its president, A. Huda Farouki, is a financier and friend of Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Nour spokesman Robert Hoopes has said there is no business relationship between the two men. A Nour press release said any suggestion that politics played a role in the contract is false.
Ongoing hostilities in Iraq make it hard to be as exacting in contract requests as might normally be expected, said the senior Army official, however "we need to be as informative as we can." The original contract, he said, should have been more precise about equipment needs or the number and range of sites in which the work would be done -- factors that can dramatically influence costs.
The problems were exacerbated by staff turnover. The military contracting officer who had handled the bidding in Baghdad was rotated back to the United States on regular duty a week before the contract was awarded, the Army official said.
A new contract to outfit the Iraqis likely will not be awarded for 60 to 90 days, said Mark J. Lumer, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Iraqi operations, policy and procurement, who spoke at a Pentagon briefing yesterday. The Army could piggyback on several existing government contracts to buy some supplies more quickly, the Army contracting official said -- using an existing law enforcement contract, for example, to purchase some weapons.
But the rebidding of the main contract will set back the establishment of new Iraqi forces as coalition officials race to hand off sovereignty this summer to the Iraqis.
Army contracting officers in Washington will draft and award the new contract.
Delays in equipping the new Iraqi Army and other Iraqi security forces have frustrated U.S. military commanders in the field, said Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
In a press briefing yesterday in Baghdad, he said that "if we had the equipment for these brave young men, we would be much farther along." Swannack said he would have drawn on funds available to him as a commander to buy some equipment earlier had he known the extent of the delays.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who called today's House hearing, said of the canceled contract: "They probably don't have as many contracting officers over there as they need." And, he said, "they need to make a decision on what to do next time on this. What did they learn? When you're making decisions in a war zone you always make mistakes."
--------
Pentagon asks Justice Department to join Halliburton probe: defense official
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040311191444.6vws9nzy.html
The Pentagon has asked the Justice Department to join in an investigation of alleged overcharging by US energy and services group Halliburton, a senior US defense official confirmed Thursday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon's inspector general decided in recent weeks to bring the Justice Department into the investigation because it had reached a point where additional investigative tools were required.
"At a certain point in an investigation, the IG brings in the Justice Department," the official said, saying it was a "fairly routine aspect of these kinds of investigations."
The Pentagon, which lacks the power to indict and press criminal charges, launched a probe in January into allegations Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) had overcharged the military for fuel delivered to Iraq by 61 million dollars.
The defense official said investigators were looking into how KBR's subcontractor, a Kuwaiti firm called Altanmia, was selected and whether the proper procedures were followed.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the development, quoted a Justice Department official as saying it was "significant."
The paper said a Justice Department investigation could lead to criminal fraud charges and penalties against the Texas-based company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The US Congress was notified Wednesday of the Pentagon's decision to widen the Halliburton investigation, the daily said.
An unnamed justice official told The Wall Street Journal that the department might inquire whether Halliburton violated the federal Claims Act, by which a company found guilty of defrauding the government can be made to repay as much as three times the amount of the fraud.
The embattled oil services firm on Tuesday issued a statement claiming that its liquidity could be hurt if US government agencies require a further review of its work in Iraq.
During 2003, Iraq-related work provided 3.6 billion dollars in revenues for Halliburton and 85 million in operating profits, the statement said. But the company said it could face a crunch if its billing practices face more review.
"As a result of an increase in the level of work performed in Iraq or the Defense Contract Audit Agency's review of additional aspects of our services performed in Iraq, it is possible that we may, or may be required to, withhold additional invoicing or make refunds to our customer, some of which could be substantial, until these matters are resolved," it said.
"This could materially and adversely affect our liquidity."
-------- haiti
Pentagon increases U.S. role in Haiti
March 11, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough and Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040311-122801-5511r.htm
The Pentagon yesterday announced it has expanded the role of American troops patrolling the streets of Haiti as lawmakers on Capitol Hill called for a substantial increase in the size of the U.S. force in order to secure order in the troubled Caribbean nation.
International troops in Haiti now will intervene to prevent any Haitian-on-Haitian violence, as well as protect key sites and disarm the population ahead of the arrival of a larger United Nations force aimed at reestablishing law and order, according to Army Gen. James Hill, the chief of U.S. Southern Command.
Gen. Hill, who heads the burgeoning "Multinational Interim Force" of more than 2,400 troops, told reporters at the Pentagon the amended rules of engagement are in addition to disarming any Haitian not authorized to carry a firearm.
"When Multinational Interim Force personnel encounter any acts of violence, they will intervene to protect life," he said.
The general said U.S. forces will also search for arms caches, but added there has been no sign so far of any kind of organized insurgency akin to the deadly attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.
The changes mean that a U.S. intervention that began as a mission to protect the American embassy compound in Port-au-Prince now includes the more dangerous assignment of disarming citizens and stopping violence. U.S. officials said there were no plans to intercede to stop rampant looting.
"No one from the multinational force going in was going to stand there and watch one Haitian kill another Haitian without trying to intervene in that," Gen. Hill said.
Some 1,600 American troops are spearheading the interim international force trying to restore order in the half-island nation following the resignation and abrupt exile of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide Feb. 29.
Newly named interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, an economist and former foreign minister who had been living in Florida, arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday vowing to improve security in advance of the establishment of a permanent new government.
More than a week after Mr. Aristide's dawn departure, armed bands of pro-Aristide and opposition forces continue to roam the streets and bodies have been found on the side of the road shot execution-style.
U.S. forces have also come under fire, and Marines have killed four Haitians in recent days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace have defended the actions.
At a Senate hearing yesterday, lawmakers said the situation called for a larger U.S. military commitment.
"It is abundantly clear there are not enough troops," said Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican. "Unless there are more troops put into Haiti by the United States, we are not going to be able to stabilize the situation."
Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, added: "One lesson of our past involvements in nation- building is that you need to use maximum, not minimum, military presence at the outset."
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that the number of international forces in Haiti would soon reach 3,400. In addition to the 1,600 American troops, the contingent now includes 516 French, 328 Chilean and 52 Canadian troops.
"Other countries have offered support and we have undertaken urgent diplomatic efforts to make these troops available in the short run," said Mr. Noriega.
The Bush administration yesterday also defended its handling of Mr. Aristide, who fled in a U.S.-provided jet after a deadly two-week uprising. U.S. officials said the exiled leader's corrupt rule had lost all legitimacy.
Lawyers for Mr. Aristide said they were preparing a case against the United States, accusing it of having abducted the former leader and flown to the Central African Republic against his will.
Mr. Noriega dismissed Mr. Aristide's claims as "ridiculous," but said that: "A democratically elected government can undermine its democratic legitimacy by the manner in which it governs."
Democratic senators and Congressional Black Caucus members, angered by Washington's decision not to stand by Mr. Aristide, lashed out at the administration's stance.
"It is clear that a coup d'etat took place in Haiti," said Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat.
Mr. Noriega insisted that Mr. Aristide's departure from Haiti was never a U.S. demand, but pointedly added the administration had decided "that merely propping up the Aristide government was not worth risking American lives."
U.S. lawyer Brian Concannon, who met with Mr. Aristide, said in Paris yesterday there were "preparations for a kidnapping case against the American authorities." Cases are being prepared in the United States and France, he said.
"He was not free to leave the plane," Mr. Concannon said. "He was not free to decide the plane's direction. He did not even know where the plane was going."
--------
U.S. Rules of Engagement Shift in Haiti
Marines May Seize Arms, Open Fire to Curb Violence
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48218-2004Mar10?language=printer
U.S. Marines sent to quell violence in Haiti have received new orders to seize guns from Haitians they encounter on patrol and to open fire, if necessary, to prevent further killings, the senior American commander in the region said yesterday.
The formal rule changes are designed to deter violence and protect 2,500 foreign peacekeeping troops from gunmen waging a brutal power struggle in the aftermath of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's resignation, said Gen. James T. Hill, chief of the U.S. Southern Command.
"These gunmen posed a threat to our forces," Hill told reporters at the Pentagon. "Any loss of life is regrettable, but we will simply not tolerate acts of violence against our multinational forces or innocent Haitians."
Hill outlined a more aggressive approach than the Pentagon first signaled when President Bush dispatched troops last week to help restore order to the scarred Caribbean nation. U.S. commanders, hopeful the presence of U.S. troops in battle gear would calm the city, had declined to say whether Marines would try to control street violence.
But the violence, including revenge killing and looting, has continued since the Marines landed. Hill said U.S. troops on patrol have been fired upon "a handful of times." Three attacks occurred Tuesday night, when Marines killed two Haitians who had fired at them, a military spokesman said.
Ongoing bloodshed and the assertive tactics outlined by Hill illustrate the perils faced by the White House in a military mission that did not exist two weeks ago when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was still trying to persuade Aristide and the democratic opposition to accept a power-sharing arrangement.
The U.S. administration, which had long channeled its efforts through the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community, hoped to establish a cease-fire among armed gangs and end years of stalemate between the authoritarian Aristide and the political figures who demanded his ouster.
The opposition refused to go along, however, and unaligned rebel groups vowed to overthrow Aristide by force if he did not resign. As the rebels advanced and U.S. critics called for action, the administration reversed course and urged Aristide to resign for the good of his country. He fled on Feb. 29.
Bush deployed Marines to Haiti to work alongside forces from France, Canada and Chile, as well as Haiti's overwhelmed police. When the Marines arrived, Hill said, U.S. commanders authorized their units to do whatever was necessary to protect themselves when they felt threatened, including seize weapons.
The orders were expanded and made more explicit in recent days to cover encounters at any time with armed Haitians who are not members of an authorized security force. The U.S. troops need not feel threatened before acting, Hill said he told his principal commander in Haiti by video conference yesterday.
"As his forces move through Port-au-Prince and they encounter any armed Haitian," Hill said, "they are to take that weapon from that Haitian unless he has a valid permit by Haitian law and is in the process of conducting some valid security job."
Hill said it was clear from the start that "no one from the multinational force going in was going to stand there and watch one Haitian kill another Haitian without trying to intervene in that."
Hill discussed a wide array of armed gangs in the city, ranging from Aristide opponents to militant followers of the former president, who contends he was forced from office by the Bush administration, a charge U.S. officials deny.
"We are in negotiations with some of those groups, trying to get them to voluntarily lay down their arms," said Hill, who reported that Haitian authorities are working with foreign forces on disarmament.
Some Aristide loyalists, demanding that he be returned to power, declared yesterday that they would not support interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, a former foreign minister selected by a U.S.-backed committee of eminent Haitians.
Latortue, a 69-year-old Aristide critic, returned to Haiti yesterday from Florida. He will replace Yvon Neptune, an Aristide lieutenant whose house was gutted by opponents of the former government.
It was near Neptune's house, said Maj. Richard Crusan, a U.S. military spokesman, that Haitians fired on a Marine patrol Tuesday night. The Marines fired back, killing at least two gunmen, he said.
Another Haitian was shot Sunday after he opened fire on an anti-Aristide demonstration. Marines shot a fourth man when he allegedly raced toward a U.S. checkpoint in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Describing Haiti as "a nation of violence for many, many, many, many years," Hill said weapons on the street include "everything from rusted M-1s to top-of-the-line Uzis." He said international forces, working with Haitian police, would try to locate and seize caches of weapons.
CIA Director George J. Tenet warned this week that the situation in Haiti remains "very fluid," leaving the possibility of a "humanitarian disaster or mass migration." He noted that anti-Aristide rebels still control much of the country and have not honored earlier promises to surrender their guns.
"What concerns me is the possibility that the interim government, backed by international forces, will have trouble establishing order," Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "A cycle of clashes and revenge killings could easily be set off, given the large number of angry, well-armed people on both sides."
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who has accused the Bush administration of acting too slowly, disputed the Pentagon assessment that an international force of about 3,000 police and troops is sufficient. He said an incremental approach is a "recipe for failure" and called for additional forces to be sent "immediately."
--------
New Haitian Prime Minister Arrives, Vowing to Restore Unity
March 11, 2004
By LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/americas/11PORT.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 10 - Gérard Latortue, the economist and former diplomat chosen by a United States-backed council to lead Haiti out of its political crisis, arrived in the country from southern Florida on Wednesday, promising to reconcile opposed factions and bring peace and prosperity to a nation long wracked by poverty and brutalized by generations of dictators.
"I come with all my impartiality, with no political party," Mr. Latortue said at a hotel in Port-au-Prince. "I come to work with all Haitians."
The arrival of Mr. Latortue, the country's new interim prime minister, was the clearest sign yet that a new Haitian government was beginning to take shape as the nation continued to struggle to right itself after the departure of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president. With armed rebels menacing the capital and with the United States and other nations pressuring him to step down, Mr. Aristide fled into exile in Africa on Feb. 29.
Mr. Latortue said he would appoint Herard Abraham, a former general who has wide support and was one of three top candidates to be prime minister, as the head of the nation's security, a move likely to placate armed rebels, many of whom were members of the Haitian Army before it was disbanded by Mr. Aristide.
Mr. Latortue fled Haiti in the late 1960's, when he faced political persecution from the Duvalier regime, and he returned only for brief spells. During one, in 1988, he served as foreign minister in the civilian government of Leslie Manigat, whose administration was ended by a coup after just four months. He worked for a United Nations agency for decades and is a business consultant.
He replaces Yvon Neptune, a stalwart of Mr. Aristide's Lavalas Party who stayed on after Mr. Aristide fled to help smooth the transition to a new government. Under Haiti's Constitution, the prime minister is in charge of running the government, but under Mr. Aristide, virtually all authority rested in the president's National Palace.
The interim president, Boniface Alexandre, a justice on Haiti's Supreme Court, will serve in a largely symbolic role.
Mr. Latortue's arrival drew mixed responses across the city. Leslie Voltaire, a close adviser to Mr. Aristide and a top government minister, said that Mr. Latortue's reputation - for honesty and technocratic skills - was beyond reproach.
"He is neutral and independent," Mr. Voltaire said. "He has no political constituency. He is not going to have a vested interest in any party."
A spokesman for the political opposition to Mr. Aristide, Micha Gaillard, called Mr. Latortue "a real professional and a man of integrity" but said he had lived outside of Haiti for too long.
In La Saline, a vast slum in the capital and a stronghold of support for Mr. Aristide, Mr. Latortue's name barely registered.
"We don't know who he is," said Ernseau Bolivar, a student. "We want Aristide back."
On Wednesday, American marines shot and killed two Haitian men who had fired at them from atop a building near the prime minister's house, said a military spokesman, Maj. Richard A. Crusan. That brought the total number of Haitians killed since foreign troops arrived here Feb. 29 to four.
-------- iraq
U.S. Concerned Iraqi Police Behind Attack
March 11, 2004
By LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. officials are worried that Iraqi police - not just impostors in Iraqi uniforms - may have been behind the killings of two coalition staffers and their translator, the top American general in Iraq said Thursday.
The three were the first civilians from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. Officials have not released their names, but relatives identified one of them as 33-year-old Fern Holland, a human rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region where she was killed.
"If I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing," Holland wrote in an e-mail to a friend in Tulsa on Jan. 21.
She met often with Iraqi women around Hillah and communicated their needs to Iraq's Governing Council, even influencing the interim constitution completed this week, said one of her colleagues, Judy Van Rest.
"She was extremely dedicated to what she was doing," Van Rest said. "She carried a lot of hope with her about the future of Iraq."
The shooting Tuesday night raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by U.S. troops are turning to violence.
The Americans and an Iraqi woman working as their translator were driving near Hillah, 35 miles south of Baghdad, when they were stopped at a checkpoint and killed by gunmen.
The attackers then took their car, their bodies still inside, according to the Polish military, which patrols the area. Polish troops stopped the car and arrested the five Iraqis inside. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said it was not yet known if the attackers were disguised as police or the real thing.
"They were in police uniforms. We haven't established that it was the police," Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad.
"We are very concerned about it," Sanchez said. "We know that this has gone on ... that there are some policemen that have done criminal acts in the past."
The U.S. military, which has been training Iraq's new police force, is trying "to ensure that they are truly serving their communities," he said.
Holland investigated human rights violations and set up women's rights conferences. She grew up in the northeast Oklahoma town of Miami and was a 1996 graduate of the University of Tulsa College of Law. Before going to Iraq, she worked at two law firms in Tulsa and for the Peace Corps in Namibia.
Her job in Iraq required her to travel almost every day on highways made dangerous by snipers and roadside bombs.
"We stand out, and those who dislike us know precisely when we come to town," she wrote.
Also Thursday, the military said an American soldier from the 652nd Engineering Battalion was killed and two others wounded the day before when a homemade bomb went off in the city of Baqouba north of Baghdad, a center of anti-U.S. insurgent activity.
The latest death brings to 554 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
In the southern city of Basra, attackers killed two Iraqi women late Wednesday as they were returning home in a taxi from their jobs in a laundry for the coalition, a coalition official said.
Guerrillas have not been widely known to use police disguises - and the attack on the coalition employees near Hillah could signal a new tactic. Roads across Iraq are dotted with checkpoints manned by Iraqi police or coalition troops, particularly at the entrances to towns.
There has been at least one other case of members of the Iraqi security forces working with insurgents. On Monday, U.S. forces captured two members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps who were "suspected of conducting anti-coalition activities," the military said.
The defense corps was set up by the U.S. military as an internal security force. It and the Iraqi police force are supposed to gradually take greater responsibility in battling the insurgency after the coalition hands over sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30 - though Sanchez cautioned that the handover of security powers would take time.
Gunmen in a car ambushed a vehicle carrying American civilians on a road in the Hillah region on Feb. 14, killing one and wounding three others, the U.S. military said.
A convoy carrying CNN employees was attacked Jan. 27 near Mahmudiyah - between Hillah and Baghdad - and two Iraqi employees were killed.
--------
2 American Civilians Killed by Fake Iraqi Policemen
March 11, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/middleeast/11IRAQ.html
ABU GHARAQ, Iraq, March 10 - Two American civilians and their Iraqi interpreter were killed on Tuesday night in what American officials described as a "targeted killing" by terrorists posing as Iraqi police officers. They were the first American civilians working for the American occupation authority to be killed since American forces toppled Saddam Hussein last April.
The three were attacked as they drove past this settlement 70 miles south of Baghdad on their way from work assignments in Karbala.
By some accounts, including those from Polish officers of the allied force that controls the Karbala area, the victims died in a volley of gunfire as they halted at an improvised checkpoint set up with rocks dragged onto the road. Iraqi police officers based nearby said the lethal shots came from a chasing car.
An officer from the Polish contingent said the attackers placed the bodies of all three victims in the trunk of the Americans' Korean-built car and drove off. The officer, Col. Robert Strzelecki, said Polish troops later intercepted the car and arrested five men suspected of being the killers. He did not say whether the men were Iraqis or foreigners.
"The attackers disguised as Iraqi policemen had set up a false checkpoint," Colonel Strzelecki told Agence France-Presse. Other Polish officers said the captured men had been handed over to American forces.
The American occupation authority indicated that the killings were of a new sort. At an evening news briefing, Dan Senor, a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the authority's administrator, described the killings as "a targeted act of terrorism." He added that although the F.B.I. would be working with the Iraqi police in the probe, "We believe that this act is under U.S. jurisdiction." That was a reference, American officials said, to United States laws that provide for the extradition of anybody found guilty of a terrorist attack against an American official and that allow for the death penalty.
A reporter reaching the scene on Wednesday was taken by the Iraqi police to a spot near Abu Gharaq where the road from Karbala runs past open wheat fields and palm groves. There, near a side road traveled by donkey carts, tire tracks said to have come from the Americans' car curved sharply left across the median strip, over the lanes for oncoming traffic, and down a five-foot embankment. The car appeared to have run on across muddy ground for another 50 yards before hitting a second embankment and stopping.
The two dead Americans, a woman and a man described by United States officials as being employed by the Pentagon, and the interpreter, an Iraqi woman, were not otherwise identified. Officials in Baghdad said their names and details of their deaths would be released only after their families had been informed and a team of F.B.I. investigators had composed a fuller picture of exactly what happened.
One account circulating in Baghdad was that at least one of the dead at Abu Gharaq was an F.B.I. official, and that Mr. Bremer had called to offer condolences to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III.
According to a official tally kept by the Pentagon, 553 American soldiers have been killed in the invasion of Iraq and the occupation. No reliable figures for the numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths have been kept by the Americans, or by any Iraqi organization, but rough estimates range from about 10,000 to as high as 20,000.
According to the Iraqi police, Abu Gharaq had previously been spared terrorist bombings, ambushes and shootings. At dusk Wednesday, 24 hours after the killings, the agrarian stillness along the road here seemed a universe away from Karbala, 20 miles to the west, which has been the target of several major attacks.
The dangers in Iraq have been increasing for civilians, both Iraqi and foreign, seen as working for the occupiers. Last week in Baghdad, an Iraqi working as an interpreter for the Voice of America was shot dead, together with his mother-in-law and 4-year-old daughter, by men who followed them and opened fire as they drove home at night.
Increasingly, other Iraqis who work for foreigners have been receiving death threats, and some have quit their jobs, and even fled Iraq, rather than face execution as "traitors" and "accomplices" of the Americans, as warning notes have called them.
After suicide bombings in Karbala last week that killed at least 120 Iraqis, and after a nearly simultaneous attack in Baghdad that killed another 65 Iraqis, American officials said that an F.B.I. team, including forensic experts, had gone to Karbala to assist the Iraqi police in their investigation.
Mr. Senor, the spokesman for Mr. Bremer, said F.B.I. investigators had also been sent to Abu Gharaq. But that is routine when American officials are killed abroad.
If an F.B.I. official was one of those killed on Wednesday, it raises questions about whether the killings were linked to the Karbala and Baghdad bombings - and, in particular, whether they could have been directed by the man the Americans have named as the prime suspect in the bombings, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Mr. Zarqawi is a Jordanian-born Muslim militant accused of having ties to Al Qaeda, and American officials posted a $10 million reward for his capture or death after linking him to a series of suicide bombings, including attacks last year on the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The reward was offered after United States forces here intercepted a letter that Mr. Zarqawi was said to have written late last year in which he urged Al Qaeda to support attacks on Shiite targets with the goal of provoking a civil war between the Shiite and Sunnis in order to disrupt the American push to establish a Western-style democracy here.
-------- israel / palestine
America Seeks Details on Gaza Withdrawal
March 11, 2004
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Visiting American diplomats pressed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday for more details of his proposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, as his top security advisers recommended Israel also dismantle as many as 24 settlements in the West Bank.
The proposed pullout from much of Gaza and parts of the West Bank is part of Sharon's plan to impose a boundary on the Palestinians, at least temporarily, if peace efforts remain frozen.
The prime minister has given few details, raising concerns in Washington and with the Palestinians that he may abandon the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan. That strategy calls for an immediate end to violence and the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by next year, but neither side has moved to implement it.
The U.S. diplomats arrived for a two-day visit to hear more about the withdrawal plan, said Paul Patin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy.
Sharon's office said the prime minister met with the Americans for more than three hours, and further talks would take place on Friday.
The U.S. team, making a second visit to Israel in less than a month, included Assistant Secretary of State William Burns; Stephen Hadley, deputy director of the National Security Council; and Elliot Abrams, a Middle East specialist at the council.
The trip coincided with confirmation of a newspaper report that Israel is considering leaving up to 24 West Bank settlements.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sharon's national security team had recommended the partial West Bank pullback and a withdrawal from virtually all of Gaza.
Sharon has not yet decided on the scope or timing of any withdrawal, the official said.That will depend on how Egypt, Jordan and the United States reacts to the plan, he said.
Any broad Israeli withdrawal would be with the understanding that large settlement blocs in the West Bank would not be included. About 230,000 Israelis live in some 150 West Bank settlements.
Egypt, which borders Gaza, has emerged as a key player in the withdrawal plan.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom sought support in Cairo on Thursday, particularly Egyptian help in keeping the volatile area quiet if Israel pulls out.
While both sides ruled out an Egyptian military presence in Gaza, Shalom said that Israel would welcome an Egyptian role along the border, regardless of whether there is a withdrawal.
"We would like in any case that the border would be guarded by Egypt, and if that requires of them more effort, that will be discussed in the near future by the two countries," Shalom told Israel Radio after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Israel has carried out numerous military operations along the border to stop the flow of illegal weapons through tunnels into Gaza. It fears even more weapons could enter Gaza once it leaves the area.
Interviewed on Israel TV, Mubarak said Egyptian police have "already closed many tunnels" and that it was Israel's responsibility to stop smuggling at the other end.
The meeting came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity. On Wednesday, Egypt's intelligence chief traveled to the West Bank for talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Next week, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers are expected to hold their first summit.
Palestinians have responded cautiously to a Gaza withdrawal. They fear Sharon wants to dig in to the parts of the West Bank it does not leave, frustrating their hopes of a state in all of Gaza and the West Bank with a capital in east Jerusalem.
Arafat on Thursday said he would welcome a Gaza withdrawal, but insisted it would have to be accompanied by a simultaneous pullback from the West Bank.
However, the withdrawal "should be through talks between the two parties and the framework of the road map," he told Palestinian legislators. Sharon has spoken of unilateral steps.
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Israeli Troops in Disguise Kill 5 Palestinian Gunmen in West Bank
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47995-2004Mar10.html
JERUSALEM, March 10 -- Israeli security forces disguised as Palestinians riding in an unmarked car killed five Palestinians on Wednesday afternoon in a shootout in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, according to a militant leader and an Israeli military spokesman.
The military spokesman said the five members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement, were killed when the border patrol troops stopped the Palestinians' car at about 3 p.m. None of the Israelis was killed or injured, the spokesman said.
"They were caught by surprise by undercover agents and were not prepared," Zakaria Zbeida, the al-Aqsa commander for the Jenin area, said in a telephone interview. He described the shooting as an ambush.
The Israeli spokesman said several of the slain men were wanted for alleged involvement in attacks against Jewish settlements near Jenin.
"All of us are wanted by the Israelis," said Zbeida, who ranks high on Israel's most-wanted list. "We don't think they are going to greet us with flowers, but that doesn't mean they have the right to assassinate our members."
Zbeida identified the five dead men as Ayman Seaany, Mohammed Kherallah, Ihab Abu Jafr, Basel Mahdy and Amer Ghoul.
The Israeli military spokesman said that three of the men were armed with M-16 rifles and that one carried a Kalashnikov. He said he had no information on the fifth man.
Based on the accounts of both the Israeli spokesman and Zbeida, it appeared most of the militants were shot dead before they realized their assailants were Israeli troops; others managed to fire only a few rounds. The military spokesman described the encounter as "a small gun battle."
The shooting occurred on a day when Israeli news media reported that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would meet next week with his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qureia. The two men have not met since Qureia took office four months ago.
Qureia, however, told reporters in Oslo that the date of a meeting with Sharon "is not fixed yet."
The remark by Qureia, who was in Olso to deliver a lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, marked the second time in as many days that Sharon has been rebuffed by an Arab leader. On Tuesday, Sharon said during a public reception to unveil a joint scientific project involving Israel and Jordan that he would be meeting soon with Jordan's King Abdullah. At a ceremony the same day at his palace in Amman, Abudullah told Israeli reporters that no meeting was planned.
Three Bush administration representatives -- White House Middle East specialist Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and Stephen Hadley, deputy to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- were scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday on their second trip in the past month. They were to discuss details of Sharon's orders to plan a possible withdrawal of Jewish settlements and Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
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Arafat Tentatively Backs Israeli Proposal for Troop Pullback
March 11, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/middleeast/11CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, March 11 - The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat said today that he would welcome an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, provided it is coordinated with the Palestinians and is part of a broader peace effort.
Mr. Arafat's comments to the Palestinian Parliament, which gathered at his badly damaged compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, reflected the shifting Palestinian position on Israel's proposals to take unilateral action.
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, outlined his "disengagement plan" in December, and since then has said he is contemplating pulling out Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from most of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. The Israeli leader says he is weighing the actions because he sees little prospect for progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.
The initial Palestinian reaction was extremely negative. Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders dismissed it as a limited Israeli step intended to undermine the far more comprehensive Mideast peace plan, known as the road map. That plan was introduced last summer with broad international support.
But today Mr. Arafat said: "We welcome any simultaneous Israeli withdrawal from any part of our land. I mean from Gaza and the West Bank."
Mr. Arafat stressed that such moves "should be through talks between the two parties and the framework of the road map."
He reiterated the Palestinian demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, lands that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, and which the Palestinians want for a future state.
Israeli officials say the scope and timing of any withdrawal will be determined by Israel, but the move should be discussed with the Palestinians and neighboring countries.
Mr. Arafat's remarks came on busy day of diplomacy, which has picked up recently, after months of little such activity. Diplomatic efforts tailed off after the road map stalled amid ongoing violence last August, just two months after it was formally launched.
Today, Mr. Sharon discussed the disengagement plan with a trio of visiting American envoys, Stephen Hadley and Elliot Abrams from the National Security Council and William J. Burns from the State Department. The Bush administration says it remains committed to the road map, which it drafted, but it is also exploring Mr. Sharon's proposals as a possible way to revive the peace process.
And in Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was host to Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom.
In Israel, the newspaper Maariv published what it said was a draft of the proposed unilateral steps that Israel's National Security Council's has sent to Mr. Sharon.
The plan recommends Israel withdraw from 18 of its 21 settlements in Gaza, remaining in the three settlements on the northern frontier of the territory, and in a buffer zone in the south that borders Egypt.
In the West Bank, the council outlined four separate proposals, and advised that Israel leave up to two dozen of its more than 120 settlements.
Such moves fall far short of Palestinian demands. Still, an Israeli pullback in Gaza and the West Bank could improve the climate for any future negotiations and reduce the daily friction between the two sides.
Meanwhile, Egypt is concerned about instability in Gaza if the Israelis pull out and the Palestinian Authority is unable to exert control. In turn, Israel wants Egypt to work on preventing weapons smuggling from its territory into Gaza.
"We think that Egypt should have a permanent role, irrespective of the program, in preventing smuggling of arms and people," Mr. Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, told Israel radio.
Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, dismissed speculation in the news media that Egypt might be asked to place troops in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal.
"It wasn't considered, sending Egyptian troops to Gaza," said Mr. Maher, who also participated in the Cairo talks. "However, concerning defending our borders, that's our responsibility."
In a separate development, Israel's High Court of Justice extended for six days an interim order that prevents the building of a section of a West Bank separation barrier outside Jerusalem.
The court, which first gave the order on Feb. 29, said the state should negotiate the route with the petitioners, which includes both Israelis and Palestinians who object to its proposed path.
This section of the fence runs for about 15 miles inside the West Bank, northwest of Jerusalem, and Palestinian villagers say it will cut them off from their farmland and make it difficult to reach jobs inside Israel.
Israel says the barrier is necessary to prevent Palestinian suicide bombings, while the Palestinians say it amounts to the confiscation of land they seek for a state.
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Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Prepare for First Meeting
March 11, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/middleeast/11MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, March 10 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qurei, intend to hold their first meeting next week, with the talks likely to focus on a possible Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian and Israeli officials said Wednesday.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli undercover troops shot and killed five Palestinian militants in a brief gunfight in the town of Jenin, Palestinian security officials said. Israeli military officials said the Palestinians were armed with automatic rifles and were intercepted while traveling by car to carry out an attack on a Jewish settlement.
The Palestinians belonged to the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of the Fatah movement of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian officials added.
Middle East peace efforts have been frozen since summer, and the two prime ministers have not met despite repeated efforts to arrange talks since Mr. Qurei assumed his post in October. The road map, the Middle East peace plan rolled out last year, is on the back burner. The current diplomatic focus is on Mr. Sharon's proposal for unilateral Israeli steps, which could include withdrawing from most or all of the Gaza Strip, home to about 7,500 Jewish settlers and a military contingent.
Aides to the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers are to meet Sunday to make final arrangements for the meeting, with the most likely date being next Tuesday, said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr. Sharon. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the Palestinians wanted to discuss the peace plan and the easing of restrictions on Palestinians. But he acknowledged that Mr. Sharon's proposals would be on the agenda. "I would not be surprised if Israeli unilateralism is discussed bilaterally," Mr. Erekat said.
Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, met secretly with Mr. Sharon on Monday and conferred with Mr. Arafat on Wednesday in Ramallah. Also, Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, is heading to Cairo for a Thursday meeting with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. Three United States envoys were expected in Israel on Thursday for the latest round of talks on Mr. Sharon's disengagement plan, and the Israeli leader is expected to see President Bush in Washington in the coming weeks.
Mr. Sharon outlined his proposals in a speech last December. The Israeli leader says the measures could include an Israeli departure from Gaza, as well as pulling back Israeli troops to a new "security line" in the West Bank. Much of the international community, in particular the Arab world, has treated Mr. Sharon's proposals with deep skepticism. But the Palestinians and some Middle East mediators now appear willing, at a minimum, to entertain Mr. Sharon's ideas. Mr. Qurei, speaking in Oslo, said he wanted to know if an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was a move toward the peace plan, "or is it an attempt to put it to death."
"We will not object to the withdrawal, but we will not be held responsible or make any commitments" unless it is part of a larger agreement, Mr. Qurei was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse.
In a separate development, an Israeli official was quoted as saying that the government had decided not to extend the West Bank security barrier deep into the Jordan Valley. Col. Dany Tirza of the Israeli Army, Mr. Sharon's top adviser on the barrier, told the daily Haaretz that the government had made the decision because it was concerned about the "diplomatic damage" extending the barrier would cause.
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Palestinians vow revenge attacks
Friday 12 March 2004
Gulf Daily News
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=76444&Sn=WORL
JENIN: Tens of thousands of furious Palestinians vowed yesterday to exact revenge on Israel as the West Bank town of Jenin ground to a halt for the funerals of five militants shot dead by Israeli troops.
Mourners chanted "Israel will pay the price" and "our revenge will be in Tel Aviv and Haifa" as the bodies of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades fighters were carried through the streets.
And the local leader of the group warned that hundreds of fellow Palestinians had offered to take part in suicide attacks and would not be thwarted by Israel's West Bank separation barrier.
As he watched his24 -year-old son Ayman's body being buried in Jenin's main cemetery, Mohammed Sabahna spoke of his pride that his son had died "in the fight for Palestine" but also of his hope that the cycle of killing would come to an end.
Israeli sources said the five were shot as they were planning an attack on the nearby settlement of Qadim.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security team yesterday has recommended that Israel withdraw from virtually all of the Gaza Strip and up 24 West Bank settlements, a government official said yesterday, as US diplomats sought more details on the proposal.
Meanwhile, Israel's Supreme Court extended a freeze on construction of a25 -kilometre section of the country's contentious West Bank separation barrier until next Wednesday.
The court had initially suspended construction in the area, around eight Palestinian villages northwest of Jerusalem, on February 29 at the request of a civil rights group representing Israeli and Palestinian opponents of the barrier.
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CIA Chief Clueless on Neocon Intelligence Channel
March 11, 2004
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2116
Was Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet really the last person in Washington to find out that both the president and vice president were being fed phony or "sexed up" intelligence about prewar Iraq by a Pentagon office staffed by ideologically driven neoconservatives?
It is highly doubtful, but in his desperate attempt to walk a tightrope between his increasingly irreconcilable loyalties to the administration of President George W. Bush and to his own intelligence professionals, Tenet is suggesting that he really was in the dark about what was going on just a few miles down the Potomac River from CIA headquarters.
Just a month ago, in a rousing defense of the intelligence community's professionalism, Tenet boasted to students at Georgetown University that he and only he was the sole purveyor of intelligence information to the president.
But on Tuesday he admitted to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was unaware until just last week that officials based in the Pentagon's policy office had given intelligence briefings directly to the White House.
"Is that a normal thing to happen, that there (is) a formal analysis relative to intelligence that would be presented to the NSC (National Security Council) that way, without you even knowing about it"? an incredulous Democratic senator, Carl Levin, asked Tenet during contentious hearings.
"I don't know. I've never been in the situation," Tenet replied, insisting, "I have to tell you senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects."
"I know you feel that way," Levin said, betraying a hint of sarcasm.
The exchange reflected the latest development in what is building into one of the biggest intelligence crises in modern U.S. history, one the administration is trying desperately, but with increasing difficulty, to quash.
The scandal, which is based on Washington's abject failure one year after invading Iraq to find any evidence to back up the administration's prewar claims that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed massive stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons; reconstituted his nuclear-weapons program (to the extent that, according to Vice President Dick Cheney, he had obtained weapons); and had operational ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, has been building since last summer.
But it gained momentum in January when the CIA's chief weapons inspector, David, Kay admitted that US intelligence, including himself, had been "almost all wrong" on its prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities.
Both Kay and the administration, as well as members of Congress from Bush's Republican Party, immediately blamed the official intelligence community, which Tenet heads as CIA director, for the failure.
But opposition Democrats, backed up by former intelligence officials and some media reporting, charged the administration had systematically exaggerated and manipulated the intelligence by both intimidating the professional analysts who disagreed with them and by producing its own intelligence, much of which now appears to have been fabricated, through unofficial channels.
As a result, the intelligence committees in both houses have expanded their investigations in recent weeks.
While it is now clear that professional intelligence analysts made some serious errors assessing Iraq's WMD programs - largely through a combination of assuming "worst-case scenarios" in the absence of hard evidence and lacking reliable agents or assets in Iraq either as informants or investigators - the "Feith factor" has now emerged as the key focus of the committees' work.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up two groups, the Office of Special Plans (OSP) and the Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG).
They were tasked to review raw intelligence to determine if official intelligence agencies had overlooked connections between Shiite and Sunni terrorist groups and between al-Qaeda and secular Arab governments, especially Hussein's.
The effort, which reportedly included interviewing "defectors," several of them supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group close to neoconservatives who support Israel's Likud Party, closely tracked the agenda of the Defense Policy Group (DPG), chaired by Feith's mentor, Richard Perle.
The DPG also convened after Sept. 11 with INC leader Ahmed Chalabi to discuss ways in which the terrorist attacks could be tied to Hussein. Neither the State Department nor the CIA was informed about the meeting.
The OSP, which was overseen by Abram Shulsky, brought on Michael Malouf, who had worked for Perle in the Pentagon 20 years before and specialized in obtaining authorizations giving the office access to analyses produced by official intelligence agencies, according to knowledgeable sources.
Malouf's operation, called the "bat cave," permitted hawks in the Pentagon and Cheney's office to anticipate the intelligence community's more skeptical arguments about the alleged threats posed by Hussein, and then to devise questions or develop their own evidence that would be used to challenge the more benign views of the professional analysts, according to these sources.
At the same time, OSP, which consisted of only two permanent staff members, but which employed dozens of like-minded consultants, developed its own "talking points" and briefing papers, one of which - on the subject of Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda - was leaked last November to the neoconservative Weekly Standard.
It consisted of 50 excerpts taken from raw, mostly uncorroborated intelligence reports from sources of varying reliability from 1990 to 2002, which purported to show an operational relationship between the captured leader and the group.
But when it was published, former intelligence officials dismissed the work as amateurish, unsubstantiated and indicative, even if most of the allegations were true, of the absence of any operative relationship.
"This is meant to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated," former State Department intelligence officer Greg Thielmann told IPS at the time.
As recently as last month, Cheney referred to the paper as "the best source of information" for intelligence on Iraq.
It was this paper that reportedly formed the basis of a briefing by Feith given to the NSC and Cheney's office in August 2002. Tenet said Tuesday he "vaguely" remember having received a similar briefing by Feith, but was never informed that it was also presented to the White House.
The presentation to the CIA reportedly omitted certain remarks made to the White House to the effect that the CIA was deliberately ignoring evidence of Hussein-al-Qaeda links.
"Did you ever discuss with the secretary of defense or other administration officials whether the Department of Defense policy office run by Mr. Feith might be bypassing normal intelligence channels?" Levin asked Tenet on Tuesday.
"I did not. I did not," he replied.
Why he did not remains a major question, particularly in light of the fact that several publications, including The New Yorker, Knight-Ridder news agency and IPS, were reporting already last July that Feith's office was constantly "stovepiping" intelligence directly to Cheney and the White House in order to circumvent official channels.
These accounts have now been accepted by Democrats and some Republicans on the intelligence committees. Last Friday, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives committee, Rep Jane Harmon, raised the issue directly in a speech at Perle's AEI.
"The president should direct a review of the activities of various (Pentagon) offices, particularly an early analytic unit that reported to Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, as well as the Office of Special Plans," she said.
"Disclaimers notwithstanding, many in Congress and intelligence operatives in the field now believe these entities fed unreliable and 'unvetted' intelligence to (Pentagon) policymakers and the Office of the Vice President."
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Ex-Aide for Congress Is Charged for Being a Paid Agent for Iraq
March 11, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/politics/11WIRE-ARREST.html?hp
NEW YORK -- A former journalist and one-time press secretary for four members of Congress was arrested Thursday on charges she served as a paid agent for the Iraqi intelligence service before and after the U.S. invasion.
Susan Lindauer, 41, was arrested in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md., and was to appear in court later in the day in Baltimore, authorities in New York said.
She was accused of conspiring to act as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service and engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving the government of Iraq under dictator Saddam Hussein. Prosecutors say she accepted $10,000 for he work.
"I'm an anti-war activist and I'm innocent," Lindauer told WBAL-TV as she was led to a car outside the Baltimore FBI office. "I did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else. I have done good things for this country. I worked to get weapons inspectors back to Iraq when everyone else said it was impossible. I'm very proud and I'll stand by my achievements."
Lindauer worked at Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before beginning her career as a political publicist.
She worked for Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. in 1993 and then Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in 1994 before joining the office of former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun as press secretary in 1996. From March to May 2002, she worked for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
"Her position was eliminated in the downsizing following the 1994 elections," said Josh Kardon, chief of staff for now-Sen. Wyden. "She worked for us a short period of time."
Braun's current spokesperson, Loretta Kane, said the former senator does not remember Lindauer.
According to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Lindauer made multiple visits from October 1999 through March 2002 to the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. The indictment makes no mention of her congressional staff work.
There, she met with several members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the foreign intelligence arm of the government of Iraq that allegedly has played a role in terrorist operations, including an attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, the indictment alleged.
The government said she accepted payments from the Iraqis for her services and expenses amounting to a total of $10,000, including $5,000 she received during a trip to Baghdad in February and March 2002.
Her acceptance of the money and her willingness to bring it home from Iraq violated a law prohibiting transactions with a government that sponsors international terrorism, the government said. The indictment did not specify a motive.
The charges against Lindauer were included in an expanded indictment in the case against Raed Rokan Al-Anbuge, 28, and Wisam Noman Al-Anbuke, the sons of Iraq's former liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors.
The brothers were charged last year with acting as Iraqi government agents and conspiring to do so, prosecutors said. The indictment said Lindauer conspired with the brothers.
On Jan. 8, 2003, prosecutors said, Lindauer tried to influence U.S. foreign policy by delivering to the home of a U.S. government official a letter in which she conveyed her access to and contacts with members of Saddam's regime. The official was not identified in the indictment.
The United States invaded Iraq in March of last year, and the government fell the following month.
The indictment said she met on two occasions in Baltimore in June and July with an undercover FBI agent who posed as a Libyan intelligence representative who was seeking to support resistance groups in postwar Iraq. It said she discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support these groups.
According to the indictment, she continued to correspond with the undercover agent until last month and followed the agent's instructions to leave packages on two occasions in August in "dead drop" operations.
Lindauer, who was not immediately assigned a defense lawyer, faces up to 10 years in prison on the most serious charge and five years on the lesser charge if she is convicted, prosecutors said.
More than a half dozen FBI agents could be seen searching Lindauer's residence in Takoma Park, a city known for its liberal views. Her neighbors recalled her as friendly.
Joao Luiz Vieire de Castro, 39, described Lindauer as "a regular American who walks her dog in the mornings and the afternoon."
"It's a big surprise. Who would think that it's (espionage) in your neighborhood?" said Dean Paris, 45, who sometimes greeted Lindauer on the street, which is less than a mile from the District of Columbia line. Paris said he never saw anything suspicious.
But Malvina Lacey, who lives next door to Lindauer, added, "She lives in a fantasy world."
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Pentagon Pays Iraq Group, Supplier of Incorrect Spy Data
March 11, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/politics/11CHAL.html
WASHINGTON, March 10 - The Pentagon is paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi government who has close ties to the Bush administration, for "intelligence collection" about Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.
The classified program, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency since summer 2002, continues a longstanding partnership between the Pentagon and the organization, the Iraqi National Congress, even as the group jockeys for power in a future government. Internal government reviews have found that much of the information generated by the program before the American invasion last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.
Under the unusual arrangement, the Central Intelligence Agency is required to get permission from the Pentagon before interviewing informants from the Iraqi National Congress, according to government officials who have been briefed on the procedures.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been working with another Iraqi group, the Iraqi National Accord, to help establish an independent Iraqi intelligence service. The relationship between the C.I.A. and Mr. Chalabi's group has been strained for years.
An American intelligence official said the maintenance of the separate, exclusive channel between Mr. Chalabi's group and the Defense Intelligence Agency is not interfering with the C.I.A.'s effort to set up the new Iraqi service.
Among several defectors introduced by Mr. Chalabi's organization to American intelligence officials before the war, at least one was formally labeled a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Others were viewed as having been coached by the Iraqi group to provide intelligence critical of Saddam Hussein's rule. Internal reviews by the Pentagon agency and the National Intelligence Council this year concluded that little of the information from the group had any value.
The payments to the group as part of an "intelligence collection program" was authorized by Congress in 1998 under the Iraq Liberation Act. The fact that the arrangement has continued since the war was first reported last month by Knight-Ridder newspapers.
A Defense Department official who defended the continuing ties with the Iraqi National Congress said the arrangement was proving more useful now than it had before the war, in part because the agency was taking new pains to corroborate the intelligence provided.
In the days after Mr. Hussein's government fell in April, congress officials took a vast quantity of secret government documents, and the group has kept custody of them, to the dismay of some at the C.I.A., according to government officials. Defense Department officials said the Pentagon agency had been permitted to review the documents but not to take custody of them.
Another government official outside the Pentagon who has been critical of the earlier relationship said he believed that the current partnership might be valuable. "This is an organization that has a lot of access, and people who know the country and speak Arabic, and we ought to take the information as long as we're careful about it," the official said.
But the arrangement is drawing some criticism on Capitol Hill. In a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, pointedly asked Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of defense intelligence, to confirm that the payments were continuing. Admiral Jacoby declined to discuss the matter in open session.
In a television interview broadcast Sunday by CBS on "60 Minutes," Mr. Chalabi defended the quality of information provided by his group. He also said American agencies should have done a better job filtering out the good from the bad, and did not acknowledge personal responsibility for the incorrect information. He said he hoped to appear before the Senate intelligence committee to clear his name.
"Intelligence people, who are supposed to do a better job for their country and their government, did not do such a good job," Mr. Chalabi said.
The C.I.A. severed its ties with Mr. Chalabi's group in 1995, in part because of doubts about the quality of information it was providing. Asked Tuesday by Senator Clinton about Mr. Chalabi's comments, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, chose his words with care.
"Mr. Chalabi's an interesting man," Mr. Tenet said slowly. "He's got an interesting history, and I think hearing him would be interesting, but you know, I guess I don't have much of a response to it, Senator. We'll just leave it at that."
Admiral Jacoby told the Senate committee that the value of information provided by the Iraqi defectors had been mixed.
"There are some situations where the information has been verified and corroborated through multiple sources," he said. "There have been other situations where we believe that information was either fabricated or embellished. And just - it's a situation that we have in other human operations, where the information spans a pretty broad range of veracity, and we need to go into the situation very much like we do in any human situation: our eyes very wide open."
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Discredited Iraqi exiles still land US spy funds
Questions over $340,000 per month payouts
Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters in Washington
Thursday March 11, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1166966,00.html
Washington is paying the Iraqi National Congress exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi about $340,000 (£190,000) a month for intelligence about insurgents and other matters, US officials said yesterday.
Mr Chalabi, a former exile and now a member of the Iraqi governing council, pushed for years for the US to topple Saddam Hussein.
Before the war, his group directed numerous Iraqi defectors to the US to provide intelligence from inside Iraq that critics now say was largely spun to alarm Washington into taking action against Baghdad.
Internal reports revealed that much of the information from the INC was either fabricated or useless.
But now, even with American forces on the ground in Iraq after toppling Saddam last April, the US government is still paying Mr Chalabi's exile group for information.
"We're still getting good information from them," one US official said. "There are a lot of insurgents that are doing bad things, and the INC has a lot of contacts and making better ones every day."
Mr Chalabi's group had provided information that had helped prevent attacks by insurgents, the official said.
"If we stop an attack and it saves one soldier's life or 100 soldiers' lives or 100 Iraqi lives, is that worth the price you pay?" the US official said. "Yes, they have been very helpful."
At a Senate armed services committee hearing this week, Senator Hillary Clinton, a New York Democrat, asked CIA director George Tenet about the continued payments. Mr Tenet replied: "We're not paying them."
She then asked Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency. He replied: "Senator, you have me in a situation where this would be best dealt with in closed session. I could give you detail."
Mr Chalabi, asked about the payments in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday, said: "It's a very small programme in terms of cost."
Congress authorised the funds for the "Intelligence Collection Programme", which was transferred to the Defence Intelligence Agency from the state department about two years ago and mainly pays for intelligence gathering by the INC, officials said.
The CIA has been more wary of Mr Chalabi and his group than the Pentagon has.
The Senate intelligence committee, as part of its review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, is looking at how intelligence agencies used INC information.
No banned weapons have been found in Iraq and it has become a key political issue heading into the presidential election in November, with Democrats claiming the White House exaggerated the threat to gather support for war.
US officials said last month that a major in the Iraqi intelligence service - who was a source for a pre-war US intelligence claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs - had been labelled a fabricator. He was introduced to the Defence Intelligence Agency by the INC. Reuters
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Pentagon Pressed for Iraq War's Costs
By PAULINE JELINEK
The Associated Press
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/27-03112004-262236.html
WASHINGTON - Pressed to estimate the cost of future operations in Iraq, the Pentagon has repeatedly said it is just too hard to do. Now the ranks of disbelievers are growing - in Congress and among private defense analysts. Some say the Bush administration's refusal to estimate costs could erode American support for the Iraq campaign, as well as the credibility of the White House and lawmakers.
"It is crucial that we have every bit of information so we can level with the taxpayer," Democratic Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin recently told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "We don't have that information now."
"The White House plays hide and seek with the costs of the war," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
The object of their ire is President Bush's proposed defense spending for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 - a $402 billion request that did not include money for the major military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is not just Democrats who disagree with the administration's approach.
Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees have penciled in tens of billions of dollars for the two military campaigns - $30 billion in the Senate, an expected $50 billion in the House - in spending plans they began pushing through Congress this week.
Asked at a recent congressional hearing why costs for Iraq were not included in the administration's budget, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim replied: "Because we simply cannot predict them."
Yet many contend the administration at least knows that roughly 100,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq for another year and could have budgeted an estimate or a placeholder request for that.
"We know it will not be free," said Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Private and congressional analysts, in fact, have done a number of studies and projections of possible costs:
-Daniel Goure of the conservative Lexington Institute said he expects troop levels to gradually drop over five years to one-half or one-third the present deployment - meaning 30,000 to 50,000 Americans troops could remain in Iraq through 2009.
-The Congressional Budget Office a few months ago estimated the cost to occupy Iraq through 2013 at up to $200 billion, depending on troops levels.
-Casualties could rise to at least 1,000, said a recent report by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a frequent Pentagon adviser. "One thousand or more dead in Iraq is hardly Vietnam," Cordesman said. "But it must be justified and explained, and explained honestly."
White House budget chief Joshua Bolten acknowledged in a briefing with reporters last month that the military will need money over and above the defense request - up to $50 billion the administration will seek in an emergency budget request for Iraq and Afghanistan. It used a similar supplemental spending measure last fall to ask for $87 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq
But administration officials do not plan to ask for that supplemental, or specify what it might include, until sometime after Jan. 1, 2005 - about two months after November's presidential election.
Had Bush included it in the budget proposal sent to Congress in February, the government's surging deficit problem would have looked even worse.
Zakheim denied last month that the administration was waiting until January so Iraqi expenses wouldn't figure into Bush's re-election bid.
That hasn't convinced everyone.
"The American people are entitled to know before the election, not after the election, at least the estimated costs ... in dollars ... lives ... length of the occupation," said Byrd.
Most of the Capitol Hill arguments have centered on whether war spending should be requested in the regular budget being discussed now or in the supplemental to come later. But Byrd, among others, notes that the government has not made public estimates of non-monetary costs, either.
The Pentagon's refusal to estimate costs is the same stance it took before the war.
For months leading up to the invasion, officials said they couldn't estimate because they didn't know how long it would take to fight the war.
Within days after it started, however, the Pentagon sent Congress a request for $63 billion.
"So you know they had it in their back pockets," all along, said Cindy Williams, a former congressional budget officer now with the MIT security studies program.
Rumsfeld said at a recent hearing that he can't now estimate Iraq and Afghanistan needs for the budget year starting in October because there are so many uncertainties.
Those include how violent Iraq will be then, the number of troops that will be required, whether allies might contribute forces and whether a new Iraqi government will let the U.S. military stay
---------
Nominee to Head Army Withdraws
Roche's Air Force Leadership Criticized
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47173-2004Mar10.html
The Bush administration dropped efforts yesterday to shift James G. Roche from heading the Air Force to heading the Army, acknowledging that his nomination had become so mired in controversy over a cadet sex scandal and a potential deal with Boeing Co. to lease tanker aircraft that Congress was unlikely to act on the appointment this year.
The admission of defeat highlighted the difficulties confronting the administration in trying to put both controversies behind it. Roche's nomination as Army secretary, presented last spring as a way to bring energetic new leadership to that service, instead drew congressional ire at the Pentagon's inattention, questionable judgments and resistance to demands for internal documents.
Although Roche took forceful action early last year to probe reports of sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy, investigations have continued into assault cases stretching back a decade. Calls in Congress have persisted for some Air Force leaders to be held accountable for past lax enforcement.
In the past week, new reports have emerged of flaws in the handling of sexual assault cases by the Air Force's Pacific command, and the Air Force has launched a service-wide review.
Even more problematic for Roche was the Air Force's plan to lease as many as 100 Boeing 767s as refueling tankers. Roche championed the $21 billion proposal as a novel way of bolstering an aging tanker fleet, but critics attacked it as corporate welfare for Boeing that would needlessly raise taxpayer costs. Investigators also are examining alleged improper contacts between the Air Force and Boeing during negotiations on the deal.
Additionally, the matter has grown into a struggle between Congress and the administration over access to internal documents. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading congressional opponent of the plan, put a hold on nominations of civilian Pentagon officials to protest the administration's unwillingness to surrender Roche's e-mails and other material related to the tanker deal. McCain said yesterday that removal of Roche's nomination would have no effect on other appointments being held up.
"I still believe we need these documents, and I will continue to fight for them as long as I can hold the nominations," he said in a phone interview.
In a brief statement released by the Pentagon, Roche said he requested that his nomination be withdrawn. "Given the range of issues before the Senate in a busy legislative year, I accept that my nomination is unlikely to be considered this year," he said, adding that he intends to continue as secretary of the Air Force.
An official close to Roche said that months ago, Roche had given Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a standing offer to remove his name from consideration. Rumsfeld, the source said, accepted the offer this week.
"At several points in the last few months, Roche went to Rumsfeld and said, 'If you want me to back out, I will,' " the official said. "Rumsfeld was all, 'No, you're the choice. Let's go forward with it.' I think there was just a realization by Rumsfeld at this point in the calendar" that time had run out.
Rumsfeld had asked Roche, a 23-year Navy veteran and former Northrop Grumman Corp. executive, to move to the Army last spring, as part of an attempt to bring in new civilian and military leadership that would modernize and restructure the service.
Rumsfeld had dismissed the previous secretary, Thomas E. White, after months of strained relations. He also had summoned Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker from retirement to take over as Army chief of staff. Schoomaker succeeded Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who like White had clashed with Rumsfeld over the pace and nature of Army modernization.
But Roche's nomination quickly ran into trouble when a congressional commission probing the academy sex scandal concluded that Air Force leaders had not done enough to prevent sexual assaults or respond to reported cases for much of the past decade.
Roche purged the academy's leadership earlier in the year and issued new policies to fortify the school's ability to monitor and respond to sexual misconduct. Nevertheless, the Senate Armed Services Committee made clear it would not act on his nomination until after an investigation by the Air Force's inspector general.
That investigation, due soon, will comment positively on Roche's actions over the past year, according to the official close to him.
The tanker proposal, meanwhile, remains in limbo pending not only resolution of the documents dispute with Congress but also investigations by the Pentagon's inspector general, federal prosecutors and securities regulators into whether the deal was tainted by unethical conduct.
In November, Boeing fired two senior executives -- its chief financial officer, Michael M. Sears, and Darleen A. Druyun, a former Air Force procurement official. The company accused Sears of beginning employment discussions with Druyun while she was still overseeing Boeing contracts at the Air Force. The company's chief executive, Phil Condit, resigned shortly afterward.
Rumsfeld also ordered a review of the condition of the existing tanker fleet and other options for replacing or refurbishing it.
Les Brownlee, the undersecretary of the Army, has been serving as interim secretary, and a senior defense official said yesterday that Bush would likely move to make Brownlee permanent. Brownlee is a former Senate staff member with deep ties to Congress.
In another personnel matter yesterday, the White House said that Bush had picked the FBI's chief financial officer, Tina W. Jonas, to take over as the Pentagon's chief financial officer, succeeding Dov S. Zakheim, who announced his resignation Tuesday. Before joining the FBI in 2002, Jones was deputy undersecretary of defense for financial management. She also worked for the House Appropriations Committee, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
Staff writers Renae Merle and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.
--------
Army Retraining Soldiers to Meet Its Shifting Needs
March 11, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/national/11ARMY.html?pagewanted=all&position=
FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. - Hard-pressed to fill critical jobs in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is retraining thousands of forces essential to the cold war, like tank operators and artillerymen, to be military police officers, civil affairs experts and intelligence analysts, positions the Pentagon needs for long-term stabilizing operations.
The retraining is part of a larger effort that over the next five years will reassign about 100,000 reservists and active-duty soldiers in the Army's biggest restructuring in 50 years. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are also rebalancing their forces for new missions: 50,000 positions across the military will have been reassigned by the end of next year. But the Army has the largest share of the changes and the most ambitious overhaul under way. The aim is to reshape the Army to be faster to the fight, to relieve the stress on a relatively small number of Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers who have been called up repeatedly in recent years and to tap 500,000 reservists from all services who have not been activated in the past decade. According to the Defense Department, since 1990 the brunt of the duty has been borne by only 7 percent of the 876,000 reserves assigned to units that have been involuntarily mobilized more than once.
The Army face-lift reflects Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's broader vision of revamping the military to respond more quickly to an array of threats and to be more deadly.
"What our transformation will do is permit us to deploy more agile, lethal, adaptable forces," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25.
But right now, the Army makeup, in particular, is out of sync with those goals. Mr. Rumsfeld told a House appropriations subcommittee on Feb. 12, "We have too few Guard and Reserve forces with certain skill sets that are in high demand and too many Guard and Reserve with skills that are in little or no demand."
Getting this balance right is critical for the Army's fighting abilities and the long-term health of its recruiting and retention efforts. Army officials said recently that retention rates for active-duty and Reserve soldiers were lagging despite re-enlistment bonuses of at least $5,000.
"If we continue to stress these very high-use units, we risk losing them," said Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for Reserve affairs.
In some cases, the restructuring means converting heavy combat brigades of the Guard into lighter infantry units. In other instances, the changes are more drastic.
In late February, the Army effort to regain its balance was in full swing here at Fort Leonard Wood, a large training base in the Ozarks of south-central Missouri. Tennessee National Guard artillerymen who had been trained to blast 155-millimeter howitzers struggled as military police officers to master the nuances of rape kits, domestic violence cases and traffic stops.
By early 2005, the Army plans to convert 18 National Guard field artillery batteries, with about 2,200 soldiers, into military police units. About 55 percent of the Army's 38,500 military police officers are in the National Guard or Reserve.
For these soldiers and their trainers, who are also reservists, the challenges are enormous. The eight-week course for military police trainees fresh from boot camp has been compressed to four weeks for the Guard soldiers, largely because they are familiar with soldiering.
In a mock village of about 12 brick buildings, the soldiers tackled training situations familiar to any military police officer on the beat. Earlier in the training, the soldiers rehearsed urban warfare tactics and detainee procedures, essential tasks for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Inside a mock dormitory, Sgt. First Class Sean Shea, 36, a military police instructor who is a Nashville police officer in civilian life, gathered five trainees and ran through a list of dos and don'ts for their assignment, a rape investigation.
"You have to be careful how to talk to them," Sergeant Shea said. "You don't ask a victim, `How's it going?' and you don't use the R word with them."
But what were the first words out of the mouth of Specialist Gary Mansfield after he entered the spartan room where a young woman, role-played by Specialist Amanda Broom, sat on the corner of a bed?
"How you doing?" Specialist Mansfield asked, shifting his feet nervously.
It was a forehead-slapping moment for Sergeant Shea, but he patiently regrouped his charges and on the second try, Specialist Mansfield, 23, a four-year Guard veteran from Florence, Ala., and his partner, Sgt. William Martin, 39, of Lexington, Tenn., finished the interview while three other reservists examined fake blood stains outside the room.
Specialist Broom, 25, a military police officer, stepped out of character after the exercise to assess the soldiers' performance. "Don't wring your hands, you look nervous," she told Specialist Mansfield. And to Sergeant Martin: "Make sure she can see you writing things down. That makes her feel important."
Their heads still swimming from the blur of procedures to learn, both soldiers said they were nonetheless looking forward to the change. "It's going to make the Guard more relevant," said Sergeant Martin, who spent eight years in the Marines before switching to the Guard.
Across the street in the mock village, another group of trainees learned the ins and outs of pulling over vehicles and dealing with drunken drivers, assaults and worse. "It's not that it's hard to learn, but it is a totally different thing," said Sgt. William Ray, 47, of Waynesboro, Tenn., who spent 14 years in National Guard artillery units.
Once the soldiers finish their training here, they are bound for duty at bases in the continental United States, Hawaii and Germany, freeing active-duty military police officers there to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Trainers and some students say the change from artillery to law enforcement has been a jolt for many in the Guard. "There's a lot of resentment by some reservists who didn't sign up to be M.P.'s," Staff Sgt. Sherry Sorensen, 25, a military police instructor from Lexington, Ky., said. "But they need to understand this is something the Army has to do."
Complaining aside, the transformation of armor, artillery and engineering troops for the infantry mission can already be seen among soldiers preparing for the stabilization operation in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, ordered his troops to undergo a sweeping reorganization before they were deployed to take responsibility for north-central Iraq from departing forces of the Fourth Infantry Division.
"Transformation is a reality of this mission," General Batiste said in an interview at Camp Udairi in Kuwait, where his troops were preparing for convoys heading north into Iraq. "We have taken engineers and our field artillery batteries and turned them into first-rate infantry battalions. They will patrol territory. They will find and kill the enemy. They will conduct stability operations."
One of those soldiers, Capt. Travis Van Hecke, who normally commands Paladin self-propelled howitzers, will enter Iraq as a member of Task Force 1-6, under the division's Third Brigade - "but without our big guns," he said. "We are now a patrol-type infantry battalion," Captain Van Hecke said. "We have a new focus. We are motorized infantry."
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Kuwait for this article.
--------
Donated Bodies Used in Land Mine Tests
March 11, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/national/11BODY.html
NEW ORLEANS, March 10 - Tulane University has suspended its dealings with a distributor of donated bodies after finding out seven cadavers had been sold to the Army and blown up in Texas to test protective footwear against land mines.
The bodies, which were donated to Tulane's medical school, were given to the National Anatomical Service, a Staten Island company, for distribution because the university had more than it needed. The company sold them to the Army more than a year ago for $25,000 to $30,000, said Chuck Dasey, a spokesman for the Army's Medical Research and Materiel Command in Fort Detrick, Md.
In early 2003, when Tulane found out about the tests, it asked the company to never again allow its cadavers to be used for anything but medical and educational purposes.
This month, the university suspended its contract with the service after published reports about the incident, said Mary Bitner Anderson, co-director of the Tulane School of Medicine's Willed Body Program.
The market in bodies and body parts is under scrutiny after two men, including the head of the Willed Body Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, were charged with trafficking in stolen body parts.
-------- propaganda wars
"War president" Bush more focused on September 11 than Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040311034632.u7z4j2b7.html
One year after the war in Iraq, US President George W. Bush eagerly uses the September 11 attacks for his reelection bid while treating the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein as more of a liability.
The mounting death toll among US troops in Iraq and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for war have turned military victory into political headache ahead of the November 2 vote.
"Iraq, at best, is mixed for the president: He may have captured Saddam Hussein, but US casualties are higher, Iraqi casualties have risen," according to presidential historian Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington.
So while Bush's first major advertisement blitz loudly evokes details from the 2001 terrorist attacks that left 3,000 people dead -- including firefighters carrying a flag-covered stretcher out of smoldering New York rubble, sirens blaring in the background -- it is mute on the campaign in Iraq.
In fact, the commercials mention the 2001 recession, corporate scandals, the popping of the technology-stock bubble, job losses, the need to improve schools and health care, but not one word about the US-led occupation.
Although Bush has refused to budge on the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty, Iraq's political future is clouded in doubt, which makes bold assertions about success there dangerous.
"He's more at the mercy of events there than he's controlling events. Will there really be the transfer of power on June 30, July 1? Will the bombings and the attacks against US soldiers continue?" said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Bush has been badly burned in the past after expressing upbeat certainty about Iraq, most notably when he declared "major combat" over on May 1 in a speech aboard an aircraft carrier.
Insurgents have killed more than 260 US soldiers since that carefully choreographed photo-opportunity, which featured a "Mission Accomplished" banner that may yet turn up in advertisements run by the president's political foes.
Still, Bush can take comfort in the fact that 61 percent of swing voters -- the undecideds who decide US elections -- think the war in Iraq was "the right decision", according to a poll by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.
And 62 percent of them say the invasion helped the overall war on terrorism, according to Pew.
Another question is whether inquiries into the yawning gap between Bush's pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons and the failure to find them will vindicate charges from critics who say the president misled the public on the threat, said Davis.
The US leader inoculated himself against that danger last month, when he grudgingly appointed a panel to investigate Iraq intelligence but set its final report for March 2005, well after the November election.
And in speech after speech, he tackles charges that he overstated the danger, arguing that there was an international consensus even among nations that opposed the war that Saddam was "a threat".
He also attacks his Democratic rival, Senator John Kerry, who voted for a congressional resolution authorizing Bush to make war but now says the president should have done more to secure global backing.
"My opponent admits that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He just didn't support my decision to remove Saddam from power. Perhaps he was hoping Saddam would lose the next Iraqi election," the president jokes.
-------- war crimes
Judge Charged With Bias at War Crimes Trial in Sierra Leone
March 11, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/africa/11SIER.html
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, March 10 - The official opening of the United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal on Wednesday was overshadowed by allegations of bias against the court's president, the British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.
Judges at the court's appeals chamber gave Justice Robertson until Friday to say whether he will step down after defense lawyers accused him of "grave bias" against their clients and demanded his disqualification.
The court was set up to try those bearing the greatest responsibility for crimes committed during the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone, a former British colony. It was one of the most brutal wars in modern African history.
Some 50,000 people were killed and thousands more maimed in the conflict, declared over in 2002 after the deployment of a huge United Nations peacekeeping force, which numbered 17,500 troops at its peak.
Lawyers for those indicted from the rebel Revolutionary United Front, which became notorious for hacking off civilians' limbs, said Justice Robertson had accused the rebels of committing brutal crimes in a book he wrote before being appointed to the court.
"It is submitted that the president" of the court "has expressed the clearest bias" and thereby "displayed lack of impartiality to the accused," the lawyers' motion said.
In his speech at Wednesday's opening ceremony, Justice Robertson said international criminal justice was still at a "very early stage," but the Sierra Leone court would contribute to ending the impunity "perpetrators of atrocities" have often enjoyed.
"The success of a court is not measured by its rate of convictions" but by whether it can be said "to have dealt fairly with every accused," he said.
He made no mention of the motion against him. A court official said Justice Robertson was not free to speak publicly about the bias allegations because the matter was under judicial review.
Justice Robertson, a leading British human rights lawyer, was not present at the appeals chamber hearing on Tuesday, which set the Friday morning deadline. "He would consider the matter shortly," a court statement said.
"If Justice Robertson does not withdraw by 9 a.m. on Friday, the other justices of the appeals chamber will proceed to a determination of the motion," the statement added.
The court has indicted 13 people, but only 9 are in custody. One man who was indicted, the rebel leader Foday Sankoh, died in a hospital last year. Two others were reported killed while they were at large.
Another person indicted, the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, is living in exile in Nigeria.
Mr. Taylor is considered to have been the main backer of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, Liberia's eastern neighbor, supposedly in exchange for diamonds.
Faced by rebellion in his own country, he fled last year to Nigeria, which has refused to hand him over to the tribunal despite an Interpol warrant for his arrest.
At the tribunal's opening on Wednesday, about 50 demonstrators protested peacefully outside the court against the indictment of Sam Hinga Norman, the leader of the pro-government Civil Defense Forces, which helped to defeat the Revolutionary United Front.
No date has been set for the trials. Justice Robertson said in his speech that he hoped they would begin "within a few months."
--------
War crimes court opens in Freetown
Rory Carroll
Thursday March 11, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1166675,00.html
The UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone opened its new courthouse yesterday, but was left guessing about whether its president will step down because of alleged bias against some defendants.
UN and government officials joined Geoffrey Robertson QC at the ceremony in the capital, Freetown, but he gave no public indication about the ultimatum he has been given to resign by tomorrow morning or stay and fight an attempt to disqualify him.
Defence lawyers have demanded that he withdraw because of a book he wrote which depicted the Revolutionary United Front, Sierra Leone's rebel movement, as a bloodthirsty criminal enterprise which committed crimes against humanity during a decade-long civil war.
The court's prosecutors effectively backed the application by saying that there was "an appearance of bias". On Tuesday, Mr Robertson's three fellow appeal judges ordered him to respond to the application by tomorrow.
Although the court complex is half-finished and trials are not expected to start until May, yesterday's ceremony was supposed to symbolise the speed and efficiency of the Freetown court, a hybrid of UN and Sierra Leonean justice, in contrast to war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the Balkans.
Instead, the book which Mr Robertson wrote before being appointed president of the court, Crimes Against Humanity - The Struggle for Global Justice, threw the opening into turmoil.
If the British barrister fails to turn up at this morning's plenary session of the court to discuss rules of procedure, that will be interpreted as a sign that he will quit.
The court, established in 2002 to try those most responsible for the conflict which claimed close to 200,000 lives, has indicted 11 people, including rebel leaders.
Human rights groups accused the rebels of murdering and mutilating countless civilians, but defence lawyers said it was wrong for a judge to have said the same things.
Counsel for Issa Hessan Sesay, the RUF leader, argued that although their client was not named in the book, his guilt had been prejudged.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
$5 Million Settlement Ends Case of Tainted Texas Sting
March 11, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/national/11TULI.html
Five years after 46 people, almost all of them black, were arrested on fabricated drug charges in Tulia, Tex., their ordeal will draw to a close today with the announcement of a $5 million settlement in their civil suit and the disbandment of a federally financed 26-county narcotics task force responsible for the arrests.
The case attracted national attention because the number of people charged literally decimated the small town's black population. It also gained notice because the arrests were entirely based on the work of an undercover narcotics agent who has been accused of racism and perjury. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas pardoned the Tulia defendants in August, after a court hearing last March exonerated them.
"This is undoubtedly that last major chapter in the Tulia story, and this will conclude the efforts of people in Tulia to get some compensation and justice," said Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who represented the people arrested five years ago in the civil suit. "With the abolition of the task force, it completely closes the circle on what was done."
Mr. Blackburn added that the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force failed adequately to supervise the agent, Tom Coleman, in its eagerness to win battles in the war on drugs.
Tulia is a poor town of 5,000 people between Amarillo and Lubbock. The $5 million will be divided among 45 former defendants based on a formula that will take account of whether they served time in prison and how long. One defendant has since died.
The settlement will be paid by the City of Amarillo, which had a leading role in running the task force. Marcus W. Norris, the city attorney, said many drug task forces in Texas were poorly organized and governed. That led, he said, to poor supervision of Mr. Coleman in Tulia, a lack of accountability and catastrophic misjudgments.
"There's a lesson here," Mr. Norris said, "that cities should be very careful about these alliances."
Mr. Coleman, who was named Texas Lawman of the Year in 1999 for his work in Tulia, will go on trial on perjury charges in May. He has pleaded not guilty. Jon Mark Hogg, a lawyer for Mr. Coleman, declined to comment on the civil settlement.
At a hearing last year in Tulia, Mr. Coleman testified that although most of the drug transactions he swore to were in public places and that he did not wear a recording device, arrange for video surveillance, ask anyone to observe the deals or fingerprint the plastic bags containing the drugs.
Instead, he said, he jotted down information on his leg. No drugs, weapons or large sums of cash were found in the mass arrest in 1999.
Mr. Coleman conceded that he frequently used a racial epithet, but he denied that he was a racist.
Judge Ron Chapman, who presided over the hearing, found that Mr. Coleman had committed "blatant perjury."
Judge Chapman wrote that Mr. Coleman was "the most devious, nonresponsive law enforcement witness this court has witnessed in 25 years on the bench in Texas."
Tonya White was among those arrested in 1999. She was able to refute Mr. Coleman's charge that she sold cocaine to him by producing bank records showing she was 300 miles away, in Oklahoma City, at the time. She said the most important aspect of the settlement was disbanding the task force.
"I'm glad they can't do this to anyone else," she said.
Swisher County, of which Tulia is the seat, was also a member of the task force but continues to deny any liability in the case.
"We have stated for the last five years that we don't think there was any wrongdoing in this case," said Judge Harold Keeter of Swisher County. But he suggested that the county might be prepared to make a contribution to the settlement.
Mr. Coleman was supervised by two task force officials who were also members of the Amarillo Police Department, Lt. Michael Amos and Sgt. Jerry Massengill. As part of the settlement, Mr. Norris said, they will take early retirement.
"They were good officers," Mr. Norris said. "They exercised poor judgment in this case."
Lieutenant Amos declined to comment on that assertion. He said he had been planning to retire this year, anyway. Sergeant Massengill said he had no comment.
Mr. Norris noted that Mr. Coleman was not employed by the Amarillo Police Department and did not meet its standards.
Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represents the plaintiffs along with the Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson, said it was a mistake to focus only on Mr. Coleman's actions.
"The task force is ultimately culpable for what happened in Tulia," Ms. Gupta said. "They hired, supervised and sponsored Tom Coleman's activity in the 18 months he was operating there."
"It's not that Tom Coleman was simply a rogue officer," Ms. Gupta added. "The problem is that federally funded narcotics task forces operate nationwide as rogue task forces because they are utterly unaccountable to any oversight mechanism."
Mr. Blackburn said the settlement had the potential to draw attention to the work of similar task forces.
"I am really hopeful that this will send a shock wave to Austin," Mr. Blackburn said, "and that it will result in a complete systematic overhaul of narcotics enforcement in Texas."
-------- homeland security
Financial Agencies Criticize U.S. for Detaining Spanish IMF Worker at Dulles
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48193-2004Mar10.html
A Spanish economist working for the International Monetary Fund was handcuffed as he got off a flight at Dulles International Airport last weekend and questioned for three hours, an incident that prompted startled complaints from international financial institutions in Washington.
Alex Segura, 33, who lives in Springfield, said he was detained Saturday by U.S. Homeland Security officials as he returned from a work trip to Senegal. He said the officials questioned him about his travels and passport and searched his luggage before freeing him with no explanation.
A Homeland Security spokeswoman said Segura's name and birth date matched those of a "dangerous individual" listed in federal security databases.
"It was unfortunate. But his name came up as a match when we do our advanced passenger information. Obviously Mr. Segura is not a terrorist," said the spokeswoman, Christiana Halsey, who works for the Customs and Border Protection agency within Homeland Security.
She added that "with the new focus on terrorism . . . these mistakes are going to happen."
Since the incident, e-mails have ricocheted through international financial institutions in Washington, with employees expressing outrage and concern that they, too, could be detained. The agencies employ thousands of people from around the globe, who routinely travel abroad for work.
A spokesman for the IMF, William Murray, said the agency had complained to the U.S. executive director's office at the fund, which represents the U.S. government.
"The management of the IMF is extremely concerned about the development and asked the U.S. executive director's office to raise this with the appropriate authorities," Murray said.
The World Bank also contacted U.S. authorities to see "what can be done to avoid this sort of incident happening in the future," the bank said in a memo to its staff.
Segura said Homeland Security officials boarded his Air France plane shortly after it arrived from Paris and made a beeline for him. He said he showed them his Spanish passport, which carried the G-4 visa given to employees of international organizations, and also handed over his United Nations identification. The officials asked him to leave the plane and promptly handcuffed him, Segura said.
The officers then drove Segura to the main terminal, took off the handcuffs and questioned him. They refused to let him call his wife, who was waiting in the terminal, but eventually sent an officer to contact her, according to Segura and the Customs spokeswoman.
"What's really annoying, when you come to the U.S. . . . you feel like they can do anything to you," Segura said. He added, however, that the officers were polite.
Segura said his previous trip abroad, a visit to Peru in December, occurred without incident.
Halsey, the spokeswoman, said agents have to follow security procedures when they believe a dangerous person is arriving. She said she could not provide details about the person named Segura who was on the government's lookout list.
Segura said he told the U.S. officials that his previous passport had disappeared about five years ago, when he submitted it to the U.S. Embassy in Madrid for a visa. It was not clear whether the person on the lookout list might be using that document.
--------
Terror and Transatlantic Politics
By Jim Hoagland jimhoagland@washpost.com
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A27
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48124-2004Mar10.html
The American and British governments are planning a joint training exercise to respond to a major, coordinated terrorist attack on both countries. "This will not be a desk-top exercise," says Britain's home secretary, David Blunkett, "but an actual test of our readiness to deal with a joint attack."
The tough, plain-spoken Labor Party politician who directs Britain's police and counter-terrorist forces is routinely explaining why he is in Washington this week. But what he says next -- when I ask about the timetable for this major undertaking -- is revealing and unsettling.
The joint exercise, which will build on mock attacks staged in Britain last autumn, is unlikely to occur before the U.S. presidential election in November. But it also needs to take place before next spring, the home secretary adds, since that is when a window opens for Britain's next general election.
At one level, Blunkett is merely reminding me of something no practical politician ever forgets: The political calendar in an election year will determine the timing and shape of other events that can be planned, managed or moved.
But Blunkett's explanation also offers a glimpse of one of the most difficult tasks politicians face in this particular campaign season. They will constantly have to balance fear and reassurance on a campaign trail that stretches into a troubling new era.
Voters in the United States will elect a president for the first time in the continuing psychological shadow of Sept. 11. Candidates must sound neither alarmist nor complacent about the terrorist threat.
Trying to stage a national civil defense exercise in the run-up to an election "would be very difficult," given the current corrosive political moods in both countries, Blunkett says. The incumbents would risk being accused of playing politics with national security.
"Politics and the people who comment on politics are now much more cynical than they used to be," he adds. "They would use your grandmother's birthday against you if they could."
But that seems to me to be only part of the answer. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and both sides of the aisle in each country, need to decipher and respond to the innate awareness of electorates that they live under new threats that are difficult to quantify, to respond to and at times even to imagine.
It is perhaps simpler to reduce discussions of the politics of Sept. 11 to a tactical level. Thus, George W. Bush and John Kerry argue over Bush's initial campaign ads, which visually exploit that epoch-altering day of horror. Kerry's campaign in turn sought to make hay from the exploitation.
The campaign debate must quickly rise above that level and address how an open society can protect itself "even when so many comforts seem unaffected, and the threat so far off, if not illusory," in the words of Blunkett's boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The phrase comes from a remarkable speech Blair gave March 5 in his home district of Sedgefield. Not surprisingly, Blair, who is under unrelenting attack for allegedly lying about or distorting the reasons for going to war in Iraq, sounded defensive in the talk.
But he also probed the uncertainty that pervades the beginning of a new century. For Blair, Sept. 11 "altered crucially the balance of risk" in the world. It "was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit" at a time when weapons of mass destruction would give them the potential to do just that.
This horrifying new reality is difficult for societies to absorb. Blair went on to argue that the psychological dislocation "is partly why the conspiracy theories or claims of deceit have such purchase" in the United States and Britain, and elsewhere for that matter. "How much simpler to debate those than to analyze and resolve the conundrum of our world's present state."
The speech should be required reading, and emulation, for candidates for national office here this year. This is no time to substitute arguments over campaign ads or political tactics for the needed discussion of America's role in a rapidly changing and more threatening world. Blair's speech points the way to such a discussion.
One way to bring that about might well be to do the opposite of what Bush and Blair seem to have decided. Organizing a joint security exercise before November would focus Americans on the stakes involved in an election that does truly count.
The Russian presidential election law, which is not part of the constitution as I stated in my March 7 column, sets terms under which elections and candidacies can be nullified. Moreover, those terms are more complex than I indicated. Apologies and thanks to alert reader Robert Otto.
-------- police
Police Coverup Alleged After Mass Arrests
Ramsey, Others Evaded Blame, D.C. Council Report Says
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48021-2004Mar10?language=printer
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and other police officials conspired to deflect blame and cover up evidence of their wrongdoing during the mass arrests of anti-globalization demonstrators in September 2002, according to a D.C. Council committee that investigated the incident.
The Judiciary Committee criticized police for not telling protesters to disperse during the demonstrations and then arresting them for failing to obey the nonexistent order. Hundreds of protesters and bystanders were arrested. In the months afterward, Ramsey changed his account of whether he had approved the arrests, according to a copy of the committee report obtained yesterday.
The investigation found fault with the police department's handling of demonstrations dating back to 2000. The report challenges the force's use of undercover officers to infiltrate protest groups, saying some continued surveillance after organizations were found to be generally law-abiding.
"The mayor of the District needs to turn the police department around," said Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who led the investigation. "Turn the police department away from spying on our residents and away from arresting people because of their political views."
Ramsey reacted angrily yesterday when told of the report's conclusions.
"That's bullshit," he said. "If they're challenging my integrity, that's just total BS."
The report echoes some of the findings of an internal police investigation into the mass arrests that concluded that the apprehensions were wrong. But the new report's tone is sharper, particularly about police officials.
"I'm not denying that there were some mistakes made at Pershing Park," Ramsey said. "But to . . . take it to another level, to make it some kind of massive coverup" is wrong, he said.
Ramsey contended that Patterson, chairman of the council's Judiciary Committee, had her mind made up before the investigation was launched more than a year ago. Patterson has been a frequent critic, raising questions not only about the protests but also about the quality of homicide investigations and the use of overtime.
At a council hearing in December, Patterson questioned the practice of sending undercover officers to meetings held by groups planning protests. Activists and civil libertarians also complained at the hearing about the activities of the undercover officers, which Ramsey defended.
Ramsey said yesterday that "spying" was too strong a word to describe the undercover work. He said officers attended open meetings and did nothing illegal. Police want to monitor groups that could commit criminal acts, he said, adding, "It's not politics that we're concerned about."
Mass arrests took place at Pershing Park on Sept. 27, 2002, the first day of a weekend of protests aimed at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In the days before, police had warned that there might be tens of thousands of demonstrators downtown and that many might follow through on threats to "shut down the city."
There were a few sporadic acts of vandalism that morning, and some protesters blocked roads. Police used the park, at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, as a place to contain and arrest lawbreakers. Most of nearly 400 people in the park -- a group that included not only demonstrators but also tourists, other bystanders and journalists -- were arrested.
The council report says that just after the arrests, police said the protesters had failed to obey an order to disperse. But many of the cases fell apart when it was found that no such order had been given.
As the controversy grew, Ramsey and other police officials tried to keep the chief from being held responsible for the arrests, according to the council report, which is to be released today. The report says a move was made to put the blame on a subordinate, Assistant Chief Peter Newsham.
The report cites testimony from Ramsey in February 2003 in which he told the council that he was not involved in the decision to arrest the demonstrators. It quotes him as saying, "When I came up on the scene, actually, that was already practically in progress."
But in December, the report says, Ramsey told a council attorney that "I told [Newsham] that I thought that the arrests were okay."
In an interview yesterday, Patterson said she believes that the December exchange showed that Newsham was supposed to "take the fall."
"In February [Ramsey] didn't participate. In December, he approved the arrests," Patterson said yesterday. "One of these statements is untrue."
Ramsey said yesterday that he had never been untruthful about his role in the arrests. He said that at Pershing Park, he heard Newsham's rationale for arresting the protesters and then gave "tacit approval."
"I was under the impression that there had been warnings given" to the crowd, Ramsey said.
The committee report also takes issue with a raid on the headquarters of anti-globalization organizers during protests in April 2000. The report says police were unable to obtain a search warrant for the building, so they persuaded fire officials to clear out the place as a fire hazard, with police officers going in behind them.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Freed Guantanamo prisoner denounces camp
Fri 12 March, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=474371§ion=news
LONDON - A Briton flown home from U.S captivity in Guantanamo Bay says conditions were so inhuman that animals in the prison camp were given better treatment than the detainees, the Daily Mirror newspaper reports.
Jamal al Harith, 35, was the first of five men to go free on Tuesday shortly after the group landed at RAF Northolt air base in west London having been handed over to British custody by the United States. The others were released on Wednesday.
"They actually said that -- 'You have no rights here'," Harith, from Manchester, told the Daily Mirror. "After a while, we stopped asking for human rights -- we wanted animal rights.
"In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on.
"I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, "That dog is a member of the U.S army'."
Held in captivity for two years, Harith also said he was assaulted with fists, feet, knees and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
"One of them attacked me really hard and left me with a deep red mark from my backbone down to my knee," he told the Daily Mirror. "I thought I was bleeding, but it was just really bad bruising.
"The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not nearly as bad as the psychological torture -- bruises heal after a week -- but the other stuff stays with you."
A further four Britons remain at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Washington says they are more dangerous than the five it decided to send home, who have all been released without charge.
--------
Britain Frees 5 Citizens Sent Home From U.S. Jail
March 11, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/europe/11GITM.html
LONDON, March 11 - The police have freed all five Britons flown home from the jail at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, raising questions about why they were held for two years, and on Thursday a lawyer for one of the men denounced their captors.
The men were turned over to British custody on Tuesday, and by late Wednesday, the British police and prosecutors had released all of them without charge.
This could cause trouble for Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the public asking why it took so long for him to win the men's freedom if the British authorities concluded so quickly that they need not face trial.
One man was released Tuesday and the other four on Wednesday. Four other Britons remain at the prison in Cuba; Washington says they are more dangerous than the five men sent home. More than 600 men, most seized in Afghanistan in late 2001, are still in prison.
Greg Powell, a lawyer for one of the freed men, Ruhal Ahmed, 21, from Tipton, said Thursday that Mr. Ahmed was on his way to meet his family. Mr. Powell said he had met his client in a London jail and found him in good health, but said the treatment by the Americans had amounted to "torture."
"What I have learned from him is, Guantánamo Bay is a kind of experiment in interrogation techniques and methods," he said. "And they do have extremely interesting stories to tell about what went on there."
He declined to give further details about the prisoners' treatment, or to explain what his client was doing in Afghanistan when he was arrested. None of the five men appeared in public immediately.
Jamal al-Harith, 35, from Manchester, was the first to go free, shortly after the group landed Tuesday at a British air base.
Britain's most famous publicist, Max Clifford, whose client list ranges from top nobility to O. J. Simpson, said he had been hired by the family of Tarek Dergoul, 24, another former detainee.
Mr. Dergoul, a Londoner, was freed Wednesday, followed by the three Tipton detainees: Mr. Ahmed; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Shafiq Rasul, 24. Their families said they had traveled to Pakistan in late 2001 to find a wife for one of them.
A fourth young man from Tipton, Monir Ali, had traveled with them to Pakistan and disappeared. His family hopes the others will provide clues to his whereabouts.
While Mr. Blair's supporters see the prisoners' return as a reward for his support of President Bush, the Guantánamo issue could be a major political headache, and the prospects for the four Britons still in Guantánamo is high on the political agenda.
Britain says Washington's plans for special military tribunals to try the suspects do not meet fairness standards. It wants either the rules to be modified or the suspects sent back to Britain for trial. Procedures at Guantánamo, where captives are not given lawyers, make it difficult to try the men in Britain because courts here do not accept evidence gathered in the absence of a lawyer.
-------- terrorism
At Least 190 Dead in Madrid Terror Blast
March 11, 2004
By MAR ROMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPAIN_EXPLOSION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
These eyewitnesses say the deaths and injuries are awful. (Audio) http://customwire.ap.org/audio/20040311104353-229.ra MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Ten terrorist bombs tore through trains and stations along a commuter line at the height of Madrid's morning rush hour Thursday, killing more than 190 people and wounding 1,200 others before this weekend's general elections.
The Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi said later Thursday it had received a claim of responsibility issued in the name of al-Qaida.
The government initially blamed Basque separatists for the worst terrorist strike in Spanish history. But the interior minister said other lines of investigation were opened after police found a van Thursday with detonators and an audiotape of Quranic verses near where the bombed trains originated.
"This is mass murder," said a somber Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar following an emergency cabinet meeting, vowing to hunt down the attackers.
The bombers used titadine, a kind of compressed dynamite also found in a bomb-laden van intercepted last month as it headed for Madrid, a source at Aznar's office said on condition of anonymity. Officials blamed the ETA separatist group at that time.
Police found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape with Quranic verses in the town of Alcala de Henares, 15 miles east of Madrid, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Thursday night.
Police found seven detonators and the tape on the front seat of the van, Acebes told a news conference.
He added that ETA remained the "main line of investigation" in the blasts, Europe's worst terror attack since the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270.
Three of the four trains bombed Thursday originated in Alcala de Henares and one passed through it, the state rail company said.
Panicked commuters abandoned bags and their shoes as they trampled each other to escape the Atocha terminal, where bombs struck two trains. Some fled into darkened, dangerous tunnels at the station, a bustling hub for subway, commuter and long-distance trains just south of Madrid's famed Prado Museum.
The bodies of the dead, some with their cell phones ringing unanswered as frantic relatives tried to contact them, were carried away by rescue workers. The wounded, faces bloodied, sat on curbs as buses were pressed into service as ambulances.
One firefighter said he saw 70 bodies along a platform at El Pozo station, just east of downtown Madrid. One corpse had been blown onto the roof.
Forty coroners worked to identify remains, the national news agency Efe said, and a steady stream of taxis carried relatives to a sprawling convention center where the bodies were taken.
A total of 10 bombs, nearly all in backpacks, exploded in a 15-minute span along nine miles of the commuter line - running from Santa Eugenia to the Madrid hub of Atocha - killing 192 people and injuring more than 1,240, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
Police found and detonated three other bombs.
The blasts began about 7:40 a.m., tearing through trains or platforms on the commuter line running to the Atocha station. At least two of the bombs went off in trains at that station.
ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its decades-old campaign to carve an independent Basque homeland from territory straddling northern Spain and southwest France. However, its attacks have been on a lesser scale than Thursday's bombings, with the largest toll being 21 killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987.
Spanish officials had said ETA was against the ropes after the arrest last year of more than 150 members or collaborators in Spain and France, including the leaders of ETA's commando network. Last year, ETA killed three people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.
Spain held peace talks with ETA in the late 1980s and again in 1998 after the group declared a cease-fire that lasted 14 months. But ETA resumed attacks, and Aznar has insisted on crushing it with police measures.
"No negotiation is possible or desirable with these assassins who so many times have sown death all around Spain," Aznar said Thursday.
Acebes said ETA tried a similar attack on Christmas Eve, placing bombs on two trains bound for a Madrid station that was not hit Thursday. He also noted the Feb. 29 police interception of a Madrid-bound van packed with more than 1,100 pounds of explosives. Authorities blamed ETA.
"Therefore, it is absolutely clear and evident that the terrorist organization ETA was looking to commit a major attack," Acebes said. "The only thing that varies is the train station that was targeted."
A top Basque politician, Arnold Otegi, denied the separatists were behind the blasts and blamed "Arab resistance," noting that Spain's government backed the Iraq war despite domestic opposition. Many al-Qaida-linked terrorists also were captured in Spain or were believed to have operated from there.
Otegi told Radio Popular in San Sebastian that ETA always phones in warnings before attacking. Acebes said there was no warning Thursday.
President Bush called Aznar to express solidarity and sympathy, condemning "this vicious attack of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"The United States stands resolutely with Spain in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and against the particular threat that Spain faces from the evil of ETA terrorism," added Secretary of State Colin Powell.
More than eight in 10 Spaniards said in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken last month that they are worried about the threat of terrorism in their country. That was the highest level of concern about terrorism in five European countries polled - Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Rescue workers were overwhelmed, said Enrique Sanchez, an ambulance driver who went to Santa Eugenia station, about six miles southeast of the Atocha station.
"There was one carriage totally blown apart. People were scattered all over the platforms. I saw legs and arms. I won't forget this ever. I've seen horror," Sanchez said.
Shards of twisted metal were scattered by rails in the Atocha station at the spot where an explosion severed a train in two.
"I saw many things explode in the air ... it was horrible," said Juani Fernandez, 50, a civil servant who was on the platform waiting to go to work.
"People started to scream and run, some bumping into each other and as we ran there was another explosion. I saw people with blood pouring from them, people on the ground."
The attack horrified Spain on the eve of Sunday's general election. Campaigning was called off and three days of mourning were declared. Newspapers ran special editions.
The campaign was largely dominated by separatist tensions in regions like the Basque country, with both the ruling conservative Popular Party and the opposition Socialists ruling out talks with ETA. The Socialists had come under withering criticism because a politician linked to them in the Catalonia region admitted meeting with ETA members in France in January.
The government convened anti-ETA rallies nationwide for Friday evening and announced three days of mourning.
"What a horror," said the Basque regional president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, who insisted ETA does not represent the Basque people. "When ETA attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces."
--------
Spain Struggles to Absorb Worst Terrorist Attack in Its History
March 11, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/europe/11CND-TRAI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MADRID, March 11 - In the bloodiest terrorist attack on a European target, 10 bombs exploded during this morning's rush hour in three commuter train stations here. The Interior Ministry said more than 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 wounded.
Three other bombs were discovered and detonated by the police in the highly coordinated explosions, which went off within a 10-minute period.
As the country struggled to absorb the carnage just three days before general elections, Prime Minister José María Aznar appeared on television and called the attacks "mass murder." He vowed that Spain would never negotiate with "these assassins."
Mr. Aznar added, "March 11 now has it place in the history of infamy."
Already some Spaniards are calling the attacks the country's "9/11," and the front page of a special edition of the biggest daily, El Pais, this afternoon ran the headline, "11-M."
There was no advance warning of the attacks. At first, the Spanish authorities blamed E.T.A., the Basque group that has been seeking independence from Spain for more than three decades.
Later today, however, the Interior Ministry said the police had found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape of Koranic verses, according to news agencies, and that it was considering all lines of investigation.
An Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, said it had received a claim of responsibility for theid train bombings issued in the name of Al Qaeda.
The five-page e-mail claim, signed by the shadowy Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, was received at the paper's London offices. It said the brigade's "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain."
"This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam," the claim said.
After the purported claim of responsibility emerged, however, an American counterterrorism official said that the claim should be viewed with skepticism. Without being specific, the American counterterrorism official said that "the evidence at this point" doesn't point in the direction of Al Qaeda involvement.
The official said the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade had a record of making false claims of responsibility and said the significance of the reported discovery by Spanish investigators of a van with Koranic verses was unclear.
"There is an Al Qaeda presence in Spain; there is an Al Qaeda presence in this country." the official said.
"Al Qaeda doesn't normally claim responsibility for attacks. We're not ruling anything out, but I would caution against jumping to the conclusion that this was Al Qaeda. When there are attacks sometimes people come out of the woodwork to claim responsibility for propaganda reasons."
The attacks in Spain "do represent an attack on a larger scale, but it certainly was within E.T.A.'s capability to pull that off," the official said.
The government declared a three-day period of mourning, and political parties participating in the elections called off all remaining campaign events, although elections will proceed as scheduled.
"All of Spain is suffering," said Mariano Rajoy, the front-runner and leader of the governing Popular Party, who has made the war on terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign and pledged to follow Mr. Aznar's policies. "This is a moment to put aside differences and show unity with the victims and their families."
Most of the victims were ordinary middle- and working-class people and university students commuting into Madrid, although children were also among the dead.
At the main Atocha commuter station in the heart of Madrid, just a block from the Prado Museum, an explosion cut a train in two, sending pieces of metal high into the air. Bloody victims crawled from mangled train cars and staggered into the streets. Other victims were found burned to death in their seats.
There, as at the nearby Santa Eugenia and El Pozo stations, broken bodies and body parts were thrown along the platforms; in the aftermath, rescue workers unused to massive terrorist attacks struggled to separate the dead from the wounded.
Amet Oulabid, a 23-year-old carpenter, said he got off the front of the train at the Atocha station just seconds before the bomb went off in one of its rear cars.
"I saw bodies flying," he said. "There was a security guard dripping with blood. People were pushing and running. I saw a woman who had fallen on the tracks because people were pushing so hard. I escaped with my life by a hair."
At El Pozo, just east of downtown Madrid, Luz Elena Bustos, 42, got off a nearby bus just 10 minutes before the explosion at that station.
"There were pieces of flesh and ribs all over the road," she said. "There were ribs, brains all over. I never saw anything like this. The train was blown apart. I saw a lot of smoke, people running all over, crying. I saw part of a hand up to the elbow and a body without a head face down on the ground. Flesh all over. I started to cry from nerves. There was a 3-year-old boy all burnt and a father was holding him in his arms, crying."
People combed the city's major hospitals in search of family members believed to be aboard the trains.
"Ay, please, God, this can't be happening," said Carmen Gómez, 47, sobbing as she studied a patient list - in vain - at Gregorio Marañón hospital, seven hours after the terrorist attack. She said her friend's 25-year-old daughter was aboard a train bound for Atocha station, but after traveling to four major hospitals, they had not yet located her. "How could a human being do this, how could a human being do this?" she asked.
The bombs, which were contained in plastic bags and backpacks, began exploding at about 7:50 a.m. The police quickly sealed off the bomb sites and blocked off surrounding streets; police helicopters flew over Madrid throughout the day, amid predictions that there could be other attacks.
The police had been put on a terror alert for a possible terrorist attack as the country prepares to go to the polls.
But the attacks clearly took Mr. Aznar, his government and the Spanish people by surprise. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Aznar, who survived an E.T.A. attack years ago, boasted that terrorism "is a lot weaker than it was."
The security situation seemed so stable that King Juan Carlos attended the soccer match between Spain's star-studded Real Madrid team and Munich on Wednesday evening.
Today, the king, accompanied by his wife, Queen Sofía, their son and heir, Prince Felipe, and his fiancée, Letizia Ortiz, visited a hospital in central Madrid to comfort survivors and their families.
The attacks on Madrid's busiest commuter train stations at the height of rush hour was clearly designed to inflict maximum civilian casualties, attract the world's attention and illustrate that Spain is not safe.
Despite overwhelming popular opposition, Spain was one of the most fervent supporters of the American-led war in Iraq and there are 1,300 Spanish troops on Iraqi soil. Last October, two audiotapes reportedly made by Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, said that his group had the "right to respond at any suitable time and place" against countries with forces in Iraq, listing Spain as one of his targets.
If the Basque group is responsible for today's bombings, it would be its deadliest attack; it killed 21 people in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987. But E.T.A. has been severely damaged by cooperation between Spain and France, and last year, E.T.A. killed 3 people, compared with 23 in 2000 and 15 in 2001.
E.T.A. almost always gives warnings in advance and claims responsibility, and has never conducted an attack of this magnitude. But according to one Spanish government official, the bombers used a kind of dynamite also found in the bomb-laden van intercepted last month.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Batasuna, E.T.A.'s political wing, which has been banned in Spain, said E.T.A. probably was not behind the attacks, saying that the attack could have been the work of "Arab resistance."
Douglas Jehl contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
-------- whistleblowers
Report Is Bleak for Whistle-Blowers
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47997-2004Mar10.html
A watchdog group issued a report card yesterday that gave failing grades to several federal agencies for allegedly allowing repeated verbal abuse, retaliation and harassment of employees by superiors who were the targets of discrimination complaints.
The No Fear Institute, a Washington-based organization that was formed to monitor treatment of workers after President Bush signed the No Fear Act of 2002, said the law has had little effect on the federal workplace because the administration has not enforced it.
"Tens of thousands of people are discriminated against on the basis of race, sex and because they are whistle-blowers," said Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, who chairs the institute. She said agencies are too slow to process complaints, investigate them and discipline managers who discriminate.
"We demand that agencies punish and fire managers who break the law," she said.
The institute based its report on data the agencies posted on their Web sites. But an Office of Personnel Management lawyer said the law did not go into effect until last October and does not require agencies to supply data until April 2005. The OPM is charged with collecting data from agencies to help enforce the law, formally titled the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002.
"It did not create any new employee rights or protections," said Mark A. Robbins, OPM general counsel. "All the No Fear Act did was force the agency to reimburse their budgets for judgments based on discrimination and whistle-blower complaints."
Under other regulations, federal agencies are required to file information about how complaints are processed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but they often do not.
"I share their frustrations," Robbins said of employees. "Clearly, there's a problem that Congress is trying to fix. Some of these agencies aren't complying the way they should. Congress tried to hit the agencies where it hurts, in their budgets. Only time will tell whether the law helps. I'm confident that it will work."
Members of the No Fear Institute are not as confident. The group graded six agencies in its report card, saying that they were the worst offenders.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Health and Human Services received failing grades for the way they handle complaints regarding equal employment opportunity.
The departments of Justice and Labor received incomplete grades because they did not produce enough data for a score, Coleman-Adebayo said.
In 2000, it cost $1 million to settle judgments at Commerce alone, according to the institute. "These actions are costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars," Coleman-Adebayo said.
Robbins said that after next year, Commerce will have to pay for such judgments. The law needs time to work, he said.
"We have no idea of knowing . . . whether the No Fear Act is working or not," Robbins said.
Workers at the institute's news conference said their lives and livelihoods are at stake. Karen Leperi, an assistant in the USDA's animal and plant health inspection services section, described her workplace as "a living hell."
Leperi said a manager who used an epithet when saying he would not sleep with her "if I were the last woman on earth" was not disciplined when she filed a complaint. She filed a lawsuit against the USDA, which is pending.
Matthew Fogg, a Justice Department employee and a member of Blacks in Government, said Commerce employees were outraged when a white deputy division chief repeatedly referred to an African American employee as "Buckwheat."
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), a member of the institute's board, said she will work with other members of Congress to hold hearings so that workers can voice their complaints.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Energy Department Rolls Out Revised Hydrogen Plan
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
March 11, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-11-09.asp#anchor1
The U.S. Department of Energy has released its new plan to shift the nation toward a hydrogen based transportation system. The plan, unveiled Wednesday by Bush administration officials, lays out milestones for technology development over the next decade, with the goal of a commercialization decision by industry in 2015.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the plan includes timelines that provide clear and scientific measures to track and demonstrate progress. "If we achieve our technical objectives, the automotive and energy industries will be in a position to begin to mass market availability of both vehicles and refueling infrastructure by 2020," he said.
Abraham said the plan integrates research, development and demonstration activities from the Energy Department's renewable, nuclear, fossil and science offices.
An integrated hydrogen program will improve the effectiveness and accountability of the department's research activities, he said, and increase the probability of success in achieving technical milestones on the road to a hydrogen economy.
Abraham touted the administration's fiscal year 2005 budget request for $227 million for research to support the hydrogen fuel initiative and its support for FreedomCAR, which provides $90 million annually for research into hybrid components and other advanced vehicle technology.
The new plan follows a report issued last month by a National Research Council committee, which questioned the timetable laid out by the administration.
The panel praised the intent of the federal hydrogen plan, but said the "extreme challenges set by senior government and Energy Department leaders" have created a "somewhat unfocused" program with unclear priorities.
The initiative has been promoted by the White House as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependence on foreign oil. A key goal is to make it practical and cost effective for U.S. consumers to use clean, hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles by 2020.
That is unlikely, the committee said, given the wide array of technical, economic and infrastructure challenges.
Hydrogen has long been peddled as the next great energy revolution. It can be produced by splitting water into its two component atoms - hydrogen and oxygen. When used for power in a fuel cell, the only byproducts are water and heat.
But the National Research Council committee said there is little existing capacity for hydrogen production, which remains expensive, and fuel cell technologies face challenges of storage, cost, reliability and safety.
Environmentalists are skeptical of the Bush plan and view it as more hype than substance.
Many believe the key to the environmental friendliness of the hydrogen economy is how the fuel is produced - and this is where critics say the Bush administration has got it all wrong.
The focus should be on using renewable, pollution free sources to produce hydrogen, rather than natural gas, coal and nuclear power, environmentalists say, and in the meantime the nation should adopt conservation and efficiency measures to cut pollution now.
-------- environment
Environmental lobby's efforts backfire
03/11/2004
By STAN WISE
Special to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0304/11wise.html
In an attempt to shut down coal-fired power plants and make us feel bad about driving our SUVs, the environmental lobby would have us believe that smog and pollution are hitting record highs and shortening our lives.
Science tells us, however, that sulfur dioxide in metro Atlanta has decreased 75 percent since the 1970s, even though the population has more than doubled and the number of cars has quadrupled during this same period. Since 1990, Georgia Power Co. has decreased sulfur dioxide emissions by 42 percent and nitrogen oxide by 38 percent, while increasing power generation by 21 percent.
Although we have abundant coal resources and cleaner technologies available for its use in generating power, the environmental lobby has stymied attempts to expand and has all but eliminated any attempt to construct new, coal-fired electric generators. Nuclear power -- one of the cheapest, cleanest and safest ways to produce electricity and protect our environment -- has suffered the same fate. This industry was in the midst of a comeback until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when environmentalists used the tragic events of that day to inject paranoia into the debate.
Unfortunately, the power industry now relies on one primary alternative -- natural gas. Almost every electric generating unit in this country that has gone on line in the past five years is fueled by natural gas. This overreliance on a single fuel source has caused prices for natural gas to fluctuate as much as 300 percent in recent years, leaving our more vulnerable residents at risk.
The latest energy source to be hijacked by the environmental lobby is green power, a term used to describe electricity produced by more environmentally friendly means such as solar, wind power, geothermal and biomass, and small hydroelectric sources.
This emerging source of energy provides the benefits of renewable resources, less air pollution, less fuel exploration and less dependence on foreign fuel. Energy derived from green sources is not specifically delivered to the customers who choose it, but to the power grid, which displaces power that would have otherwise been produced from traditional generating sources.
Only a few thousand customers have taken advantage of green power purchase plans offered by several electric membership cooperatives in our state. Georgia Power Co. has a plan before the Georgia Public Service Commission to initiate a similar program for its customers, but the environmental lobby is pushing its own agenda.
The current costs of producing green power are significantly greater than through traditional means. To encourage its use, some states subsidize these costs. The environmental lobby wants Georgia to follow this same misguided path.
Though I am committed to expanding the development and procurement of green energy, I will not ask ratepayers of Georgia to pay more so that a select few can feel good about what powers their light bulb. This fiscally conservative approach has served us well in Georgia, where we enjoy power rates far below the national average. Consumers who want to purchase green power do so at a premium so as not to put others at risk. Georgia Power is not permitted to make a profit on the program; excess earnings are used to expand the program or lower the cost.
Like the EMC providers, Georgia Power will use landfill gas to generate green energy. The environmental lobby is objecting to Georgia Power's plan because they do not consider it to be a "new source" and they are preoccupied with whether the program meets "Green-E" accreditation by the Center for Resource Solutions based in California.
The only criterion that was not met by this resource was the date the resource was developed. It didn't matter that the actual results of using the resource would accomplish every single environmental concern listed by the accreditation process; because it was not "new" it could not get accredited. There are many successful green energy programs across the country that are not accredited.
As an elected official, it is my duty to make decisions that are best for Georgia consumers. I applaud the efforts of the Green-E certification process and will vote to include certified contracts every time they make sense for Georgia.
However, I will not have the environmental lobby dictate that I must turn down an otherwise good program simply because a company in San Francisco has not recognized it. Efforts to develop new resources are admirable and worthwhile, but Georgia should not tie its hands to a single group's agenda. The issues of fuel diversity and green power are too important to be held hostage by turf wars and hidden agendas. Stan Wise is a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission and president of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners.
--------
District To Widen Testing For Lead Problem
May Go Beyond 23,000 Suspect Homes
By Craig Timberg and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48158-2004Mar10.html
Federal and D.C. officials announced yesterday they would broaden testing of the city's water supply as Mayor Anthony A. Williams and others warned that lead contamination reaches beyond the homes known to have service lines made of the toxic metal.
The action came after weeks of official assurances from the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority that lead problems were confined mainly to 23,000 homes with lead service lines. WASA officials have focused a health alert and other efforts on residents of these homes, denying free filters and water test kits to other residents.
Plans to test drinking water also expanded yesterday into Prince George's and Montgomery counties. Although the water in those areas comes from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and has different chemical qualities, the commission said it would begin testing to reassure residents. [Story in Metro.]
WASA officials, meanwhile, agreed to expand their testing program to representative samples of homes, schools, day-care centers and other buildings with service lines made of materials other than lead, such as copper. Service lines run from water mains into buildings.
"I want a valid sample of the rest of the city," Williams (D) said at a news conference at the John A. Wilson Building.
Federal officials said they, too, have been seeking a broader sample.
Rick Rogers, the region's drinking water chief for the Environmental Protection Agency, said yesterday that WASA officials have known since last year that some homes without lead service lines had elevated lead levels.
"This is a corrosion problem for the entire city," Rogers said. "We've recommended since [the first meeting on] February 9 that WASA expand its testing."
Data provided by WASA to The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request show that during the 2001-02 testing period, two homes with copper service lines registered lead levels far above the EPA standard of 15 parts per billion.
One of those homes, on 39th Place NW, had a lead level of 244 parts per billion, while the other, on Morse Street NE, had a level of 79 parts per billion. It is not clear how many homes with copper service lines WASA tested in that period.
WASA spokeswoman Pat Wheeler declined to address the issue of high lead results in homes without lead service lines. She said WASA officials she spoke with were not aware that the EPA had urged expanded tests.
The EPA, WASA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued an 18-page report detailing plans to make the water supply less corrosive over the next several months. The U.S. Army Corps runs the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant in Northwest Washington, which supplies water to WASA. A chemical fix is scheduled for the entire system by Sept. 1.
Federal officials have acknowledged that an increase in the corrosiveness of the water they supply to WASA is the cause of spiking lead levels in the city.
Noting that, Williams called on the federal government to pay for much of the cost of fixing water problems, which he blamed on decisions by federal agencies that provide and oversee the city's water supply. He said he did not have an estimate for how much the problem is costing the city or WASA.
"We're going to seek federal funding and in-kind assistance to protect the taxpayers of the District and ratepayers of WASA from shouldering the financial burden that has resulted from what appears to be the results of actions taken and decisions made by federal agencies," the mayor said.
Driving yesterday's decision to expand testing of homes and other buildings were concerns that WASA's database of 23,000 homes with lead service lines is riddled with inaccuracies, city officials said. Recent test results in Arlington showing elevated lead in homes without lead service lines also alarmed D.C. officials, they have said. Arlington and the District get their water from Dalecarlia, and Falls Church gets two-thirds of its water from the plant.
Corrosive water can leach lead from many sources, including brass fixtures and lead solder used to connect pipes, EPA officials said.
WASA, Wheeler said, has received results from some of the more than 2,500 water tests conducted last month. But WASA officials have refused to release the data.
Glenn S. Gerstell, chairman of WASA's board of directors, said he expects the agency to release the test results as soon as agency officials finish vetting the data, at least by the board's April 6 meeting.
"My assumption is as soon as the data is aggregated and meaningful, we'll make the results public," Gerstell said.
D.C. City Administrator Robert C. Bobb sharply criticized WASA for not making all of its testing data public immediately. "We should not be concealing information," he said.
Officials from WASA, a quasi-independent agency overseen by board members appointed by the District, Arlington and Falls Church, have faced increasingly strict scrutiny from city, county and federal officials since news reports revealed the elevated lead levels in thousands of homes.
Yesterday, in an agreement with the EPA, WASA promised to expand water testing and to provide filters or alternative water sources such as bottled water to residents of the 23,000 homes known to have lead service lines.
EPA had threatened to invoke emergency powers over WASA unless it accepted several conditions, including submitting a work plan for replacing lead service lines and initiating a public information plan that conveys a sense of urgency about lead problems.
The requirement of replacing more lead service lines has drawn criticism from Williams and others because testing has shown that it can raise water lead levels if the portion of the line on private property is not also replaced. Those portions of service lines are the responsibility of private property owners, not WASA.
Another EPA water official, Jon Capacasa, said federal regulations require WASA to replace only the portion it owns. But EPA officials said they prefer full replacement of lines -- both the public and homeowner portions of the lines -- and have talked to city leaders about tapping federal funds to pay for homeowners' replacement costs.
A working group of scientists, government officials and water quality experts is studying how to adjust the corrosion control chemistry at the city's two water plants to make it less likely to leach lead from pipes and plumbing fixtures.
They plan to try a new method, possibly a phosphate chemical, starting June 1 in part of the city and to expand its use three months later to the rest of the city and to the Northern Virginia service area. But their report warned that it might take months to bring down lead levels, and the change might bring unwelcome side effects such as rusty water and higher levels of bacteria.
Staff writers D'Vera Cohn and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
--
Places to Turn For Help on Lead
Thursday, March 11, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48194-2004Mar10.html
Blood Screening
The D.C. Department of Health will provide free blood screening for children 6 months to 6 years old and pregnant and nursing women whose homes have lead service lines. City officials have said that other District residents concerned that they are at risk also can request a free screening. The screening sites:
• Perry School, 128 M St. NW, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today.
• Department of Health Lead Clinic, 51 N St. NE, walk in 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and tomorrow or call for an appointment, 202-671-0733.
Various day-care centers also will be providing tests. For more information on the testing program, call 202-671-0733 or check www.dchealth.dc.gov
Water Tests
Residents seeking to have their water tested should call the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority lead hotline, 202-787-2732, request a WASA test kit, follow the directions and then schedule a pickup for the test or drop it off at one of the following sites:
• 301 Bryant St. NW; anytime.
• 810 First St. NE; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
• Fort Reno Pumping Station, 3900 Donaldson Pl. NW; 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays. • Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant, 5000 Overlook Ave. SW; anytime.
• 125 O St. SE; anytime.
• Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant, 5900 MacArthur Blvd. NW; 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays.
Water Filters
The D.C. Emergency Management Agency is distributing free water pitcher filtration systems to families with children younger than 6 and pregnant and nursing women whose homes have lead service lines. To receive a pitcher, residents should bring proof of address to one of the following sites:
• Perry School, 128 M St. NW, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today.
• Department of Health Lead Clinic, 51 N St. NE, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow.
General Questions
• WASA's lead hotline: 202-787-2732 or www.dcwasa.com.
• D.C. government: 202-727-1000 or www.dc.gov.
-------- health
Group Is Suing Federal Agency Over Post-9/11 Health Hazards
March 11, 2004
By ANTHONY DePALMA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/nyregion/11epa.html
The health of tens of thousands of people who live and work in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn has been endangered by the way federal officials mishandled the environmental hazards caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in United States District Court in Manhattan.
Twelve Manhattan residents and workers sued the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to follow its own procedures to ensure the area was safe before allowing people to return.
They also accused the agency's former administrator, Christie Whitman, of displaying "a shockingly deliberate indifference to human health" when she issued reassuring statements about air quality downtown that proved to be misleading.
"As a result," according to the lawsuit, a large group of New Yorkers exposed "to hazardous substances for over two years is left with the expense of full and proper cleanup of their residences and workplaces, and is faced with potentially serious long-term health effects."
In a statement, an E.P.A. regional administrator, Jane M. Kenny, said she had not seen the lawsuit and would not comment on it.
Since the dense cloud of dust and debris billowed through Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, contradictory statements about safety and risk have tarnished the reputation of the federal agency. Some residents fear they were deliberately misled by government officials more eager to see normalcy return to the area than to safeguard New Yorkers.
Just last week, federal officials conceded their hope that the formation of a panel of independent experts to oversee the cleanup would help restore lost confidence.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 12 residents - workers, students and business owners - but it seeks to represent the entire class of people exposed to the hazardous dust. One of the 12, Robert Gulack of Fair Lawn, N.J., a senior lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he developed severe respiratory problems because improperly cleaned stairways and elevators contaminated his office.
The lawsuit claims the E.P.A. had the regulatory responsibility for cleaning up indoor spaces. Initially, it delegated the task to the city, and then failed to supervise the city's inadequate response, the suit says.
A year after the attack, the federal agency agreed to take over the indoor cleanup. It implemented a voluntary program for residences in a limited area around ground zero. But the area to be cleaned excluded many apartments north of Canal Street and in Brooklyn. Offices were also excluded.
The lawsuit estimates that about 17,000 homes and many workplaces should have been tested for contamination and cleaned. It seeks the thorough testing of affected apartments and offices in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, the creation of a medical fund to pay for health testing of people exposed to the trade center dust, and the reimbursement of people who have paid to have their apartments and businesses cleaned.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Military Families vs. the War
Organized Opposition Is Small, but Some See It as Historic
By Paula Span
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48217-2004Mar10?language=printer
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- On the night last month he learned that his son had died in Iraq, Richard Dvorin couldn't sleep. He lay in bed, "thinking and thinking and thinking," got up at 4 a.m., made a pot of coffee. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a letter to the president.
When the invasion of Iraq began, Dvorin -- a 61-year-old Air Force veteran and a retired cop -- thought the commander in chief deserved his support. "I believed we were destroying part of the axis of evil," he says. "I truly believed that Saddam Hussein was a madman and that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them."
By the time Army 2nd Lt. Seth Dvorin was sent to Iraq last September, however, his father was having doubts. And now that Seth had been killed, at 24, by an "improvised explosive device" south of Baghdad, doubt had turned to anger.
"Where are all the weapons of Mass Destruction?" Richard Dvorin demanded in his letter. "Where are the stockpiles of Chemical and Biological weapons?" His son's life, he wrote, "has been snuffed out in a meaningless war."
His is not the only military family to think so. In suburban Cleveland a few days later, the Rev. Tandy Sloan tuned in to the "Meet the Press" interview with President Bush and felt "disgust." His 19-year-old son, Army Pvt. Brandon Sloan, was killed when his convoy was ambushed last March. "A human being can make mistakes," the Rev. Sloan says of the president. "But if you intentionally mislead people, that's another thing."
In Fullerton, Calif., paralegal student Kimberly Huff, whose Army reservist husband recently returned from Iraq, makes a similar point with a wardrobe of homemade protest T-shirts that say things like "Support Our Troops, Impeach Bush."
The number of military families that oppose Operation Iraqi Freedom, though never measured, is probably small. But a nascent antiwar movement has begun to find a toehold among parents, spouses and other relatives of active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops.
A group called Military Families Speak Out -- which will figure prominently in marches and vigils at Dover Air Force Base, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the White House next week -- says more than 1,000 families have signed up online and notes that new members join daily. Other outspoken family members -- Dvorin, for example -- have never heard of the group but, for a variety of reasons, share its founders' conviction that the war is a "reckless military misadventure."
Most frequently cited, when military families explain their antiwar sentiments, is the absence to date of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "They'd have these inspections and they'd find nothing," says Jenifer Moss, 29, of Lawton, Okla. Her husband, Army Sgt. Keelan L. Moss, died in November when a missile downed his Chinook helicopter, leaving her with three children and the belief that "he was sent out there on a pretense."
They are also angry at the Bush administration's insistence that its policies are nonetheless justified. Cherice Johnson's husband, Navy Corpsman Michael Vann Johnson Jr., was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade last March. "I'd love to say I back [the president] 100 percent, but I can't," she says, weeping during a telephone interview. "How many more people are going to die because he can't say, 'I'm sorry, I made a terrible mistake'?"
In interviews, families complained about the continued unrest in Iraq; worried about whether their service members had adequate equipment and supplies; feared post-traumatic stress syndrome. One mother who lost a son in Afghanistan last March took deep offense at the launch of a subsequent war when, she feels, the first remains uncompleted.
And, of course, they all watch the casualties mount, to 553 deaths and nearly 3,200 wounded, the Pentagon says.
In South Haven, Mich., Marianne Brown, 52, has joined the weekly peace vigil in front of the closest thing her small town has to a federal building: the post office. Most of the vigil-keepers -- who number 10 or 15 at most, shrinking to three or four stalwarts on the bitterest winter days -- hold a memorial photo of the faces of service members killed in Iraq. But Brown holds a photo of her stepson, Army Reserve Pvt. Michael Shepard, 21, an MP stationed west of Baghdad.
South Haven has not been uniformly receptive. Brown has had her Jeep scratched with a key. She's been shouted at when she goes to the bank. She's been called a traitor. "It's kind of scary, but it's changing," she says. "We used to get a lot more attitude. Now we're getting more thumbs-ups. I think it's slowly seeping in that this [war] was based on something other than what we were told."
A Way to Connect
It's the power of the Internet that's allowed relatives in far-flung places to know that others are also suspicious, bitter or ready to march on Washington. "That kind of sentiment has probably been there in every war we've ever had, but this time they have a ready means of identifying one another," says John Guilmartin, a military historian at Ohio State University and a decorated Vietnam War veteran.
Military Families Speak Out started before the invasion with two families, added 200 more when the first troops crossed into Iraq and another 200 when the bombing began. There were spikes in Web traffic and membership registration when the president declared the end of major combat and when he invited Iraqi insurgents to "Bring 'em on."
Even those who aren't affiliated with a peace group (Moss and Johnson are not; Brown is) use the Net to bolster their opinions, stoke their outrage or find others who share their beliefs.
When Seth Dvorin died, sympathetic Web sites picked up local newspaper stories about his divorced parents' outspoken responses. A few days after his funeral, his mother, Sue Niederer, was startled to get a call from a stranger in Columbus, Ohio. Jackie Donoghue has a son serving in the same region of Iraq and had looked up Niederer's phone number online. "I just wanted to console her," Donoghue says. "I wanted to tell her she wasn't alone, that other people with sons and daughters in the service feel the same way."
Of course, most people with relatives in wartime service, a group historically more likely to express approval than distrust, don't feel the same way. Though public support for the war was found to have declined in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, most military families say their support for the action and the president remains unwavering.
They think the weapons he warned of may have been moved or may yet turn up. Some feel Hussein's tyranny was in itself ample justification for war, even if the weapons are never found. They believe that their loved ones are helping to liberate a tortured nation and that there's more good news from Iraq than the news media have reported.
The night before Pfc. Jesse Givens, a 34-year-old Army tank driver, left for Iraq, he sat down with his 6-year-old son to explain. "He said, 'There's a bad guy over there and he hurts mommies and little kids and he has to be stopped,' " his widow, Melissa Givens, 27, of Fountain, Colo., remembers. Now, "the times I start to feel like I'm against it -- because my husband's gone and he's never coming back -- I hear what he said."
Christine Dooley, who's 22 and living in Murrysville, Pa., with an infant daughter, is mourning the loss of her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Micheal Dooley, 23, killed in June. "The fact that I lost Micheal does not change my feelings about what we needed to do over there at all," Dooley says via e-mail. "Many Americans forget that we were attacked on 9/11. . . . We need to kick some butt and clean up!"
Another group of families can probably empathize with Cathy Neighbor. A 45-year-old truck driver in rural New Lexington, Ohio, she's too overwhelmed by grief for her paratrooper son to figure out what she thinks about the war that took his life. Army Cpl. Gavin Neighbor was 20 when he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade in June.
"I still don't know what to feel," his mother says haltingly. Some days she questions why the troops were sent to Iraq; on others, she thinks they should have been. "I'm angry as hell and I'm proud as hell," she says. "And everyone says my son's a hero, and I didn't want him to be a hero."
'Unprecedented'
Yet even if the opponents represent only a sliver of military families, the emergence of organized antiwar opinion among this traditionally conservative group is something the country hasn't seen before, several historians and political scientists believe.
During the Vietnam War, a handful of Gold Star Mothers who had lost sons in the war marched with Vietnam Vets Against the War and other antiwar groups, says David Cline, now president of Veterans for Peace and an early member of Vietnam Vets. But there were only at most a couple of dozen such mothers, by his recollection, and they never created a nationwide network. The National League of Families, formed to bring political attention to prisoners of war and troops missing in action, had considerable influence but was not critical of the war itself.
And those activists, like Vietnam Vets Against the War as a national group, arose years after the first American losses in Vietnam, by which point a considerable part of the public had already lost faith in the war. For military families to organize against the Iraq war beforehand and during its first year, Cline observes, is like "Vietnam on speed."
"This is unprecedented," says Ronald H. Spector, a military historian at George Washington University. "If military families are having serious doubts about the war and don't see a reason for their relatives to go over there, that's quite significant."
How much influence they may have is another question. Small minorities can have political impact, says Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council staffer. They can gain public and media attention because "they can presume to speak with greater moral authority. . . . The picture of an angry father can resonate in a way it doesn't when it's somebody else."
Feaver doesn't expect antiwar military families to make much of a difference yet on their own. (For one thing, they don't all share the same goal. Military Families Speak Out has called for a full troop withdrawal, but some non-member families believe the best tribute to their lost soldiers is to ensure that Iraq gets stabilized and rebuilt.) But "if what we're seeing is the beginnings of a cancer of doubt," Feaver adds, "that could have serious consequences."
A Sore Subject
When Army 1st Lt. Jennifer Kaylor, stationed at Fort Myer, Va., gets together with her mother-in-law, Fairfax schoolteacher Roxanne Kaylor, they chat about their pets. They talk about Jennifer Kaylor's job and her plans to eventually continue her education. "I encourage her to think about her future," Roxanne Kaylor says.
What they don't discuss is the war in Iraq, where Army 1st Lt. Jeffrey J. Kaylor, 24, Jennifer's husband of just nine months and Roxanne's only son, was killed in a grenade attack in April. "I honestly believe that this was the best way for us to prevent anything resembling September 11th occurring on our soil again," Jennifer Kaylor says via e-mail. Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, has grown so incensed about the war that she contacted a lawyer to see whether casualty families such as hers could bring a class-action lawsuit against Bush. (You can't sue the president, the lawyer told her.)
That loved ones risked their lives -- or lost them -- for an unjust cause, as some family members contend, is a difficult view for anyone with a military connection to express. Even those willing to march with placards or wear their antiwar sentiments on their chests try to tread gingerly.
They don't want to undermine their service members, imperil their future military careers, or hurt other military families who are frightened or grieving. The military culture strongly discourages questioning a war while troops are in the field. Several relatives interviewed for this story asked that the names of their service members not be published, lest they suffer repercussions.
Jose Caldas, 44, a systems analyst in Atlanta, lost his nephew, Army Capt. Ernesto Blanco, 28, in December; a homemade bomb detonated as his Humvee passed. Caldas's son, Alec, 22, is in the Army Signal Corps at Fort Bragg and expects to be deployed to Iraq as well. Jose Caldas, a Navy veteran, has been writing his U.S. senators and representative to urge that the country's leaders be held accountable for what he deems a dreadful miscalculation.
But he is cautious about what he says to his son. "You're asking a lot of these guys," he explains. "They have to believe in what they're doing. If you don't have faith that what you're doing is right, you can't be committed and risk your life."
In Madison, Wis., retired psychologist Jane Jensen, 70, leads a military families support group that meets each Thursday evening at the United Church of Christ: mostly parents, one wife, some brothers, a grandmother. Her own son, Lt. Col. Garrett Jensen, 42, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot with the Army National Guard, expects to leave Kuwait for Iraq this month.
Her group of about 25 regulars includes a number from families that back the war, Jenson says. They can probably tell, from the Kerry campaign button she always wears, that she disagrees. She plans to join a nearby antiwar demonstration later this month, but none of the other group members has agreed to join her.
Still, they put such differences aside to talk about their service members, exchange information, pass around fresh photos. "Our group is very kind, very polite. Nobody wants to hurt anyone's feelings," Jensen says.
Sometimes feelings get hurt anyway. Nancy Lessin, stepmother of a Marine who has returned from Iraq and co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, has gotten a number of nasty e-mails; she has also reported three death threats to the Boston police.
Kimberly Huff, of the antiwar T-shirts, no longer attends meetings of the Family Readiness Group in Riverside, Calif., which supports relatives of her husband's Army Reserve unit. She was an active member for 10 months, until her shirts, and the interviews she gave at an antiwar rally in Los Angeles, made her "kind of a black sheep," Huff says. "They stopped calling to see how I was. . . . I was kind of ignored at meetings." Now she feels more alone, though unrepentant.
And hurt feelings may increase as the presidential election nears. Many of these family members, even those with no history of political involvement, say they'll work to defeat Bush in November.
John Bugay Jr., 44, a suburban Pittsburgh marketing writer and self-described conservative who hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1980, is sufficiently disillusioned by the war that he spent eight bucks to register the domain name republicansforkerry.org. "I felt betrayed by this president's administration," Bugay says. "He didn't count the costs."
Such sentiments have caused a stir at his evangelical Christian church; they also caused a public argument with his wife, an Army reservist who spent five months in Iraq, at a neighborhood birthday party. Now they don't discuss the war either.
Other antiwar families plan to register voters, write letters to newspapers, and volunteer for local and national candidates. First, they'll mark the war's anniversary this month by joining protests across the country.
Richard Dvorin has not received a reply to the letter he sent the president about his son, Seth. He doesn't expect to. But Sue Niederer, Seth Dvorin's mother, eventually learned about Military Families Speak Out and will join its march at Dover Air Force Base on Sunday.
It's one of the few places where she can say of her son, "He died a hero, but he died in vain" -- and people will understand how she feels.
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