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NUCLEAR
The Text of the IAEA Resolution on Iran
Iran Freezes Nuclear Program Inspections
Showdown looms as Iran bars nuclear inspections
Japan supplied nuclear guidance
N.Korea Nuclear Program Older Than First Believed
Pentagon admits missile shield may not work - but it may be vote winner
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
Book Says U.S. Aides Lied in Nuclear-Arms Plant Case
Flats jurors silenced
High Uranium Levels Are Found in Nevada
Senate passes $2.36 trillion budget
Senate Approves Budget Intended to Curb Deficit
Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters
Official Says He Was Told To Withhold Medicare Data
Kennedy Criticizes Bush 'Credibility Gap'
Why Dennis is staying in
MILITARY
U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Offensive
U.S. Launches New Afghan Push Against Bin Laden
Bush distances U.S. from Roh's woes
New Haitian Premier Pledges Unity
White House Sends Senior Official to Iraq
Iraqi Police Suspected In Slaying of Americans
Iraqi Policemen Tied to Killing of 2 Americans
Israel to Push Ahead With Unilateral Moves
Rumsfeld defends Iraq terror study
Pentagon Shadow Loses Some Mystique
A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
Report: Spain Told Envoys to Point Finger at ETA
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
1M in Drugs Not in Fla. Evidence Room
U.S. convention security focusing on rail threat
U.S. Passenger Trains Vulnerable To Terror Attacks, Bulletin Warns
Bombings Lead U.S. to Raise Security for Trains
Easier Internet Wiretaps Sought
ENERGY
G.E. Signals a Growing Interest in Solar
ACTIVISTS
Groups Accuse City of Trying to Stifle Protest
President's impeachment infuriates South Koreans
Sick, afraid, defiant - they marched in their millions
President's Impeachment Stirs Angry Protests in South Korea
Missile incident rattles Canada
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
The Text of the IAEA Resolution on Iran
March 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran-Text.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The text of the Iran resolution agreed on Saturday by the 35-nation board of governors' meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency:
--
Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran Resolution adopted by the Board on 13 March 2004 The Board of Governors,
(a) Recalling the resolutions adopted by the Board on 26 November 2003, and on 12 September 2003 and the statement by the Board of 19 June 2003,
(b) Noting with appreciation the Director General's report of 24 February 2004, on the implementation of safeguards in Iran,
(c) Commending the Director General and the Secretariat for their continuing efforts to implement the Safeguards Agreement with Iran and to resolve all outstanding issues in Iran,
(d) Noting with satisfaction that Iran signed the Additional Protocol on 18 December 2003 and that, in its communication to the Director General of 10 November 2003, Iran committed itself to acting in accordance with the provisions of the Protocol with effect from that date; but also noting that the Protocol has not yet been ratified as called for in the Board's resolutions of 26 November 2003 and 12 September 2003,
(e) Noting the decision by Iran of 24 February 2004 to extend the scope of its suspension of enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, and its confirmation that the suspension applied to all facilities in Iran,
(f) Noting with serious concern that the declarations made by Iran in October 2003 did not amount to the complete and final picture of Iran's past and present nuclear program considered essential by the Boards November 2003 resolution, in that the Agency has since uncovered a number of omissions -- e.g., a more advanced centrifuge design than previously declared, including associated research, manufacturing and testing activities; two mass spectrometers used in the laser enrichment program; and designs for the construction of hot cells at the Arak heavy water research reactor -- which require further investigation, not least as they may point to nuclear activities not so far acknowledged by Iran,
(g) Noting with equal concern that Iran has not resolved all questions regarding the development of its enrichment technology to its current extent, and that a number of other questions remain unresolved, including the sources of all HEU contamination in Iran; the location, extent, and nature of work undertaken on the basis of the advanced centrifuge design; the nature, extent and purpose of activities involving the planned heavy-water reactor; and evidence to support claims regarding the purpose of polonium-210 experiments, and
(h) Noting with concern, also in light of the Director Generals report of 20 February 2004, that, although the timelines are different, Iran's and Libya's conversion and centrifuge programs share several common elements, including technology largely obtained from the same foreign sources,
1. Recognizes that the Director General reports Iran to have been actively cooperating with the Agency in providing access to locations requested by the Agency, but, as Iran's cooperation so far has fallen short of what is required, calls on Iran to continue and intensify its cooperation, in particular through the prompt and proactive provision of detailed and accurate information on every aspect of Iran's past and present nuclear activities;
2. Welcomes Iran's signature of the Additional Protocol; urges its prompt ratification; underlines the Board's understanding that, in its communication to the Director General of 10 November 2003, Iran voluntarily committed itself to acting in accordance with the provisions of the Protocol with effect from that date; and stresses the importance of Iran complying with the deadline for declarations envisaged in Article 3 of the Protocol;
3. Recalls that in its resolutions of 26 November 2003 and 12 September 2003 the Board called on Iran to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, notes that Iran's voluntary decisions of 29 December 2003 and 24 February 2004 constitute useful steps in this respect, calls on Iran to extend the application of this commitment to all such activities throughout Iran, and requests the Director General to verify the full implementation of these steps;
4. Deplores that Iran, as detailed in the report by the Director General, omitted any reference, in its letter of 21 October 2003 which was to have provided the ``full scope of Iranian nuclear activities'' and a ``complete centrifuge R&D chronology'', to its possession of P-2 centrifuge design drawings and to associated research, manufacturing, and mechanical testing activities -- which the Director General describes as ``a matter of serious concern, particularly in view of the importance and sensitivity of those activities'';
5. Echoes the concern expressed by the Director General over the issue of the purpose of Iran's activities related to experiments on the production and intended use of polonium-210, in the absence of information to support Iran's statements in this regard;
6. Calls on Iran to be pro-active in taking all necessary steps on an urgent basis to resolve all outstanding issues, including the issue of LEU and HEU contamination at the Kalaye Electric Company workshop and Natanz; the issue of the nature and scope of Iran's laser isotope enrichment research; and the issue of the experiments on the production of polonium-210;
7. Notes with appreciation that the Agency is investigating the supply routes and sources of technology and related equipment, and nuclear and non-nuclear materials, found in Iran, and reiterates that the urgent, full and close cooperation with the Agency of all third countries is essential in the clarification of outstanding questions concerning Iran's nuclear program, including the acquisition of nuclear technology from foreign sources; and also appreciates any cooperation in this regard as may already have been extended to the Agency;
8. Requests the Director General to report on these issues before the end of May, as well as on the implementation of this and prior resolutions on Iran, for consideration by the June Board of Governors -- or to report earlier if appropriate;
9. Decides to defer until its June meeting, and after receipt of the report of the Director General referred to above, consideration of progress in verifying Iran's declarations, and of how to respond to the above-mentioned omissions; and
10. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
--------
Iran Freezes Nuclear Program Inspections
Mar 13, 2004
By ANDREA DUDIKOVA
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran froze a probe of its nuclear program indefinitely Saturday, spurning the U.N. atomic agency's governing body over a resolution that censured Tehran for hiding suspicious activities.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, described the resolution passed earlier Saturday as "unfair and deceitful." He said International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who were due to arrive in Tehran on Saturday, would not be allowed in.
"We will not allow them to come until Iran sets a new date for their visit," Rowhani told reporters in Iran's capital, Tehran.
Iran signed an agreement last year empowering U.N. experts to inspect its nuclear facilities at any time and without notice. On Friday, Iran suspended inspections until April, saying they conflicted with next week's celebration of the Iranian New Year.
Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said Saturday the freeze on inspections was "a protest by Iran in reaction to the passage of the resolution."
Iran, which insists its nuclear intentions are peaceful, threatened repeatedly over the past few days to reduce cooperation with the IAEA if its 35-nation board of governors came down hard on the Islamic republic.
The resolution praises Iran's increased openness to inspections but "deplores" recent discoveries of uranium enrichment equipment and other suspicious activities Tehran had not revealed.
Chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei expressed confidence that his experts would soon be allowed into Iran.
"I'm pretty confident that Iran will understand that we need to go within the time scheduled, and the decision to delay the inspection will be reviewed and reversed within the next couple of days," he told reporters.
Asked when inspectors might visit again, Rowhani replied: "It could be less than six weeks. It could be more than six weeks. We have not set a date."
Kenneth Brill, the chief U.S. delegate to the meeting, condemned the move.
"This is a measure of their full cooperation - their postponing the very thing that they are called on to do by their obligations," he told reporters.
Brill said he suspected the freeze was an attempt by Iran to gain time and hide covert activities before allowing agency inspectors access to new sites.
Brill accused Iran of "continuing to pursue a policy of denial, deception and delay."
"Is it possible that, even as we meet, squads of Iranian technicians are working at still undeclared (nuclear) sites to tile over, paint over, bury, burn or cart away incriminating evidence, so that those sanitized locations can finally be identified to the agency as new evidence of Iran's full cooperation and transparency?" he told the board of governors earlier.
A senior U.S. State Department official pointed to a paragraph in the resolution that says both Libya and Iran were supplied by the same nuclear black market and suggested that - like Libya - Iran could have bought plans for a warhead.
"The board served a search warrant on the Iranians that we're coming after your secret weapons program," he told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Iran disputes U.S. assertions it wants to make nuclear arms, asserting that its activities are strictly geared to generating power.
Nonaligned members of the IAEA had tried to tone down the language of the resolution, while Western powers - foremost the United States - wanted to send Iran a harsh warning.
Striking a balance, the 13-nation nonaligned group dropped most of its objections but pushed through wording that effectively defers the threat of Security Council action against Iran until the board meets again in June.
Still, much of the language was critical, reflecting shared concerns by most board members about Iran's nuclear activities and its uneven record of cooperation with the IAEA.
The resolution, made available to The Associated Press, notes "with serious concern" that the board still does not have "the complete and final picture of Iran's past and present nuclear program," needed by the IAEA to dispel suspicions Iran had a weapons agenda.
Unlike an earlier draft pushed by the United States and its allies, the resolution made no mention of military involvement in Iran's nuclear program. Iran's military acknowledged this week it built uranium enrichment centrifuges but said they were for civilian use.
Iran's move to freeze inspections would be a huge obstacle to the agency's efforts to deliver a judgment by June on the nature of Tehran's nuclear past and present.
An IAEA report last month accused Iran 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 enriching uranium.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: http://www.iaea.org
--------
Showdown looms as Iran bars nuclear inspections
Ian Traynor
Saturday March 13, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1168651,00.html
International concern about Iran's suspect nuclear projects deepened last night when Tehran barred the International Atomic Energy Agency's nuclear inspectors.
It told the IAEA that its inspectors could not return to resume their search for evidence for at least six weeks.
Tehran's allies at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna yesterday blocked a tough resolution on Iran supported by the US and Europe.
The sudden intensification of the crisis appeared to pave the way for a showdown by the next IAEA board meeting in June.
"Iran has raised the ante," said a diplomat following the meeting. "There's some consternation."
The Americans and the Europeans, despite deep differences over how to respond to the Iranians, agreed a compromise formula on Wednesday which demands "immediate", "proactive" and "urgent" cooperation from Tehran on the nuclear inspections.
Iran's decision to cancel the inspections for a month flies in the face of such demands. The US-European compromise wording, however, has run up against stiff resistance from the Russians and the 13 of the 35 board members from the Non-Aligned Movement.
Meetings were continuing behind closed doors late last night and the board is to resume this morning, a highly unusual scenario.
Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, is to travel to Washington tomorrow to discuss with President George Bush how to tackle the Iranian issue and the black market in nuclear technology recently revealed to be centred in Pakistan.
It remained unclear how the developing drama in Vienna would affect Dr ElBaradei's trip to Washington. Diplomats said the Iranian postponement of the UN inspections was an attempt to "put pressure" on the IAEA and an example of Iranian "posturing".
Europe and the US have been seeking to get the Iranians to dismantle their uranium enrichment programmes since Iran was found last year to have been operating a secret enrichment project for 18 years, the key to obtaining nuclear bomb-grade material.
The US-European compromise agreed on Wednesday put off until June a decision on how to respond to Iran's breaches of its international nuclear commitments.
The resolution "deplores" Iranian failures to report fully its nuclear activities to the IAEA and singles out the Iranian military for the first time as being heavily involved in Iran's nuclear programmes.
The Iranians reacted furiously earlier this week to a tougher-than-expected response to the long-running nuclear row.
Diplomats characterised the furious response as predictable brinkmanship. But the decision to delay UN inspections was seen as much more serious.
-------- japan
Japan supplied nuclear guidance
March 13, 2004
By George Jahn
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040312-105435-7294r.htm
VIENNA, Austria - A Japanese company decades ago supplied Libya with a key piece of the technology needed to make nuclear weapons, and the Japanese government must have known about the transaction, diplomats said yesterday.
One diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the 1984 sale of a uranium conversion plant as a "flagrant example" of the failure of export controls meant to keep such equipment away from rogue nations and terrorists.
Such plants are used in the process of enriching uranium that at lower levels can be used to generate power but at levels above 90 percent - or weapons grade - can be used in nuclear warheads.
The company was not named. A report presented earlier this week to the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned a "pilot-scale uranium conversion facility" ordered in 1984 by Libya but did not specify the country of origin.
Japan's top government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said Tokyo was looking into the findings by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
"We are conducting an investigation. But we can't discuss the details of our investigation due to our previous agreement with the IAEA not to disclose anything," he said.
If confirmed, the transaction would violate Tokyo's strict export controls and its long-standing policy against possessing or trading nuclear weapons. Japan was the target of history's only atomic bomb attacks.
One of the diplomats said Japan's export controls were generally considered effective, meaning the government must have known about the sales.
"Had Japan reported such a deal to the IAEA earlier, that could have helped to get an earlier start on" investigations of the nuclear black market, which only became exposed in recent months, he said.
Unlike other deals made by Libya, Iran and North Korea, the sale was apparently directly arranged with the Japanese instead of through middlemen linked to a loose international nuclear sales network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the diplomat said.
But other countries were involved because the packing material originated from outside Japan, a diplomat said. The plant components were subsequently moved within Libya to keep them hidden before being taken out of the country.
Libya owned up in December to having programs for weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms, and pledged to scrap them.
Earlier this week, the IAEA board of governors passed a resolution praising Tripoli for its admission but criticizing it for its earlier nuclear weapons plans. Libya also signed an agreement with the IAEA opening its nuclear program to far-reaching agency inspections.
-------- korea
N.Korea Nuclear Program Older Than First Believed
March 13, 2004
Reuters
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20040312/wl_nm/nuclear_usa_khan_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Information obtained from accused Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan suggests North Korea began to pursue a highly enriched uranium program for nuclear weapons several years earlier than originally thought, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The officials, interviewed by Reuters, cited this disclosure as evidence that Pakistan has been cooperative in sharing with Washington the secrets of Khan's global network that sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
U.S. allegations about an HEU program are central to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program and U.S. officials said they have used Khan's information to buttress their case with their negotiating partners.
But officials also said that five weeks after Khan confessed his deeds, the United States still has not had direct access to the disgraced scientist, who is known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear program.
Khan presumably could provide concrete answers to many key questions including whether he sold nuclear weapon designs to Iran, which claims its program is only peaceful.
Some U.S. sources said the Bush administration was unhappy with Pakistan's cooperation but a senior U.S. official said these reports are "highly exaggerated."
Asked if Islamabad's cooperation was sufficient, the senior official replied: "I think we think it is an ongoing process."
"We get regular briefings from the Pakistanis about what they are finding out and have been able to share this with other partners in the six-party talks" on the North's nuclear program, he said.
KHAN ACCESS
But a second senior official said: "We don't know what Khan has ... We've been told that it's coming."
"The Pakistanis are going to give us what they feel like giving us," a third U.S. source said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to visit Pakistan as part of a South Asia trip next week and he is expected to discuss Khan and related proliferation issues with President Pervez Musharraf and other officials.
After saying he acted alone in nuclear trafficking, Khan was pardoned by Musharraf but remains in custody and apparently is being questioned by authorities.
One of Khan's recent revelations is that he began working with Pyongyang on an HEU program around 1991, not in the mid-1990s as officials had believed, two U.S. officials said.
Khan supplied the North "with equipment for centrifuges for over a decade ending in 2001," one senior official said. He declined to say if Khan provided documentary proof.
Another official said that just when Khan supplied actual centrifuges to Pyongyang remains unclear but there was "information exchange" and discussions about the "parameters of cooperation" on an HEU program as far back as 1991.
"It does suggest that the cooperation was somewhat earlier, that North Korea began HEU at an earlier date than might have been thought before," he said.
Pyongyang admits to producing plutonium, the other major fuel for nuclear weapons, but has denied the HEU program.
One U.S. official said the Khan information "has not changed our view that the year 2000 was the tipping point where Pyongyang went from an active R&D (research and development) program to production of a full scale HEU program."
-------- missile defense
Pentagon admits missile shield may not work - but it may be vote winner
March 13, 2004
By Bradley Graham in Washington
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/12/1078594571329.html
With the US only months away from fielding a national anti-missile shield, the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator said he could not be sure the system would be able to knock down North Korean missiles fired at the US, the system's main initial purpose.
With the US requesting $US10.2 billion ($13.8 billion) for missile defence in the 2005 financial year alone, officials on the project faced intense questioning at a Senate armed services committee hearing on Thursday.
The Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator, Thomas Christie, told the committee the system was insufficiently developed to validate Pentagon computer models showing it would be effective.
"So at this time we cannot be sure that the actual system would work against a real North Korean missile threat?" asked Senator Jack Reed.
"I would say that's true," Mr Christie replied.
The disparate assessments at the armed services committee underscored the extent to which the US is departing from traditional procedures for new weapons to get some kind of anti-missile system in place. Normally, a new weapon would undergo extensive operational testing before being fielded. Instead, the Pentagon plans to start deploying interceptor missiles in Alaska and California this year, declare the system operational by September and move towards increasingly realistic flight tests.
Pentagon officials said the urgency of the threat and the inherent technological difficulties justified the exceptional approach. Democrats accused the Bush Administration of turning the traditional "fly-before-you-buy" standard on its head.
Weapons experts outside the Pentagon say there is no imminent threat that would justify the huge cost and the deployment of a system whose real capabilities are unknown. Theses critics say they see only one thing on the horizon that could be driving such a breakneck schedule: a presidential election.
-------- u.n.
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
Saturday March 13
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040312/1/3ipta.html
UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei will fly to Washington next week for talks with US officials on strengthening non-proliferation measures.
"The director general will fly to Washington next week for working meetings with senior US government officials likely including US President Bush," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said Friday. "The purpose of the trip is to discuss current efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime," he added.
ElBaradei is to leave Vienna Sunday and is expected to meet with Bush, as well as Bush's national security adviser Condeleeza Rice on Wednesday, sources close to the IAEA said.
A Western diplomat said both ElBaradei and Bush "have recently put forward proposals on how to fix the nuclear non-proliferation systemm."
"They will be looking at areas where their ideas meet and how to work together," the diplomat said.
ElBaradei's Washington trip will follow an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna this week that has reviewed progress in guaranteeing the peaceful nature of the Libyan and Iranian nuclear programs.
ElBaradei called at the Vienna board meeting for strengthening the international mandate to verify nuclear non-proliferation.
ElBaradei has urged countries to impose tougher export controls in the wake of reports of a Pakistani-run nuclear black market that supplied programs in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He has also said the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which went into effect in 1970, needs updating in order to keep tighter control on possible atomic weapons development.
Bush said in a speech in February that the NPT regime needs to be strengthened.
Bush sought global support for tighter curbs on nuclear technology, taking aim at North Korea, Iran, and black-market sales by Pakistan's former top atomic expert Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Experts have said Iran is an example of a country which could be developing the technology to make atomic weapons, even while honoring the NPT by claiming its nuclear program is peaceful. Much of sensitive nuclear technology, such as enriching uranium, can have both civilian and military applications.
The IAEA said in a report issued last month ahead of the board meeting that Iran had failed to report possibly weapons-related atomic activities despite promising full disclosure and warned Tehran to make sure this didn't happen again.
Iran had not told the IAEA it had designs for sophisticated "P-2" centrifuges for enriching uranium nor that it had produced polonium-210, an element which could be used as a "neutron initiator (to start the chain reaction) in some designs of nuclear weapons," the report said.
This was despite Iran's claim last October that it had given the IAEA a full picture of its nuclear program.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Book Says U.S. Aides Lied in Nuclear-Arms Plant Case
March 13, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/national/13NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, March 12 - The Justice Department lied about its reasons for not pursuing the most serious accusations of environmental crimes at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in the 1980's and 1990's, according to a new book written in part by the foreman of the grand jury that investigated the case.
For decades the plant, which abuts the densely settled northwest suburbs of Denver, worked with plutonium, an exceptionally long-lived toxic substance.
The accusations are the latest development in a long controversy over the government investigation of the plant, including a 1989 raid by armed F.B.I. agents. The case against the contractor running the plant, Rockwell International, was settled in a plea agreement in 1992. The company paid an $18.5 million fine, which prosecutors said at the time was a record for a hazardous-waste case. Rockwell pleaded guilty to five felonies and five misdemeanor counts.
Among the legal twists, a federal grand jury convened to hear evidence in the case in August 1989 was allowed by prosecutors to expire in March 1992 without issuing an indictment. But the members of the jury continued to meet on their own and to demand action in the case, including that criminal charges be pressed against officials of the company and the Energy Department. No charges were filed against individuals.
Twelve of the 23 jurors sent a letter to President-elect Bill Clinton to demand appointment of a special prosecutor. Almost a year later, a Congressional report found that the Justice Department had mishandled the case, but in April 1994 the department issued a report exonerating itself.
One charge at the heart of the dispute was that in the late 1980's, plant workers were burning plutonium in an incinerator that had been closed as unsafe. The accusation was made in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's affidavit seeking a search warrant, and two plant workers have publicly said that they testified that they ran the incinerator while it was supposed to be closed. But the accusation was not pursued. According to the new book, "The Ambushed Grand Jury," to be published this month by Apex Press, the Justice Department incorrectly stated that an important witness brought in to analyze aerial photographs of the plant had changed his testimony. The authors of the book are Wes McKinley, the grand jury foreman, and Caron Balkany, a lawyer and longtime antinuclear campaigner.
The witness who was said to have changed his testimony is Allen Divers, a former military photo intelligence interpreter who reviewed infrared photographs taken by the F.B.I. Mr. Divers confirmed in a telephone interview this month that he had not changed his testimony. The book asserts that prosecutors began saying that he had changed his testimony before the second time he testified, and that this amounted to lying. The lie was repeated to a Congressional committee, the book says.
A prosecutor in the case, Peter J. Murtha, now director of the office of criminal enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency, said he could not comment because of a rule on grand jury secrecy. The book portrays Mr. Murtha as being so angry at the jurors' independence that he flung his notebook against a wall in the grand jury room, kicked over a lectern, tried to rip a door off its hinges and stalked out.
The book's underlying premise is that the Justice Department caved in when Rockwell refused to plead guilty if individuals were charged or if any charges would jeopardize future government work.
A department spokesman, Blain Rethmeier, said he could not comment because of the secrecy rule. He said the fine was "a just and appropriate resolution of this very complex, and in many respects unique, criminal investigation."
About 18 grand jurors brought suit in federal court in Denver, seeking permission to discuss what they say is prosecutorial misconduct. Their lawyer, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said that late Friday the judge, Richard P. Matsch, ruled against the jurors, but in his ruling revealed that Mr. Turley had been authorized to write a report detailing the jurors' complaints. The judge, Mr. Turley said, wrote that Congress could subpoena that report. Mr. Turley said he would appeal the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
"The grand jurors remain committed to revealing what occurred inside the grand jury room," he said. "The resolve hasn't diminished with time." Mr. Turley no longer represents Mr. McKinley.
--------
Flats jurors silenced
Federal judge rules members of grand jury can't tell story
By Karen Abbott,
Rocky Mountain News
abbottk@RockyMountainNews.com
or 303-892-5188
March 13, 2004
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2726698,00.html
Federal Judge Richard Matsch refused Friday to let members of the 1989 special Rocky Flats grand jury tell their story of alleged government wrongdoing.
Matsch cited a federal rule requiring grand jury proceedings to be secret but said in his seven-page ruling that it may not be good social policy.
Grand jurors have been trying since 1996 to win permission to disclose what they believe was illegal behavior on the part of the government and a contractor.
"The concerns that these (grand jurors) have expressed are serious and substantial," Matsch said. "They relate to the power of the government to compel citizens of this country to devote their time and energy to participate in an investigation conducted by attorneys for the Department of Justice and then to compel those citizens to be silent.
"Such concerns raise questions as to whether (the grand jury secrecy rule) is an appropriate public policy and whether the government employees involved in this matter have conducted themselves in an appropriate manner."
He said any changes to the rule lie "within the authority and responsibility of the United States Congress."
Wes McKinley, a Granby rancher who was foreman of the special grand jury, said he was disappointed.
"Man, that would have been great if all of the grand jury members, myself included, could have spoken," he said.
Mike Norton, the then-U.S. attorney whom grand jurors accused of thwarting their decision to indict managers with the U.S. Department of Energy, which owned the plant, and the contractor running it, Rockwell International, had not seen Friday's ruling.
"I am sure Judge Matsch followed the law," Norton said. "He always does."
He said the Rocky Flats investigation is "ancient history."
The grand jurors' story began early on a summer morning in 1989, when 75 FBI agents raided the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant west of Denver in Jefferson County.
The federal grand jury was convened later that summer. It was the first special grand jury in Colorado's history.
Its mission: to investigate whether environmental crimes had been committed at the now-closed nuclear weapons plant. The plant was built in the 1950s and made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War.
The alleged evidence included infrared photos indicating that radioactive waste was being burned in an incinerator that plant officials had promised not to use, and water samples showing exotic chemicals in creeks that flowed through Rocky Flats.
The grand jury met for more than two years. Then Norton struck a deal with Rockwell, which pleaded guilty to 10 felony and misdemeanor violations of hazardous waste laws and the Clean Water Act.
Rockwell paid an $18.5 million fine - at that time the largest federal fine for environmental violations in U.S. history.
No individuals were charged, although the special grand jury had voted to indict key managers with Rockwell and the DOE. Norton refused to sign the indictments, saying there wasn't enough evidence to convict any managers.
Then-Colorado Chief U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver refused to release the grand jury's full report.
Eighteen of the 23 jurors petitioned in 1996 for permission to testify before Congress, and Matsch ordered a magistrate judge to resolve the issue. However, the case stalled when objections were raised about the process.
It wasn't until recently, when a grand juror wrote Matsch to ask what had happened, that the judge realized the case had never been resolved. That was the case Matsch turned down Friday.
McKinley, meanwhile, has co-authored The Ambushed Grand Jury.
Some material in the book was provided by a witness who testified before the grand jury and who isn't restricted from revealing her testimony, McKinley said.
He'll sign copies March 23 at the Tattered Cover in lower downtown.
Matsch said some of the story also was told during the 1999 trial of a civil "whistleblower" lawsuit filed against Rockwell by former Rocky Flats engineer James Stone.
The lawsuit sought $168 million from Rockwell on behalf of the federal government. After a 5-week trial before Matsch, the jury awarded $1.4 million.
-------- nevada
High Uranium Levels Are Found in Nevada
Associated Press
Saturday March 13, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3855403,00.html
RENO, Nev. (AP) - New tests show extremely high levels of uranium in groundwater beneath an abandoned copper mine in northern Nevada, and federal regulators say more tests are needed to determine if nearby wells could be contaminated.
The Atlantic Richfield Co. has agreed to provide bottled water to at least 10 households with wells near the mine even though most private wells and all of the municipal wells met U.S. drinking water standards in the latest round of tests. The company is responsible for cleaning up the 3,500-acre former Anaconda mine site that has been mined since 1953.
Tests conducted in December found concentrations of uranium in a monitoring well at the mine at more than 200 times the Environmental Protection Agency's standard for public drinking water. Uranium is considered a carcinogen.
Armed with the new data, the EPA is pushing the state to broaden its investigation into how far the pollution may have moved off the site bordering the small, rural community of Yerington.
-------- us politics
Senate passes $2.36 trillion budget
March 13, 2004
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040312-115034-5037r.htm
The Senate passed its $2.36 trillion version of next year's budget early yesterday, giving President Bush the majority of what he wanted, but not his most prized goal of making his tax cuts permanent.
On a largely party-line vote of 51-45, Senate Republicans were able to bump up defense spending by 7 percent to $421 billion, and restrain domestic spending at $16 billion, a number promised by Senate leadership. It also takes steps to pare down the deficit, cutting it in half in three years, much faster than Mr. Bush's proposal.
"We are very excited we were able to accomplish something we didn't think we would be able to do, pass the budget and cut the deficit in half in three years with a reconciliation to stop tax increases that would take effect next year," said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Republican Caucus.
But making Mr. Bush's tax cuts tamperproof was beyond the Senate's grasp because of fears of expanding the already gaping deficit.
The Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit to reach $477 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
"I'm very confident we sent the right message to the budget community and the economists on whether or not the president and the Senate will take fiscal responsibility seriously," Mr. Santorum said.
Now the spotlight turns to the House, where the budget is expected to mirror the Senate's version. In fact, the House Budget Committee, headed by Jim Nussle, Iowa Republican, Thursday debated the fiscal outline, which has smaller tax cuts, less spending and a faster reduction of the deficit than Mr. Bush proposed.
But the House is notoriously more conservative on budget issues than the Senate and budget hard-liners in the committee are already demanding separate votes to revive pay-as-you-go rules in the budget, making it more difficult for Congress to increase spending not covered with other savings.
The House, Senate and Mr. Bush get much of their deficit reduction not from budget cuts, but from assumptions that a strengthening economy will produce more federal revenue.
Senate approval came after Republicans fought off a mountain of Democratic amendments. Many would have trimmed tax cuts on the richest Americans and shifted the money to health care, schools, firefighters or other popular programs.
Senate Democrats said the Republicans were making matters worse by calling for more tax cuts, shortchanging necessary domestic programs and doing nothing to relieve the deficit.
"I don't see any cutting of the deficit in half," Sen. Kent Conrad, North Dakota Democrat, told the Associated Press.
Mr. Conrad said absent in the plan were certain costs for the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq and easing the alternative minimum tax's growing impact on middle-income families.
Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi was the only Republican to vote against the budget. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia was the only Democrat to vote for the bill. Democratic Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Minority Whip Harry Reid of Nevada, and Tim Johnson of South Dakota didn't vote.
•This story is based in part on wire-service reports.
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Senate Approves Budget Intended to Curb Deficit
March 13, 2004
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/politics/13BUDG.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 12 - The Senate voted early Friday morning to approve a $2.4 trillion budget resolution for next year that could imperil President Bush's drive to make all his tax cuts permanent while it tries to shrink the federal deficit faster than the White House proposes.
The vote came hours after budget deliberations broke down in the House following a rebellion by Republicans who demanded that party leaders take tougher actions to control spending. Taken together, the moves reflected apprehension among some Republicans that the deficit is gaining new currency as an election-year issue.
"The budget issue is a very critical issue, and frankly, a defining issue for many members of Congress," Representative Jeb Hensarling, a freshman Texas Republican who has emerged as a leader in efforts by conservatives to rein in what they consider unsustainable spending growth, said in an interview this week. He added: "I didn't come to Congress to grow government."
The Senate passed the budget in the early morning hours on Friday on a mostly party-line vote of 51 to 45. But the Senate action, and the difficulty the budget is encountering in the House, betray concerns among some Republicans over the course of President Bush's fiscal policy. White House officials, in contrast, took issue with the notion that the administration is responsible for the deficit.
Over all, the Senate budget is similar to the White House proposal but calls for slower growth in spending and, after five years, a deficit $56 billion lower than the administration plan. Also, White House officials acknowledge that an amendment approved over objections by Senate Republican leaders will complicate efforts to extend Mr. Bush's tax cuts - though House Republican leaders already have signaled that they intend to kill the provision.
The Senate resolution calls for the deficit to fall to $202 billion in 2009 from an estimated $478 billion this year, though Democrats say they believe the proposal would not cut the deficit by nearly that much.
For most Republicans, especially those in the House, the problem they see is with spending. This week, conservative and moderate Republicans forced a delay on a committee vote on the House's proposed budget, demanding that lawmakers first draft new budget rules that would force future spending growth to be paid for with cuts in other spending.
Representative Patrick J. Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican on the budget committee, said that many Republicans were concerned that without new budget rules not enough would be done to control spending in future years.
"We wanted to have strong enforcement," Mr. Toomey said.
Representative Sue Myrick, a North Carolina Republican who is chairwoman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of almost 100 conservative House members, said President Bush's budget was a "good start." But Ms. Myrick adds: "We are in this tight budget year and concerned about what's happening with the budget. We just want to do better than he has done in holding the line on spending."
"What people at home are concerned about is spending so much money," she said.
At the White House, officials say they are growing tired of being blamed for failing to curb spending and of assertions that Congressional proposals will cut the deficit more deeply and quickly. With the exception of military spending, they say, Congress has sought more money than the administration for legislation including airline bailouts, the farm bill, retirement benefits for people who served in the military, the highway bill and the energy bill.
"President Bush has been the lever of spending restraint in Washington for his entire first term," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We welcome the Congress's interest in holding the line on spending."
On Friday, the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group made up primarily of 55 moderate House Republicans, endorsed the budget committee's intention to adopt "pay as you go" rules for spending. The group members said it was not their style "to take a `my way or the highway' stance on any piece of legislation, but we are deficit hawks who believe Congress must take bold action now to address the deficit."
House Republican leaders were taken by surprise by the revolt this week. One leadership aide said that leaders felt "bamboozled" at being caught off guard and forced to delay the committee vote - and, as a result, action on the House floor.
But Democrats wasted no time capitalizing on the dispute. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said "their stubborn refusal to pay for tax cuts makes any real deficit reduction a virtual impossibility."
Many Democrats say the principal budget problem is the effect the Bush tax cuts have already had. They point to White House projections that taxes and other government receipts, as a percentage of the gross domestic product, are expected to fall to 15.7 percent this year. That would be the lowest percentage since 1950, and a huge drop from four years ago, when receipts totaled 20.9 percent of gross domestic product. In terms of actual government receipts, the federal government is expected to bring in $1.8 trillion in 2004 as compared with $2.03 trillion in 2000.
Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, estimates that almost half of the decline in tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product has been caused by the tax cuts, and the other half by the state of the economy.
Mr. Bush and other Republicans say the tax cuts were needed - and still are necessary - to spur the economy. But some Republicans in Congress say they fear that the economic growth from the tax cuts will be frittered away over time by the effects of the deficit, unless it is more aggressively reckoned with.
"If we continue to carry a half-trillion-dollar deficit, you're going to wash away the effects of tax relief," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.
That sentiment was reflected on Wednesday, when the Senate voted 51 to 48 to adopt new rules as part of its budget resolution to force tax-cut proposals over the next five years to win at least 60 votes, unless spending cuts or increases in other taxes can be found to pay for them. Four Republicans joined all but one Democrat to support the measure. "Given our current budget position, we ought to make it harder to make the deficit worse," said Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who sponsored the amendment.
The vote came despite strong objections by the White House. Mr. Duffy said that Mr. Bush opposed the Feingold approach because "raising taxes right now is the wrong way to go."
House Republican leaders quickly signaled that they were likely to kill the provision when House and Senate budget writers met to reconcile differences in the budgets that pass the House and Senate.
Mr. Feingold's provision will not pose a problem for the extension of three popular tax breaks that expire this year and have bipartisan support for renewal: ending the so-called "marriage penalty" under which some couples pay more taxes when they marry and file jointly; expanding the 10 percent tax bracket, and keeping the child tax credit at $1,000 per year.
Republican leaders avoided having to take a stand on those Bush tax cuts that expire at the end of the decade by putting forward five-year, instead of 10-year, budgets. But the White House did get the Senate to budget for a $27 billion, or 7 percent, increase in military spending. Financing in the Senate resolution for domestic security also rises by $4 billion, or 15 percent, while other discretionary spending would rise by $2 billion, or 0.4 percent - both in line with White House proposals.
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Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters
By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54446-2004Mar12?language=printer
A string of glaring missteps by President Bush's economic team has raised alarm among the president's supporters that his economic policymakers may have lost the most basic ability to formulate a persuasive message or anticipate the political consequences of their actions.
In recent weeks, the White House has had to endure its chief economist's positive comments about job "outsourcing," or sending work overseas; controversial passages in the annual Economic Report of the President; questions over the legitimacy of Bush's 2005 budget; a California swing in which Bush bragged about the possible addition of two or three jobs to a 14-person business in Bakersfield and a flap over a job-creation forecast that not even the president could stand by.
On March 1, a host of U.S. industries began paying trade sanctions to Europe because Congress and the White House have not replaced illegal export subsidies with new aid for ailing manufacturers.
But the non-naming of Anthony F. Raimondo on Thursday as assistant commerce secretary for manufacturing and services has brought the concerns to a boil.
The long-anticipated announcement of a manufacturing czar was supposed to be a good-news day for a White House struggling with its economic message. Instead the planned, smiling photo op fizzled when it came to light that a year ago Bush's choice had opened a major plant in Beijing.
"Clearly, the machinery's not working very well," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, who noted that this White House has been known for its discipline on message.
Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbying world of K Street say that the incidents may be minor, but they are many, each amplified by the last. And they are supplying a steady, nourishing diet for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made jobs and Bush's economic policies a centerpiece of his campaign to capture the White House.
Several former administration officials said the debacle over Raimondo illustrated broader weaknesses in Bush's White House as he gears up his reelection campaign. Some Republicans said the situation crystallized their concerns about his weakened political position. These Republicans refused to speak on the record because they said that if they did, they could not be candid about the problems without infuriating Bush and his most powerful aides.
These Republicans noted that several key officials who were steeped in Bush's first campaign have moved out of the West Wing or out of the government, and their replacements -- especially in the economic arena -- have weaker political antennae.
"People are doing their jobs, but most of them don't have the authority to do something once they find a mistake," said a former official who stays in frequent touch with the West Wing. "Somebody over there has to take complete and utter responsibility for everything that is publicly released from that White House. And no one is doing that."
They also noted that Democrats are drawing scrutiny to errors and inconsistencies that might have passed unnoticed a few months ago. "This is a hyper-charged political environment, and they have not adapted," the former official said.
And Karl Rove, who is on the government payroll as the White House senior adviser, is stretched thin between trying to watch what the administration is doing and overseeing the ramping up of a campaign that has accelerated its plans in response to Kerry's early lock on the Democratic nomination.
"There's a trade-off," said a Republican who advises both the administration and the campaign. "It means you end up talking through get-out-the-vote activities instead of looking at every single element of the economic report before it is released."
A former White House official pointed to other personnel issues. Bush loaded his first economic team with brash, outspoken officials full of ideas, such as Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, National Economic Council Director Lawrence B. Lindsey and economic adviser R. Glenn Hubbard, he said.
But those ideas often clashed, and the officials proved too outspoken. So Bush swung the team in the opposite direction, filling it with replacements who would stick to the White House message and keep out of the news. But those officials have not generated fresh policies.
"They've populated the place with an absence of ideas guys, which is fine if you think you can put it on autopilot and win," he said. "But it doesn't look like it's working."
Others say the economic team was kept straight in the first two years by Joshua B. Bolten, the deputy chief of staff for policy. When Bolten left last year to head the White House budget office, the wheels started coming off the operation, one Senate Republican aide said.
Administration officials contend that as the economic recovery takes hold and jobs begin proliferating, GOP concerns will disappear. Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said that, already, the unemployment rate has fallen, disposable income has risen, single-family home ownership is at record levels and worker productivity is high.
But outside the White House, allies are worried. The recent losing streak has the administration "on its heels," said Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist at the Heritage Foundation.
This week, Reps. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.), who represent hard-hit manufacturing districts, requested a meeting with Bush to get him to refocus his economic message. "Let me try to be diplomatic about this," Manzullo said. "The president needs to bring together in a single, simple focus the things he really believes in. He's got the right stuff. He just needs to sharpen the focus."
The flap over Raimondo may be the most glaring breakdown, critics say. He is a well-respected chairman and chief executive of a prefabricated-building manufacturer. But his company -- Behlen Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Neb. -- laid off 1,180 workers from its five U.S. plants in the past three years while opening a plant in Beijing.
That was only the most recent problem. The release last month of the Economic Report of the President by the White House Council of Economic Advisers has proven to be rich fodder for Democrats, who promise it will appear in ads. First came the flap over a passage that appeared to praise the recent movement of U.S. service jobs to such low-wage countries as India: "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than make or provide it domestically."
Then, critics turned their attention to the report's anticipation that 2004 employment would on average be 2.6 million jobs higher than last year. The secretaries of commerce and the Treasury, and then the president, quickly backed off that projection.
Finally, Democrats latched on to an obtuse question in the report, "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger . . . is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" The point, administration economists said, was to question the practicality of congressional proposals to offer tax breaks to manufacturers. But Democrats accused the White House of wanting to reclassify burger flippers as Joe Lunchpails.
The reactions were unfair, said two former White House officials, but in an election year, they should have been anticipated. They said the extensive vetting process that governed previous report releases must have broken down. "Clearly, people didn't read it," one of the former officials said. "This stuff was not hard to find."
As the White House was putting out those brush fires, officials had to deal with the comments of N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw managed to anger manufacturers, software writers and even radiologists in his extended take on the "outsourcing" of jobs overseas.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," he told reporters. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing."
But administration officials concede that, so far, it has been a good thing mainly for Democrats.
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Official Says He Was Told To Withhold Medicare Data
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54524-2004Mar12.html
The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told.
Richard S. Foster, a nonpartisan Department of Health and Human Services official who has been Medicare's chief actuary for nine years, said he nearly resigned in protest because he thought the top Medicare administrator, and perhaps White House officials, were acting against the public interest by withholding information about how much changes to the program would cost.
"Certainly, Congress did not have all the information they might have wanted, or that we had," Foster said in an interview.
He said Thomas A. Scully, then administrator of the HHS agency that oversees Medicare, repeatedly told him last spring and summer that Foster would be fired if he complied with requests from Republican and Democratic lawmakers to provide cost estimates of aspects of the prescription drug legislation. Although other HHS officials ultimately assured him his job was safe, Foster said, the administration's practice of withholding budget predictions continued until the legislation was enacted in November.
Foster is regarded in government and policy circles as a competent and neutral civil servant. His disclosure set off the latest escalation of a partisan war over Medicare that has been playing out since Congress adopted the largest expansion in the history of the program.
Yesterday, congressional Democrats called for an ethics investigation and dispatched a bitter letter to President Bush, who frequently cites the new Medicare law as one of his proudest domestic accomplishments. Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) demanded a new vote on the measure, which barely passed the House and Senate, saying that "members of Congress were called to vote under false pretenses."
A Republican who helped forge the law, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), joined in the criticism. He said, "Government analysts with relevant information should never be muzzled."
The controversy over Foster's threatened dismissal, reported yesterday by the Knight Ridder news service, erupted several weeks after the White House acknowledged the administration's cost estimates for the law were significantly higher than those lawmakers relied on.
Bush had said he was willing to spend as much as $400 billion for the drug benefits and other Medicare changes during the next decade, and the Congressional Budget Office, the official fiscal advisers to Congress, predicted the law would cost $395 billion.
In late January, the White House said calculations provided by Foster, indicated the law would cost $534 billion. That provoked an outcry from Democrats and conservative Republicans concerned that the drug benefits would deepen the federal deficit.
Internal documents and federal officials made clear that the White House had known of the higher cost estimates for months. Until now, it has not been apparent the lengths to which Bush aides who negotiated the bill with Congress went to keep the figures private.
Foster, who was deputy chief actuary for the Social Security Administration for 13 years before becoming the chief Medicare actuary in 1995, said his office has a tradition of providing technical assistance to Congress "on an independent, nonpartisan basis."
But last June, he said, Scully directed him to "cease responding directly to Congress" and to funnel all cost estimates to Scully to decide which ones would be released. "More than once, Tom said he was just following orders," Foster said, adding he did not know where the orders came from but believed they might have originated in the White House.
Late that month, Foster dispatched an e-mail to several senior assistants and private actuaries in which he called the situation "nightmarish." He wrote: "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons." He said he decided to stay at his staff's urging.
Yesterday, HHS officials portrayed the matter as a conflict between Foster and Scully, who left the government for private consulting jobs a few months ago. "Those two just clearly did not get along," said Kevin Keane, assistant secretary for public affairs. "To suggest it's anyone else is way out of line."
Scully said in an interview he had never threatened Foster's job, other than in jest. "I never said to Rick, I'm going to fire him," Scully said. Scully also said he had only once forbidden Foster to release information. It would have been in response to a request from the staff of a liberal Democrat, Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (Calif.), who wanted to know the effect on Medicare premiums of a form of private-sector competition with the program that had been deleted from the House bill at the time of the request. Scully said the request was designed to "blow up the Medicare bill over something that wasn't even in there anymore."
Foster said that was not the only request that Scully blocked. "I tried to persuade him this was not in the public interest, but I was not successful," Foster said.
Stark aides said yesterday that the provision was in the bill when they asked for the information. Another congressional Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Foster sometimes conveyed information by telephone, but that White House officials routinely were on the line and sometimes instructed Foster not to answer questions.
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Kennedy Criticizes Bush 'Credibility Gap'
March 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Democrats-Kennedy.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Saturday the Bush administration has a ``widening credibility gap'' between what it tells the American people and the facts.
In the weekly Democratic radio address, Kennedy said the administration's assurances on the economy, education, health care and the war in Iraq don't match the truth.
During Bush's three years in office, ``we have seen a widening credibility gap between what the administration says and what it does,'' said Kennedy, D-Mass.
``Facts don't lie,'' he said. ``The Bush administration and the Republican Congress are giving schools only two-thirds of the funds they were promised'' by the No Child Left Behind Act.''
Kennedy's criticism followed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's comments, spoken into a microphone that he apparently did not realize was activated, that his Republican critics were ``the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen.''
An ardent backer of fellow Massachusetts Sen. Kerry's campaign, Kennedy has been one of the administration's most frequent and rabid critics, particularly on the Iraq war. In last week's Democratic radio address, Kerry pummeled Bush's Iraq policies.
On Saturday, Kennedy said, ``On no issue has the truth been a greater casualty than the war in Iraq.'' He said Bush's assertions that Iraq posed an urgent, imminent threat were just distractions to justify the war.
There was no immediate threat or nuclear weapons, he said. ``No president who takes our country to war like that deserves to be re-elected,'' he said.
Kennedy also took Bush to task for failing to come through with the economic revival and new jobs he promised when he pushed through his tax cuts.
America lost 400,000 jobs in 2003, rather than gaining 1.7 million new jobs as the president predicted, Kennedy said.
``Families across America know better,'' Kennedy said. ``Job creation in America is in the basement.''
Kennedy has been a mainstay of the Kerry effort, shifting key members of his staff to the campaign late last year when it was languishing with weak fund raising and polling numbers. He also campaigned for Kerry during the initial contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
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Why Dennis is staying in
Dennis Talks About Setting a Direction for the Democratic Party Introduction by Reverend Jesse Jackson
Video by Ryan Adkins (9 mins.)
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Chicago, Illinois Rainbow-PUSH Weekly Forum
http://www.kucinich.us/031304-illinois.php
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Reverend Jesse Jackson: I want you all to hear something real, real basic about this campaign: no matter what the polls say, no matter what the polls say, George Bush has the inside track. They stole the election without the White House; they can control it with the White House. We must overwhelm the machinery on Election Day, but I do not want to ever mislead you, because we can win and still lose unless we change assumptions. If you get the flipside of the same nickel, you have not won.
In slavery times there were liberals and conservatives. Conservatives said, "Treat the enslaved as you want; they are property." Liberals said, "Don't treat them bad; I want to go to heaven." But both liberals and conservatives were for slavery. Abolitionists was another coin. I have no interest in the liberal side of a right-wing coin. We need another coin. We need another proposition. Y'all hear what I'm saying?
I want to express my thanks to Dennis today for being in the race, and for assuming the burden of saying "you make the most sense, but you can't win". I heard that. Every now and then, sense ought to count in these campaigns. And even if sense is a minority it's going to let its light shine anyhow. You might go along with darkness -- darkness is popular -- but if this room was totally dark and someone lit one candle you would be saved by the power of the light, not by the size of the darkness. Can I get a witness here?
Somebody has got to make sense about Iraq, about Haiti, about the federal right to vote. See, no matter what the count is I hear somebody saying that no good thing will be lost if you do the Lord's work and do it right. And so, Dennis Kucinich, your work in this campaign has not been lost; keep speaking truth against the odds. A big hand for Dennis Kucinich from Cleveland, Ohio, the congressman! On your feet. Show your respect and your appreciation for Dennis Kucinich.
Dennis Kucinich: Thank you very much Reverend Jackson, my colleague, Congressman Jackson. Happy birthday to you and your daughter. Since we're all in a birthday mood, let me share that I come to the microphone with a distinction of my own in that regard. I happen to share the same birth date with Reverend Jackson, October 8th. So the stars were in alignment on October 8th -- 1941 in his case and 1946 in mine. But I was close behind.
I like to feel that the things I bring to this presidential race are also close behind, traveling in the powerful wave Reverend Jackson created for democrats years ago when he said "keep hope alive." And that wasn't true just for that one convention: it was true for all the conventions we would hold, and it's certainly true for 2004. Because while the nominee for the upcoming election may be a foregone conclusion, what we stand for as the Democratic Party is not a foregone conclusion. We must be the party that stands for peace, for health care, for voting rights, and for social and economic justice.
If justice is in fact to be the measuring line, then let us draw the line here at Push today, because we shouldn't have to choose between a Republican version of the war in Iraq and a Democratic version of the war in Iraq. We have to stand for peace. We have to stand for connecting with the world community. And we have to bring our troops home.
It's time for us to realize that when the President of the United States us took this country into a war, we were taken into that war based on a lie. We were told that Iraq had attacked us. It had not. We were told that Al Qaeda had something to do with Sadam Hussein. This also turned out to be untrue. We were told that Iraq had something to do with the anthrax attack. Not so. In fact Iraq had neither the capability nor the intention to attack the U.S. Iraq wasn't trying to get uranium from Niger. And Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Reverend Jackson, I was mayor of the City of Cleveland, and I could have helped George Bush find weapons of mass destruction. All Bush needed to do was to come to the neighborhoods of any city in America; we could have helped him find all sorts of weapons of mass destruction. Because poverty is a weapon of mass destruction! Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction! Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction! Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction, poor education is a weapon of mass destruction, and racism is a weapon of mass destruction! We have weapons of mass destruction here at home that we have not taken care of; that we have not disarmed. We have to address these things here at home before we go around the world looking for dragons to slay.
We're talking about the essential mission of government -- and John Kerry is going to need a lot of help. He may not be able to say the things he needs to say, so we need to say the things that must be said. We need to present the issues. We need to set the priorities of our party, and we need to set a direction for the Democratic Party, so when people come in November they'll
be lining up outside the polls. We need to set a direction for the Democratic Party so there will be so many people lining up to vote that it will be a like a mighty wave come to sweep this administration out of office -- a tidal wave for social and economic justice.
So I'm in this race all the way through to New Jersey and beyond. I'm in this race for peace. I'm in this race for health care. I'm in this race for jobs. I'm in this race to do everything I can to raise the level of the debate. I'm in this race, Reverend Jackson, to take the principles that you've worked your life for -- the principles that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for - and to create with them a cabinet-level Department of Peace where we can make non-violence an organizing principle in our society. What do we stand for? It's time to do away with war. It's time to do away with war and start to put a peace dividend back into our communities.
I want to thank you, Operation Push. I want to thank you for what you stand for. I want to thank you for keeping the dream alive. I want to thank you for helping to keep a catalyst for change in the Democratic Party. And I pledge to you that I'm going to stay the course. I'm going to run. I'm going to run strong, and I'm going to run hard. I'm going to run for justice. And I'm going to carry that banner for peace right into the convention. I'll be there right next to you. We'll go in together!
Thank you very much.
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-------- afghanistan
U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Offensive
Mar 13, 2004
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_MOUNTAIN_STORM?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. military on Saturday announced a sweeping new operation across troubled southern and eastern Afghanistan, with the aim of destroying al-Qaida and the Taliban and ultimately reeling in Osama bin Laden.
The offensive comes as Americans step up their hunt for the al-Qaida leader and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed to be hiding out in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We believe this will help bring the heads of the terrorist organizations to justice, by continuing placing pressure on them," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a U.S. military spokesman.
The operation, however, was "about more than one person," he said. Hilferty said American forces were confident they will eventually catch the al-Qaida leadership as well as Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, but not necessarily during the new operation.
Hilferty also said U.S. forces are involved in what he described as a "small scale air assault" in southern Afghanistan, but would not give details about the location or the target.
A senior Afghan army commander in southern Kandahar province, Haji Granai, told The Associated Press that U.S. aircraft attacked a pickup truck carrying 12 suspected Taliban in Kandahar province on Thursday, killing them all. Granai said the American planes swooped down on the truck near Sami Ghar in Maruf district, some 160 miles east of Kandahar city. Suspected Taliban militants killed seven Afghan soldiers in a raid on a border post in Maruf on Mar. 3.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment.
The overall operation, dubbed "Mountain Storm," officially began Sunday and was open-ended, Hilferty said. He said the entire 13,500-strong U.S.-led coalition was involved.
While bin Laden's whereabouts have been the subject of intense speculation, there has been no known hard evidence of his location - or even that he is alive - since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Hilferty said the operation was in effect a continuation of tactics already being used, such as intensive patrolling, village searches and impromptu checkpoints.
He declined to give specifics, but an Associated Press reporter at the military's main southern base at Kandahar noted what base personnel said was heavier than usual air traffic, with C-130 cargo planes and Chinook helicopters landing through the night.
The base also served a lobster and steak dinner on the eve of the new operation. The army traditionally serves special meals to kick off large offensives.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has said his soldiers are engaged in a "hammer-and-anvil" strategy along with Pakistani forces on the other side of the border.
Some 70,000 Pakistani troops have moved into semiautonomous tribal regions to take away maneuver room for al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives believed to have taken refuge there.
A Feb. 24 operation in Wana, the main town in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, netted 24 suspects, but none were believed to be important al-Qaida operatives.
Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. war on terrorism, has arrested more than 500 al-Qaida suspects. But Afghans also say they have not done enough to seal the border, and complain that Taliban commanders have been organizing operations from large Pakistani border towns like Quetta and Peshawar.
On Saturday, tribal elders in South Waziristan imposed a 24-hour deadline on a tribe accused of sheltering terrorists to hand over the fugitives or expect an armed force of 600 men to search the area forcibly.
A Pakistani military spokesman, Gen. Shaukat Sultan, would not comment on the new U.S. operation or say whether Pakistani troops were involved in fresh deployments on their side of the border.
Hilferty played down suggestions by defense officials in Washington that the military was embarking on a "spring offensive."
"If it continues past March 21, I assume it will be a spring operation," Hilferty said. "But spring offensive is what they media have been calling for, not us."
The military offensive also is supposed to safeguard landmark Afghan elections slated for June, when U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai is expected to secure a new term.
More than 140 people have died in violence already this year, underlining security fears ahead of the vote.
Much of the south and east of the country remains off-limits to international aid groups, and local officials complain their forces are unable to deal with the Taliban threat without more help from the Americans and the central government.
Hilferty said the previous two-month U.S. operation, called Blizzard and including 143 raids and searches, had resulted in the death of 22 "enemy combatants." No U.S. soldiers were killed in combat during the period, he said, though a number died in accidents.
--------
U.S. Launches New Afghan Push Against Bin Laden
March 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-usa-operation.html
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces have launched a sweeping new offensive in Afghanistan's remote southern and eastern mountains aimed at crushing the Taliban and al Qaeda and snaring militant leaders including Osama bin Laden.
Operation ``Mountain Storm'' was given additional significance by concerns al Qaeda could be behind Thursday's bomb attacks on Madrid trains that killed 200 people. Spain's government, however, insists the blasts were the work of Basque separatists.
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty told a Kabul news briefing on Saturday the offensive had begun on March 7 and involved troops from the 13,500-strong U.S.-led force backed by air support.
Asked if it could lead to the capture of bin Laden, Hilferty said: ``This operation is aimed like the rest at rebuilding and reconstructing and providing enduring security in Afghanistan, so it's certainly about more than one person.
``The leaders of al Qaeda and...the Taliban need to be brought to justice and will be.''
It is unlikely bin Laden would be directly involved in detailed planning of any specific operation in western Europe, but he is considered the key figure of authority in al Qaeda.
The senior military commander for Afghanistan's southern region, General Haji Granai, told Reuters U.S. aircraft attacked a truck carrying 12 suspected Taliban guerrillas in Maruf district of Kandahar province on Thursday, killing all of them.
Hilferty said he had no information on such an attack, though he told the briefing U.S. forces had carried out a small-scale air assault in the south which he declined to detail.
The campaign comes after a surge in militant attacks on aid workers and Afghan government and U.S.-led forces and ahead of presidential elections supposed to held in June.
On Saturday night, a blast was heard in the capital Kabul. Police said they appeared to have been caused by a rocket that exploded in the air, not on the ground, causing no casualties.
SPRING OFFENSIVE
U.S. defense officials told Reuters in Washington on Friday that ``Mountain Storm'' was timed to exploit improving weather in the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where bin Laden he is believed to be.
A Taliban spokesman said U.S. forces had launched offensives from the Waza Khuwa region of Paktika province to the Yakubi region of neighboring Khost province. But he said the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who headed its government that harbored the al Qaeda network, was safe.
``Mullah Omar is in a very safe place. But we don't know about Osama bin Laden,'' Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters by telephone.
U.S. officials said the secretive Task Force 121, a covert commando team of Special Operations troops and CIA personnel involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in December, has relocated people and equipment to the border region.
Pakistan has in recent weeks moved forces into the lawless tribal lands on its side of the Afghan border in the search for militants.
Lieutenant-General David Barno, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said last month the United States and Pakistan were moving toward coordinated operations along the border.
In Pakistan's South Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan, tribal elders gave 24 hours to anyone harboring al Qaeda and other militants to surrender, saying that if they failed to do so they would pursue them with a 600-man tribal militia.
U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001 after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which are blamed on al Qaeda.
-------- asia
Bush distances U.S. from Roh's woes
March 13, 2004
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040312-115036-9954r.htm
The Bush administration yesterday took a laissez faire approach to South Korea, saying the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun is an internal political matter and will not affect six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear standoff.
"We continue to work through the multilateral talks when it comes to North Korea," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said U.S.-South Korean relations and its alliance remain "strong, stable and vital."
He noted that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon had a conversation yesterday morning in which they "reaffirmed to each other that we'd keep working together and cooperating as this unfolds in Korea."
"I don't see, really, any change in the current level of cooperation. Certainly the secretary and the Korean foreign minister agreed today we'd continue to work together on this and other topics," he said.
South Korea's government was thrown into turmoil Thursday when Mr. Roh was im13 months of a five-year term. His foes charged him with failing to maintain political neutrality ahead of the April 15 parliamentary elections, a violation of the law. He was ousted by a 193-2 vote in the opposition-controlled legislature.
Prime Minister Goh Kun immediately took over as acting head of state until the Constitutional Court approves or rejects the impeachment, which could take up to six months. If Mr. Roh is removed from office, a new election will be held.
Mr. Goh, 66, pledged to stabilize the economy as Seoul's main index slumped nearly 5 percent in morning trading before coming off its lows at the close, and ordered South Korea's 700,000-strong military to heighten its security posture along the heavily fortified border with North Korea.
While Mr. Goh plans a foreign policy more independent of the United States, Mr. Boucher said the U.S.-South Korean cooperation "has been excellent on international issues as well on things like economic cooperation" and expressed confidence that it will remain so in the future.
Mitchell Reiss, the State Department's director of policy planning, also said he expects no disruption to the talks to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. The talks - which include North and South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia - are set to resume in Beijing by the end of June.
He also warned that the United States could use unspecified measures to eliminate a North Korean threat.
In a speech emphasizing that the potential for a deal depended on North Korea, Mr. Reiss' statements were a response to Pyongyang's criticism of the U.S. stance at last month's second round of six-way talks. The United States maintains that North Korea must give up its nuclear programs.
Mr. Reiss said a final deal should involve financial and food aid as well as what he called North Korea's economic and diplomatic integration in the international community.
President Bush, who has called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and prewar Iraq, has said the United States does not intend to attack the nation. But Pyongyang continues to voice fears of such an action and demands Washington drop its policy of "hostility."
The most recent round of talks in China fizzled last week after four days with just an agreement to establish working groups and to convene again before June.
The talks failed to resolve differences over the prime U.S. demand for the complete dismantling of the secretive Stalinist country's nuclear programs. North Korea called the U.S. demand "criminal" and said progress was impossible given the impasse.
The removal of Mr. Roh is not a foregone conclusion. The impeachment measure will go into effect if six or more of the court's nine judges approve the legislative vote, but seven of the current nine were appointed under the Roh administration.
"I expect the Constitutional Court to make a legal judgment which will be different from a political one," Mr. Roh said after the impeachment vote. If he is ousted, an election to pick a new president will be held within two months.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- haiti
New Haitian Premier Pledges Unity
By Ian James
Associated Press
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54394-2004Mar12.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 12 -- Gerard Latortue was sworn in Friday as Haiti's prime minister, promising to unite the country after months of bloodshed and political strife that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Latortue took the oath of office in front of 200 people, saying he was happy to serve his country. "This is an occasion for hope for all Haitians," he said. "Together we will form a responsible government that respects its institutions, and I will see that every dollar given to development projects will be well spent."
Latortue, 69, is a former U.N. official and business consultant who arrived in Haiti on Wednesday after spending much of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship, which ended in 1986, in exile in Florida. He became foreign minister in 1988 for President Leslie Manigat, who was toppled in a military coup.
Earlier, Latortue told pro-Aristide politicians that he wanted to hold legislative elections in six to eight months, said Leslie Voltaire, a cabinet minister.
Latortue, in an attempt to end speculation that the former leader's trip to Jamaica next week might lead to negotiations for his return, told reporters that Aristide is no longer Haiti's leader. Aristide has said he remains Haiti's legitimate president.
Latortue said Friday that news of Aristide's planned trip to Jamaica had caused "an increase in the tensions in Port-au-Prince." He said he told Jamaica's prime minister, Percival J. Patterson, that hosting Aristide would be viewed by Haiti as "an unfriendly act."
Latortue spoke with Patterson by telephone and said the Jamaican leader told him Aristide "had no other place to go."
U.S. officials say Aristide asked for help and that they saved his life by arranging his departure during a bloody rebellion. Aristide has taken refuge in the Central African Republic, after fleeing Haiti on Feb. 29 aboard a U.S.-chartered aircraft. His hosts have made it clear they were providing temporary asylum, as Jamaica did Thursday.
From Africa, Aristide has urged his followers to offer "peaceful resistance" to the U.S. "occupation."
Patterson said Aristide and his wife, Mildred, would visit for eight to 10 weeks to be reunited with their two young daughters, who were sent to New York City for their safety.
Also Friday, Latortue moved quickly to appoint a transitional cabinet and begin organizing elections.
Earlier, he reassured politicians from Aristide's Lavalas movement that they would be part of the transitional government, Voltaire said. "The opposition is trying to say that Lavalas doesn't exist anymore, and it shouldn't participate," Voltaire said. He said he thought Lavalas continued to command majority support "because it is the party of the poor."
Meanwhile, U.S.-led peacekeepers said Marines came under fire at an industrial park in Port-au-Prince, and gunmen fired at a nearby car dealership overnight. No injuries were reported.
-------- iraq
White House Sends Senior Official to Iraq
Aim Is to Salvage Latest Bid to Form a Government
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54538-2004Mar12.html
The Bush administration has dispatched a senior White House official to Baghdad to rescue its already troubled new attempt to form an interim Iraqi government, the pivotal step in the political transition before the U.S.-led occupation ends on June 30, according to senior U.S. officials.
The mission is, in part, to persuade the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council to quit stalling on inviting the United Nations back, both to mediate a solution to the immediate crisis and to help prepare for elections after the United States leaves. Key Shiite leaders have broken with others on the Governing Council and are frustrating U.S. attempts to get the United Nations to return, U.S. officials and envoys of coalition countries said.
The White House official is scheduled to arrive in Iraq this weekend for meetings with the U.S.-handpicked council to jumpstart the process, after L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, and other coalition officials failed to end the squabbling, U.S. officials said. At the administration's request, The Washington Post is not identifying the official before his arrival in Iraq because of security concerns.
The ability of the United States to end the occupation now depends on crafting a caretaker government that would be deemed credible by major ethnic and religious groups. Two previous plans had to be discarded after they were rejected by Iraq's most popular Shiite cleric and other leaders.
Last month, the Bush administration thought it had come up with a viable alternative by proposing to bring the United Nations back in, only to see a minority of council members stall -- partly in a bid to give the United States no choice but to hand over power to the current council, U.S. and coalition diplomats said.
"We definitely think the United Nations has an important role to play," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy. "Many Iraqis on the Governing Council agree with that, but some on the council don't for a variety of reasons."
The power dynamics are rapidly changing as the occupation moves into its final phase. The closer the transition gets to June 30, the more leverage council members feel they would have -- and the weaker they believe the coalition would be in forcing them to comply, U.S. officials say. The problem is already being referred to by administration officials as "June 30-itis."
Ironically, U.S. officials noted, the United States is now more in sync with the United Nations on the steps necessary for the transition than it is with some members of the Governing Council.
With less than four months left in the occupation, the United States wants U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to return to Iraq within two or three weeks to discuss how to form a new government. The approach favored by the United States is to enlarge the Governing Council by adding members to be selected by a "roundtable meeting" or, in Arabic, a shura of Iraqis outside the council who are not viewed as surrogates of the U.S.-led coalition, U.S. officials said.
"Brahimi's ready to go back as soon as he's invited," said a senior State Department official familiar with the standoff.
But, now, at least five Shiite members of the Governing Council are reluctant to give the United Nations a management role, U.S. officials said. The main reason is concern that they might either lose their jobs or see their power diluted as new members are added. Some Shiite members also did not like the tone of Brahimi's report last month that was implicitly critical of the council, U.S. officials said.
"Bremer has been talking to the Iraqis about getting the United Nations back. It would be good if the Iraqis would ask the U.N. to help out. They haven't done it yet, so we continue to talk to them. Bremer's got his hands full," the senior State Department official said.
But the United States also wants the Iraqi council to invite the United Nations to take the lead in organizing Iraq's first national elections, due to be held by year's end, according to a new interim constitution signed last week. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has stipulated that Iraq must make a formal request and has noted that time is running out.
A preliminary U.N. assessment last month estimated that preparations -- for a census, voter registration, civic education, party formation, candidate selection, campaigning and a vote -- would take at least eight months. To meet its own deadline, the United Nations would have to be ready to operate in Iraq by the end of April, seven weeks away.
The world body currently has no diplomats in Iraq. Two suicide bombings at its Baghdad headquarters, in August and October, killed about two dozen staff members, including top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Just getting up and running could take several weeks, U.S. officials and envoys from coalition countries say.
--------
Iraqi Police Suspected In Slaying of Americans
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54346-2004Mar12.html
BAGHDAD, March 12 -- Four men suspected in the slaying of two Americans working for the occupation authority in Iraq appear to be active Iraqi police officers, U.S. officials said Friday.
The Americans, Fern L. Holland, 33, and Robert J. Zangas, 44, and Holland's Iraqi translator, Salwa Ourmashi, were shot dead around 6 p.m. Tuesday near Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Shortly afterward, Polish troops apprehended six Iraqi men riding in the victims' car and discovered that four carried cards that identified them as police, officials said.
"Four of them had current and, we believe, valid Iraqi Police Service identifications," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, told reporters Friday. Kimmitt cautioned that it was too early to say definitively that the suspects were involved in the attack or that the attackers knew that their victims worked for the occupation authority.
The new evidence raised questions about the screening of Iraqi security forces, a key component of the U.S. strategy to give control of Iraq back to Iraqis. To speed the return home of U.S. troops in Iraq, military and security officials are attempting to establish five Iraqi security forces, including a national police force of 85,000 officers.
As of Friday, 2,827 had graduated from an eight-week training course for recruits without police experience; 12,422 who had been police officers under the government of Saddam Hussein had finished a three-week course.
But the demands associated with hiring, screening, training and outfitting those forces have posed frequent problems. Because Iraq does not have accurate census records and many criminal records are spotty or inaccurate, applicants are often hired on the basis of little more than a quick oral interview. In Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, found last winter that more than 200 officers in the new force already had been dismissed or had their pay cut for crimes that included theft, extortion and even kidnapping.
On Thursday, the top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said he was "very concerned" about the possible penetration of guerrillas and insurgents into the new security forces. On Friday, however, other U.S. officials repeatedly defended the selection of police officers as "robust" and said that mistakes in the recruitment process were rare.
"While it is a robust vetting process, it is not perfect, as is to be expected not just only in the Iraqi security forces but in security forces around the world," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the occupation authority.
Noting that more than 150,000 Iraqis have joined the new services, Senor said that the vast majority were honest, law-abiding and committed to creating a democratic and peaceful country. Occurrences of crime and corruption have been "isolated incidents," he said: "They are exceptions. They are not the rule."
The FBI and Iraqi police are investigating the killings of the three occupation authority employees. The six people in detention are being interrogated, but there are no independent witnesses to the killings, officials said.
Investigators are trying to reconstruct the crime scene and are examining tire marks found there. Although initial reports stated that the victims were shot after they stopped at a makeshift checkpoint, Kimmitt said Friday that "they may have been chased or run off the road."
The three victims were driving without a military escort and in a vehicle not protected by armor. More than a dozen bullets hit the driver's side of the dark four-door sedan in which the victims were riding, a U.S. official said Friday.
The victims worked in the occupation authority's south-central regional office. Holland helped set up women's rights centers, and Zangas worked with Iraqi journalists.
[The Associated Press reported that a roadside bomb early Saturday in Hussein's home town of Tikrit killed two members of the Army's 1st Infantry Division and wounded four others.]
--------
Iraqi Policemen Tied to Killing of 2 Americans
March 13, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/international/middleeast/13IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - American officials said today that four men arrested in connection with the killing of two American civilians working for the American occupation authority were apparently members of the new 70,000-member American-trained Iraqi police force.
A fifth man seized in the killings was a former member of the police force under Saddam Hussein, an American spokesman said, while the sixth man was described as a civilian. The killings occurred on a road near the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Tuesday, when gunmen pursued the Americans and their Iraqi interpreter and raked them with automatic rifle fire.
The slayings have shocked the Americans here, who now face the possibility that the men to whom they turn for cooperation in fighting the insurgency may include insurgent infiltrators or those paid to do their work. When the killings were first reported, officials said the killers were rebels disguised as policemen, but they said Friday that four of the arrested men had current and valid documents identifying them as policemen.
At a news conference in Baghdad, American officials identified one of the victims as Fern L. Holland, 33, of Tulsa, Okla., a Washington lawyer who was in Iraq to lead classes in democracy and women's rights. Her American companion was identified as Robert J. Zangis, 44, of Prince William County, Va., a computer software salesman and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot who fought in Iraq last year as a reservist, then returned here to work with Iraqi newspapers and broadcasting outlets on issues of press freedom.
The two were the first civilians working for the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in the insurgency that has been fighting a 130,000-member American force for much of the last year.
American officials refused to give further details of the attack on the civilians, saying they were holding back out of respect for the victims' families and because an F.B.I. team that has joined Iraqi investigators has yet to complete its work. But they vigorously defended their vetting procedures for police recruits, saying police forces everywhere have "corrupt" individuals who escape detection on entry.
The rebuilding of the Iraqi police began when the country's security forces virtually evaporated last year and the Americans disbanded Saddam Hussein's army. United States officials say there are now 150,000 Iraqis serving in the newly reconstituted army, police, civil defense force and border guard, as well as a security force known as the Facilities Protection Service. They say many of them have served bravely in the fight against the insurgents and suffered high casualties. The Iraqi police have lost 325 men from insurgent attacks during the occupation, and with other Iraqi security units, have taken more casualties than American troops have, the Americans say.
Many of the Iraqis in the security forces, the Americans acknowledge, are veterans of Mr. Hussein's security forces who have been only hastily vetted for ties to the brutality of the past and given only short courses in Western-style practices and values.
In the case of the new police force, American officials say, about 90 percent of the recruits were policemen during Mr. Hussein's rule, and most of them have been given uniforms and weapons after what the Americans call a "transition and integration program," a three-week course in Western styles of policing, respect for the law and concern for individual and community rights.
The killing of the Americans raised perplexing questions about their own security. One is why Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangis were permitted to travel in a car without armor plating or armed guards. Officials declined comment.
A second question is whether the Americans were attacked because of their work advocating Western values that sometimes conflict with the conservative, Islam-based mores of Iraqi society. Again, Americans officials declined to say, but they offered a defense of the promotion of women's and human rights that has occurred at Hilla, the two Americans' destination, and other centers.
One official with knowledge of the killings said: "Are there short-term costs involved? You bet, we've experienced that this week. But is it worth it? We think it is."
[Early Saturday, two American soldiers were killed in Tikrit when a roadside bomb destroyed their Humvee, The Associated Press said, quoting Capt. Tim Crowe of the Army. The attack came a day after the military said two soldiers were killed in a similar blast near Habbaniya.]
Until American officials give a fuller account, it will be impossible to determine exactly what happened in the attack at Abu Gharaq, a farming area beside the Euphrates River that the victims were passing through en route to the southern regional headquarters of the occupation authority at Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.
One clue left at the site the day after the attack were tire tracks suggesting that the Americans' car had veered off the divided highway, across a median strip and oncoming lanes, then down an earth embankment until it struck another embankment 70 yards farther on. American officials said this suggested that the two Americans lost control when their vehicle was fired on at speed.
Iraqi police officers in Karbala offered more evidence on Friday. They identified several of the arrested men as belonging to the drugs division of the Karbala police, which has its offices opposite the American-financed women's center that Ms. Holland, Mr. Zangis and their interpreter had often visited. This suggested that the killers might have conducted some sort of surveillance of the Americans beforehand.
"They are from our police department," a Karbala police spokesman, Rahman al-Mussawi Diab, told Agence France-Presse. "They are suspected of being involved. The case is under investigation, but they are innocent until proven guilty."
The A.F.P. report also quoted the Hilla police chief, Keis Hamser Abud, as saying that witnesses had identified the killers as having worn police uniforms, and that most of the men now held as suspects were wearing uniforms when arrested.
Mr. Abud suggested that the men might have been paid to carry out the attack - a pattern American commanders have described as common during the insurgency. "We are living in a time when we cannot have pure policemen 100 percent of the time," Mr. Abud said. "There are policemen who are weak to bribery."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel to Push Ahead With Unilateral Moves
Mar 13, 2004
By JASON KEYSER
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel will push forward with plans to withdraw from some Palestinian areas and draw its own borders if a summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders next week doesn't revive a peace plan, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Saturday.
The Israeli and Palestinian leaders tentatively agreed to meet Tuesday if a final planning session goes well on Sunday.
Meanwhile Saturday, Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian militants who were crawling through an off-limits zone toward a fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, the military said.
The men were armed with assault rifles, 10 grenades and a pipe bomb, and apparently planned to cross the fence to attack an Israeli farming village, the military said.
A long-delayed first summit between Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia will focus on jump-starting the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, stalled since it was launched last June. The plan aims to end more than three years of fighting and create a Palestinian state next year.
But neither side has met first-phase requirements under the plan, which was drawn up by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
The Palestinians have refused to crack down on militant groups that have killed more than 450 people in suicide bombings alone, in addition to staging numerous shooting attacks. And Israel has not gone ahead with troop pullbacks or frozen construction in Jewish settlements built on land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Palestinians want for their future country.
Amid the deadlock, Sharon has threatened to pursue unilateral moves to "disengage" from the Palestinians. Israel would pull troops and settlers out of nearly all of Gaza and perhaps also parts of the West Bank. Israel would then draw its own temporary border with the West Bank, but one that would leave the Palestinians with much less land than they seek.
Palestinians fear Sharon's plan is to pull forces out of Gaza, but further entrench Israel in large parts of the West Bank, making it impossible to create a viable independent state there.
There are also suspicions that Sharon's talk of unilateral moves means Israel is quietly abandoning the concept of a negotiated solution to generations of Mideast conflict.
For now, Israel is pursuing both the peace program and its plan for a unilateral separation if the road map leads nowhere.
"We are proceeding with the road map as if there is no disengagement plan and proceeding with the disengagement plan as if there is no road map," Sharon adviser Assaf Shariv told The Associated Press.
But a failure to nail down progress on the peace plan in next week's summit could bring Israel a step closer to implementing the disengagement plan, Shariv said.
"If we don't advance in the road map, then we have our own plan," he said. However, Shariv stopped short of saying Israel would abandon the road map altogether.
Palestinian officials also said the road map plan would be at the center of the summit.
A high-ranking Palestinian official said the two leaders would form committees to work out a timetable and logistics for an Israeli troop pullback to lines held before fighting broke out in September, 2000. The road map calls for such a pullback.
The two Palestinians killed Saturday were sent by the military wing of the radical Islamic Hamas and a smaller Gaza militant group called the Ahmed Abu al-Resh Brigades, whose members come from Arafat's Fatah movement.
The military suspects the men were planning to attack the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, which is just across the fence.
Also, Israeli forces arrested three suspected weapons smugglers along the Gaza-Egypt border and confiscated bags containing 30 Kalashnikov rifles, an army spokesman said Saturday.
In another development, a 29-year-old Palestinian woman deported from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip more than a year ago for sewing explosives belts worn by suicide bombers will return home Sunday, Israeli military officials and Palestinians said.
Earlier this month, an Israeli appeals committee cut Intisar Ajouri's sentence by half a year, clearing the way for her release
-------- spies
Rumsfeld defends Iraq terror study
March 13, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040312-115035-6924r.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday defended the work of a small team of analysts who wrote a report outlining years of reported contacts between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network.
The two-person team began reviewing existing intelligence reports of such contacts shortly after September 11. Scanning a secure computer, the team gleaned scores of reports of Iraqi officials visiting bin Laden's headquarters in Sudan and Afghanistan. The reports suggested that Saddam's bomb-makers lent their expertise to al Qaeda operatives.
The Pentagon team's work has been condemned by liberal journalists and Democrats for, in their view, going outside the Central Intelligence Agency.
The team's report became the brunt of criticism this week at a Senate hearing, as Democratic Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Carl Levin of Michigan grilled CIA Director George J. Tenet on pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But to Mr. Rumsfeld, the team's work was routine. "They were asked to review intelligence reports on a certain subject, which they did, which is perfectly proper thing for policy people to do," he said at a Pentagon "Town Hall" meeting. "We do it all the time. There's nothing new about that. You're not creating intelligence. You're not gathering intelligence. You're reviewing intelligence that already exists, so that you can support your superiors in the policy shop. That is what that was about."
Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the team's supervisor, eventually provided the secret report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The office of Vice President Dick Cheney also received a briefing.
Pentagon sources told The Washington Times, which first reported the group's existence in 2002, that Mr. Feith's advisers believed the CIA downplayed links between Baghdad and al Qaeda. They wanted to do their own intelligence analysis to show links the CIA ignored or did not believe existed, the defense sources said.
But some CIA analysts viewed the work as encroaching on their turf. Mr. Tenet has stated he does not agree with all the Pentagon's conclusion on al Qaeda-Baghdad ties.
Mr. Rumsfeld yesterday defended his team's work as "not only not a bad thing, it's a good thing."
"We briefed the vice president. We briefed the DCI [director of Central Intelligence]. We briefed the secretary of state," he said.
Mocking critics and their "conspiratorial view," Mr. Rumsfeld adjusted his voice into a whisper. "Why did they do that?"
Then he answered his critics: "They did it because they wanted to be briefed."
--------
Pentagon Shadow Loses Some Mystique
Feith's Shops Did Not Usurp Intelligence Agencies on Iraq, Hill Probers Find
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54569-2004Mar12?language=printer
In February 2002, Christina Shelton, a career Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was combing through old intelligence on Iraq when she stumbled upon a small paragraph in a CIA report from the mid-1990s that stopped her.
It recounted a contact between some Iraqis and al Qaeda that she had not seen mentioned in current CIA analysis, according to three defense officials who work with her. She spent the next couple of months digging through 12 years of intelligence reports on Iraq and produced a briefing on alleged contacts Shelton felt had been overlooked or underplayed by the CIA.
Her boss, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and the point man on Iraq, was so impressed that he set up a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was so impressed he asked her to brief CIA Director George J. Tenet in August 2002. By summer's end, Shelton had also briefed deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Shelton's analysis, and the White House briefings that resulted, are new details about a small group of Pentagon analysts whose work has cast a large shadow of suspicion and controversy as Congress investigates how the administration used intelligence before the Iraq war.
Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops -- the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group -- were established by Rumsfeld, Feith and other defense hawks expressly to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They argue that the offices supplied the administration with information, most of it discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush, Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
But interviews with senior defense officials, White House and CIA officials, congressional sources and others yield a different portrait of the work done by the two Pentagon offices.
Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both parties say. Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to war.
At the same time, the Pentagon operation was created, at least in part, to provide a more hard-line alternative to the official intelligence, according to interviews with current and former defense and intelligence officials. The two offices, overseen by Feith, concluded that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda were much more closely and conclusively linked than the intelligence community believed.
In this sense, the offices functioned as a pale version of the secret "Team B" analysis done by administration conservatives in the mid-1970s, who concluded the intelligence community was underplaying the Soviet military threat. Rumsfeld, in particular, has a history of skepticism about the intelligence community's analysis, including assessments of the former Soviet Union's military ability and of threats posed by ballistic missiles from North Korea and other countries.
Rumsfeld's known views -- and his insistence before the war that overthrowing Hussein was part of the war on terrorism -- only enhanced suspicion about the aims and role played by Feith's offices.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the intelligence panel, charged that Feith's work "reportedly involved the review, analysis and promulgation of intelligence outside of the U.S. intelligence community."
Levin pressed Tenet on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "Is it standard operating procedure for an intelligence analysis such as that to be presented at the NSC [National Security Council] and the office of the vice president without you being part of the presentation? Is that typical?"
"My experience is that people come in and may present those kinds of briefings on their views of intelligence," responded Tenet, who said he had not known about the briefings at the time. "But I have to tell you, senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects. From my perspective, it is my view that prevails."
Hussein's Role
Feith, who worked on the NSC staff in the Reagan administration, is a well-known conservative voice on Israel policy who once urged the Israeli prime minister to repudiate the Oslo peace accords. His views are a source of tension between him and foreign policy officials at the State Department and elsewhere who advocate concessions be made by Palestinians and Israel to achieve a peace settlement.
No sooner had Bush announced that the United States was at war on terrorism than it became Feith's job to come up with a strategy for executing such a war.
"We said to ourselves, 'We are at war with an international terrorist network that includes organizations, state supporters and nonstate supporters. What does that mean to be at war with a network?' " Feith said in an interview.
But Feith felt he needed to bring on help in the Pentagon for another reason, too, said four other senior current and former Pentagon civilians: the belief that the CIA and other intelligence agencies dangerously undervalued threats to U.S. interests.
"The strategic thinking was the Middle East is going down the tubes. It's getting worse, not better," said one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely with Feith's offices. "I don't think we thought there was objective evidence that could be got from CIA, DIA, INR," he added, referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main intelligence office, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Feith's office worked not only on "how to fight Saddam Hussein but also how to fight the NSC, the State Department and the intelligence community," which were not convinced of Hussein's involvement in terrorism, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Feith set up the first of his two shops, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, to "study al Qaeda worldwide suppliers, chokepoints, vulnerabilities and recommend strategies for rendering terrorist networks ineffective," according to a January 2002 document sent to DIA.
The group never grew larger than two people, said Feith and William J. Luti, who was director of the Office of Special Plans and deputy undersecretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.
The evaluation group's largest project was what one participant called a "sociometric diagram" of links between terrorist organizations and their supporters around the world, mostly focused on al Qaeda, the Islamic Resistance Movement (or Hamas), Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. It was meant to challenge the "conventional wisdom," said one senior defense official, that terrorist groups did not work together.
It looked "like a college term paper," said one senior Pentagon official who saw the analysis. It was hundreds of connecting lines and dots footnoted with binders filled with signals intelligence, human source reporting and even thirdhand intelligence accounts of personal meetings between terrorists.
One of its key and most controversial findings was that there was a connection between secular states and fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
If anything, the analysis reinforced the view of top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul N. Wolfowitz and Feith, that Hussein's Iraq had worrisome contacts with al Qaeda over the last decade that could only be expected to grow.
The evaluation group's other job was to read through the huge, daily stream of intelligence reporting on terrorism and "highlight things of interest to Feith," said one official involved in the process. "We were looking for connections" between terrorist groups.
From time to time, senior defense officials called bits of intelligence to the attention of the White House, they said. Feith said the worldwide threat study itself never left the Pentagon. It helped inform the military strategy on the war on terrorism, but it was only one small input into that process, he said.
Mainly, the work of the evaluation group, Luti said, "went into the corporate memory."
'Very Helpful'
In the summer of 2002, Shelton, who had been working virtually on her own, was joined by Christopher Carney, a naval reservist and associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Together they completed their study on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
"It was interesting enough that I brought it to Secretary Rumsfeld because Secretary Rumsfeld is well known for being a particularly intelligent reader of intelligence," Feith said.
Rumsfeld told Feith, " 'Call George and tell him we have something for him to see,' " Feith said. On Aug. 15, 2002, a delegation from Pentagon was buzzed through the guard station at CIA headquarters for the Tenet meeting. Shelton and Carney were the briefers; Feith and DIA Director Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby accompanied them.
"The feedback that I got from George right after the briefing was, 'That was very helpful, thank you,' " Feith said.
CIA officials who sat in the briefing were nonplussed. The briefing was all "inductive analysis," according to one participant's notes from the meeting. The data pointed to "complicity and support," nothing more. "Much of it, we had discounted already," said another participant.
Tenet, according to agency officials, never incorporated any of the particulars from the briefing into his subsequent briefings to Congress. He asked some CIA analysts to get together with Shelton for further discussions.
Feith also arranged for Shelton to brief deputy national security adviser Hadley and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
"Her work did not change [Hadley's] thinking because his source for intelligence information are the products produced by the CIA," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Nor did the briefing's content reach national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney or Bush, according to McCormack and Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems. (In November 2003, a written version of her PowerPoint briefing, a version submitted to the intelligence committees investigating prewar intelligence, was published in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.) The briefing openly challenged the prevailing CIA view that a religion-based terrorist, Osama bin Laden, would not seek to work with a secular state such as Iraq. "They were the ones who were intellectually unwilling to rethink this issue," one defense official said. "But they were not willing to shoot it down, either."
Whatever the agency really thought of Shelton's analysis, on Oct. 7, 2002, CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin sent a letter to the Senate intelligence committee which, in a general sense, supported her conclusion: "We have solid evidence of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade," it said. ". . . Growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's link to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."
A Nondescript Name
In August 2002, as the possibility of war with Iraq grew more likely, Luti's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NESA) was reorganized into the Office of Special Plans and NESA. Its job, according to Feith and Luti, was to propose strategies for the war on terrorism and Iraq.
It was given a nondescript name to purposefully hide the fact that, although the administration was publicly emphasizing diplomacy at the United Nations, the Pentagon was actively engaged in war planning and postwar planning.
The office staff never numbered more than 18, including reservists and people temporarily assigned. "There are stories that we had hundreds of people beavering away at this stuff," Feith said. ". . . They're just not true."
The office's job was to devise Pentagon policy recommendations for the larger interagency decision-making on every conceivable issue: troop deployment planning, coalition building, oil sector maintenance, war crimes prosecution, ministry organization, training an Iraqi police force, media strategy and "rewards, incentives and immunity" for former Baath Party supporters, according to a chart hanging in the special plans office, Room 1A939, several months ago.
The insular nature of Luti's office, and his outspoken personal conviction that the United States should remove Hussein, sparked rumors at the Pentagon that the office was collecting intelligence on its own, that it had hired its own intelligence agents. Even diehard Bush supporters, some of whom were critical of Feith's and Luti's management style, were repeating the rumors.
Yesterday, Rumsfeld addressed the controversy, saying critics of the Office of Special Plans had a "conspiratorial view of the world." Shelton's analysis, he emphasized, was shared with the CIA, and White House briefings were not unusual.
"We brief the president. We brief the vice president. We brief the [CIA director]. We brief the secretary of state. . . . That is not only not a bad thing, it's a good thing."
-------- us
A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
March 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html
As of Friday, March 12, 558 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. Of those, 379 died as a result of hostile action and 179 died of non-hostile causes, the department said. The department did not provide an update Saturday.
The British military has reported 58 deaths; Italy, 17; Spain, eight; Bulgaria, five; Thailand, two; Denmark, Ukraine, Estonia and Poland have reported one each.
Since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 420 U.S. soldiers have died -- 264 as a result of hostile action and 156 of non-hostile causes, according to the military.
Since the start of military operations, 2,788 U.S. service members have been injured as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department's figures as of Friday. Non-hostile injured numbered 424.
The latest deaths reported by U.S. Central Command:
-- Two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb Saturday in Tikrit.
The latest identifications reported by family members:
-- Army Staff Sgt. Joey Dunigan, 37, Benton, Ky.; killed Thursday when his vehicle rolled over a bomb northeast of Habbiniyah; 1/16th Infantry Battalion, Fort Riley, Kan.
-------- propaganda wars
Report: Spain Told Envoys to Point Finger at ETA
March 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-spain-explosions-ambassadors.html
MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government told its ambassadors to spread the word that armed Basque separatist group ETA was to blame for the Madrid bombings within hours of the attacks, a leading newspaper reported on Saturday.
``You should use any opportunity to confirm ETA's responsibility for these brutal attacks, thus helping to dissipate any type of doubt that certain interested parties may want to promote,'' El Pais quoted Foreign Minister Ana Palacio as writing in a memo.
Officials could not be immediately reached for comment on the report in a paper linked to the opposition Socialists.
Simultaneous explosions on Thursday morning ripped through commuter trains, killing 199 people and wounding nearly 1,500.
Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government was quick to point to ETA as its prime suspect, but suspicions have also emerged that Muslim militants may have been behind the attack.
As well as the huge security implications, pinning down responsibility is crucial to Sunday's general election.
If ETA is to blame, that could benefit the ruling party because of its tough stance against the Basque separatists. But if there was al Qaeda or other radical Islamic involvement, it may be viewed as the price of Aznar's support for war in Iraq.
El Pais said Palacio's internal memo, sent at around 5:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. EST) on Thursday, quoted earlier statements by Interior Minister Angel Acebes.
``The Interior Minister has confirmed ETA's responsibility. This is confirmed by the explosive and style used, as well as other information that has not yet been made public for obvious reasons,'' the text said, according to the newspaper.
Since then, the Spanish government has seemed less certain, affirming ETA remains its main line of investigation but saying it is also pursuing other theories.
The discovery of a van with detonators and a tape in Arabic, plus a purported letter claiming responsibility for a group aligned to al Qaeda, have fed suspicions of Arab involvement.
ETA denied responsibility late on Friday.
El Pais said Foreign Ministry officials would not comment on Palacio's memo or whether modified instructions had been sent out to ambassadors at any point afterwards.
The newspaper said ``an immediate consequence'' of Palacio's memo was a ``clash'' in the U.N. Security Council between Spain's second most senior diplomat there and the Russian ambassador.
``The latter was reluctant to approve a resolution about the attack in Madrid which condemned ETA, arguing nothing like that had ever been done before, because it is normally impossible to show responsibility for a terrorist act the same day it has been committed,'' it said.
The U.N. Security Council voted, however, 15-0 to accept the word of the Spanish government and condemn ETA on Thursday despite hesitations from Russia, Germany and others.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
1M in Drugs Not in Fla. Evidence Room
March 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Missing-Evidence.html
DELAND, Fla. (AP) -- State police will inspect a sheriff's office evidence compound after $1 million in drugs was reported missing.
A six-person team from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will inspect the evidence room at the Volusia County Sheriff's Office, said sheriffs spokesman Gary Davidson on Saturday.
Last month, Sheriff Ben Johnson announced that 370 pounds of marijuana and 1.89 pounds of cocaine worth $456,000 was missing from the office's evidence room.
Timothy W. Wallace, 47, the former evidence manager, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and marijuana. He was released on $300,000 bail and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Davidson said Saturday another 600 pounds of marijuana are missing.
The marijuana was housed in the same place as the other missing drugs and likely disappeared the same way, Davidson said. He would not say whether there were suspects.
The state inspection begins Monday.
-------- homeland security
U.S. convention security focusing on rail threat
March 13, 2004
By Tom Ramstack
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040312-103014-6315r.htm
Law-enforcement agencies are designing a security plan for the Democratic and Republican national conventions intended to avoid the kind of bombings that killed 199 persons at Madrid rail stations Thursday.
Both the political conventions this summer will be held in buildings on top of rail stations.
"We will take that into consideration because we continue to adjust our security measures to take into account any change in circumstances," said Ann Roman, spokeswoman for the Secret Service, the lead law-enforcement agency for security plans for the conventions.
She refused to give details other than to say train security has been considered.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin yesterday advising state officials, police, transit and rail agencies to be more vigilant against terrorism.
Locally, Amtrak and Metro are increasing their surveillance and watching for unattended bags.
In Madrid, 10 bombs detonated within minutes of each other on trains in downtown stations the trains were approaching. The death toll continues to rise among the roughly 1,400 people injured.
Although investigators still are trying to determine who planted the bombs, the "coordination" of the attack points to al Qaeda terrorists, the same group that orchestrated the September 11 attacks, according to Homeland Security Department officials.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for July 26-29 in Boston's Fleet Center, which is served by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority trains at the transit agency's North Station.
The Republican National Convention is scheduled for Aug. 30-Sept. 2 in New York's Madison Square Garden. About 600,000 passengers daily ride trains from Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and the local subway system at Pennsylvania Station, under Madison Square Garden.
The Homeland Security Department has declared the conventions "national special security events," the department's highest security category.
As a result, the Secret Service is in charge of coordinating security and the FBI is supposed to collect intelligence and provide crisis management.
Local police in New York and Boston are responsible for controlling the streets. They also are monitoring the Internet and various protest groups, trying to identify potential terrorists.
About 48,000 people are expected at the Republican National Convention and 35,000 at the Democratic National Convention.
Some local officials in both New York and Boston want to keep the rail stations open for public use during the conventions. Although they won their case to keep Pennsylvania Station open, a decision on Boston's North Station is pending.
Other potential security measures include posting National Guard troops in stations or subjecting passengers to searches.
However, Asa Hutchison, the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, said searches of rail passengers seem an unlikely solution to security concerns throughout the nation's public transit systems.
"That's not a solution that we're looking at at this time in terms of 100 percent inspection of passengers and bags," Mr. Hutchison said yesterday.
More likely solutions include use of law-enforcement officers patrolling transit stations, bomb-detection squads and public announcements intended to warn passengers to say alert for suspicious items and situations.
In addition, Mr. Hutchison said, "There's a lot the public can't see."
Although he refused to disclose details, he said the Homeland Security Department has spent $115 million on rail-security projects since May. They included "pilot programs" such as biological weapons detectors hidden in rail stations.
Mr. Hutchison also said current U.S. security systems probably could stop the type of attack that occurred on the Spanish trains.
Other specialists in public transit and terrorism are less certain.
"In this day and age, terrorists can strike anywhere and anytime," said Bill Millar, spokesman for the American Public Transportation Association, the trade group for transit agencies. "You can never be 100 percent sure that you are prepared for every eventuality."
In addition, trains have been a lower priority than airline security, said Bert Mizusawa, president of anti-terrorism defense contractor ITA Inc. The Springfield company designs software to identify vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks and equipment to protect against them.
"We don't have the same safety procedures for trains." Mr. Mizusawa said. "You would have to have everybody go through metal detectors."
Public transit worldwide has been a preferred target of terrorists because of the opportunity for mass casualties and widespread disruption within a community.
•Jerry Seper contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Passenger Trains Vulnerable To Terror Attacks, Bulletin Warns
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53873-2004Mar12.html
U.S. officials expressed concern yesterday that terrorists might target passenger railroads and subways in the United States after the deadly synchronized bombings on three trains in Spain on Thursday, but in a confidential bulletin to local authorities federal officials acknowledged that transit systems are difficult to secure against a sneak attack.
"We acknowledge the U.S. rail sector has vulnerabilities which terrorists may choose to exploit," said the bulletin, sent Thursday to local law enforcement officials and transit authorities. "Trains and rail stations remain potential targets for terrorist groups due to their reduced security (in comparison to airports)."
Transit systems across the country, including the Washington area's Metro system and New York's subway, tightened security yesterday as federal officials kept in close touch with them about the latest intelligence from Madrid on the 10 tightly choreographed bombings that killed nearly 200 people during the morning rush hour on Thursday. The attacks came five weeks after a Moscow subway bombing that killed 41 people.
Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, told reporters yesterday that the U.S. intelligence community has "no specific indicators that terrorist groups are considering such attacks in the United States in the near term."
Yet Hutchinson also said that "we've had a substantial concern over the threat of attack on our mass-transit systems," in part because of what he and other government officials say is al Qaeda's ceaseless preoccupation with striking U.S. transportation networks of all sorts.
U.S. officials say they are unsure whether the attacks in Madrid were the work of Basque separatists, who have killed hundreds of people in Spain, or of al Qaeda. "The complexity and coordinated nature of the attacks" pointed toward al Qaeda, Hutchinson said. But he expressed skepticism about a claim of responsibility for the attacks by a group called the Abu Hafs Brigade, which is allegedly tied to al Qaeda, because the group had made a now-discredited claim that it caused the electrical blackout in the East and Midwest last year.
Since the Madrid bombings, transit police have increased patrols in the Washington Metro with bomb-sniffing dogs and swept stations of extraneous equipment, much of it left by escalator mechanics.
"We're doing better housekeeping, making sure everything is locked down," said Metro Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson. Hanson recorded a message repeatedly broadcast in the rail system referring to Madrid and reminding passengers to report suspicious people and packages.
At Washington's Union Station, the ramped-up security first ordered on Thursday also included an increase in Amtrak police patrols and the use of dogs, Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel said.
Hutchinson said officials are not considering requiring the inspection of all luggage and packages on passenger trains "at this time." Security experts said that is in part because of the massive costs and logistics that would be involved.
The security quandary was obvious at Union Station yesterday, as a small contingent of Amtrak police officers in blue fatigues walked through a long corridor lining the gates while a sea of travelers shopped, dined or hurried to their trains. The uniformed presence was nowhere near as visible or pervasive as it is at some federal buildings in the capital.
The Madrid bombings were a concern for some -- though not all -- travelers yesterday. J. Alexander Kent, 33, waiting at Union Station for a train to Philadelphia, said he had reservations about traveling on a train. He said he would like train stations to take the same precautions as airports by installing metal detectors and screening luggage. Even if such precautions mean a longer wait or more expensive train tickets, Kent said, "I'm willing to pay the price."
In New York, officials said some transit police officers are carrying portable devices for monitoring radiation and evidence of a chemical or biological attack.
Washington's Metro system and San Francisco International Airport are experimenting with sophisticated fixed chemical sensors that are designed to activate massive redirections of airflow to remove toxins from crowds, officials said.
Passenger trains are not the only concern; government officials and environmental groups such as Greenpeace also worry about freight trains carrying hazardous chemicals such as chlorine and ammonia. The Homeland Security Department works closely with industry executives to secure such rail cars.
But the news from Madrid dramatized in particular the risks in passenger rail travel. Hanson said the authorities need the help of the system's customers.
"We've got to ask our passengers . . . to demonstrate a certain level of attention," she said. "If you got on a train and someone leaves a backpack and gets off, don't sit there and wonder if you should say something. You need to be jumping out of your seat and get on the intercom and tell the train operator."
Staff writers Lindsey Layton and Manny Fernandez in Washington and special correspondent Michelle Garcia in New York contributed to this report.
--------
Bombings Lead U.S. to Raise Security for Trains
March 13, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SARAH KERSHAW
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/national/13ATTA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 12 - Law enforcement and transit authorities said Friday that they were moving to bolster security on passenger rail lines around the country, particularly in the crowded Northeast corridors. But some officials warned that rail and subway systems remained particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks like the ones in Madrid.
In the hours after the attacks, officials busily moved to put more bomb-detection teams, electronic devices and other measures in place from Washington to New York to Seattle. Transportation experts said, however, that the Madrid bombings underscored the fact that rail security had lagged woefully behind aviation improvements since the 9/11 attacks. And Democrats in Congress quickly proposed a $500 million commitment for rail security to help narrow the gap.
American security officials said that while they had no specific intelligence about imminent attacks in the United States, Al Qaeda had made clear that it considered commuter train and subway systems to be vulnerable.
"We do know that Al Qaeda looks to hit us hard and that mass transit is something they've consistently referenced," Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said at a news conference on Friday. Investigators were still trying to determine whether the group was responsible for the Madrid bombings on Thursday.
While there were no plans to raise the nation's threat level from its current yellow, or elevated status, federal officials said they began taking steps almost immediately after the Madrid attacks to tighten security at high-risk train stations and rail lines.
Federal officials said Friday that they had added law enforcement officers and bomb-detection teams in certain high-risk locations, alerted state and local officials about their concerns over mass transit systems and urged the public to be on guard. Amtrak, meanwhile, increased its own security patrols and intensified electronic surveillance on bridges and tunnels, a spokesman said.
Federal officials were most concerned about subway and train systems in and around New York City, Washington and other major Eastern cities. "The whole Northeast region is obviously the most highly served and densely populated set of corridors," said a federal transportation official. "Routes between Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago - those are the ones I would identify as higher value targets."
In New York, the police and other authorities increased patrolling of both uniform and plainclothes officers in the subway system and at Grand Central Terminal, using dogs as well as sweeps along various lines. Officers climbed on and off trains, and stood guard along train platforms.
In large subway and rail systems like those in Washington and Chicago, local officials urged passengers and their own employees to report any unattended bags or other suspicious items. In San Francisco, where the Bay Area Rapid Transit system covers 104 miles of track, officials did not plan any immediate increase in security.
And in Seattle, where security since the Sept. 11 attacks has focused on the nation's largest ferry system, officials urged police officers who patrol the ferries, buses and monorails to be vigilant.
Brian Jenkins, a transportation security specialist at the Mineta Transportation Institute, said the Madrid bombings, like the frequent bus bombings in Israel and the occupied territories, the sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway in 1995 and other attacks, showed the vulnerability of mass transit systems.
"Our ability to prevent these attacks is limited because public service transportation is public and therefore is easily accessible, and the volume of traffic on these systems is huge," dwarfing air transit, Mr. Jenkins said in an interview.
Officials say that it would be nearly impossible to check every passenger boarding from myriad train platforms along any given rail line, or to screen the luggage and other bags that are carried on every day.
Experts say that to be successful, public transit must be convenient and inexpensive, making it difficult to impose the types of strict security seen at airports. The passenger volumes are enormous, about 14 million people a day, according to the American Public Transportation Association, of whom most are on buses, plus about 4 million on subways, suburban commuter trains or other rail transport, and smaller numbers on ferries. In contrast, there are a little under 2 million airplane boardings every day.
Local law enforcement officials in several major cities said Friday that they were concerned that the government had devoted far more toward improving air safety than rail or other mass transit systems. The Department of Homeland Security since last May has spent $115 million on grants for rail security, a small fraction of the billions spent to beef up aviation safety.
Calling the Madrid attacks "a wake-up call," several Democrats in the Senate on Friday introduced legislation that would authorize $515 million in 2005 to improve rail security safety and provide grants to private railroads for security.
"More people use Amtrak's Pennsylvania Station in New York City in a single day than use all of New York's airports combined," said Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors. "It is imperative that the Homeland Security Department take specific steps to ensure that rail passengers are as safe as they can be from terrorist threats."
If Al Qaeda does turn out to have been responsible for the Madrid attacks, said Gil Kerlikowske, the Seattle police chief, "I think there's going to be a lot of reconsideration in this country about modes of transportation other than airplanes. I think there really needs to be some serious rethinking on that."
Mr. Hutchinson, the homeland security undersecretary, said that it is still unclear whether Al Qaeda, the Basque separatist group ETA or other terrorists were behind the Madrid attacks.
At the American Public Transportation Association, William W. Millar, the president, said that since Sept. 11, transit systems had concentrated on training their employees and "making sure that they're aware what's going on in the environment."
The training, he said, would have personnel ask questions like, "That box that wasn't there before, why is it there now?" Employees are also trained to watch for "aberrant behavior by customers," he said.
Many systems have equipped their buses with systems that keep track of their locations and report back automatically, he said. This is primarily for operational improvement but can help security, he said.
Mr. Millar said that transit systems have the ability to advise all trains or buses of an attack, but need to work out procedures, determining, for example, whether trains should stop immediately if one were attacked, or should pull into stations or get off bridges.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting for this article. Eric Lichtblau and Mr. Wald reported from Washington, D.C., and Sarah Kershaw reported from Seattle.
-------- justice
Easier Internet Wiretaps Sought
Justice Dept., FBI Want Consumers To Pay the Cost
By Dan Eggen and Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54512-2004Mar12?language=printer
The Justice Department wants to significantly expand the government's ability to monitor online traffic, proposing that providers of high-speed Internet service should be forced to grant easier access for FBI wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to documents and government officials.
A petition filed this week with the Federal Communications Commission also suggests that consumers should be required to foot the bill.
Law enforcement agencies have been increasingly concerned that fast-growing telephone service over the Internet could be a way for terrorists and criminals to evade surveillance. But the petition also moves beyond Internet telephony, leading several technology experts and privacy advocates yesterday to warn that many types of online communication, including instant messages and visits to Web sites, could be covered.
The proposal by the Justice Department, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration could require extensive retooling of existing broadband networks and could impose significant costs, the experts said. Privacy advocates also argue that there are not enough safeguards to prevent the government from intercepting data from innocent users.
Justice Department lawyers argue in a 75-page FCC petition that Internet broadband and online telephone providers should be treated the same as traditional telephone companies, which are required by law to provide access for wiretaps and other monitoring of voice communications. The law enforcement agencies complain that many providers do not comply with existing wiretap rules and that rapidly changing technology is limiting the government's ability to track terrorists and other threats. They are asking the FCC to curtail its usual review process to rapidly implement the proposed changes. The FBI views the petition as narrowly crafted and aimed only at making sure that terrorist and criminal suspects are not able to evade monitoring because of the type of telephone communications they use, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"Lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance is an invaluable and necessary tool for federal, state and local law enforcement in their fight against criminals, terrorists, and spies," the petition said, adding that "the importance and the urgency of this task cannot be overstated" because "electronic surveillance is being compromised today."
But privacy and technology experts said the proposal is overly broad and raises serious privacy and business concerns. James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a public interest group, said the FBI is attempting to dictate how the Internet should be engineered to permit whatever level of surveillance law enforcement deems necessary.
"The breadth of what they are asking for is a little breathtaking," Dempsey said. "The question is, how deeply should the government be able to control the design of the Internet? . . . If you want to bring the economy to a halt, put the FBI in charge of deploying new Internet and communications services."
Jeffrey Citron, chief executive of Internet phone provider Vonage Inc., said the FBI is overreaching. He said that he and other providers cooperate fully with law enforcement, and that if the FBI has ongoing concerns, it should strive to change the law governing wiretaps.
The FCC is in the midst of a wide-ranging review of how to regulate the fledgling Internet telephone industry. Chairman Michael K. Powell, responding to complaints from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, said last month that the FCC will also pursue a separate review of wiretapping rules.
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), enacted in 1994, required telecommunications companies to rewire their networks so police could have access for wiretaps and other surveillance measures. But law enforcement officials and privacy advocates have argued fiercely in recent years about whether, and to what extent, the law should apply to such newer-generation technologies as Internet telephone and broadband services.
The Justice proposal asserts that "CALEA was intended to protect the capacity of law enforcement to carry out authorized surveillance in the face of technological change, and CALEA contains no exemption for telephony services provided through broadband access."
Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel at the National Security Agency, said the petition ignores the intent and letter of the CALEA law, which specifically exempts "persons or entities insofar as they are engaged in providing information services." The Justice Department and FBI argue that Congress nine years ago had in mind simple data-storage services, and did not envision the kind of Internet-based communications technologies available today.
The problem the FBI faces is that it cannot identify and break down information that travels as packets of data over the Internet. Phone calls placed over the Internet are changed from voice signals into data packets that look much like other data packets that contain e-mail or instructions for browsing the Internet.
CALEA does not require telecommunications providers to break down and identify which is which, or to decode data that might be encrypted. The FBI wants Internet providers to be forced to do so, experts said.
Justice and FBI lawyers also asked the FCC to "permit carriers to have the option to recover some or all of their CALEA implementation costs from their customers." The petition argues that the actual costs to individual customers would be minimal, although no estimates are provided.
Internet service providers yesterday reacted with caution. Many said they had not yet studied the FBI petition, and want to be viewed as cooperating with law enforcement whenever possible.
David Baker, vice president for public policy at Internet provider EarthLink Inc. in Atlanta, said the FBI appears to be going beyond concerns over voice communications technology on the Internet and is instead "seeking to apply CALEA to all information services."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
G.E. Signals a Growing Interest in Solar
March 13, 2004
By BARNABY J. FEDER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/technology/13solar.html?pagewanted=all&position=
General Electric will acquire the major assets of the largest American-owned maker of solar equipment, in a move the solar power industry sees as a major vote of confidence in the business.
A federal bankruptcy court judge in Delaware yesterday approved G.E.'s plan to buy the bulk of AstroPower for $15 million in cash and an estimated $3.5 million in debt, along with other liabilities to be settled when the deal closes at the end of the month. It would be the most decisive step yet by G.E. into the so-far unprofitable business of generating electricity from sunlight, a technology that G.E. researchers have dabbled in for nearly half a century.
Previously, G.E. confined its growing interest in this field, known as photovoltaics, to modest increases in research spending and the quiet acquisition 18 months ago of Railway Technology Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Railway makes a line of solar-powered railroad switches.
G.E. declined yesterday to discuss its plans for AstroPower. By G.E. standards, the acquisition is a modest bet. The cost will be but a half-day's earnings for the company, which had net income last year of $15 billion on revenue of more than $134 billion. But if the investment looks minuscule from a Wall Street perspective, it is still enough to excite many people involved with solar energy.
"It shows we are a mainstream industry, or moving that way," said Bob Kenedi, general manager of the solar systems division of Sharp Electronics, an American subsidiary of the Sharp Corporation of Japan. Sharp has emerged as the clear market leader in solar power equipment with a sixfold increase in production since 1999, and it opened its first American assembly plant, in Memphis, last year.
Worldwide, annual revenue from solar power equipment and installation, which reached $4.7 billion last year, will climb to $30.8 billion in 2013, according to a recent forecast from Clean Edge, a market research firm in San Francisco.
Solar energy is profitable in numerous niche markets, including powering satellites and providing electricity for oil rigs and devices like rural water pumps, road signs and emergency telephones that cannot be conveniently linked to power grids. But it is still regarded as too expensive to be widely adopted for powering homes and businesses now supplied by utilities. That has left even deep-pocketed manufacturers like Sharp, Sanyo Electric, the Kyocera Corporation and the solar subsidiaries of BP and Shell Oil dependent on governments and power companies to subsidize sales.
None of the big solar players claim to be profitable and some former participants remain dismissive about the potential. "Even if it grows at 20 percent annually, it will contribute less than 1.5 percent to global energy needs by 2020," said Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, which has estimated that it invested more than half a billion dollars in solar energy, going back to the 1970's, before withdrawing.
But analysts and solar manufacturers figure G.E. is responding to signs that rising prices for hydrocarbon-based fuels and improvements in solar products and manufacturing technology have laid the foundation for large-scale producers to finally start making steady profits - even as major supporters like the Japanese government and California reduce subsidies to consumers.
"We're in line for our best year yet," said Steven Westwell, president and chief executive of BP Solar, which entered the industry 30 years ago and hopes to turn profitable this year. Demand in California, the leading United States market, is so strong that state subsidies for solar equipment purchases could be used up by September, he said.
Still, in an industry that has frequently disappointed its advocates, Mr. Westwell and analysts have no trouble imagining ways that trouble could strike again. By the end of the year, they said, the industry could be hurt from overcapacity because so many new solar cell manufacturing projects are under way. The industry also could be hit by rising prices for silicon - the basic ingredient in most photovoltaic cells - because manufacturers of raw materials have been slow to add capacity. Most of them view supplying the solar industry as a sideline to making more expensive products for the computer and consumer electronics industry.
G.E.'s long-term goals for solar energy would make such concerns irrelevant. Its recent attention to photovoltaics grew out of research on light-emitting plastics. Feeding electricity into such plastics creates light, but researchers knew that they could also do the reverse - use light to create electricity. A plastic that was efficient enough at creating electric current from sunlight might serve as a much cheaper and more flexible photovoltaic material than silicon, and become a monster product for G.E.'s huge plastics business.
As they began to look more closely at developments in the photovoltaics market, G.E. researchers also realized that they had expertise to apply to silicon designs that could pay off even if the plastics project ultimately failed. And pursuing the technology supported the goal of Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.'s chairman and chief executive, to become a leader in markets based on renewable-energy technology and energy efficiency, including wind power, fuel cells, hydrogen storage and microturbines.
"If you say you are doing renewables, and you are not doing photovoltaics, you are missing a huge part of it," said Anil R. Duggal, head of the light-energy conversion research program at G.E.'s corporate research center in Schenectady, N.Y.
Renewables have become one of the fastest-growing pieces of the G.E. portfolio of energy-related businesses, which is dominated by the company's gas turbine sales and generated $20 billion in revenue last year. Wind energy in particular has been a smashing success for G.E., which is based in Fairfield, Conn. The company won a court auction for Enron's wind energy subsidiary two years ago, with a $358 million bid; G.E. is forecasting revenue of $1.3 billion and profit of $100 million from the unit this year.
But compared with the Enron unit, AstroPower, which ran out of cash after a still unresolved accounting scandal emerged last year, represents a far flimsier platform for diving into a new line of business.
As recently as 2001, AstroPower ranked fifth globally in the production of solar cells and the modules into which they are assembled, but its rank tumbled to 11th last year, according to PC News, a trade publication. The company, based in Newark, Del., lost about $100 million from the last quarter of 2001 through the end of last year, according to J. Scott Victor, a partner at SSG Capital Advisors, the investment bank that helped AstroPower find a buyer.
"We've been able to sell everything we could make, but we ran out of money to buy raw materials," Carl H. Young III, a turnaround specialist who was appointed interim chief executive last year, said yesterday.
Industry experts are uncertain what G.E. intends to do with the company. It is unclear how much interest G.E. has in an advanced thin-film project for making solar cells that AstroPower had been pursuing but had shut to save cash. Presumably, that project would be moved to Schenectady if the company wanted to continue research on it.
Many analysts assume that G.E.'s principal interest is to keep AstroPower's main production line operating and use it to gain more solar experience. AstroPower followed the industry practice of selling most of its products through solar contractors but it also developed modules sold at Home Depot and had direct sales relationships with builders.
"G.E. called us to say they might do this," said Michael V. McGee, chief executive of Pardee Homes, a company based in Los Angeles that has built about 100 solar-powered homes in partnership with AstroPower since 2001. "We're very excited about it, because we have a great relationship with G.E. on the appliance side, and we would expect them to bring a better product to AstroPower."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Groups Accuse City of Trying to Stifle Protest
March 13, 2004
By MICHAEL WILSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/nyregion/13arrests.html
New York City civil liberties groups accused city and police officials yesterday of trying to stifle protests during the Republican National Convention by publicly predicting that officers would arrest more than 1,000 people each day of the event.
"Given the long history of peaceful protests in this city, suggestions of this sort seem irresponsible and do nothing more than create a wholly unnecessary atmosphere of tension surrounding Convention protests," read a letter from the New York Civil Liberties Union to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
The convention will be held in New York City from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected.
"The police department simply does not seem to understand that it has the responsibility to uphold and ensure the free speech rights of those protesting on an equal footing with those inside the convention," Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement yesterday.
The group called on the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, to investigate "the N.Y.P.D.'s hostility to protests in the city," Mr. Fogel said.
Mr. Morgenthau presented the estimate of 1,000 daily arrests on Tuesday while testifying before the City Council's Committee on Public Safety during a budget hearing.
"We also know that the Republican National Convention will bring significantly increased arrests in the weeks before and during the convention," he said. "N.Y.P.D. anticipates that we could have up to 1,000 arrests a day, three times our normal volume.''
A police spokesman declined to comment on whether the department had projected the number of arrests. "We are urging people to demonstrate peaceably," said Chief Michael Collins, the spokesman. "Our job is to ensure that's done safely within the framework of the law."
"We are in no way discouraging people from demonstrating," Chief Collins said.
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President's impeachment infuriates South Koreans
March 13, 2004
By Hans Greimel
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040312-115025-8417r.htm
SEOUL - Thousands of angry South Koreans held candlelight vigils across the country to protest the historic impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday. Prime Minister Goh Kun, known as "Mr. Stability," took control, pledging to keep foreign and economic policies on an even keel.
The spontaneous evening protests were peaceful but underlined widespread dismay at a political crisis that has rattled a nation already juggling the North Korean nuclear standoff, a sluggish economy and a tumultuous run-up to hotly contested parliamentary elections next month.
The presidential impeachment was a first in South Korea. Mr. Goh, who assumed executive powers from Mr. Roh, spoke of the need to "stabilize the people's lives and ensure that the country's international credibility will not be damaged."
In a phone call to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon stressed the government's commitment to continuity. He told Mr. Powell there would be no change in Seoul's policy toward North Korea and that the government would "maintain its close alliance with the United States," according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
There were no reports of any change in the alert status along the South's highly militarized border with the North following the rapid change in leadership.
But Defense Minister Cho Young-kil said today the impeachment had caused a "crisis situation in the supreme military command." He did not elaborate but urged U.S. military assistance in maintaining "impeccable vigilance without the slightest wavering."
U.S. Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, is scheduled to meet Mr. Cho today.
Mr. Goh, 66, who held various posts under six successive governments, earned the nicknames "Mr. Stability" and "Master Administrator" for his ability to survive military coups, civic unrest and parliamentary machinations.
Mr. Goh will perform the executive duties until the Constitutional Court rules on whether to unseat Mr. Roh, a decision that could take six months.
Protests erupted throughout the country, including rallies in Seoul, Busan, Taegu and Kwangju. Police estimated that about 12,000 Roh supporters gathered outside the capital's National Assembly, waving candles and chanting, "Impeachment is null and void."
Riot police parked buses bumper-to-bumper to block protesters from marching on parliament.
Fueling the rallies was a widespread perception that the opposition Grand National and Millennium Democratic parties began the impeachment bid for political gain ahead of nationwide parliamentary elections on April 15.
Polls taken by broadcaster KBS and Yonhap news agency both found that 70 percent of South Koreans thought the impeachment was wrong. The KBS poll's margin of error was 3.3 percentage points; Yonhap's was 3.07 percentage points.
Mr. Roh, 57, a former human rights lawyer, came to office in February a year ago on a populist ticket that promised South Koreans better relations with communist North Korea and a more equal footing with the country's biggest ally, the United States.
His 13-month tenure was dogged by corruption scandals, but yesterday's vote was a crowning embarrassment for the feisty, independent leader.
North Korea watchers agreed the impeachment wouldn't alter the South's basic policy, but said it could lead to Seoul's taking a harder line toward the North - especially if a new leader takes office.
Investors recoiled and sent the country's KOSPI stock index tumbling 5.5 percent at one point. It closed down 2.5 percent. South Korea's currency, the won, fell by about 1 percent, closing at 1,180 to the dollar.
The opposition-backed impeachment motion had cited Mr. Roh's purported mismanagement of the economy as one reason for trying to oust him. South Korea's economic growth rate slowed to 2.9 percent last year, from 6.3 percent in 2002.
--------
Sick, afraid, defiant - they marched in their millions
Saturday March 13, 2004
Angelique Chrisafis in Madrid
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,1168568,00.html
No one was sure whether it was over. Bob Dylan's Knocking on Heaven's Door and U2's Bloody Sunday hummed from radios, in between tearful speeches from DJs.
On screens in empty bars, newscasters were carefully listing the distinguishing features of corpses which hadn't been claimed - woman in her 30s, height: 5ft. Children left uncollected at kindergarten were presumed to have gone to relatives to sit by the phone.
In the streets, Spanish flags with black ribbons clung to every available facade, lamppost, cashpoint, streetsweeping machine in Madrid.
But there was a reticence before the grieving and demonstrations began. A fear that there could possibly be more to come: another blast, another explosion. Because, as one tax inspector said as he entered a terrifyingly empty tapas bar, "we're in some kind of suspended nightmare. We still don't know what the hell is going on here. Why? Someone, please, tell me why."
Then, slowly, thousands began to congregate in squares, unfurling banners begging "We don't want to die" and "Death to ETA", "Peace not terrorism". As the thousands multiplied into a million, and then two, Madrid knew it was witnessing the biggest mass-protest in Spanish history.
At first, the worst thing was the silence. The loudest, most raucous city in Europe - famous for its working class which never draws breath and always there with an opinion - was suddenly mute.
"There are no words to describe this," was the answer from the cleaners at the station, the Italian woman in furs at the bus-stop.
Language had failed everyone. The city had been up all night trying to make sense of it in darkened living rooms. People looked drawn, gaunt, scowling, afraid. "I've never seen us look like this," said an insurance inspector. "So tense, so goddamn furious, looking left to right, hunching over and walking straight ahead."
By 7pm, over 2m people were marching on the centre of Madrid - a canopy of umbrellas trying to reclaim the streets from an unknown enemy. "Madrid is weeping," they chanted. The infirm stood still and let the crowds sweep past them. They marched for hours, but opinions were gradually polarising. An architect with a Spanish flag brushed off Eta's denial of the attack. "Of course it was Eta," she spat. She would vote for prime minister José María Aznar on Sunday.
A civil servant from Madrid would spoil his vote. "Al-Qaida did this but it doesn't suit our pro-war government to tell us until the elections are over."
The three days of mourning was launched at noon with 10 minutes' synchronised silence as taxi drivers climbed out of cabs and workers went outside. People stood side by side on Madrid's avenues, but there was not yet the frenzied embracing and outpouring they might have expected.
It was a city almost pre-grief. They were still gripped by fury, rage, and something they remembered from lesser Eta bomb blasts over the last 20 years: a horrific tension. Society was winded.
And when the silence took hold and the scented candles in the street caused people to pause to reflect, their ears tuned into the sirens which still droned through the city.
Those who had run from another bomb scare on a rail line into Atocha yesterday morning, were still shaking. Many had left the trains wrapped in black ribbons to walk into town to lay their candles.
At the Puerta del Sol square in front of the regional government headquarters, thousands of students gathered with placards. "The tears of 200 people," "No to terrorism," "What are you going to do with power when you are dead?" "We're Spanish. Is it a crime?"
As the drizzle began, they sat down on the pavement punctuating the silence with a steady chant: "No Eta no, Eta no, Eta no, Eta no" or "Eta, you sons of a bitch."
Fourteen-year-olds had painted black ribbons on their faces, or large CND signs. They handed out stickers saying "no to terrorism". One, whose brother's best friend had been killed in the first explosion, had peace tattooed in ink on her forehead.
She didn't cry but her eyebrows were raised in a silent grimace. "I'm scared. I'm terrified. We were ushered out of the underground this morning in another bomb scare. I don't know what to do."
She and her friends believed that Islamist militants had carried out the killings, and that there was a script of some sort from September 11 that they could now follow - if they could remember what people did in New York, they would be OK. Better to huddle in this square promote peace than go home to face the TV images.
They had started by gathering under flags. It was beyond their imagination that this act of "animal barbarism" could have begun at home. "It must be related to September 11. It must be," said a 16-year-old.
"The scale of it, the simultaneous attacks. It had to be them. Nobody in Spain could do that to other Spaniards, surely?"
The pensioners, for the most part, felt different. Their brows were knitted. They felt sick to the stomach.
They said they remembered an era of facism when horrors where committed by Spaniard against Spaniard, they mentioned the not-so-distant civil war.
"Why now? Why when everyone has liberty, everyone has everything they want in Spain?" asked a 55-year-old grandmother in an empty department store. She had survived an Eta bomb attempt many years earlier herself.
Gloria Alcaine, a grandmother from Burgos, said: "This has killed the Spanish soul, numbed us. It has ripped the heart right out of Spain. "People are crying in their homes, that has never happened before. They have killed all of us, all of us." At Atocha's makeshift memorial shrines with candles, flowers and virgin Marys on pavements and concourses sat those who would have been on the trains that day and who had now come into the city centre to march.
The cleaner who had overslept, the hotel worker who had had a day off and who was now resolved to vote fascist.
The Ecuadorian cleaner who woke up to the bomb blast outside her home facing Atocha and heard the police ringing every doorbell in her building telling people to keep their windows closed, and whose 11-year-old daughter turned wild with fear and had to be held down until the panic subsided. "They were workers, immigrants who minded their own business. Not politicians, but the strivers, the underclass."
Some refused to blame Aznar, as the election banners hung useless behind giant sheets with black ribbons. "It's not his fault," said a retired telecoms worker. But others were afraid that if Eta wasn't responsible, how on earth had their country, with a population 90% opposed to war in Iraq prompted this scale of murder against them?
One man hinted Mr Aznar could have reaped what he had sown. "Aznar, the dead thank you," said the message on a wall at Atocha as the marchers gathered.
On the walls of the back streets were the faintest remnants of grafitti which sat uneasily under the skin of everyone marching against yesterday: "Aznar, war criminal," "Aznar resign," "No war, no occupation," written in Catalan.
"We don't know who the hell did this. There is no rhyme or reason for it. Don't ask anyone for an explanation," said one newspaper vendor, like many unable to have the conversation about this yet.
"Until an explanation is given, we just feel sick, sick, sick and afraid."
--------
President's Impeachment Stirs Angry Protests in South Korea
March 13, 2004
By SAMUEL LEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/international/asia/13KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Saturday, March 13 - With just a month to go before crucial National Assembly elections, South Korea entered uncharted political waters on Saturday after President Roh Moo Hyun was impeached and stripped of power by the National Assembly, unleashing protests in the capital.
The country's prime minister, Goh Kun, sought to calm the public after he assumed interim leadership. He said in a statement Friday that he would seek to maintain Mr. Roh's policies on relations with North Korea and the United States, and he emphasized that the government would try to shield the country's economy from the turmoil.
"In order to overcome this difficult time for the country, individual branches of the government must execute state affairs in a steady manner," Mr. Goh said.
The public protest culminated Friday afternoon, when about a thousand supporters of the president, including members of the pro-Roh Nosamo organization, rallied in front of the National Assembly, many wearing their trademark yellow jackets or scarves as hundreds of riot police officers surrounded them. The crowd soon grew as large groups of protesters filed in, bringing the total to more than 10,000 people.
"If a million of us gather here, then we will be able to create a human wave that represents the will of the public!" shouted Lee Sang Ho, who led Nosamo in the 2002 election.
Leaders of Nosamo said Saturday that they planned to hold a larger candlelight rally in downtown Seoul, and many civic and labor groups said they would also protest.
The vote on Friday to impeach Mr. Roh on charges of illegal campaigning was the first such action in the country's history. A total of 193 lawmakers in the 273-seat National Assembly voted to impeach.
Last month, Mr. Roh said he would do everything within the law to encourage votes for the upstart Uri Party in the elections scheduled for April 15. The remark outraged the two main opposition parties, who accused him of breaking laws that ban campaigning more than 17 days before an election. They submitted a motion on Tuesday to impeach.
In Washington, the State Department responded cautiously, saying the impeachment was an internal matter. "We will continue to work together on issues of mutual concern, including things like the six-party talks and the Korean forces that are going to Iraq," said the department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, referring to talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Prime Minister Goh, a career government bureaucrat who had also served as prime minister from 1997 to 1998, will serve as interim leader until the constitutional court rules on the impeachment vote. The court has 180 days to reach a decision, but most officials predicted that it would rule before then.
Political analysts said Mr. Goh's ample experience in government administration and his stable style of leadership were calming factors during a time of turmoil. But they said they were concerned about possibly violent outbursts in public between conservatives and supporters of Mr. Roh, especially during an emotionally charged election season.
"I'm worried that the unexpected actions of a few could trigger emotions and possibly lead to an uncontrollable situation," said Baek Seung Hyun, a political science professor at Kyung Hee University.
In a survey by the Yonhap news agency of 1,018 South Koreans on Friday, 7 out of 10 said they felt the vote to impeach was improper.
In the National Assembly, supporters of Mr. Roh likened the impeachment vote to an act of mutiny. "What happened today was a coup d'état carried out without guns and swords," said Chung Dong Young, a lawmaker with the Uri Party.
--------
Missile incident rattles Canada
'Nuclear fallout knows no border,' lawmaker says
By MIKE BARBER,
Saturday, March 13, 2004
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/164710_missile13.html
It might not have been a "broken arrow" nuclear missile accident, but a mishap that damaged a Bangor Trident submarine ballistic missile and was kept under wraps by the Navy until this week threatens broken trust on an international scale.
Libby Davies, a member of Canada's national parliament from Vancouver East, yesterday said she intends to seek the same kind of answers for Canadians that her U.S. congressional counterparts are seeking for Americans.
"If something happens in Bangor, we're the ones upwind. Nuclear fallout knows no border," Davies said.
"The whole issue of transparency in government is fundamental to our democratic system. I think when something is covered up it is pretty outrageous."
U.S. Reps. Norm Dicks and Jay Inslee have demanded answers, and Thursday are slated to receive a special briefing from Rear Adm. Charles Young, head of the "nuclear Navy's" Strategic Systems Program. The SSP oversees Bangor's Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific, where the accident allegedly occurred.
The Nov. 7 incident was first brought to public light last weekend on a Web site, www.jaghunters.blogspot.com, by former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Walt Fitzpatrick. He has had a long-running feud with the Navy to clear his name following a questionable court martial.
Military and civilian sources confirmed many of Fitzpatrick's allegations.
The incident occurred when a missile being extracted from the USS Georgia's No. 16 tube smacked into an access ladder left in the tube, punching a 9-inch hole in the missile's nose cone.
Dicks is the No. 2 ranking Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on defense. Submarine Base Bangor lies in Inslee's district.
Dicks and Inslee said they are "troubled" by the lack of information about the accident, serious enough to result in firings a month later of the entire leadership of the strategic weapons facility, announced in December.
"Assuming these reports are accurate, the Navy must provide better notification to the Kitsap County community, including local emergency personnel," Inslee said.
"The safety of residents and employees is of the utmost importance when moving nuclear weapons. Congressman Dicks and I intend to discuss these allegations with the Navy in the upcoming days, and work to ensure that a comprehensive safety system exists to prevent any incident, such as those alleged in media reports, ... from occurring."
Navy officials cite a Defense Department "neither confirm nor deny" directive that handcuffs its spokesmen from discussing nuclear weapons accidents. The Navy denies an accident occurred there last November, but splits hairs over what is an "accident" and what is an "incident."
The congressmen want to cut through doublespeak.
"We want to know everything," George Behan, Dicks' spokesman, said yesterday. "The Navy has been very much cooperative so far and labors under some constraints because of a Defense Department rather than a Navy policy."
Behan said a letter from Davies would be included in Thursday's meeting to punctuate the importance of disclosure.
The Navy points to its zero-tolerance policy resulting in the career-ending firings as evidence of how seriously it takes its responsibilities. But while nuclear experts say the possibility of nuclear detonation is highly unlikely, questions left hanging by the Defense Department's silence create concern on both sides of the border about even the smallest potential for plutonium releases or rocket fuel explosions.
Davies said questions raised by the Navy's silence can galvanize peace activists on both sides of the border. In 1998, she visited Bangor, leading a "citizens weapons inspection team" to inspect U.S. weapons of mass destruction.
"I was the only elected person. We really just wanted to make a point and the point was that all weapons of mass destruction have to be dealt with, not just the ones that were supposed to have been in Iraq," she said.
"There is a strong connection between U.S. and Canadian peace activists."
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