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NUCLEAR
What to do with nuclear waste?
Cheney visits China for trade talks
Cheney meets Chinese leaders
Cheney Presses Beijing on North Korea
Juicy rewards as Indian nuclear boffins split bananas
The `desert foxes' of Iraq
US Whitewashes Warthogs Killing Marines
Pakistan silent on claims Khan saw nuclear bombs in NKorea
US says it has much information on disgraced Pakistan scientist
Japanese government goes quiet on hostage crisis
U.S.: New Report on N. Korea's Nuclear Program No Surprise
3 Nuclear Devices Cited in N. Korea
S.Korea Says Assessing Khan Report on North's Nukes
US quite confident about Brazil's intentions over nuclear technology
U.S. Moves to Retrieve Foreign Uranium
Uranium Waste Pile Makes Colorado River Most Endangered
Colorado River heads endangered list
Atomic Anniversary
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Information Falls Short
HEHF sues AdvanceMed
Kerry presses Bush on Iraq
President on Probation
Iraq Occupation Policy Under John Kerry
Roberts contradicts Frist on Clarke
Bush Acknowledges 'Tough' Weeks
MILITARY
Amnesty says lifting China arms embargo the 'wrong message'
Cheney Defends U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan
Demand for anti-terrorism equipment up sharply at defence showcase
US Transparency Survey: Serious Problems Evident
Cheney took in $178,437 from Halliburton in 2003
Guilty Plea in Boeing Case
Cheney faces pressure on Taiwan in China
Cheney to Reassert U.S. Position on Taiwan's Status
In Beijing, Cheney Is Urged to Reduce Taiwan Military Support
Portugal repeats vow to keep troops in Iraq despite violence
Bomb hoax forces evacuation of French nuclear power plant
Tehran Has Armed Agents in Iraq - Iran Exile Group
Italians taken hostage as nervous nations pull out
Iraqi 'beaten to death' by US troops
Fallujah truce extended despite sporadic fighting
Hostages - what lured them to Iraq?
US marine officer recounts dramatic rescue in Fallujah
Army Girds to Confront Radical Cleric
Insurgents Display New Sophistication
U.S. Launches Heavy Fire on Fallujah
U.N. Envoy Suggests Initial Caretaker Government in Iraq
War Reports From Civilians Stir Up Iraqis Against U.S.
Israel's Claim to Some Outposts Is Recognized by President
Bush Also Appears to Side With Israel on 'Right of Return'
Mubarak offers aid
Jordan's King Thanks Intelligence Chief
Russian firm evacuates 370
Ex-spy: Australian intelligence distorted to back government
Howard rejects spy probe
C.I.A. Chief Defends Agency but Allows 'We Made Mistakes'
9/11 Panel Report Faults Culture of Spy Agencies
Kofi Annan says Iraq too violent for U.N. role
U.N. Envoy To Outline New Plan For Iraq
Analysis: US 'emulates' Israeli tactics
Pentagon says 688 US soldiers killed in Iraq
Pentagon crash 'too unrealistic'
FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard
Heads Up ... from Michael Moore
In the Shadow of Wolves: Shame on you, Corporate Media
Bush fresh out of ideas
Bush's press conference
Trust, Don't Verify
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ashcroft denies taking little interest in terrorism
Spitzer Wants Wiretap Law to Include New Technologies
New Rules Shorten Holding Time for Detained Immigrants
Stateless, Man Avoids Deportation From U.S.
Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Ashcroft's Efforts on Terrorism Criticized
'DNA Dragnet' Makes Charlottesville Uneasy
F.B.I. Is Assailed for Its Handling of Terror Risks
A Secret Service Worker Is Accused of Stealing Cars From Ground Zero
Pentagon Crash Scenario Was Rejected for Military Exercise
ENERGY AND
San Francisco Test Drives Fuel Cell Cars
OTHER
Kremlin aide officially advises Putin to kill Kyoto
Pollution Study Favors Regulation
ACTIVISTS
Physicians can change nuclear views
Hung Jury in Trial of St. Patrick's 4 in Ithaca NY
Radical environmentalist sentenced to prison
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Shoot it at the sun. Send it to Earth's core. What to do with nuclear waste?
Government advisers consider 14 ways of getting rid of the troublesome legacy
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday April 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1191376,00.html
Firing nuclear waste into the sun, placing it in Antarctic ice sheets so it sinks by its own heat to the bedrock, or putting it under Earth's crust so it is sucked to the molten core. These are three of the 14 options the government's advisers are considering to get rid of the UK's troublesome nuclear waste legacy.
All options are technically possible and many are potentially hazardous - either to current generations or those yet unborn. Most also have political drawbacks and are expensive, around £50bn and counting, yet it is a problem the government has decided it must solve.
Last year it appointed a committee on radioactive waste management to re-examine all possibilities to find a publicly acceptable solution to the nuclear waste problem - something that successive governments have failed to do for 50 years.
The committee's options, seen by the Guardian, range from the exotic to the well established. And most have their difficulties. For example, firing waste into the sun or into outer space may permanently rid Earth of the problem but the possibility of rocket failure may make this seem too much of a gamble.
The Antarctica solution, allowing heat producing waste to bury itself in the ice, runs into the difficulty that the interna tionally agreed Antarctic Treaty bans such activity. The last pristine continent is supposed to be untouched by nuclear material.
Sub-seabed disposal, where waste is placed in a pre-dug hole or dropped in specially built penetrators to bury itself in the soft seabed, may be the best technical option. Even if the packages eventually rot and the radioactivity escapes it will be diluted by the sea water. But sea dumping is banned.
Some of the other ideas, such as placing it deep in the ground either to lose it in the Earth's mantle or in deep stratas where it would remain, have been tried by Russians and Americans. The Swedes are successfully using a deep depository but so far the UK has proved short of suitable geological formations. Exporting nuclear waste is also against government policy and likely to draw international protests.
All of the ideas remain on the table and none is yet a frontrunner. The present policy, by default, is storage but with a government committed to safeguarding the environment for future generations this may be ruled out as an option too. Nuclear waste stays dangerous for 250,000 years and even the best constructed concrete bunker is likely to need upgrading every 100 years or so.
A report to the committee says: "Fifty years of experience has proved the pursuit of 'the best' in the long term management of radioactive waste to be an illusory concept. The UK is currently engaged in a process, the success of which would be the identification of 'the acceptable', at a level which would allow the government to proceed with confidence."
Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment, who is due to meet members of the government committee this week, was dismissive of the 14 ideas: "We thought all these madcap schemes had been junked donkey's years ago. The only sensible solution is to store it where it rightfully belongs - in above ground custom built concrete stores at the site of origin."
The government's estimates it will soon have 500,000 tonnes of higher level nuclear waste it has no home for, even if it never builds another nuclear power station. The even higher volume of low level waste is sent to a waste dump at Drigg, near Sellafield, in Cumbria, for disposal in especially engineered trenches. Meanwhile the more pressing problem is the more dangerous wastes. These are stored all over the country in naval dockyards, at a dozen nuclear power stations, former experimental sites like Harwell, Oxfordshire, or Dounreay, Highlands. But by far the largest stores and the most dangerous high level heat producing liquid wastes are at Sellafield, Cumbria, where Britain's major nuclear facilities were developed.
And it was Sellafield that was the scene of the previous government's last big failed attempt to solve the nuclear waste problem on the eve of the election in 1997.
John Gummer, in his last act as John Major's environment secretary, refused planning permission for a laboratory to test the suitability of the area for disposal of nuclear waste in granite. Mr Gummer ruled that the science on which the planning application was based was flawed.
It was this decision that left the Blair government with a vacuum where its nuclear waste disposal policy was concerned. The committee was originally charged with finding a way forward for nuclear waste disposal by the end of next year, but the committee has pleaded for an extension to the middle of 2006 before it can produce a final report.
-------- china
Cheney visits China for trade talks
April 14, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040414-010326-8510r.htm
BEIJING - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in China yesterday where he is expected to be pressed by Chinese leaders to ease U.S. export controls as part of Beijing's plan to build up to 60 nuclear power reactors in the coming years.
Mr. Cheney arrived here from Tokyo yesterday afternoon and met with Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong. Today, he is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese leaders on trade, terrorism and North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Mr. Zeng asked Mr. Cheney during the meeting to stop the United States from selling defensive weapons to Taiwan, according to Chinese news reports.
"We hope the United States can carry out its commitment and not sell weapons to Taiwan and not send wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces," Mr. Zeng reportedly told Mr. Cheney.
Mr. Cheney said during a dinner with Mr. Zeng that "we believe we can do good work together." Mr. Cheney is scheduled to meet today with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, National Military Commission leader Jiang Zemin and President Hu Jintao.
One Bush administration official said the Chinese are expected to press Mr. Cheney to further loosen restrictions on nuclear technology after an offer was made recently from Chinese leaders to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. He was told China will build between 50 and 60 nuclear reactors over the next 16 years.
A U.S. official said the United States will endorse China's admittance to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 30-nation association that seeks to control exports of nuclear materials, equipment and technology. The official said the decision to admit China to the group will likely be criticized by officials who view China as a major source of nuclear proliferation to rogue states.
The issue of nuclear technology sales to China has touched off a debate within the Bush administration. On one side are officials who view nuclear reactor sales as a way to spur job creation in the United States, a key issue in the presidential campaign.
Other officials believe the Chinese have a record of spreading nuclear technology to rogue states. These officials said China likely will offer to buy billions of dollars worth of U.S. reactors, but in reality will only purchase one or two and then reverse engineer the reactors and make them indigenously.
"There are obviously proliferation issues here, but I think job creation is the big driver," said one official speaking on the condition of anonymity.
A senior Bush administration official in Beijing told reporters that the vice president will not boost "individual commercial transactions" related to the nuclear reactors. Mr. Cheney will tell the Chinese that "we support the efforts of our American companies," the senior official said.
Some industry and trade groups have been pressing the Bush administration to loosen controls on nuclear transfers to China.
China is facing an energy crisis as its modernization proceeds and its need for energy increases. The country has not found any major oil reserves and thus is seeking nuclear reactors to produce electricity for its economy.
In September, Mr. Abraham signed a statement with China described as a "statement of intent" aimed at preventing China's transfer of nuclear technology that could be used for weapons development.
Then in January, the United States signed another agreement aimed at increasing cooperation to halt the spread of nuclear technology.
China is helping Pakistan build two nuclear reactors that will produce plutonium and was a major contributor to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. The state-owned China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation was caught selling 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan in 1994. The magnets were used in centrifuges that spun gas into highly enriched uranium for Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
China weapons-design information was uncovered earlier this year in Libya in dismantling Tripoli's nuclear arms program. A Chinese-language document was found that contained information on how to make a nuclear warhead for a missile.
The document was believed to have come from the network of nuclear technology sellers headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He was pardoned by the Pakistan government for his role in illicit nuclear sales.
The document showed that China's nuclear arms proliferation had spread beyond Pakistan.
Other key issues to be raised during Mr. Cheney's talks include North Korea's nuclear arms program. China has played a leading role in six-nation talks, but so far there has been no breakthrough in getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arms program.
The New York Times reported yesterday that Mr. Khan inspected nuclear weapons in Pakistan as little as five years ago.
----
Cheney meets Chinese leaders armed with new intelligence on North Korea
BEIJING (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414034022.fgn5dzaj.html
US Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday met with China's top leaders, reportedly armed with new intelligence on North Korea's nuclear activities and a US demand for tougher Chinese action on the crisis.
As Cheney held talks with President Hu Jintao at the Diaoyutai compound in western Beijing, US reports emerged suggesting that Pyongyang's bomb-makers might have advanced even further than previously feared.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, had told interrogators he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported.
The paper said Cheney was expected to cite the intelligence report during his talks in Beijing, and that he would argue the US administration was losing patience and might seek tougher action, such as sanctions.
China has emerged as a crucial player in attempts to defuse the crisis, hosting two rounds of six-party talks involving the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and North Korea.
The discussions have so far failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
Nevertheless, behind-the-scenes preparations are believed to be taking place for a third round of talks in the Chinese capital before the end of June.
The United States has accused North Korea of pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear weapons and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
Amid angry rhetoric from Pyongyang accusing the United States of driving the Korean pensinsula to the brink of nuclear war, there are also unconfirmed signs that the isolated regime is willing to talk.
South Korean media reported earlier this week that the North's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il is planning a trip to Beijing, possibly next month, in a signal of possible progress in efforts to end the nuclear standoff.
Before his meeting with Hu, Cheney also held talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and Jiang Zemin, China's former president who retains considerable power as the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces.
The US vice president, who arrived in Beijing late Tuesday and was scheduled to leave for China's largest city Shanghai later Wednesday, brought an agenda that was believed to also include the highly divisive issue of Taiwan.
On the first day of his China visit Cheney told Vice President Zeng Qinghong that the United States does not support Taiwan independence, according to the state-run China Daily.
Adopting careful diplomatic vocabulary designed not to upset either his Chinese hosts or US public opinion, Cheney said the United States realizes the importance of the Taiwan question to US-China relations, the paper reported.
Cheney's visit comes at a crucial moment, just weeks after controversial presidential elections on Taiwan which gave Chen Shui-bian another four years as the island's political leader.
China sees Chen as a dangerous advocate of Taiwan independence and is banking on the US government to exert discreet pressure on him to prevent him from widening the gap with the mainland.
Beijing is keen to exact statements from Cheney that Washington remains loyal to the "One China" principle, under which China defines Taiwan as a part of its territory awaiting unification and is opposed to Taiwan independence.
It also hopes Cheney will come away with the understanding that the United States should not encourage Taiwan independence by selling arms to the island, which Beijing says could jeopardise Sino-US relations.
Besides North Korea and Taiwan, Cheney was also expected to discuss booming economic and trade relations.
-------
Cheney Presses Beijing on North Korea
April 14, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/asia/14CND-CHEN.html
BEIJING, April 14 - Vice President Dick Cheney presented Chinese leaders with new evidence about the scope of North Korea's nuclear program and warned that "time is not necessarily on our side" in continuing negotiations, a senior Bush administration official said today.
Mr. Cheney told President Hu Jintao and other top leaders that the United States remained committed to six-nation talks that have met twice under Chinese auspices, so far without tangible progress, to find a solution to the nuclear standoff. But he stressed that the talks must show "real results" soon, without setting a timetable.
"It is important to stay engaged and to make progress," the senior official said. "But we need to keep in mind that we need results and that they are developing nuclear weapons as we deliberate."
The discussions about North Korea were held during Mr. Cheney's three-day visit to China, his first as vice president. The two sides also addressed China's tense relations with Taiwan, its large trade surplus with the United States, and American concerns about human rights abuses here.
American officials emphasized that they had held talks about China's wireless encryption standards and its poor enforcement of intellectual property rights, among the top concerns of American companies that do business here. Chinese leaders told Mr. Cheney that they plan to send Huang Ju, an executive vice prime minister, to the United States later this year to discuss currency policy, another sore point in bilateral ties.
The visit was the most extensive exchange between the Bush administration and top Chinese leaders since the Communist Party handed power to Mr. Hu in late 2002. Mr. Cheney first came to China with former President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, but had not visited during the decade-long economic boom that has transformed the economy and the urban contours of Beijing.
Today Mr. Cheney and Mr. Hu had two hours of talks over lunch in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound. Mr. Cheney also met Jiang Zemin, Mr. Hu's predecessor as president and Communist Party chief who remains China's top military official. He discussed economic issues with Wen Jiabao, the prime minister.
Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who is thought to exercise extensive behind-the-scenes influence in the ruling party, was the host for Mr. Cheney at a dinner Tuesday night at the Great Hall of the People.
Before leaving Beijing for Shanghai this afternoon, Mr. Cheney praised what he called the professionalism of the new leadership and talked of "shared concerns and strategic interests." But he said "it would be a mistake for us to underestimate the extent of the differences" between the two countries.
"I did not come here expecting to alter Chinese policy," Mr. Cheney said. "I did come to make clear our views and share perspectives, and I think we achieved that."
On North Korea, Mr. Cheney "brought to the attention" of Chinese leaders a report in The New York Times on Tuesday about the North's nuclear program, the senior official said. That report quoted Bush administration and Asian officials as saying that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who has acknowledged selling weapons technology around the world, claims to have seen three nuclear devices in North Korea five years ago.
Although American officials had estimated that North Korea could have two or more nuclear devices, Dr. Khan's report, if true, would be the only first-hand validation that the North has a small arsenal.
Chinese officials have raised doubts that the North, its neighbor and one-time ally, has working nuclear weapons. Beijing has cited faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as one reason that it is opposed to taking precipitous action against North Korea.
Mr. Cheney told his Chinese counterparts that Dr. Khan's confession also shows that North Korea has been pursuing two ways of making nuclear bombs - through plutonium and enriched uranium. That is another subject of dispute between China and the United States.
"What is new is what we have learned about their capability," the senior administration official said. The official implied that China, which exercises considerable influence over North Korea, needs to achieve a breakthrough in coming talks to forestall sanctions against the North.
China is expected to act as host at a third round of negotiations before the end of June, and may convene a working group to search for common ground before then.
China's main concern during Mr. Cheney's visit was Taiwan, which it claims as its territory, and the recent narrow re-election of President Chen Shui-bian, whom Beijing views as determined to formally establish Taiwan as an independent nation.
Though Chinese officials pressed Mr. Cheney to reduce American arms sales to Taiwan as a way of restraining Mr. Chen, Mr. Cheney rejected those demands and stuck closely to established American policy.
"We are going to assist Taiwan to acquire the capability to defend itself," the senior administration official said, adding that China had "significantly increased" its own military deployments against Taiwan in recent years.
The official said Mr. Cheney did not make a "formal offer" to act as an intermediary between China and Taiwan, but did stress the importance of opening a dialogue soon "to eliminate miscalculations and avoid a confrontation that is not in anyone's interest."
-------- conversion
Juicy rewards as Indian nuclear boffins split bananas instead of atoms
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414021603.j8so5tbo.html
Indian nuclear scientists say they have unpeeled one of the great mysteries of the soft-drinks world -- how to extract juice from bananas cheaply and simply.
The breakthrough could lead to fizzy banana juice sold in cans and bottles, banana nectar and banana wine, they say.
Despite an 85 percent water content, scientists have long struggled to extract juice from the bendy fruit because when mashed it simply turns to pulp.
Costly and complicated techniques were developed to break down walls storing the moisture using enzymes.
"But in (our) process no external agent is added," said K.K. Surendranathan of the Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
"Our technique works without using any external enzymes. We just make the banana into a pulp and it is then treated in a reaction vessel for four to six hours," Surendranathan.
"The viability of the technology lies in its simplicity."
The technique extracts about 85 percent of the fruit's juice while the solid leftover -- which also smells and tastes of banana -- could be processed into confectionery items, he said.
However, few companies have expressed any interest in adapting the process for commercial use, said the scientist, who patented the technique two months ago.
"People have come in, sampled the drink and found it nice but are cautious because they are not sure of the market reaction," Surendranathan said.
"What we try and tell them is that there is a range of products you can further develop from the juice which include banana nectar, carbonated banana drink or even wine," he said.
The juice extracted from the banana has a very high sugar content of about 30-35 percent, which allows it to be stored for up to four months at a temperature below 15 degrees Celcius (59 Fahrenheit).
"We have found it to be very economical as one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pulp yields about 600-650 millilitres of juice," Surendranathan said.
BARC was one of the Indian nuclear research facilities which played a critical role in developing components and technology required for India's shock nuclear tests in 1998.
------- depleted uranium
The `desert foxes' of Iraq
By TAKAAKI IKEDA and YO KONISHI,
April 14, 2004
Asahi Shimbun
http://www.asahi.com/english/world/TKY200404140140.html
Day in, day out, they put their lives on the line to get the story-with nobody but fellow adventurers to fall back on if, or when, things go wrong in Iraq. They don't quite operate out of foxholes, but you could call them ``desert foxes,'' for that is what they are.
Meet the freelance journalist: the reporter or cameraman willing to risk it all for that one moment of glory.
For sure, Self-Defense Forces members may also face grave danger, but the freelancers are a breed apart.
Freelancers are people like Soichiro Koriyama, 32, one of the three Japanese taken hostage by a militant group last week and threatened with execution unless Tokyo meets demands to withdraw its forces from Iraq.
Until he got taken, Koriyama filed live-account dispatches despite encountering numerous difficulties.
It's a frantic life, surviving on your wits. Koriyama spent two months working on a construction site in Japan to fund his trip to Iraq to ``shoot some good pictures.''
He, too, would be reporting on the hostage crisis had he not become part of the story himself.
The Foreign Ministry says there are about 70 Japanese in Iraq with no ties to the SDF. Most are journalists.
Takeharu Watai, 32, typifies the breed of risk-takers. On Monday, for example, he was out roaming the streets of Baghdad, a video recorder slung over his right shoulder and a camera on the other.
Watai is one of about 30 journalists accredited to Asia Press International, a network of independent Asian journalists, founded in 1987.
His rationale: ``I wanted to be right there recording the turning point of world history as it happens.''
Watai also covered East Timor and Afghanistan.
Last year, as the Iraq war began heating up and news organizations began pulling out their correspondents, Watai elected to stay in Baghdad and file stories. A recipient of a special Vaughn-Ueda Memorial Prize-it is awarded to journalists who make contributions to international understanding-Watai returned to Iraq in February.
``I can feel the animosity against the Japanese growing,'' said Watai, recounting how on April 8 a demonstrator deliberately threw a rock in his face. ``I'd never been the target of hatred from the local people. Not until now. I hear grumblings against the SDF troop presence in Iraq. It makes the work harder.''
And there are people like freelance photographer Naomi Toyoda, 47. He returned to Japan at the end of March after a month in Iraq.
It was his ninth visit.
``I had been investigating the aftereffects of depleted uranium weapons when the Iraq war broke out,'' Toyoda said.
Toyoda said that while measuring radiation levels in Nasiriyah, he was surrounded by a militia group and taken away.
He did his best to convince them that he was in Iraq to help.
The following day, the soldiers became his guide.
``I wish for peace. That is the starting point for all my reporting,'' Toyoda says.
He holds exhibitions of his photographs and is a regular on the Japan lecture circuit.
Last year he published a collection of his photographs titled ``Iraku, Bakugeki to senryo no hibi'' (Iraq-Days of bombing and occupation). Toyoda also got to know volunteer aid worker Nahoko Takato, 34, now a hostage in Iraq.
Toyoda rushed to the Tokyo office of the Hokkaido government Monday to offer his assistance to relatives of the hostages.
Mizue Furui, 55, a member of Asia Press International who returned from Iraq on Saturday, says she ran into the other hostage, Noriaki Imai, 18, in Amman, Jordan, on April 6. He told her he was off to Iraq soon.
Furui is a photojournalist who has covered the Palestinian uprising, Uganda and wars in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Her speciality: spotlighting women under fire.
``When it comes to mobilization power, there's no way (freelancers) can go against the big newspapers and broadcasters,'' Furui said. ``But if you are an independent, you have the freedom to go after your heart's theme, and go digging as long as you wish. We can go right to the people who are living the actual war, enter their lives, feel their feelings.''(IHT/Asahi: April 14,2004) (04/14)
----
US Whitewashes Warthogs Killing Marines
Wednesday 14th April 2004
Traprock Peace Center
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_friendly_fire_add.html
The US Central Command has issued its investigative report on the attack on Marines at An Nasiriyah by 2 A-10 Warthogs on March 23, 2003. Initially, Americans were told, and US media reported, that the Marines died as a result of Iraqi's pretending to surrender, and then firing on the Marines. It was then revealed that two A-10's had attacked the Marines during the worst so-called 'friendly' fire incident of the war. 18 Marines died and 17 were wounded during the engagement with Iraqi forces and the US A-10's. The A-10's fired Maverick missiles at vehicles and strafed vehicles and US Marines on the ground with 30 mm 'depleted' uranium rounds. One Marine witnessed 9 strafing runs. On March 19, 2004, NPR had broadcast accounts by Marines given shortly after the battle to Marine historians. Marines described multiple deaths from the A-10's; a sergeant said that most of the Americans deaths were caused by the A-10's.
Col. Reed Bonadonna, Marine historian, described the devastating effect of the 30 mm DU rounds and called for a legitimate investigation of the incident: "I think that most of the Marines felt that with the kind of price that is being paid by this war, by a lot of people, and with the stakes being what they are, that falling back on some kind of no comment or bland, evasive or euphemistic language is really inadequate to the situation. That this kind of sacrifice, only the truth is good enough. That to try to protect somebody's nasty little career or to try to throw a gloss over this as if it didn't exist. The proper function of military history is to instruct people so we do it better next time, save people's lives." (transcription from NPR broadcast.)
Yet, the Central Command report did not confirm a single death caused by the A-10's. It found that the cause of death for 10 Marines was "indeterminable." Of Marines wounded, the Central Command said in its press release: "Of the 17 wounded, only one was conclusively determined to have been hit by friendly fire." Further, that "three Marines were wounded while inside vehicles that received both friendly and hostile fire, and the exact sequence and source of their injuries could not be determined." It is unbelievable that the military could not confirm if these Marines were injured by an A-10's strafing, as DU is radioactive.
There was barely a mention of 'depleted' uranium in the report itself, even though it played a key role. It was mentioned in connection marking vehicles that had been hit by the 30 mm rounds as radioactive.
It seems clear that the military has minimized this deadly incident. Why?
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_friendly_fire_add.html covers this controversy.
It also provides exclusive commentary by Dr. Doug Rokke (retired Major USAR); Tedd Weyman, Iraq Field Team leader for the Uranium Medical Research Center, and Ross Wilcock, MD., as well as links to the NPR and Central Command original resources and media accounts.
Charles Jenks, attorney at law
President of the Core Group
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-1633; Fax 413-773-7507
charles@mtdata.com
http://traprockpeace.org
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan silent on claims Khan saw nuclear bombs in NKorea
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414125731.ur1n00xs.html
Pakistan said Wednesday it was sharing information from a probe into proliferation by its nuclear godfather Abdul Qadeer Khan but refused to confirm reports that he had seen three nuclear bombs in North Korea.
The metallurgist, hailed as a national hero in Pakistan for creating its nuclear program, told interrogators he was shown the devices at a secret underground plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
"I have seen the report," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a weekly press briefing, but he declined to elaborate, saying only: "I would not like to go into specifics."
He added: "We have been sharing information with the international community and other countries who have a direct interest in this matter."
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters that Washington "has received significant amounts of information from Pakistan about the network, about Mr Khan's activities, about the activities of his associates, about others who were involved."
"We would note that Mr Khan has admitted to assisting North Korea's enrichment program, and his admissions have put the lie to North Korea's denials," Boucher said.
The Times report quoted US officials who had been briefed by the Pakistani government.
It said US Vice President Dick Cheney was expected to cite the intelligence report on North Korean nuclear activities when he meets Chinese leaders in Beijing, where he is on a two-day visit.
The US has accused North Korea of pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear weapons and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned Khan for his self-confessed sale of nuclear expertise and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Khan said in a televised confession that he acted without government or military support.
----
US says it has much information on disgraced Pakistan scientist
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040413225033.62rsgf2u.html
US said Tuesday it has received "significant amounts of information" on a Pakistani top nuclear scientist's illicit activity as reports revealed he had seen three nuclear bombs in North Korea.
Scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had told interrogators he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground nuclear plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported Tuesday, quoting officials who had been briefed by the Pakistani government.
The US State Department, commenting on the news report, said Washington worked very closely with Pakistan to dismantle Khan's network after he publicly confessed that he had shared nuclear secrets with Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Washington "has received significant amounts of information from Pakistan about the network, about Mr Khan's activities, about the activities of his associates, about others who were involved," department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
The New York Times said Vice President Dick Cheney was expected to cite the intelligence report on North Korean nuclear activities when he meets with Chinese leaders in Beijing, where he is on a two-day visit.
The newspaper was quoting US officials, who had declined to discuss the report in detail saying it was "too sensitive."
China has hosted six-party talks involving the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and North Korea which so far have failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
Boucher said he could not comment specifically on the New York Times report, which had contained US intelligence information.
"We continue to follow closely all information about North Korea's nuclear program," Boucher said.
As North Korea had claimed to possess a nuclear deterrent and have the capability to produce additional weapons,"we have to take those statements seriously," he added.
The United States has accused North Korea of pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear weapons and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington last week of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
"We would note that Mr Khan has admitted to assisting North Korea's enrichment program, and his admissions have put the lie to North Korea's denials," Boucher said.
Khan has been a national hero in Pakistan since he helped test its first nuclear bomb in 1998. President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned him.
-------- japan
Japanese government goes quiet on hostage crisis
By Masayuki Kitano
14 Apr 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:407d2d3c:a3a5bdee39225134?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4818834
TOKYO - Japanese officials were tight-lipped on the fate of three Japanese hostages in Iraq on Wednesday after days of conflicting reports, fearing that too much talk could endanger the captives' lives.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has insisted that he would not give in to the demands of the group holding them and withdraw Japan's 550 troops from southern Iraq, where they are engaged in reconstruction and humanitarian work.
But analysts say his handling of the crisis could affect by-elections for the Lower House of parliament this month as well as Upper House elections in July.
"We will not comment on such things now," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference when asked about the safety of the Japanese hostages.
Koizumi was also circumspect when urged by the opposition Democratic Party to call for restraint by the U.S. military in Falluja, saying he had to be careful with his words.
Media reports have said the three Japanese may be held in Falluja, where fierce fighting between U.S. forces and Sunni guerrillas has taken place.
"It's not simply a matter of calling for restraint or not...This is linked to the hostages and delicate information," Koizumi said in parliament.
"There are both things that should be said publicly and efforts being made behind the scenes. In the current situation, this is linked to the issue of hostages, so I'm being cautious with my comments," he added.
Talks have been taking place to extend a shaky truce in Falluja, where U.S. forces launched an attack on rebels last week after the gruesome public murders of four Americans on March 31.
Japan's Foreign Ministry re-issued a warning to all Japanese nationals to leave Iraq, citing the danger of kidnappings.
Up to 40 foreigners from at least a dozen countries are being held hostage in Iraq, where U.S. forces are locked in some of the fiercest fighting with Sunni and Shi'ite forces since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.
U.S. President George W. Bush vowed in a prime-time news conference to stay the course in Iraq and ruled out any delay in a June 30 deadline for a transfer of sovereignty to a still-undefined interim Iraqi government.
WORRIED FAMILIES, DIVIDED NATION
Relatives of the Japanese hostages found some comfort in the absence of bad news.
"I believe the lack of any particular change is actually a good sign," said Naoko Imai, mother of 18-year-old Noriaki Imai.
"We're very worried," she added. "We are praying that they will all return safely, without injury."
The three hostages are Imai, who wanted to look into the effects of depleted uranium weapons, freelance journalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, and aid worker Nahoko Takato, 34.
Japan was divided over Koizumi's original decision to send the troops to help rebuild Iraq and is split over whether they should now be pulled out to save the hostages' lives.
But Koizumi said again on Wednesday that the troops would remain in Iraq to carry out reconstruction work.
Some of his harshest critics, including the opposition Democratic Party, agree that the troops should not be brought home in response to threats from the kidnappers.
But they argue that the deteriorating security situation in southern Iraq means the dispatch is violating a law that restricts the troops' activities to non-combat zones.
-------- korea
U.S.: New Report on N. Korea's Nuclear Program No Surprise
VOA News
Apr. 14, 2004
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200404/200404140002.html
Bush administration officials say they're not surprised by a published report Tuesday that North Korea displayed what it said were nuclear weapons to renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan during a visit to that country five years ago.
Citing intelligence considerations, U.S. officials are declining to confirm details of The New York Times report, which says Abdul Qadeer Khan was shown what were said to have been three North Korean nuclear bombs during a visit there in the late 1990's.
However, they say Pakistan has provided the United States with "significant amounts of information" on the proliferation network of A. Q. Khan derived from recent interrogation of the nuclear scientist, and that it only reinforces U.S. assumptions about Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities.
Mr. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, confessed in February to selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya and was immediately pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf on condition that he cooperate with an investigation of those activities.
The New York Times said its account of Mr. Khan's visit to North Korea was provided by U.S. and Asian sources who had been briefed on it by Pakistani officials. If Mr. Khan's account is true, it would be the first time that any foreigner had reported inspecting an actual North Korean nuclear weapon.
At a news briefing here, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the newspaper account is in line with U.S. intelligence assessments of the North Korean nuclear program. "North Korea has pursued and is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability," he said. "In our view there's been no question of this. It's been the long-standing intelligence community assessment that North Korea has produced one, possibly two, plutonium-based nuclear weapons. We would note that Mr. Khan has admitted to assisting North Korea's (uranium) enrichment program, and his admissions have put the lie to North Korea's denials."
Mr. Boucher noted that North Korea has in the past claimed to possess a nuclear "deterrent" and to have the capability to produce additional weapons, and said those statements "have to be taken seriously."
The New York Times said the information provided by Pakistan has "set off alarms" in Asian countries, including China, which had expressed doubts about U.S. assertions that North Korea has an enriched-uranium bomb project in addition to its plutonium-based weapons program.
The issue is expected to loom large in Vice President Dick Cheney's current visit to China, and give added urgency to the six-party talks aimed at ending North Korean nuclear weapons efforts.
At a San Francisco meeting late last week, senior U.S., South Korean and Japanese diplomats urged the convening, before the end of the month, of "working group" sessions on the issue, and they said the next plenary meeting of the Chinese-hosted talks should be held on schedule before the end of June.
--------
3 Nuclear Devices Cited in N. Korea
Verifying Remarks Of Pakistani Is Difficult for U.S.
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9452-2004Apr13.html
Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has told interrogators that he shipped nuclear technology to North Korea, where he said North Koreans showed him three devices they identified as nuclear weapons, Bush administration officials said yesterday.
If Khan's unconfirmed report is accurate and his North Korean clients were telling the truth, it would affirm the U.S. intelligence community's belief that the secretive Pyongyang government had perfected atomic weapons.
Only last month, CIA Director George J. Tenet noted the intelligence estimate that North Korea possessed "one, possibly two, nuclear weapons." If Khan is right, it could mean North Korea had more plutonium than suspected, raising questions about its source of the valuable metal.
The information about Khan, first reported yesterday by the New York Times, comes from briefings assembled by Pakistani officials for North Korea's neighbors, including Japan and South Korea. U.S. authorities yesterday verified elements of the briefings, but stressed they have no way to confirm the accuracy of the statements attributed to Khan.
"The details are a little bit hazy," said a White House official, noting that North Korea has "admitted to a plutonium program. They've admitted to a uranium program. The CIA has put out its estimate."
Khan, a metallurgist, is known as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb and mastermind of an international nuclear technology smuggling ring. He is the only foreigner to have described seeing nuclear weapons in North Korea.
The CIA conclusions, dating to the mid-1990s, are based on calculations derived from the amount of plutonium North Korea was believed to possess. Khan had no way of knowing whether he was shown actual weapons.
"Was he in a position to tell whether these were mock-ups, real weapons or what? Were they empty bombs waiting for the nuclear material?" asked Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It comes down to a question of sources."
The Bush administration, eager to assess the extent of Khan's help to North Korea, Iran and possibly other countries, has been frustrated by its inability to question him. Requests must be routed through Pakistani investigators, and some top U.S. officials believe that valuable details are omitted when the answers are relayed to the Americans.
Khan admitted publicly in February that he and his associates sold nuclear secrets to foreign countries, including North Korea, Iran and Libya. He confessed on state-run television under terms of a pardon granted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
While running Pakistan's nuclear weapons laboratory, Khan said he repeatedly visited North Korea to help with uranium-enrichment technology. U.S. officials have long suspected Pyongyang of trading missile technology to Pakistan in return for help with the complex enrichment process, an essential component of one type of weapons program.
According to the Pakistani briefings, Khan said he delivered enrichment equipment after North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze its plutonium program. He told investigators that he delivered a shopping list of equipment North Korea would need.
North Korea told U.S. diplomats two years ago it had a uranium enrichment program, but has since denied the existence of a program.
----
S.Korea Says Assessing Khan Report on North's Nukes
April 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-pakistan.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's estimate of the communist North's nuclear capability is not greatly altered by a report that Pakistan's top scientist saw nearly completed atomic weapons in the North, Seoul's foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Ban Ki-moon said five countries engaged in multilateral negotiations with North Korea already assume that the North has an advanced plutonium-based program to make bombs and a highly enriched uranium scheme, about which less is known.
``Our assessment of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs remains unchanged, although there needs to be a final confirmation of all reports,'' Ban told reporters.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had seen what he described as three nuclear devices, believed to be full weapons. The paper quoted U.S. officials as saying they were unsure whether Khan would have been able to verify the claim.
South Korea has long accepted U.S. intelligence estimates that North Korea produced enough plutonium for several bombs in the early 1990s, before an American-negotiated 1994 freeze of the North's program which Pyongyang repudiated last year.
North Korea said last year it had restarted the frozen nuclear reactor and completed making weapons-grade plutonium from fuel extracted from the plant.
But Pyongyang has reversed its reported October 2002 admission to the United States that it had a uranium-based program. It now denies this, and also that it acquired uranium enrichment technology and know-how from Khan.
``We believe the testimony by Khan that he transferred information and technology to the North,'' Ban said, referring to a suspected separate program based on uranium enrichment.
Ban said Seoul has asked Pakistan to verify aspects of Khan's testimony that are unclear, and said the circumstances surrounding the report are ambiguous. He said South Korea remains in consultations with the United States over the case.
The two Koreas and the United States, hosted by China and joined by Japan and Russia, held two rounds of talks on the North's nuclear programs in August 2003 and in February.
The talks have made little progress on how North Korea's nuclear programs would be dismantled and its energy and security concerns addressed.
Ban said the six countries hope to meet for working-level talks in late April or early May.
``It will be about talking with some flexibility about a wide range of issues, including the North's demand for compensation in return for its nuclear freeze and our demand for a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement,'' Ban said.
-------- latinamerica
US quite confident about Brazil's intentions over nuclear technology
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414183857.0ilc7pi7.html
The US government is confident that Brazil is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons and believes the IAEA is best suited to handle the "sensitive" issue, the top US diplomat for Latin America said Wednesday.
"It's a very sensitive subject but I believe our government has a terrific amount of confidence in Brazil," said assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega.
The Washington Post last week said Brazil had rejected a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency to a uranium enrichment plant it is building near Rio de Janeiro, and that IAEA inspections in Brazil are stalled.
"It's a complicated technical issue," Noriega told reporters.
"We believe they (Brazil) are committed to meeting their international obligations and this is a matter that is best handled by the IAEA in a multilateral way. We do not want to make this a bilateral issue, because quite frankly the US has confidence that Brazil is a responsible actor."
A State Department official, who asked not to be named, last week called on Brazil to implement all IAEA safeguards at its nuclear plants and to adopt an additional protocol on non-proliferation.
Brazil, which has one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors access to the plant between February and March, but is negotiating with the Vienna-based organization on other ways for checks to be carried out at the plant once it launches its experimental phase.
Nonproliferation specialists say that if the United States and the United Nations do not act to curtail Brazil's program, or at least insist on inspections, it could undermine White House calls for Iran and North Korea to halt their efforts to enrich uranium.
Brazil's project also poses a conundrum for US President George W. Bush, who has called for tighter restrictions on enrichment of uranium as part of a new strategy to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, last week's report in The Post said.
-------- terrorism
U.S. Moves to Retrieve Foreign Uranium
Wednesday April 14, 2004
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3978177,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department announced an overhaul Wednesday of its program to retrieve weapons-grade uranium from foreign research reactors after an internal audit warned that much of the material was ``out of U.S. control'' and could be stolen by terrorists.
The department said the program would shift to its nonproliferation and nuclear security offices, moving from the environmental management programs where it has been since 1996.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he wanted the program refocused within offices ``with a proven track record in nonproliferation.''
He also directed managers to give priority to getting the material out of countries where the diversion risks are greatest and to work with the State Department in diplomatic efforts to persuade countries to give up the material.
Over a number of decades, the United States has provided more than 17,500 kilograms - about 19 tons - of highly enriched uranium for use in research reactors in 51 countries. The uranium was provided under the ``Atoms for Peace'' programs aimed at helping countries use nuclear facilities for scientific research and medical purposes.
Among the countries using U.S.-produced, weapons-grade uranium in research reactors are Iran, Pakistan, South Africa and Mexico.
As of October, the department reported that 22 counties had returned only about 1,100 kilograms of the highly enriched uranium, or HEU, according to an internal audit of the program released last month.
``Large quantities of U.S.-produce HEU were out of U.S. control,'' the auditors concluded, and only a small fraction of the material still in foreign hands is ever expected to be retrieved.
It only takes about 12 kilograms, or 26 pounds, to fashion a nuclear devise, according to nuclear weapons experts.
Among the countries that have shown little interest in giving up the U.S.-produced material are Iran, Pakistan, South Africa, Mexico, Israel, Jamaica and France, according to the report by the department's inspector general.
Inspector General Gregory Friedman warned that recovery ``a critical component of the effort to prevent diversion of the material for use in nuclear weapons.'' Yet, his audit concluded the department is ``likely to recover only about half of the approximately 5,200 kilograms, or 11,440 pounds, of the material covered by the program.
The report said many of the countries are reluctant to give up the material because doing so would disrupt their nuclear research programs. Also, the U.S. program requires the countries to pay for shipping it back to the United States, a cost some nations do not want to absorb.
More than 12,300 kilograms of the material in foreign countries is not under the retrieval program, although most of that is in countries such as Germany, France and Britain where the risk of diversion or theft is minimal and where some of the material already is being mixed so it cannot be used in weapons, according to the audit.
But Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University researcher and expert on nuclear proliferation issues, said some of the material is in idle research reactors in countries were security consists of ``a single sleepy watchman and a chain-link fence.''
Abraham said the changes being made to the program will speed the process of getting more of the material back to the United States.
``This consolidation will refocus and strengthen our international campaign to deny terrorists opportunities to seize nuclear materials and will also increase our effectiveness in achieving the reduction and eventual elimination of the use of weapons-usable materials in civil commerce worldwide,'' Abraham said in a statement.
U.S. officials want to trade the highly enriched material, which is suitable for being used in weapons, for a low-enriched uranium that still can be used in research but does not pose a proliferation concern.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Uranium Waste Pile Makes Colorado River Most Endangered
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
April 14, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-14-01.asp
"The Colorado River is not yet the most polluted river in the country, but it could become so if the current problems are allowed to fester," said Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers, announcing that the Colorado tops the organization's annual Most Endangered Rivers list. "A concerted national solution is necessary to problems that reach far beyond the banks of the river."
The most dangerous situation on the Colorado River is the Atlas uranium milling site across the Colorado River from Moab, Utah. There an estimated 110,000 gallons of radioactive groundwater seeps into the river each day from an unlined riverbank impoundment where some 10.5 million tons of radioactive waste is stored. Ammonia is also leaching into the waters of the Colorado River from the tailings pile.
Radioactive dust from the piles, dispersed by the persistent local winds, settles far from the sites. The piles produce radon gas, a deadly substance that has caused a five-fold increase in lung cancer among uranium miners.
American Rivers and its partners would like to see the waste moved away from the river, which supplies drinking water for 25 million people, including residents of Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The second largest uranium waste pile in the United States, the Atlas tailings resulted from operations of a uranium mill at the Moab site from 1956 until 1984. The facility is now owned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Uranium is no longer processed at the site, and the mill has been dismantled except for one building.
The Energy Department will soon disclose its plans for the Atlas milling site, but the environmental groups say the federal agency has signaled its intention not to relocate the material to a safer location.
Donald Metzler, DOE's Program Manager for the Moab Mill Project, has said that the DOE has not yet made a decision regarding whether the radioactive pile will be capped in place or moved to an off-site location.
The Draft Environmental Impact Statement expected shortly will announce the preferred alternative for groundwater remediation so that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be able to complete its Biological Opinion.
One of the partners for the Most Endangered River Initiative is the Colorado Riverkeeper, John Weisheit, a river guide who works daily from an office located within a mile of the Atlas Mill site. "Visitors come from all over the world to enjoy the Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park downstream," says Weisheit.
"They enjoy the scenery, the rapids and all the good things one expects to find from such a treasured landscape. Someday a big flood like those that raged through these canyons in the 19th century is going to lift that pile into the river and irradiate Canyonlands National Park. It is pure folly not to move this pile away from the floodplain of the Colorado River."
"As long as this material remains on the riverbank, it poisons the river every day and threatens water supplies with a catastrophic failure. New evidence suggests that disposing of it in an underground salt formation might be an affordable alternative," said Bill Hedden with the Grand Canyon Trust. "The Energy Department must now expedite studies of this alternative to confirm if it is truly the ideal solution."
Sarah Fields, who also lives within a mile of the waste pile, has engaged herself in efforts to remove the radioactive heap for more than 10 years. Fields is the coordinator of the Nuclear Waste Committee of the Sierra Club Glen Canyon Group.
"It is a fact that for thousands of years this tailings pile will remain toxic and radioactive to humans and animal life," she said. "In the scale of hundreds of years, it is inevitable that a catastrophic flood will consume this pile and devastate the down river environment. As irresponsible as it was to put this pile by the River, it is equally as irresponsible to let it remain by the river."
Dangerous as it is, the radioactive tailings pile is not the only environmental problem on the Colorado River. Of equal concern to American Rivers are the rising predictions for human waste reaching the river from riverfront boomtowns in California and Arizona. This area has the largest concentration of people in the United States using septic tanks.
Overloaded septic systems allow increasing quantities of nitrates to seep into groundwater and the Colorado River. High nitrate levels in drinking water can deplete oxygen in infants' blood, creating blue baby syndrome, and they are suspected to cause some types of cancer. Local communities' efforts to upgrade their wastewater infrastructures have been hampered by lack of federal support, American Rivers says.
In Henderson, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas, the toxic chemical ammonium perchlorate is trickling into the river from a former military facility. Perchlorate, measured in Lake Mead at concentrations as high as 24 parts per billion, interferes with proper thyroid function and disrupts the body's normal hormonal balance. Produce grown with Colorado River water often contains trace amounts of perchlorate and is sold at supermarkets nationwide. Even as scientists debate how much exposure to perchlorate is safe, Congress is considering relieving the Department of Defense of the responsibility to clean up after itself at Henderson and elsewhere, American Rivers and its partners warn.
"Our tests last year found that perchlorate levels in winter lettuce irrigated by the Colorado were four times higher the EPA's recommended safe dose for a glass of drinking water," said Bill Walker, west coast vice president for the Environmental Working Group, which has studied perchlorate contamination since 1999.
"The cropland irrigated by the river produces most of the lettuce and other produce sold nationwide during the winter months, which means that perchlorate is not just a local or regional problem, but a concern for every American."
The groups point out that the administration of President George W. Bush has reduced the number of Clean Water Act enforcement actions, levied fewer and smaller fines on lawbreakers, and created new loopholes on behalf of polluting industries. The administration failed to disclose the results of an internal audit, which found that one-quarter of all major industrial and wastewater treatment facilities are in "significant violation" of the law at any one time.
"The president's clean water record can be summed up in three words - soft on crime," Wodder said.
The White House and Congress have also shortchanged communities seeking a helping hand to clean up their waters. The federal government's share of sewage treatment construction costs has fallen from 20 percent to just five percent - and the White House seeks to cut federal funding by another third in 2005.
There are 10 rivers in 26 states profiled in this year's America's Most Endangered Rivers report, released today. The report highlights the 10 rivers facing the most uncertain future rather than the worst chronic problems.
Mississippi's Big Sunflower River is number two on the list of Most Endangered Rivers due to two costly flood control projects - the Yazoo Pumps. American Rivers says this single project will drain and damage seven times more wetlands than all the nation's private developers harm in one year.
Without firm opposition from the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Corps of Engineers will also dredge more than 100 miles of the Big Sunflower's riverbed, destroying even more wetlands, stirring up a toxic stew of pesticides, and endangering the health of those who eat fish caught in the river, American Rivers says.
Dams on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers have caused steep declines in the Snake River's once abundant wild salmon population, with all the river's runs either extinct or sliding toward extinction. Studies show that local economies would benefit from thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of new dollars if wild salmon were restored to the Snake River.
Number four, the Tennessee River, is overloaded with large amounts of inadequately treated sewage from wastewater systems that discharge into the river.
Two rivers share the number five slot - the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers that run through the coal country of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Thousands of abandoned mines are leaking acid and other toxic substances into streams that feed these rivers. The pollution threatens 42 public drinking water intakes, and thousands of private wells, as well as fish and wildlife. American Rivers is calling for Congress to reauthorize the Abandoned Mine Land Trust Fund which supports efforts to fix this problem.
The Spokane River in Idaho and Wyoming is number six on the list, threatened with groundwater withdrawal applications, sewage discharge, and mine waste.
In the number seven spot is the Housatonic River of Massachusetts and Connecticut, contaminated with some of the highest levels of toxic PCBs in the nation.
Number eight is Florida's Peace River where phosphate mining in the watershed has been the source of environmental problems for many years. Now large new mines are planned.
At number nine is a waterway that is not yet badly polluted. Despite its close proximity to Columbus, Ohio, Big Darby Creek has escaped many impacts of urban sprawl. But American Rivers warns that unless state and local governments adopt and enforce river-conscious land use planning in the Big Darby watershed, one of the highest quality streams left in the Midwest may become "just another polluted, flood prone urban ditch."
The tenth most endangered river is America's longest, the Mississippi. Manipulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for years, the Mississippi "faces ecological collapse" says American Rivers, with negative economic impacts to tourism and recreation industries worth $21 billion per year.
----
Colorado River heads endangered list
By Mitch Tobin
04.14.2004
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/printDS/17951.php
The Colorado River, lifeline for Tucson and the desert Southwest, tops a list of endangered rivers being released today by an advocacy group.
Citing three sources of contamination - sewage around Lake Havasu, rocket fuel in Nevada and a uranium mine near Moab, Utah - American Rivers says the Colorado's water quality is as troubling as the growing demands placed on its meager flow.
"While conflict over Colorado River water allocations has grabbed headlines for years," the group says, "water pollution problems from human waste, toxic chemicals and radioactive material have been largely overlooked and threaten to get much worse."
The group isn't exaggerating the problem, said Tucson Water Director David Modeer.
"This is not a contamination that will occur in the next week or two," he said. "But certainly, if left unattended, it's definitely a threat to the water supply of not only Tucson, but over 30 million people."
Tucson taps the Colorado via the 336-mile Central Arizona Project canal. The river water seeps into the Avra Valley, west of the Tucson Mountains, and is pumped out with the native groundwater. That blend will account for half the city's water supply by year's end and was developed to wean Tucson from its unsustainable mining of groundwater.
CAP water begins its uphill journey to Phoenix and Tucson at Lake Havasu, where American Rivers said nitrate pollution of groundwater may cause cancer and deplete the oxygen in infants' blood.
Lake Havasu City - population 50,000 and growing at 6 percent to 10 percent per year - has nearly 25,000 individual septic systems. That's the largest concentration of septic systems anywhere in the nation, city spokesman Charlie Cassens said.
Most cities grow in chunks, with sewers and other infrastructure built to serve new neighborhoods, but Lake Havasu City expanded piecemeal as a developer sold off property lot-by-lot, Cassens said. "Septic systems were just the most economical way to grow."
In 2001, city voters approved a $463 million bond package to expand the sewer system. Work began last year and is expected to take another nine years.
"We'll literally be abandoning about 25,000 septic systems that would normally serve to trickle nitrates into the river and our drinking water supply," Cassens said. Already one shallow monitoring well has found nitrates at four times the federal standard, he said.
The project comes at a price - namely, a new sewer bill of $23 to $40 per month in a town with plenty of retirees on fixed incomes. The city is seeking federal aid to ease that burden and was hopeful that today's report would boost that effort.
American Rivers is also worried about perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel seeping into Lake Mead from a Cold War-era missile plant in Henderson, Nev.
Upstream, near Moab, Utah, the group says a massive uranium tailings pile is leaching 110,000 gallons of water tainted with radioactive material into the river every day.
"They're all very serious issues," said Robert Glennon, a water expert at the University of Arizona law school. "All three of these are really about groundwater and its connection to the surface flow in the river."
A fourth source of groundwater pollution has also made news recently - a plume of toxic hexavalent chromium is migrating toward the Colorado from a Pacific Gas and Electric natural-gas facility in California's Mojave Desert.
That chemical - made famous by the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich" - and the perchlorate are both being pumped from the ground before they reach the river, said CAP spokesman Bob Barrett.
Barrett said continual tests by CAP and local water utilities show river water remains safe. With perchlorate, the highest level recorded by CAP was 6 parts per billion and it's now between 2 and 4 parts per billion. There is no federal standard for perchlorate, but California recently set a limit of 6 parts per billion and Arizona's standard is 40 parts per billion, Barrett said.
Proposals for the uranium mine have included capping the site or moving it.
Pollution issues may compound the age-old fights among Western states over the Colorado, where every drop is already spoken for, even in times of normal precipitation. An ongoing, basinwide drought has depleted reservoirs and raised the specter of water restrictions.
If the dry spell continues, CAP's supply may be cut by about one-quarter as early as 2011, but the shortage would hit Arizona farmers, not its cities, Modeer said.
"The quality issues are, at this time, more of an immediate threat than the quantity issue," he said.
Washington, D.C.-based American Rivers has 53,000 members and has released its list of endangered rivers annually since 1986, citing the Colorado four other times since then.
° Contact Mitch Tobin at 573-4185 or mtobin@azstarnet.com.
-------- idaho
Atomic Anniversary
SRA hits the quarter-century mark glowing
by Nicholas Collias,
Apr 14, 2004
Boise Weekly
http://www.boiseweekly.com/more.php?id=1075_0_1_0_M
The Snake River Alliance, Idaho's self-proclaimed "Nuclear Watchdog," is celebrating its silver anniversary on Monday, April 19 and Tuesday, April 20 with a conference entitled "25 Years of Nuclear Activism: Swimming Upstream to Protect Communities Downstream."
The seminar, featuring five lectures, two forum discussions and a special screening of the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, comes at a high point in the SRA's history, mere days after what SRA executive director Jeremy Maxand labels "One of the most effective lobbying efforts that we've ever had." "We met with all of our Idaho congressional delegates, as well as others from Georgia, South Carolina, Washington and Oregon," Maxand reports of the Alliance's participation in the "DC Days" event in Washington, D.C., held March 28 through 31. "People were supportive across the board of our lawsuit [to stop the DOE from avoiding proper cleanup by reclassifying high-level nuclear waste], protecting the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and keeping [nuclear waste] cleanup a priority."
Several of the SRA conference speakers, including Institute for Energy and Environmental Research President Arjun Makhijani and Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Susan Gordon, were involved in the lobbying event, to some great ends. "The consensus is that we're winning," Maxand explains. "The Department of Energy [DOE] is on the run and they are finding that it's harder and harder to justify cleanup by attrition. That is encouraging because the topic of our conference is about 'Swimming Upstream,' and going up against an agency like the DOE, which has been shrouded in cold war secrecy for half a century. It can feel like we're going against the current without a paddle. Now we're just trying to keep the pressure on and keep pushing."
With this forward momentum in mind, very little of the lecture time at "Swimming Upstream" will be devoted to historical reminiscences of the long and impressive list of accomplishments realized by the SRA. For those participants not up to date, some highlights include: halting the construction of no less than three nuclear weapons plants at INEEL, the stoppage of a proposal to build a plutonium production reactor as well as an isotope separator meant to upgrade "reactor grade" plutonium into "weapons grade" and constant and vigilant opposition to the INEEL's irresponsible handling of radioactive waste above the Snake River aquifer. Perhaps most famously, the Alliance also embarked on the unprecedented task of monitoring and announcing the arrival of clandestine shipments of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho. "Spent fuel shipments were not publicized. They were treated as if they were shipments of nuclear weapons," SRA Development Director Margaret Macdonald explains. "We started tracking those shipments and telling not only the people of Idaho but the state of Idaho, which in turn was instrumental in helping the state get a stronger role at INEEL. Governor Andrus acknowledged that that we were the bedrock on which the state could take its stand."
One of the organization's proudest moments is also one that SRA Program Director Beatrice Brailsford labels "not particularly glamorous." "We worked with state and citizen groups from around the country," she recalls, "in order to ensure that the DOE had to obey [the Nuclear Waste Policy Act]. We won in 1992, and that was the last major environmental law passed in this country. It was, and is, a lot more important than most people realize, because it gave someone outside of the DOE enforcement power over the way that waste is handled. If we're safer in Idaho and as a nation, it's not because the DOE has removed any perils, but because more people are watching. The most unsafe position we could be in is one in which no one is keeping tabs."
Lessons learned from these past victories will feature most prominently in the panel discussion, "Tools of the Movement: How You Make a Difference," taking place on Tuesday afternoon. Other conference highlights will include discussions of Idaho's historical role in the nuclear energy program, the shady history of the DOE, nuclear weapons and non-proliferation and a forum led by local activists, ranchers and politicians about the experience of living downstream from INEEL's half-century of nuclear activity.
-------- nevada
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Information Falls Short
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
April 14, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-14-09.asp#anchor3
The technical positions behind the Department of Energy's (DOE) license application to build and operate a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada may not be supported by enough information for authorization unless substantial changes are made, a branch of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Monday.
During weeklong audits during the months of November, December and January at the DOE and Bechtel SAIC facilities in Las Vegas, a team from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards evaluated the quality of technical information in three documents that the Department of Energy is preparing to support its Yucca Mountain application.
The three documents - chosen because their subjects are of high or medium significance to repository performance - are on the general and localized corrosion of the waste package outer barrier, the commercial spent nuclear fuel waste form degradation model, and the drift degradation analysis in the Yucca Mountain tunnel.
The evaluation team found that, "if DOE continues to use their existing policies, procedures, methods, and practices at the same level of implementation and rigor, the license application may not contain information sufficient to support the technical positions in the application."
This could result in the NRC issuing a large volume of requests for additional information in some areas, which could extend NRC staff's time for review and could prevent the NRC from making a decision regarding a construction authorization to DOE within the three years required by law, even with a possible extension to four years, the report said.
The NRC has made no determination on the technical adequacy of the documents evaluated, known as Analysis Model Reports. This would be done during the review of the license application. Conclusions drawn from the results of this evaluation indicate neither NRC acceptance nor rejection of any DOE documents.
The NRC team found that the DOE and its contractor, Bechtel SAIC Company, had used several good practices and found the technical information was much improved over what was presented in the DOE's Total System Performance Assessment for Site Recommendation in 2001. The information was up to date, more comprehensive and contained more data, the team said.
But the evaluators identified concerns with both "the clarity of the technical bases and the sufficiency of technical information used to support DOE's explanation of the technical bases."
The team also had concerns with the effectiveness of DOE's corrective actions. The number and similar pattern of concerns found in the three documents that NRC reviewed "suggests that other DOE documents may have similar limitations," the team said.
Copies of the report, "U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff Evaluation of U.S. Department of Energy Analysis Model Reports, Process Controls, and Corrective Actions," will be available on the NRC website by clicking here.
-------- washington
HEHF sues AdvanceMed
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4964394p-4892947c.html
The Hanford Environmental Health Foundation has filed suit against AdvanceMed, saying Washington law bars the subsidiary of an international corporation from practicing medicine in the state.
AdvanceMed of Reston, Va., is preparing to take over occupational medicine services for about 11,000 Hanford employees.
The Department of Energy notified the foundation, HEHF, on Friday that it immediately should begin work to transition services to AdvanceMed. HEHF has provided occupational health services at the Hanford nuclear reservation for 38 years.
In January, the Department of Energy announced that AdvanceMed would take over the contract to provide health services to about 11,000 Hanford workers.
HEHF, which was among the other bidders on a contract valued at up to $96 million, pro-tested the award to the U.S. General Accounting Office. The protest was denied last week.
HEHF is asking Benton County Superior Court to prohibit AdvanceMed from practicing medicine in Washington. It also wants AdvanceMed to be barred from providing health services at Hanford while the suit is being heard.
Also named in the suit is HPM, a small start-up corporation in Richland that will provide services as part of the AdvanceMed contract.
Washington law prohibits for-profit corporations not controlled by licensed medical professionals from employing doctors and providing medical services, according to HEHF.
"The rationale for the rule is a simple one: the ethical obligations to clients or patients should not be compromised by obligations to shareholders," according to the suit filed by HEHF.
AdvanceMed and HPM are for-profit corporations not controlled by medical professionals, according to the suit. AdvanceMed has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the publicly traded Computer Sciences Corp., or CSC, since it acquired AdvanceMed's former parent company, DynCorp, 13 months ago.
The state restriction does not apply to HEHF because it is not for profit, said Lee Ashjian, chief executive of HEHF.
"The health and welfare of Hanford workers are our primary consideration, not making profit for the shareholders," he said.
HEHF was formed to provide industrial medicine services for Hanford workers. The service was planned to be independent of contractors responsible for producing plutonium during the Cold War and now cleaning up the site. Many employees must work around hazardous chemicals, radioactive material or construction hazards.
Over the last six months, HEHF has been criticized by a public interest group and some workers for being too concerned about pleasing contractors as it diagnoses workers and determines work restrictions. HEHF officials have said they are confident DOE investigations will find they have acted in the workers' best interests.
HEHF would do a better job of protecting the health and safety of Hanford workers than AdvanceMed, Ashjian said.
HEHF does not participate in joint ventures or similar arrangements with other Hanford contractors that would compromise HEHF's independence, according to a statement from the foundation.
It claimed AdvanceMed or CSC has joint ventures, subcontracts or other business relationships with Bechtel, Fluor, Battelle, Lockheed Martin and CH2M Hill, which all hold DOE contracts in Richland.
DynCorp, which was acquired by CSC, practiced a "minimalist approach" to occupational medicine as the contractor at the DOE nuclear site in Rocky Flats, Colo., according to HEHF. AdvanceMed proposed a similar approach in its Hanford contract, according to HEHF.
DOE said earlier this year that all bidders for the contract provided strong proposals, but that they varied widely in cost.
HEHF also is pointing out that it is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization, the same body that accredits the three Tri-City hospitals.
In the contract with AdvanceMed, which has not been made public, DOE is giving AdvanceMed two years to qualify for accreditation, according to HEHF. The initial award of the contract is for three years, with possible extensions for up to a decade.
Mike Dickerson, a spokesman for CSC, declined to comment late Tuesday afternoon other than to say that "as a matter of policy CSC does not normally comment on pending litigation."
HPM did not respond to a request for comment.
The Hanford occupational health contract comprises more than 99 percent of HEHF's work, Ashjian said. DOE has yet to meet with HEHF to discuss the transition, but HEHF officials are guessing that if the transition proceeds, the agency's contract would end in early June.
Another of the losing bidders, Comprehensive Health Services, with corporate headquarters in Vienna, Va., also has filed a protest with the Government Accounting Office.
-------- us politics
Kerry presses Bush on Iraq
April 14, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040414-123950-6878r.htm
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry yesterday demanded a "specific explanation" from President Bush about how his prosecution of the war will lead to a shared goal of a stable Iraq.
"The last several weeks have made it even clearer to Americans than it was before that this mission is not only not accomplished, it is more challenged than perhaps at any time," Mr. Kerry said.
Speaking during a fund-raising lunch, the senator from Massachusetts toughened his criticism of Mr. Bush, pointing to the president's scheduled press conference last night against a backdrop of rising violence in Iraq.
"I believe it is important for the president to not just share with all Americans what we all believe. We know we must succeed, we know we are committed to having a stable Iraq," he said. "The president owes Americans a specific explanation of exactly how we are going to achieve that."
Mr. Kerry said he timed his comments to coincide with the approach of the first anniversary of Mr. Bush's landing on an aircraft carrier to announce the end to major combat in Iraq.
On May 1, the president donned a flight suit and landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Speaking under a banner that declared "Mission Accomplished," Mr. Bush appeared to be declaring victory in the war.
Mr. Kerry said, "Now we know with an incredible collapse of security in Iraq, we know to what degree those words 'mission accomplished' missed the mark and to what degree we remain challenged today."
In a statement, Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt responded: "It's outrageous that Senator Kerry would blame the violence and the attacks made by the insurgents on the administration. Senator Kerry does not seem to understand that it is the terrorists who are to blame for the violence in Iraq."
Mr. Kerry planned this week to focus on soaring college costs while touring campuses, but he was finding the campaign dominated by unrest in Iraq and the growing violence.
When a questioner pressed him to concede that the United States had made a mistake in Iraq, Mr. Kerry said: "I think we've already made it clear, many of us, that the way the president went about this was more than a mistake, in the sense that the president broke promises. ... He promised he would go to war as a last resort. He broke every one of those promises."
With the increasing violence in Iraq, the war has taken a more prominent place in the campaign's debate. Mr. Kerry routinely chides Mr. Bush for not broadening the effort to include more nations.
"I think this is one of the great failures in judgment about how you take a nation to war," he said.
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President on Probation
04/14/2004
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?pid=1379
"The President is on probation with military voters," says Peter Feaver, professor of Political Science at Duke University and an expert on military-civilian relations.
It may be anecdotal but three stories in last week's newspapers offer a sharp sense of the growing ambivalence military veterans and families feel toward this Administration. The once rock-solid GOP military voting bloc could become a domestic casualty for Bush. And, as the New York Times reports , with a large number of military personnel living in battleground states like Florida, West Virginia and New Mexico, even small changes in military voting patterns could be decisive in November. With the occupation into its first year, casualties rising daily and no coherent exit plan in sight, Samie Drown--who voted for Bush in 2000 and has a husband in the Army's 101st Airborne Division--told the New York Times that her view of the Administration has completely changed. "My husband is a soldier and his job is to fight for freedom. But after so many months and so many deaths, no one has shown us any weapons of mass destruction or given us an explanation." A mother of four young kids, she continued: "So a lot of military wives are now asking: 'Why? Why did we go to Iraq? The Administration talked a strong story, but a lot of us are kicking our butts about how we voted last time around. Now we're leaning the other way."
Rhonda Wilson, of Astoria, Queens echoed Drown in remarks she made recently to New York Newsday. Her daughter, Shawna Herron, 26, is a cook with the Army's 225th Battalion.
"I don't know why President Bush don't let our children come home," Wilson said. "He would rather see our kids slaughtered. Who's he to say we're sticking it out? This is not our fight. It never was.
"He's busy trying to get himself re-elected and got all our babies over there risking life and limb," Wilson said. "It's wrong, wrong, and somebody needs to let him know it. So many people have lost their kids."
Samie Drown and Rhonda Wilson must be keeping Karl Rove wide awake in the wee hours of the night.
On the same base as Drown's husband in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Brittany Wood, 19, whose stepfather has spent most of the past 18 months in Iraq, says she was a Bush supporter a year ago but she plans to vote for Kerry this November.
"I was glad we were doing this because we need to help other countries fight for freedom, but now lots of people feel there's been a cover-up and it is a lie and we were not told the real reasons for being in Iraq," Ms. Wood says. ""That is making a lot of soldiers and their families think about voting. And for the first time they're thinking about voting Democratic." (A recent CBS News survey found that forty to forty-eight percent of people from "military families" would vote for Kerry.)
And buried in Sunday's Washington Post report on the small ANSWER -organized antiwar demonstration in DC on Saturday was a telling interview with a veteran on holiday who happened upon the demo unexpectedly. "What they're [the protestors] saying is correct," said T.J. Myers--who had recently returned from a year's stint in Iraq after leaving the Army after a seven year hitch. "It's all about money." Myers, who lives in Fort Benning, Georgia and was in Washington on vacation, said "It's my first time in DC, and I have never seen so many homeless people in my life and right near the White House. How can we send [billions] to another country when we have so many people in trouble here?" Myers's sentiments are shared by groups like Military Families Speak Out, which together with United for Peace and Justice, organized a press conference and walk to the White House on April 14 to deliver the message that it's time to end the occupation.
All this is showing that military families and personnel may be this election's newest swing voters. They certainly aren't Republican stalwarts anymore.
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Iraq Occupation Policy Under John Kerry
By Abu Spinoza
April 14, 2004
Press Action
http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001617.html
Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., has no intention of withdrawing Anglo-American occupation forces from Iraq. U.S. policy in Iraq under John Kerry would possibly be even worse than under Bush #2. John Kerry's op-ed piece, "A Strategy for Iraq," which appeared in the Washington Post (April 13, 2004), clearly shows that despite his rhetoric, the Democratic nominee has neither the temperament nor any intention to end the violence and occupation.
Kerry begins with grandiose declarations, such as: "To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime," and "Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed." Indicative of his mentality Kerry solemnly avers that the Iraqi resistance will not succeed "in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops." He is very much committed to the neo-conservative lie that "Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society." Facts and history do not matter to him and his ilk.
No doubt Kerry genuinely believes that the United States is in the business of "helping" Iraqis by killing them through decades of sanctions, the use of depleted uranium, bombing cities and villages, and inflicting collective punishment, just as he himself was part of the machinery in the business of constructing "a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society" in Asia by slaughtering peasants and killing millions in Vietnam. This has been the standard operating practice. He knows the trade and is unwilling to stop the massacres.
Kerry's policies in Iraq will not differ substantively but will have some variations in appearance and style. He assures his fellow citizens: "The military alone cannot win the peace in Iraq. We need a political strategy that will work." What is his political strategy? Firstly, using the United Nations and the office of Lakhdar Brahimi to legitimize Anglo-American domination of Iraq. Secondly, using the full brunt of NATO under the lead of a U.S. commander to establish complete hegemony over Iraq. Thirdly, installing a puppet regime in Iraq that serves the masters under a facade of Arab rule. These measures are inclusive of NATO allies but the essential objectives are the same as under Bush.
Mr. Kerry's policies do have a difference with Mr. Bush's. The principal difference is that they are definitively more polished and are sensitive to liberal sensibilities of Foreign Affairs magazine, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Harvard University, George Soros, Wall Street, European and Japanese fellow travelers and so forth. Kerry has mastered the art of speaking in a politically correct tone. He writes: "The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people. ... We must level with our citizens. ... The president must rally the country around a clear and credible goal ... the stakes are too great to lose the support of the American people."
He reassures that his "is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust." But beneath his genteel disquisition is a cold-hearted calculus of escalating the violence and military operations against the Iraqi resistance. He endorses the view that "if our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them" and "more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police" in oppressing the Iraqi population and joining the Uncle Toms, Uncle Ahmed Chalabis and Uncle Adnan Pachachis in plundering the resources of their country for the sake of Anglo-American occupiers and transnational corporations.
John Kerry will escalate the conflict rather than end it. It is a safe bet that John Kerry is no Charles de Gaulle. There are some actual, substantive and meaningful differences between Kerry and Bush, particularly on domestic policies. It would be wrong to discount those. However, as far as the occupation of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the overall aim of U.S. foreign policy is concerned, the same Bush #2 strategy of bombing and violence will continue under a more refined oratory and multilateral communion based on sharing the spoils and splitting the costs of war. For an Iraqi living under the boot of the occupiers the small differences between Kerry and Bush are absolutely inconsequential.
The anti-war activists should not harbor any illusions about John Kerry and the Democrats. The goal of anti-war activists should be the liberation of Iraq from the illegal Anglo-American occupation and its deadly consequences. It does not take a belief in determinism to figure out that the occupation can end under either Bush or Kerry if the economic and political costs become prohibitive for the financiers, the transnational corporations, the politicians and the military. These costs can rise if the Iraqi resistance grows strong, or if the anti-war movement in the West can put effective public pressure, or both.
Going forward, anti-war activists need to do much more to reach out to the citizens of Western democracies, build an international movement that is capable of not just massive and impressive demonstrations but also of providing popular education day in, day out. The anti-war movement should gradually aim to shift to the next stage of the struggle of peace and justice. Symbolic shut downs of universities may be possible. It is not wishful thinking that after massive education and institution-building nationwide work stoppages in solidarity with Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Haitians, Chechens, Columbians, and others can also be done.
Suffice to say that the populations of Western countries are far from being ready for these types of civil actions. But counting on John Kerry to bring peace to Iraq and the United States of America would be an incredible and foolish mistake with grave consequences for humanity.
Abu Spinoza is a columnist for Press Action.
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Roberts contradicts Frist on Clarke
By Alexander Bolton
April 14, 2004
The Hill
http://www.hillnews.com/news/041404/roberts.aspx
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's testimony before a joint congressional panel on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks did not contradict his later testimony before a presidentially appointed commission.
Roberts's comments to The Hill contradict a stinging condemnation of Clarke by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on the Senate floor after Clarke accused President Bush of failing to take Osama bin Laden seriously before Sept. 11. patrick g. ryan Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)
Roberts said Frist did not consult him before making his floor speech, which has been criticized by Democrats. Roberts's words make perjury charges against Clarke highly unlikely.
Democratic attack ads have used Clarke's assertions that Bush did not adequately heed warnings about bin Laden and have been roundly rejected by the administration and its allies, particularly Clarke's former boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Frist.
Frist has seemed to back off his earlier position, declining to repeat the charge that Clarke contradicted himself. But the majority leader continues to say it is suspicious that Clarke, who resigned at the beginning of 2003, has waited until now, in the midst of the presidential campaign season, to level his criticisms.
Speaking of Clarke's private testimony in 2002 before a joint House-Senate panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, compared to more recent public testimony, Roberts said, "It's not that he said one thing in one place and said another in another place. It's just that the subject never came up during the investigation by the House and Senate.
"The prime topic was basically, Did the intelligence community have the authority to take advantage of opportunities in regard to Osama bin Laden.
"But I don't recall any questions in regard to whether the Bush administration was responding well ... I don't think the words ever came up."
When asked if Clarke contradicted himself, Roberts said he did not.
Roberts said Clarke's 2002 testimony was on small-bore process issues related to the intelligence community while the later testimony took a big-picture view of policymakers' handling of evidence of a pending attack.
He wished that Frist had consulted with him before making his floor statement.
After Clarke testified publicly before the Sept. 11 commission chaired by former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, Frist urged on the Senate floor for Clarke's 2002 testimony before the Congressional joint inquiry to be declassified.
Frist said Clarke had earlier been "effusive in his praise for the actions of the Bush Administration. It is my hope that we will be able to get that testimony declassified."
Frist went on to say "Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath. In July 2002, in front of the congressional joint inquiry on the Sept.11 attacks, Mr. Clarke testified under oath that the administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al Qaeda during its first seven months in office.
"It is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media. But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress it is a far more serious matter."
Bob Stevenson, Frist's spokesman, told The Washington Post that on March 24, while Clarke testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, "a number of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee familiar with Clarke's 2002 joint intelligence committee testimony contacted the senator's staff and said 'the tone' was 'quite different from 2002.'"
Roberts said Republican staffers on the intelligence panel "will be in trouble" if he finds out they took the initiative to relate Clarke's closed-door testimony to Frist's staff.
Roberts said the appropriate handling of the matter would have been for Senate intelligence staff to brief him and for Roberts to brief Frist directly.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the intelligence panel, said that it would have been inappropriate for Intelligence Committee staffers to contact staff in the leader's office to relate the contents of Clarke's 2002 testimony.
Durbin added that Frist's condemnation of Clarke was excessive and out of character for the leader. "It's like he was handed a script from the White House," Durbin said.
Frist told The Hill he was not contacted by officials at the White House, officials from the intelligence community or members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When asked if he based his floor criticisms on a transcript of Clarke's 2002 closed-door testimony and drew his own conclusions from that transcript, Frist said that he had.
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Bush Acknowledges 'Tough' Weeks, Signals Intent to Bolster Iraq Force
'We Must Not Waver,' President Declares In Prime-Time Speech
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9654-2004Apr13?language=printer
President Bush signaled last night that he expects to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and vowed that insurgents leading a violent uprising against the American occupation will not "run us out of Iraq."
In a prime-time news conference -- his first since the war in Iraq began 13 months ago -- Bush mixed an expression of concern about the killings and lawlessness in Iraq with an absolute certainty that his course of action is the correct one.
"There's no question it's been a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people," he said. "It's been really tough for the families. I understand that. It's been tough on this administration. But we're doing the right thing."
Scaling back more of his upbeat assessments of the situation in Iraq, Bush presented what he called a "somber" portrait of recent events in Iraq and pledged new actions to ease the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis. He said that he will dispatch Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage to Iraq to help negotiate the transition and that he will seek a new U.N. Security Council resolution to increase international participation in Iraq after the transfer of power.
But though acknowledging more adversity in Iraq than he has in recent days, Bush held to his view that the rebellion in Iraq is relatively small. Those responsible "want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi people," he said. "The violence we have seen is a power grab by these extreme and ruthless elements. It's not a civil war. It's not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis by far reject violence and oppose dictatorship."
Bush endured three-quarters of an hour of consistently sharp questioning from reporters on just two subjects: the uprising and power transfer in Iraq and his actions before and after the 2001 attacks, which have come under renewed scrutiny because of the independent commission investigation the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Though he began with a confident, 17-minute overview of the situation in Iraq, he seemed out of sorts at times as he searched for words to answer often hostile questions and sometimes lapsed into awkward pauses. Of the U.S. presence in Iraq, he said: "They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied, either." Gone were the banter and cheer that have graced Bush's news conferences in the past; instead, he seemed determined to yield nothing and to avoid any hint of doubts about the centerpiece of his foreign policy in this election year.
While acknowledging grief over the losses of Sept. 11, Bush said that there was no reason to apologize for the government's performance before the attacks. Several questioners quizzed him about misstatements about Iraq and errors in intelligence, but he declined to acknowledge any mistake. When one questioner asked about his biggest mistake since the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush shook his head twice as he searched for an answer.
"I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet," Bush said. "I would've gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein."
The president gave his clearest indication yet that he will increase the U.S. troop level in Iraq from the current 135,000, rather than decrease it to 115,000, as had been planned. He said Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, who is overseeing Iraq operations, "is clearly indicating that he may want more troops. It's coming up through the chain of command. And if that's what he wants, that's what he gets."
About 700 insurgents have been killed by U.S. troops since the beginning of this month, and about 80 coalition troops -- almost all Americans -- have died across Iraq.
Bush's prepared remarks included a passionate statement that the June 30 handover will not be changed. "Were the coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed," he said. "And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand. We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands."
He also returned to his theme that success in Iraq has become paramount for American security. "Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world," he said. "We must not waver." And, he asserted, "every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers."
Bush tied the violence in Iraq to a string of terror attacks across two decades, from the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut to the train bombings in Madrid. In linking all such attacks, rather than merely al Qaeda attacks, Bush grouped many disparate Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups into "the same ideology of murder" -- a grouping that has caused irritation in the Muslim world.
In his opening statement, Bush cited prospects for a role for NATO, saying foreign ministers "are exploring a more formal role for NATO, such as turning the Polish-led division into a NATO operation and giving NATO specific responsibilities for border control." But in talks last month at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was rebuffed by allies in the world's largest military alliance.
Bush did not make the one announcement that had been widely expected. Senior U.S. officials said early yesterday that Bush would make the long-rumored appointment of U.N. envoy John D. Negroponte as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. But no appointment was mentioned, and Negroponte's office denied that the U.N. ambassador had been formally notified, even while confirming that Negroponte had met with Bush and Vice President Cheney over the past two weeks about his possible nomination.
Bush repeatedly demonstrated that he would acknowledge no shortcoming. Asked about his plans for intelligence reforms, Bush delivered a defense of his Iraq strategy. "My message today to those in Iraq is we'll stay the course -- we'll complete the job," he said. Tapping the podium loudly, he added: "My message to our troops is we'll stay the course and complete the job, and you'll have what you need."
Asked about comparisons between the Iraq and Vietnam wars that some Democrats have made, Bush responded: "I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy is -- sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy."
The president turned animated when asked whether the Iraq war would be worthwhile even if he was not reelected. He replied: "I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes. Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching."
Democrats criticized what they said was Bush's stubbornness in the hour-long session. Bush's presidential challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), said the president "offered no specific plan whatsoever."
"Rather, the president made it clear that he intends to stubbornly cling to the same policy that has led to a greater risk to American troops and a steadily higher cost to the American taxpayer," Kerry said in statement released last night by his campaign.
The president acknowledged some regrets about events in Iraq. He said he was "disappointed in the performance" of some U.S.-trained Iraqi troops against the insurgents. And he said U.S. forces will remain committed well after the transfer of sovereignty. "We'll need to be there for a while."
But Bush was more often defiant when asked about apparent shortcomings in his policies. Asked about the still-unknown makeup of the Iraqi government that will assume power on June 30, Bush shot back, "We will find that out soon." Asked about previous administration predictions that Iraq's oil revenue would finance the country's reconstruction, Bush replied that the oil revenue is "bigger than we thought they would be."
Asked about former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's apology and claim that the government failed the families of the Sept. 11 victims, Bush declined to follow. "Here's what I feel about that," he said. "The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden."
Bush did not answer directly when asked why he and Cheney had insisted in appearing together, rather than separately, in a private session with the independent commission investigating the attacks. "It's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them," he said.
After rejecting several alleged failings raised by questioners, Bush said he did not "want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident that I have." But, he added, "you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Amnesty says lifting China arms embargo the 'wrong message'
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414133148.jpne8cjn.html
Amnesty International on Wednesday warned the European Union to consider the message it was sending to imprisoned human rights activists in China if it lifted its 15-year-old arms embargo against Beijing.
Lifting the embargo imposed in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square killings would be the "wrong message" if there was no "clear and concrete progress in return" on human rights, Amnesty spokesman Dick Oosting told reporters.
European foreign ministers are due to discuss the lifting of the embargo in the coming weeks but European Commission president Romano Prodi said more efforts were needed to improve human rights.
The London-based human rights organisation is calling for an independent inquiry into the events of 1989 when China sent in tanks to break weeks-long pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, killing hundreds.
"Activists who call for such an enquiry or criticize what happened, even in emails and on web-sites, are still being imprisoned to this day," it said in a statement.
The organisation said it had "cautioned the EU to consider what message it will be sending to human rights activists in China, who are still being imprisoned 15 years after Tiananmen Square, if it lifts the EU arms embargo against China."
France initiated the push for the lifting of the ban, supported by Germany, but they face opposition from Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Europe also faces pressure from the United States which firmly opposes the lifting.
Amnesty highlighted the limits of the EU's code of conduct on weapons' exports which was adopted in 1998 in the event that the embargo is lifted.
The text was a "big step forward but it has no legal teeth", said Robert Parker underlining that it did not apply to arms' brokers.
China has been lobbying hard for the ban to be lifted.
----
Cheney Defends U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
Apr 14, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/C/CHENEY_ASIA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday suggested a link between Chinese efforts to restrict self-government in Hong Kong and China's tense dealings with Taiwan. He also defended U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
"I didn't come to alter Chinese policy. I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were. I think we achieved that," Cheney told reporters after meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing.
The vice president was ending the China leg of his weeklong Asia tour with a foreign policy speech Thursday at Shanghai's Fudan University. He next goes to South Korea.
In his Beijing meetings, Cheney suggested to Chinese leaders that people in Taiwan might view current activity in Hong Kong as "sort of a bellwether" of China's commitment to its "one country, two systems" formula for the former British colony, said a senior Bush administration official traveling with Cheney.
Cheney expressed concerns to the Chinese leaders about Beijing's recent moves to restrict Hong Kong's efforts toward self-rule, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. China increased its public criticism of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan during Cheney's visit, with officials denouncing recent sales of sophisticated radar equipment, suggesting it only encouraged moves toward independence by Taiwan.
But Cheney responded by suggesting to the Chinese leaders that the United States was increasing its sales of defensive arms to Taiwan in response to China's missile buildup on the mainland side of the Taiwan Straits, the official said.
The United States is required under the Taiwan Relations Act to defend Taiwan against an attack from the mainland.
The status of Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, has been a contentious issue between the United States and China for half a century, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Cheney said.
"And it's important that there be a very clear open channel of communications between our two nations on that issue," he told reporters.
"I think it is a mistake for us, as Americans, to underestimate the extent to which there are differences" between the United States and China, Cheney said.
"By the same token, I think it's clear that there are broad areas where we share strategic interests. ... There's no reason why we can't achieve a high degree of cooperation and avoid the kind of conflict and confrontation that would be a tragedy for everybody."
Cheney also sought to prod China to apply more pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, citing new evidence that it has atomic weapons.
The senior administration official said Cheney passed on to Chinese leaders new information, obtained from a top Pakistani nuclear scientist, suggesting that North Korea had at least three nuclear devices and is capable of making them from both plutonium and enriched uranium.
"Time is not on our side," the official quoted Cheney as saying.
Cheney favors resuming stalled six-nation talks, but results are what ultimately counts, the U.S. official said. There should be a more aggressive effort to either get those talks back on track or to find other ways of applying pressure on North Korea, the official said.
Cheney met separately Wednesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao, his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and Premier Wen Jiabao.
Cheney also raised anew U.S. problems with China's practice of pegging its currency, the yuan, to the dollar instead of allowing it to rise and fall with market pressures.
Chinese leaders told Cheney that Chinese Vice Premier Huang Ju would travel to the United States later this year to discuss American concerns with Treasury Secretary John Snow.
U.S. manufacturers claim China's rigid currency policy gives China a competitive advantage and helps drive U.S. jobs overseas. China claims it agrees in principle with allowing market forces to set currency rates, but that such a change must be achieved slowly to avoid damage to its banking system.
Cheney also delivered to Chinese leaders a request from the Vatican that it be allowed to send an ambassador to Beijing, the official said.
----
Demand for anti-terrorism equipment up sharply at defence showcase
SUBANG, Malaysia (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414085248.3kfycb4d.html
The demand for anti-terrorism equipment by security forces worldwide has risen sharply since the attacks on the United States, defence officials said at a major international arms show here Wednesday.
Arms manufacturers from the US, Britain, South Africa and France are showcasing their state-of-the-art equipment, from spy planes and surveillance cameras to battle tanks, at the biennial Defence Services Asia exhibition.
Malaysia's special forces commander Ahmad Rodi Zakaria told AFP many countries, including Malaysia, now treated counterterrorism as a priority and were equiping their security forces with surveillance and intelligence-gathering gadgets.
"Terrorists are becoming more sophisticated in how they attack and have an arsenal of weapons to use," he said. "We have to be prepared. If we are not, then what happened in the United States can happen here."
While fighting a conventional war remained the army's top concern, security forces in the region would have to be prepared to fight terrorists through training and acquiring modern equipment, Ahmad Rodi said
Malaysia had been acquiring technology related to intelligence gathering, he said, but declined to elaborate.
Ahmad Rodi pointed to a recent terror attack in neighbouring Thailand and the Bali bombings in Indonesia in October 2002 by the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group as proof that "the threat of terror in Southeast Asia is real."
Raymond Hoekstra, managing director of SafetyXpress Stromberg, a South African company that produces security related equipment, said demand for the company's products had surged in the Middle East and Africa.
"The September 11 attack has made my job easier," he told AFP.
Stromberg produces a range of equipment for the police and army to mount effective checkpoints against terrorists or criminals activities, including the simple nail-based tyre deflator.
"It can stop a potential car bomber from hitting a target. Around the world there is a rise in demand for counterterrorism equipment not related to firepower," he said.
Hoekstra, who is in Malaysia for the first time, said the Malaysian police had shown interest in the company's products and it was looking for a Malaysian partner.
Chris Lewis, technical director of UK-based defence manufacturer Television Installation Services (TIS) said that in the UK there has been a sharp rise in demand for surveillance equipment.
"An important element in enforcing security is having an effective closed circuit television," he said.
Earlier, Malaysia's DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies Sdn Bhd inked an agreement with three foreign partners from Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Thailand to market its wide range of infantry vehicles.
Similarly, Daewoo Heavy Industries Wednesday tied-up with Malaysia's PSC Naval Dockyard to assemble and market armoured personnel carriers and fighting vehicles.
"We hope through Muslim Malaysia we can penetrate the Middle East countries to export our defence products," Daewoo's executive managing director In Ahn told reporters.
Defence Minister Najib Razak on Monday announced top Austrian arms producer, Steyr Mannlicher, will shift production of its Steyr assault rifles and pistols to Malaysia.
-------- biological weapons
US Transparency Survey: Serious Problems Evident
The Sunshine Project
News Release
14 April 2004
http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr140404.html
(Austin, TX) - The Sunshine Project has made additional information available on its website concerning its Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) Transparency Survey. The Project is making this early release of information because it is deeply concerned by the fact that the survey results demonstrate, prima facie, widespread noncompliance with federal biotechnology research rules. The rampant violations call into question the effectiveness of the United States' guidelines-based laboratory biosafety system. Survey results to date strongly suggest that increased biodefense spending is triggering a collapse in the public accountability of biological research across the US.
While dozens of nearly 400 surveyed institutions have replied adequately, revealing that many work diligently to comply with federal research rules, it is equally clear that many others do not. According to the Sunshine Project's Edward Hammond "Internationally, the US promotes its rules as a model for the rest of the world to follow; but this research indicates the opposite. The replies to date suggest that the US system is actually a house of cards."
The 389 federally-registered biotechnology research institutions queried by the Sunshine Project have an unequivocal obligation to release the meeting minutes it requested, yet:
- Only two out of five (42.9%) IBCs have provided meeting minutes;
- Almost half (44.5%) have failed to reply to the survey at all.
- The remaining 12.6% have replied but have not provided minutes.
Institutions who have not replied include two of the nation's maximum containment biosafety level four laboratories (a Centers for Disease Control lab and a San Antonio, TX facility), an operator of Department of Energy biodefense labs, a major genome sequencing institution, and some of the largest recipients of federal biotechnology and biodefense research funds in the country.
Among those IBCs that have replied (with or without minutes), serious problems are evident. These include:
- major research centers, including institutions handling potential biological weapons agents and that conduct federally-funded biotechnology research, who do not maintain records of their IBC meetings and/or approve risky experiments without committee review;
- numerous IBCs punching holes in the national system by asserting the primacy of state law over the federal laboratory safety rules;
- widespread and arbitrary removal of information from public records;
- adoption of policies and procedures deliberately designed to evade public accountability.
In addition, analysis of US National Institutes of Health IBC data reveals that a significant number of biotechnology labs, particularly private sector labs and private non-profit labs, are not even registered under the federal laboratory safety system.
The survey, which began in late January, is assessing the quality of public disclosure by Institutional Biosafety Committees across the United States. IBCs are established under the US National Institutes of Health Guidelines on Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules ("the NIH Guidelines"), which exist to safeguard against the health and environmental dangers of biotechnology research.
The final report of the survey will make recommendations for how to raise the public accountability of biodefense research.
A summary of responses to the survey is available in the biodefense section of the Sunshine Project website, or by clicking on the link below:
http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/initialreplydata.html
Preliminary Statistics on IBC Response to Public Access Requests Last Updated: 14 April 2004
(Replies noted are not an indication of the quality of the response. A 'reply' simply indicates that the IBC has contacted the Sunshine Project in response to the survey letter.)
IBCs receiving request: 389 Replies received: 216 (55.5%) Failed to reply: 173 (44.5%)
Responses will continue to be accepted and, indeed, are required by the NIH Guidelines. Late arriving replies will be noted as such in the final report.
Quote of the Month for the IBC Transparency Survey
"A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught, and that was part of our calculation."
- George W. Bush, 13 April 2004
Some institutions that have not replied (full list below):
Battelle Memorial Institute
Centers for Disease Control (NCID)
Duke University
Emory University
University of Georgia
The Institute for Genomic Research
Johns Hopkins University Los Alamos National Laboratory
University of Michigan
Microbia, Inc. (Cambridge, MA)
Monsanto (5x)
Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
University of Nebraska (2x)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Pennsylvania State University (2x)
Rockefeller University
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research
Texas A & M University
Uniformed Services University
USDA Plum Island Animal Disease Center
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
FULL LIST OF IBCs SURVEYED AND THEIR RESPONSE STATUS ...
http://www.sunshine-project.org/biodefense/initialreplydata.html
-------- business
Cheney took in $178,437 from Halliburton in 2003
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
By Steve Holland,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-14/s_22792.asp
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney received $178,437 in deferred pay last year from Halliburton, the Texas oil-field services company he once headed that has received billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.
The White House Tuesday released the 2003 income tax returns for both Cheney and his wife, Lynne, and President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura.
Cheney's office said the income from Halliburton - which was close to his salary as vice president - was in no way linked to the financial health of the company. A Halliburton subsidiary is under investigation for possibly overcharging the U.S military for fuel supplies in Iraq.
The Bushes' taxable income was virtually unchanged from 2002. It was reported at $727,083, after deductions of $95,043. Their income included his salary earned as president - $397,264 - and investment income from the trusts in which their assets are held.
The Bushes reported paying a total of $227,490 in federal income taxes. They contributed $68,360 to churches and charitable organizations.
The Cheneys reported taxable income of $813,226 in 2003. They paid $258,779 in taxes in withholding and estimated tax payments but only owed $253,067 and thus were eligible for a $5,712 refund but decided to apply that to their 2004 taxes.
Cheney reported $198,600 in vice presidential salary for the year. In addition, his tax return reported the payment of $178,437 in deferred compensation from Halliburton Co.
The deferred pay is based on a 1998 agreement in which Cheney elected to defer compensation earned in 1999 for his services as chief executive officer of Halliburton. This amount is to be paid in annual installments, with interest, over the five years after Cheney's retirement from Halliburton.
Cheney has taken some criticism from Democrats for his connection to Halliburton, which is the U.S. military's biggest contractor in Iraq, responsible for everything from preparing meals for U.S. troops to repairing Iraq's oil infrastructure.
The company has been a lightning rod for criticism during this presidential election year due to allegations it received lucrative contracts because of its ties to the White House. Both Halliburton and the White House have strongly denied the charges, and Halliburton has said it had operated legally under its Iraq contracts.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg complained that Cheney is "still getting paychecks from Halliburton."
"That's wrong," he said. "Dick Cheney is being paid almost the same amount by Halliburton as he is making as vice president of the United States."
He said other top officials, such as Treasury Secretary John Snow, ended their deferred compensation plans upon taking office. "Vice President Cheney should have done the same," he said.
A statement from the vice president's office said Cheney's decision to defer income from Halliburton became "final and unalterable before Mr. Cheney left Halliburton. The amount of deferred compensation received by the vice president is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton's economic performance or earnings in any way," the statement said.
The Cheneys donated $321,141 to charity in 2003, primarily from donations of Mrs. Cheney's royalties from the publisher Simon & Schuster on her books, America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail and her forthcoming book Fifty States.
--------
Guilty Plea in Boeing Case
April 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/business/14boeing.html
ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 13 (AP) - A former Boeing executive under investigation for her role in helping the company obtain a $23 billion contract from the Air Force has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy, according to court records.
Darleen A. Druyun, who was an Air Force procurement officer before accepting a job from Boeing as deputy general manager of its Missile Defense Systems unit, has not been charged with a crime, though she has been under investigation by a grand jury.
A document filed last week in federal court in Alexandria indicates that she plans to plead guilty to conspiracy on April 20. The charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Boeing, based in Chicago, fired Ms. Druyun, 56, and its chief financial officer, Michael M. Sears, in November. The company charged that Mr. Sears improperly contacted Ms. Druyun about a possible top-level job for her at Boeing in 2002, when Ms. Druyun played an influential role in deciding whether Boeing should get a contract to lease or sell 100 aerial tankers to the Air Force.
The contract was eventually awarded to Boeing.
An assistant United States attorney, Robert W. Wiechering, who is handling the case, declined to comment Tuesday, as did Ms. Druyun's lawyer, John M. Dowd.
A Boeing spokeswoman, Deborah Bosick, would not comment specifically on the plea bargain but said, "The company has been cooperating with authorities since we uncovered inappropriate conduct involving our hiring practices."
-------- china
Cheney faces pressure on Taiwan in China, presents evidence on N Korea
BEIJING (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414111528.icxi3egv.html
US Vice President Dick Cheney was pressured over Taiwan in meetings with China's top leaders Wednesday, while he presented them with new intelligence on North Korea's nuclear program.
Within the space of a few hectic hours, he met China's three most powerful men -- President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and military chief Jiang Zemin -- and was left in no doubt what they wanted from Washington.
"We hope that the United States can observe its commitment to adhere to the one-China policy," Hu told Cheney, referring to the position that the mainland and Taiwan belong to the same Beijing-ruled entity.
Hu told Cheney the United States should oppose "any words or action by the Taiwan leaders attempting to change Taiwan's status quo", and urged it not to "send wrong signals to the Taiwan authorities".
Jiang, the former president who still wields considerable influence behind the scenes, also hammered the point home, telling Cheney the Taiwan issue was pivotal for the development of Sino-US ties.
"The Taiwan issue concerns the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, and is related to Sino-US relations and the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region as well," he said.
"Sino-US ties will have more room for development if the Taiwan issue is well handled."
Cheney's short visit to China, which took him to Shanghai later in the day, has come at a crucial time for both Beijing and Washington.
After presidential elections in Taiwan last month, China can look forward to a further four years with the independence-leaning Chen Shui-bian as the island's political leader.
China is deeply worried that Chen may make irreversible moves towards a formal split with the mainland, and hopes to enlist US support to prevent this from happening.
The United States is forced to listen to Beijing's views because China matters to American policies like never before, according to observers.
This is because of Beijing's growing clout in global politics, from the war on terror to the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.
Just hours before Cheney entered the talks, US reports suggested that North Korea's bomb-makers might have been much more successful than previously feared.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, had told interrogators that he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported.
Cheney cited the intelligence report during his talks in Beijing, according to a US official.
"Time is not necessarily on our side," the US official quoted Cheney as saying, adding that the atmosphere of the talks was not confrontational or intended to put pressure on the Chinese.
"It was more like 'we're working with them, that it should be more aggressively handled'," the official said.
China has emerged as a crucial player in attempts to defuse the crisis, hosting two rounds of six-party talks involving the US, Japan, South Korea, Russia and North Korea.
The discussions have so far failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
The US has accused North Korea of pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear weapons and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
Despite the gap between the US and North Korean sides, behind-the-scenes preparations are believed to be taking place for a third round of talks in the Chinese capital before the end of June.
Amid angry rhetoric from Pyongyang accusing the US of driving the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, there are also unconfirmed signs that the isolated regime is willing to talk.
South Korean media reported earlier this week that the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, was planning a trip to Beijing, possibly next month, in a signal of possible progress in efforts to end the nuclear standoff.
--------
Cheney to Reassert U.S. Position on Taiwan's Status
Human Rights, N. Korean Nuclear Aims Also on Agenda for Meetings in China
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7331-2004Apr13.html
BEIJING, April 14 -- With tensions rising across the Taiwan Strait, Vice President Cheney held meetings Wednesday with top Chinese officials, including President Hu Jintao, on a range of economic and security issues, including Chinese complaints about the narrow reelection victory of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and his campaign to write a new constitution for the island.
A senior administration official said Cheney planned to tell the Chinese, who claim sovereignty over Taiwan, that the United States continues to adhere to the "one China" policy, which holds that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of it. He also was to reiterate that the administration opposes unilateral efforts by either side to change the status quo in the region.
Cheney met with Vice President Zeng Qinghong shortly after his plane arrived on Tuesday from Tokyo, the first stop on his week-long Asian tour. On Wednesday morning, he met with Hu, Premier Wen Jiabao and former president Jiang Zemin, still an influential figure as head of the Central Military Commission. He was to depart for Shanghai in the afternoon.
The official New China News Agency reported that in the meeting with Zeng, Cheney said the United States did not support "Taiwan independence" and that U.S. policy on that question had not changed. Zeng urged U.S. officials to stop selling weapons to Taiwan and to not send any "wrong signals" to the "Taiwan independence" forces, the news agency reported. Zeng said China would adhere to a policy of peaceful reunification with Taiwan, it added. U.S. officials were not immediately available to confirm the Chinese account of the meeting.
The crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions is also high on the agenda. China has pressed the Bush administration to show greater flexibility in negotiations with the Pyongyang government. But U.S. officials said Cheney would tell the Chinese that the United States would offer no concessions as it seeks a complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs backed by a tough inspection regimen.
In Japan, Cheney's three-day visit was overshadowed by the continuing drama over the fate of three Japanese civilians held hostage in Iraq. Seven Chinese hostages were seized Sunday, but they were quickly released.
Another senior administration official, briefing reporters on Cheney's plane, said a key theme during both the China and Japan stops was the new leadership emerging in Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi impressed Cheney and his aides with his refusal to bow to public opinion over the Japanese hostages and remove the country's troops from Iraq. Before leaving Japan, Cheney declared in a speech that under Koizumi's leadership, Japan was "entering a new era of growth, dynamism, rising confidence and global influence."
Chinese leaders made it clear before Cheney's arrival that the Taiwanese election results remain a central concern. Chinese officials have said they believe the Bush administration has tilted at times toward Taiwan, especially by continuing to sell high-tech weapons to the island.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Chen said his narrow victory had given him a mandate to press ahead with his plans to develop Taiwan as an "independent, sovereign country."
A senior Chinese official later condemned Chen's remarks as a provocation and said it was clear Chen's plans to write a new constitution for the island by 2006 was "virtually a timetable for Taiwan independence."
The United States has pledged to help Taiwan maintain defenses against a possible Chinese attack, but Chen's agenda has stirred unease in the Bush administration. The Chinese government claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to seize it if it declares independence.
In December, President Bush, with Chinese Premier Wen at his side in the Oval Office, pointedly warned Chen over Taiwan's aspirations for independence. "The comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose," Bush said at the time.
Bush and Cheney entered office deeply skeptical of Chinese intentions and supportive of Taiwan, but since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, relations with the Beijing government have improved because of China's assistance on counterterrorism, especially in intelligence-sharing, and its growing importance in trying to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Nevertheless, U.S. officials said Cheney planned to raise the issue of China's human rights record. The Bush administration has stepped up its criticism in that area in recent months, believing progress has slipped in the past year. The United States sought a resolution with the U.N. human rights watchdog criticizing China's performance, and China responded by suspending its human rights dialogue with the United States.
Economic issues are also part of Cheney's agenda, officials said. The Bush administration filed the first complaint against China in the World Trade Organization, alleging that China violates global trade rules by giving a tax break to domestic producers of semiconductors that it does not give to firms exporting such products to China.
Bush administration officials are also pressing China to adopt a flexible currency exchange rate in an effort to reduce the $124 billion trade deficit the United States has with China.
American manufacturers argue that China's policy of tightly linking its currency to the U.S. dollar has undervalued the yuan by as much as 40 percent, giving Chinese producers an advantage against American companies. But Finance Minister Jin Renqing said last week in Paris that China would maintain its stable currency policy.
--------
In Beijing, Cheney Is Urged to Reduce Taiwan Military Support
April 14, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/asia/14chin.html
BEIJING, April 13 - Vice President Dick Cheney, in Beijing for a round of talks with China's top leaders, was urged Tuesday to reduce United States arms sales to Taiwan to lessen the risk of conflict across the Taiwan Strait, Chinese state media reported.
Mr. Cheney arrived in Beijing on Tuesday afternoon, in the second of three stops on a tour of northeastern Asia. American and Chinese officials say talks here will focus mainly on Taiwan and on North Korea's nuclear program.
Chinese officials have been eager to receive Mr. Cheney because he is widely viewed here as a crucial influence on President Bush and a hard-liner on both Taiwan and North Korea, the two most delicate issues in Chinese-American relations.
China would like the United States to sharply reduce its military and political backing for Taiwan, which is viewed by many American conservatives as a bastion of democracy that deserves firm support but which Beijing sees as its territory.
China is also pressing the United States to adopt a more flexible stance in negotiations with North Korea. Bush administration officials have insisted they will not make concessions to the North until it unilaterally dismantles its nuclear program, arguing that the country has reneged on past promises to do so.
In an opening meeting just after Mr. Cheney arrived from Tokyo, Vice President Zeng Qinghong urged Mr. Cheney to "stop selling weapons to Taiwan" and "avoid sending any wrong signals to the Taiwan independence forces," the official New China News Agency reported.
The brief comments underscored the high priority China places on extracting a firm commitment from the United States to discourage any steps President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan, who was narrowly re-elected in March, might take toward achieving formal independence in his second four-year term.
President Bush offered to substantially increase weapons sales to Taiwan when he came into office. The Pentagon recently confirmed an agreement to provide Taiwan with a $1.78 billion radar system, a sale sharply criticized by Beijing.But Mr. Bush recently warned Mr. Chen not to provoke China and scolded the Taiwanese leader for risking the delicate status quo in cross-strait relations.Chinese state television quoted Mr. Cheney as telling Mr. Zeng that the United States stands by its commitment to the "one China" principle, under which Beijing maintains that it still exercises sovereignty over Taiwan. He also reiterated Mr. Bush's comments opposing unilateral action from either China or Taiwan that "changes the status quo."
Mr. Cheney also told Mr. Zeng that relations between the United States and China were on sound footing, pointing especially to increased cooperation on preventing weapons proliferation and fighting terrorism, the New China News Agency said.
The United States says China sold nuclear technology to Pakistan and missile technology to several Middle Eastern countries in the past, but it has recently praised Chinese commitments to crack down on the spread of sensitive technology and weapons. Mr. Cheney is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao of China, who is also the Communist Party chief, on Wednesday. He will also talk with Jiang Zemin, the former president and party leader who remains chairman of the Central Military Commission, the top military post.
On Thursday he is scheduled to visit Shanghai, where he will address students at Fudan University, the same place former President Reagan spoke when he visited China 20 years ago.
-------- europe
Portugal repeats vow to keep troops in Iraq despite violence
LISBON (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414132324.gb7ys9al.html
Portugal will stand by its pledge to keep its national guard contingent in southern Iraq despite growing unrest in the country and calls to bring them home, Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes said on Wednesday.
"We will not abandon this nation which has been so martyred," he told parliament.
He also repeated Lisbon's willingness to extend its presence in Iraq even after June 30, when Washington is to hand over sovereignty of the country, if asked to do so by the Iraqi governing authority which will take over.
The minister said another contingent of national guards was already being prepared to go to Iraq to relieve some of the 120 or so guards currently in the country should the mission be extended.
Portugal dispatched the national guards to Iraq in November, immediately after a suicide bomb attack on the Italian base at Nasiriyah where they were to be stationed. Nineteen Italians and nine Iraqis were killed in that attack.
The Portuguese national guards are part of a multinational force under British command which is providing security in the south of the war-ravaged country.
Left-wing parties argue the nature of their mission has changed to one of engagement in warfare because of the mounting attacks on foreign forces in Iraq and are demanding the national guards be recalled.
Three Portuguese guards were slightly injured in an ambush earlier this month near Nasiriyah, fueling opposition arguments that the national guards are being forced into combat situations.
But Figueiredo Lopes denied the nature of their mission had been altered.
"Despite the worsening of security conditions in Iraq, you can say the area where the national gurads operate is relatively stable," he said, describing the incident in which the three guards were injured as "predictable".
Nearly three in four Portuguese, or 71 percent, want the national guards to be withdrawn, a poll published last month found.
----
Bomb hoax forces evacuation of French nuclear power plant
SAINT-LO, France (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414111745.whdat088.html
A bomb hoax forced the evacuation of around 100 staff members from a French nuclear power plant in the northern town of Flamanville, police said Wednesday.
The incident occurred Tuesday when a telephone caller told authorities that a bomb had been placed near a reactor at the power plant which had been shut down for regular maintenance.
The false alert did not interrupt the operation of the rest of the plant, the police said, adding that the employees returned to their posts after a five-hour search failed to find any device.
-------- iran
Tehran Has Armed Agents in Iraq - Iran Exile Group
April 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-iran-opposition.html
PARIS (Reuters) - Iran has sent thousands of armed agents into neighboring Iraq to back a Shi'ite Muslim uprising there and foment anti-U.S. sentiment, an exiled Iranian opposition group said Wednesday.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, listed by the United States as a terrorist group, said Iranian agents had infiltrated the Iraqi police force and Iranian Shi'ite clerics were present in towns and villages throughout Iraq.
Tehran ``has sent thousands of troops into Iraq and thousands of arms so as to be able to intervene there better,'' Mohammad Mohaddessin, head of the group's foreign affairs commission, told reporters in Paris, where it has an office.
``The strategic aim is to secure its domination of this country. It believes it has time on its side,'' he said through an interpreter, citing unnamed sources within Iran.
The group is the political wing of the People's Mujahideen, banned by the EU as a terrorist organization.
Some 3,800 People's Mujahideen guerrillas have been interned by U.S. forces in Iraq where they were once armed and supported by former President Saddam Hussein and helped his forces fight Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
But the group's pronouncements have been given some credence since it said in 2002 that Tehran was hiding an uranium enrichment plant, forcing Iran to admit the existence of the plant and allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to view it.
Mohaddessin said the Iran-backed forces in Iraq were a mixture of Revolutionary Guard and guerrilla elements.
The United States has accused predominantly Sh'ite Iran of fomenting anti-U.S. sentiment in Iraq and doing too little at its border to keep out ``undesirables'' which it suspects of mounting attacks on occupying forces in Iraq.
Tehran has denied that accusation and says it has taken steps to secure its borders.
Mohaddessin said Tehran believed the knock-on effect of any Shi'ite uprising would be to ensure that President Bush -- who named Iran as part of an ``axis of evil'' -- was ousted in November elections.
``The closer we get to the U.S. elections, the more they try to interfere to complicate the situation,'' he said.
-------- iraq
Italians taken hostage as nervous nations pull out
April 14, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/13/1081838727859.html
Al-Jazeera Arab television has aired a tape of four men described as Italians being held by a hitherto unheard of Iraqi Islamist group which demanded that Italy withdraw its forces from Iraq.
The four men in civilian clothes were shown seated on a floor and holding up their passports, surrounded by gunmen whose faces were covered by traditional Arab headscarves. The name on one passport could be seen as Fabrizio Quattrocchi.
"The Italian Government ... should vow and give guarantees to withdraw its forces from Iraq and give a time schedule and to free Muslim clerics in Iraq," a voice on the film said, adding the men were captured in the Sunni Muslim town of Fallujah.
"If the Italian Government agrees to these demands, we will inform them which party to negotiate with for their release," the man said, adding that the abductors were a unit of a group the station said was calling itself the Mujahideen Brigades.
The name appeared to be new and slightly different from that given by men who are holding three Japanese hostages.
In Rome, a Foreign Ministry official confirmed four Italian employees of a security firm called DTS were missing but it was still unclear if these were the four being shown held captive. Italian media said DTS was based in the United States.
The kidnappers said the Italians were seized while guerillas were "cutting off all supplies" to US forces in Fallujah. A US fuel convoy was ambushed and destroyed on Friday and numerous other vehicles have been fired on and foreigners captured on the main highway between Baghdad and Fallujah.
The kidnappers also demanded an apology from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who risked anti-war domestic opinion to support the US invasion of Iraq last year.
Five Ukrainians and three Russians were freed on Tuesday, and seven Chinese nationals seized separately near Fallujah were freed on Monday.
Insurgents holding three Japanese hostages have reneged on a decision to free them after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called them "terrorists", a cleric whose organisation had called for the release said.
"We had issued a call for their release and they were about to be freed, but then we learned [the abductors] changed their minds because the Japanese prime minister called them terrorists," Sheik Abdel Salam al-Kubaissi told reporters.
"Saying these things is really counter-productive; it adds obstacles," he said.
"They do not consider themselves as terrorists, but resistance fighters defending themselves and their nation against occupation and aggression," he said.
At least one US civilian also remains captive. In all, seven American civilians and two US soldiers have been listed as missing by the US authorities.
The past week's kidnaps have lent a new dimension to the Iraq conflict, snaring civilians from a dozen countries, some of which, like Russia, opposed the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Thailand, meanwhile, has ordered its forces working in Iraq not to leave their camp because of the spate of kidnappings of foreigners.
Thailand is considering whether to keep its 443 troops there until September as planned, its Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has said. "I'm concerned about the news [of the kidnappings]. I've told the Thai troops to stay inside the camp," he said. He also ruled out sending more troops.
Mr Thaksin has already said that troops would be withdrawn early if they were unable to do their work.
The Thais, based at Lima Camp near Karbala, about 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, are on a humanitarian mission that includes sending mobile medical teams into the surrounding areas and helping to rebuild roads and buildings.
They have formed part of a Polish-led multinational force of 9500 controlling south-central Iraq, but have not been in combat.
France, too, is worried about the situation and is strongly advising its 100 citizens in Iraq to leave the country and warning others not to travel there, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
And Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso yesterday advised Portuguese civilians in Iraq to leave the country because of the growing number of foreigners being kidnapped there.
"Our recommendation is that, beyond those who are strictly necessary, no Portuguese civilians stay in Iraq," Mr Durao Barroso told a news conference following talks with his visiting Estonian counterpart Juhan Parts.
The evacuation of 370 Russians was announced yesterday by Interfax news agency, which quoted the company boss, Sergei Molozhavy, as saying that it had decided on Monday to remove its staff, who have been building a power station.
The Government was ready to help Russian firms leave Iraq if they wished, the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said yesterday.
Some Bulgarian troops had asked to be sent home and "there have been some withdrawals", the Foreign Minister, Solomon Passi, said yesterday. Relatives of troops in Iraq, afraid that their loved ones could be attacked by Shiites, have pressed their President, Georgi Parvanov, to move the soldiers out of Karbala over fears they might be attacked by Shiite militants.
Dozens travelled to Sofia and handed Mr Parvanov a petition bearing 500 signatures.
New Zealanders and Germans working for international aid agencies are also being pulled out of Iraq.
World Vision NZ, the Salvation Army and Tear Fund NZ have removed their workers.
A spokesman for the German agency Aktion Deutschland Hilft said the last four members of a team of 10, who had been removing munitions from residential areas, left Baghdad on a United Nations aircraft for the Jordanian capital, Amman.
Poland has ruled out sending more troops to Iraq, outgoing Prime Minister Lezsek Miller said yesterday.
"We rule out increasing our contingent," he told Polish public radio.
"The Government plans rather to decrease rather than increase the contingent," he said.
Poland commands a 9000-strong multinational force in southern Iraq, which includes some 2500 of its own troops.
----
Iraqi 'beaten to death' by US troops
April 14, 2004
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9282015%255E1702,00.html
AN Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.
The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.
After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture from his car, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.
US troops also detained from the same area five men wearing black pants and shirts, the usual attire of Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen and followers.
Qassem Hassan, the director of Kut general hospital, identified the man as Salem Hassan, a resident of a Kut suburb.
He said the man had died of wounds sustained in the beating.
A spokesman for the US-led coalition could not confirm the incident.
----
Fallujah truce extended despite sporadic fighting
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414172913.7c683e2t.html
The shaky five-day-old truce in the Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah was extended for 48 hours Wednesday despite US air strikes and heavy clashes between US forces and Iraqi guerrillas.
A senior official of the Iraqi Islamic Party which has been leading mediation talks said the ceasefire would allow hospitals to reopen and had been agreed by both sides, although there were few signs of peace on the frontlines.
"It is mainly meant to allow the reopening of the Fallujah General Hospital and the Jordanian Hospital which had been forced to close because of the siege imposed by the marines," said mediator Fouad Rawi.
Rawi said the city's two major hospitals had been "forced to shut down after US marines blocked roads leading to them, including a bridge which had been the only way to reach the general hospital".
"Doctors, nurses and equipment could not reach them, so they were closed down," he said.
"Now the 48 hours will help the staff reach the hospitals to reopen them and sterilize them."
UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, speaking to reporters later in Baghdad, said he was hopeful the ceasefire would lead to a peaceful settlement in the besieged Sunni bastion.
More than 80 US soldiers and around 700 Iraqis have been killed in fighting in Iraq over the past nine days, mainly around Fallujah where marines launched a major crackdown last week following the brutal murder of four US contractors.
Marines said they killed at least 20 insurgents during vicious fighting on Tuesday, when two US armoured vehicles were amushed and the troops inside one of them found themselves surrounded in a guerrilla-held part of town.
"We definitely stumbled into a wasps' nest," said Catpain Jason Smith. Casualties on the marine side were not immediately released.
Major General James Mattis, head of the marines' 1st Division which has been fighting in the town for more than a week, predicted the "stalemate" would be short-lived as he toured frontline positions.
"I don't forecast the stalemate will go on for long," he told reporters embedded with the US soldiers.
"They (insurgents) have to be dealt with. I can deal with them with high explosives or I can deal with them this way (through mediation). If this reduces the people's suffering, then we will have the patience to do this."
But he admitted his troops would rather "duke it out" with the insurgents in open terrain rather than fight them among the civilians of this dusty highway town, known as the "city of mosques".
"Sure we would rather fight it out in the desert but the enemy is hiding behind the skirts of women," he said.
Even as mediators prepared for more talks to extend the ceasefire, a US military aircraft blasted two buildings with cannon fire early Wednesday morning in response to the ambush on marines the previous day.
The AC 130 gunship fired 105 and 40 millimeter rounds at the buildings which had been used in the ambush, when rocket-propelled grenades disabled two armoured vehicles, a US officer said.
"We're using defensive fire on known enemy positions to protect our marines," the marine officer said.
Rawi accused US snipers and tanks of "breaching" the ceasefire on Tuesday, when several intense bursts of fighting briefly shattered the relative calm in the town.
"We are working to help the political solution prevail over the military solution," he said, adding that the withdrawal of American snipers was a possible outcome of ongoing "negotations".
The extended ceasefire had been reached "as a result of continued negotiations, which is an important progress that we hope will help lead to further positive measures, including the pullout of (US) snipers".
Civilians were seen leaving their homes with white flags. Hundreds of families have fled the city in recent days.
----
Hostages - what lured them to Iraq?
Drawn by big bucks, overseas workers flock to Iraq doing everything from driving trucks to repairing oil fields
By John Newland,
APRIL 14, 2004 WED
Straits Times
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,245640,00.html
WORKERS wanted: Must be willing to dodge bullets, run the gauntlet of deadly ambushes, risk kidnapping and death. The faint-hearted need not apply.
Companies helping in Washington's US$18 billion (S$30 billion) reconstruction of Iraq don't need to spell out the working conditions in such graphic terms.
Applicants can read for themselves the recent headlines describing the deteriorating security in Iraq, as US-led coalition forces battle a new wave of Sunni and Shi'ite violence endangering Washington's plans for a peaceful handover of power to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.
Apart from a surging death toll among combatants, almost daily kidnappings of foreign civilians represent a new security dimension.
Already, an estimated 35,000 workers from around the world have signed up for the job and are in Iraq for the reconstruction work, drawn by the promise of big bucks.
Overseas workers in Iraq do everything from driving buses and trucks, to repairing oil fields and electric grids, to providing food service, pest control and laundry services.
They also train Iraqis in law enforcement, prison management and a host of other trades.
In the past week, however, they have become high-profile targets, with armed groups capturing contract workers from at least a dozen countries - some of which, like Russia and China, opposed the US-led war.
As missionaries, journalists, human rights activists or contract workers, most of those taken captive are not linked to the military, perhaps making them easy targets.
So, altruism, patriotism or a warped sense of adventure aside, why go to Iraq to risk death? For most, it's the lure of the dollar. Growing list of kidnapped foreigners
INSURGENTS in Iraq have seized at least 40 civilian hostages from 12 countries and have briefly detained a number of foreign journalists during a week-long uprising:
# Russia's Foreign Ministry said eight Ukrainian and Russian employees of a Russian energy company who were kidnapped on Monday were freed yesterday.
# Two US service members and seven employees of American contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root are missing, Lt-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US officer in Iraq, said on Monday. The captors of one of the employees, Mr Thomas Hamill, a truck driver from Mississippi, have threatened to kill and mutilate him.
# Armed men kidnapped seven Chinese civilians in Fallujah on Sunday. Early on Tuesday, the official Chinese news agency reported the seven had been freed.
# Japanese aid workers Noriaki Imai, 18, and Nahoko Takato, 34, and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, were taken hostage in southern Iraq, but the exact date of their capture was unclear. Their captors vowed to burn them alive if Japan does not withdraw its troops.
# Seven South Korean missionaries were held briefly before being released on Thursday. An eighth person escaped.
# Nine foreigners who drove trucks for military supply convoys were kidnapped, shown in captivity on Arab television on Sunday, and then released. Three were from Pakistan, two from Turkey, and one each from Nepal, the Philippines and India. The nationality of the ninth was unknown.
# Three Czech journalists on assignment in Iraq have been missing since Sunday morning and are believed to have been kidnapped. -- AP
Mr Chris Boyd of Kroll-Crucible Security told CNN: 'There's a lot of contracts that pay anywhere from US$350 a day to US$1,500 a day.'
The seven impoverished Chinese farmers abducted on Sunday and released the next day made the treacherous trip to Iraq to renovate a hotel.
The men wanted to start their own business - a venture some of them were still 'determined to open' despite their harrowing experience, Xinhua news agency said.
The father of one of the hostages told AFP they were making about US$90 a month.
According to China's Ministry of Commerce, eight Chinese firms have branches in Iraq with a total of 23 employees, AFP reported.
Before Briton Gary Teeley was kidnapped - he was freed on Sunday - he was setting up a laundry.
The British Foreign Office says there are more than 1,000 British civilians now in the country. Of these, about 150 are employed by the Ministry of Defence working as secretaries, kitchen staff, translators and advisers. It will not say how much they are being paid, beyond the fact it is their basic salary, plus an operational allowance and various other payments, the BBC reported.
Of the three Japanese hostages taken last week, the news mission for 32-year-old Soichiro Koriyama and hundreds of journalists like him was clear.
As for teenager Noriaki Imai, the 18-year-old wanted to look into the effects of depleted uranium weapons. The other Japanese civilian Nahoko Takato, 34, was an aid worker.
At the other end of the scale, the burgeoning private security business in Iraq presents workers with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Prominent across Iraq in their sports utility vehicles, they work as sub-contractors for large corporations such as Kellogg, Brown & Root and Bechtel.
Other companies providing armed escorts and other security services for increasingly edgy corporations include Erinys International, Kroll and Global Risks Strategies - firms with long experience in danger zones around the world.
The risk is high: last month, four guards working for US security firm Blackwater Security Consulting were mutilated in an ambush.
Still, 35 other security companies now employ an estimated 15,000 private security workers in Iraq.
'I never thought I'd make this much money in a year in my life,' said one worker whose job is to collect unexploded bombs, shells and other stray ordnance.
In a year in Iraq, he said, he could make US$230,000.
'It's kind of like hitting the lottery,' he told the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.
Growing list of kidnapped foreigners
INSURGENTS in Iraq have seized at least 40 civilian hostages from 12 countries and have briefly detained a number of foreign journalists during a week-long uprising:
# Russia's Foreign Ministry said eight Ukrainian and Russian employees of a Russian energy company who were kidnapped on Monday were freed yesterday.
# Two US service members and seven employees of American contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root are missing, Lt-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US officer in Iraq, said on Monday. The captors of one of the employees, Mr Thomas Hamill, a truck driver from Mississippi, have threatened to kill and mutilate him.
# Armed men kidnapped seven Chinese civilians in Fallujah on Sunday. Early on Tuesday, the official Chinese news agency reported the seven had been freed.
# Japanese aid workers Noriaki Imai, 18, and Nahoko Takato, 34, and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, were taken hostage in southern Iraq, but the exact date of their capture was unclear. Their captors vowed to burn them alive if Japan does not withdraw its troops.
# Seven South Korean missionaries were held briefly before being released on Thursday. An eighth person escaped.
# Nine foreigners who drove trucks for military supply convoys were kidnapped, shown in captivity on Arab television on Sunday, and then released. Three were from Pakistan, two from Turkey, and one each from Nepal, the Philippines and India. The nationality of the ninth was unknown.
# Three Czech journalists on assignment in Iraq have been missing since Sunday morning and are believed to have been kidnapped. -- AP
----
US marine officer recounts dramatic rescue in Fallujah
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414202633.pngrttm6.html
A US marine officer described Wednesday how his troops battled into the heart of Fallujah and killed some 20 insurgents to save a group of fellow soldiers.
"We definitely stumbled into a wasp's nest," Captain Jason Smith of the First Battalion-Fifth Marine's Bravo company said of the four-hour rescue launched around 4:00 pm (1200 GMT) Tuesday.
"There's definitely a lot more organized resistance out there," he said, adding that he believed his troops had killed some 20 fighters.
Smith described how two Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV) had tried to flush out snipers just beyond their lines in southeastern Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim bastion where a shaky five-day-old truce was extended for 48 hours Wednesday despite US air strikes and heavy clashes.
However, the mission went awry when the insurgents hit the AAVs with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), Smith said.
Desperate to escape the onslaught, one of the AAVs sped deep into the city's hostile southwestern area -- further than any marine platoon had ventured.
Between 50 and 100 insurgents starting firing RPGs and small arms at the errant AAV, whose engine burst into flames.
The 20 men inside the US vehicle took shelter in a house and set up defensive positions with M-16 assault rifles and SAW and GOLF machineguns, Smith said.
Rebels fired RPGs and lobbed hand grenades inside the house and the marines frantically threw them back out, Smith said.
The stricken AAV sent up a column of grey smoke into the sky, which the rescue team -- about 30 marines in six armoured humvees from a quick reaction force and four tanks -- used to locate its position.
Around 700 Iraqis, and more than 80 US soldiers, have been killed in fighting in Iraq over the past nine days, mostly in and around Fallujah.
----
Army Girds to Confront Radical Cleric
Four Bodies Found Near Where Civilian Convoy Was Attacked
By Sewell Chan and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9600-2004Apr13?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 13 -- A force of 2,500 troops from three U.S. Army divisions massed Tuesday on the northern outskirts of the Iraqi holy city of Najaf and readied for a confrontation with Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, who defiantly declared that he was prepared to die for his cause.
In Washington, the State Department said four mutilated bodies were found west of Baghdad, near the spot where seven American civilians employed by Halliburton Co. disappeared Friday during an attack on a supply convoy. A department spokesman said that the bodies had not been identified and that the U.S.-led occupation authority was investigating.
The State Department has been in constant contact with relatives of the missing civilians since they were abducted, and the families were notified of the discovery of the four bodies Tuesday, the spokesman said. Halliburton said in a statement that it could not confirm that the bodies were those of the missing workers.
The occupation authority said 40 hostages from 12 countries were known to be held by Iraqi insurgents -- at least 15 more than the number publicly reported by individual employers and foreign governments.
On Tuesday, a French television reporter and four Italian security guards were reported abducted, and eight employees of a Russian energy company were released one day after they were seized from their house in Baghdad. The French, Russian and Czech governments urged their citizens to leave Iraq.
Meanwhile, insurgents in the besieged western city of Fallujah fired on an Army transport helicopter, wounding three crew members and forcing it to make an emergency landing. The Sikorsky H-53, one of the largest in the military's fleet, with a capacity of 55, was the second helicopter to be downed in Iraq in three days.
The persistent kidnappings, the combat preparations outside Najaf and the resurgence in fighting in Fallujah underscored the level of tension in Iraq, where the U.S. military is battling a two-front insurgency that shows few signs of abating.
Near Fallujah, one Marine was killed and seven were wounded, a spokesman said. In addition, a soldier with the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed and another soldier and a civilian contractor were injured in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad early Tuesday as their convoy headed for Najaf.
The two deaths marked a slowdown in the pace of combat fatalities in April, the deadliest month since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1 last year. At least 83 U.S. troops have been killed in action in the first 12 days of April; during the same period, more than 560 have been wounded and two have been declared missing.
Soldiers from the 1st, 2nd and 25th Infantry divisions set up an outpost on the edges of Najaf, an ancient center of learning and the burial site of Imam Ali, one of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam.
The commander of the 1st Infantry Division flew Tuesday from his unit's headquarters in Tikrit, about 200 miles to the north, to visit the new base. "We have consolidated north of Najaf and are preparing for future operations," the commander, Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, said in a brief interview. Asked why he had visited the base, Batiste said: "We conducted a rehearsal of future operations."
Soldiers pursued armed Sadr followers into the city Tuesday and killed several. Batiste said he recognized that storming the city would anger the overwhelmingly Shiite population. "Treat the people of Najaf with dignity and respect," the Associated Press quoted the general as saying. "Only bite off the head of the poised rattlesnake."
In Baghdad, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said only that the force was engaged in "preparatory operations" and declined to say if an attack was imminent.
Sadr remained inside the holy city, protected by the black-clad militiamen who began a broad-based revolt against the American-led occupation on April 4. The militia withdrew Monday from most of the police stations that it had occupied in Najaf, but the top U.S. commander in Iraq said on the same day that his goal remained to kill or capture Sadr.
Sadr, the son of a widely admired cleric who was assassinated in 1999, gave no indication that he expected a peaceful ending to the impasse.
"I say to Iraqis: Don't consider my death as an end to your efforts to call for freedom and spreading Islam in the world," he said in a televised interview with al-Manar, the satellite television network run by the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. "I say, as my father did: My body is not important."
He added: "I'm ready to sacrifice for the sake of the Iraqi people. I call on the people not to allow my death to cause the collapse of the fight for freedom and an end to the occupation."
In the latest clash between the U.S. military and the radical cleric, soldiers temporarily detained a top Sadr aide and spokesman outside a major hotel in central Baghdad.
The aide, Hazm Aaraji, was stopped by soldiers from the 1st Armored Division at 11 a.m. after he entered the fortified compound that includes the Ishtar Sheraton and Palestine hotels for a meeting with tribal sheiks from across Baghdad. After soldiers and sheiks shouted and shoved each other as journalists looked on, the cleric was put in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and taken to Baghdad International Airport, where the 1st Armored Division is based.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Aaraji returned to the hotel compound. He told reporters that he had been asked to give a blood sample and sign some papers. The soldiers released him unharmed and apologized to him, he said.
Kimmitt, the military spokesman, said that Aaraji was interviewed because of his close association with Sadr. "After questioning, Aaraji was determined to have no direct involvement in violent attacks in Iraq and is not viewed as an imminent threat to security," Kimmitt said.
At a news conference, Kimmitt reported a sharp rise in attacks on military convoys, commercial trucks and passenger vehicles along two major highways that run south and west from Baghdad. The attacks involved large bands of as many as 50 men each who ambushed vehicles with a variety of weapons. Many of the kidnappings of civilians have occurred along the two highways.
The Marines, who have three battalions encircling Fallujah, responded Tuesday to criticism from Iraqi journalists and officials that their siege of the restive city has delayed the delivery of humanitarian supplies to civilians.
In a statement, a Marine spokesman, Maj. Thomas V. Johnson, blamed insurgents for delaying the arrival of aid convoys. On Monday, a convoy carrying food, water and blood was delayed and rerouted when troops escorting the convoy found roadside bombs along its route.
A second convoy was attacked with a bomb and gunfire, Johnson said. After Marines called in a helicopter gunship to fire on the attackers, the convoy safely reached the city. A humanitarian convoy Friday was attacked with mortar rounds, Johnson said.
In addition, vehicles carrying members of the Anbar provincial council, who are trying to negotiate an end to hostilities in Fallujah, were attacked with mortar fire while the councilmen tried to leave the city Monday.
"These tactics threaten the peace that Fallujah and all Iraq are working towards, and coalition forces will continue to defend those innocent Iraqis from harm by eliminating that enemy threat," Johnson said.
Ricks reported from Forward Operating Base Duke in southern Iraq. Correspondent Pamela Constable in Fallujah, staff writers Robin Wright, Jackie Spinner and Bradley Graham in Washington and special correspondents Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
Insurgents Display New Sophistication
Campaign Leaves Bridges Heavily Damaged, Hampering Military's Push South
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9532-2004Apr13?language=printer
FORWARD OPERATING BASE DUKE, Iraq, April 13 -- Insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation force have sharply increased the sophistication, coordination and aggressiveness of their tactics over the past week, Army officers and soldiers involved in combat here said.
Most dramatically, as several thousand U.S. troops pushed south this week from the Baghdad area to this new base in central Iraq, one highway bridge on their planned route was destroyed and two others were so heavily damaged that they could not be used by heavy Army trucks and armored vehicles.
Those attacks on convoy routes, which U.S. forces were using for the first time, revealed a previously unseen degree of coordination among insurgent groups, said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, the commander of a brigade-size task force now assembling for possible combat operations against the forces of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr in or near the holy city of Najaf.
"The dropping of the bridges was very interesting, because it showed a regional or even a national level of organization," Pittard said in an interview. He said insurgents appeared to be sending information southward, communicating about routes being taken by U.S. forces and then getting sufficient amounts of explosives to key bridges ahead of the convoys.
With occupation forces battling Sadr's Shiite militiamen south and east of Baghdad and Sunni Muslim insurgents to the north and west, the timing of the Iraqis' tactical development is nearly as troubling for U.S. forces as its effect. But the explanation for the change is not yet clear, military commanders said.
Here in southern Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shiite, U.S. officers say the best guess is that former soldiers who served under President Saddam Hussein have decided to lend their expertise and coordinating abilities to the untrained Shiite militiamen.
"It's a combination of Saddam loyalists and Shiite militias," Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said in a brief interview here at FOB Duke, where he was reviewing combat preparations.
Batiste said the influence of former Iraqi Republican Guard officers was especially apparent in the fighting in the Sunni town of Fallujah, where, he said, many veteran officers made their homes. "You could staff a division with the Iraqi officers living there," he said.
Maj. Kreg Schnell, Pittard's intelligence chief, agreed with Batiste's assessment. "There's been a marriage of convenience between Sadr's militia and Saddam loyalists," he said.
What officers here say they are not seeing is a sharp increase in the number of foreign guerrillas involved in the fighting. That element, said Pittard, is tiny -- perhaps "about 2 percent."
One of Pittard's combat engineers noted that several hundred pounds of explosive material and a fair degree of expertise were required to destroy a span on a major highway bridge. Several Army convoys moving south to this base -- the task force commanded by Pittard includes elements of the 1st Infantry Division, 2nd Infantry Division and 25th Infantry Division -- were delayed by more than 12 hours by the operations against the bridges, which Pittard called "irritating" but not a major problem.
The bridge demolitions are not the only evidence of the insurgents' increasing sophistication.
"When we first got here, it was just IEDs," the roadside bombs known as improvised explosive devices, "and mortars," said Sgt. James Amyett, a scout with the 1st Infantry Division who arrived in Iraq just over a month ago. "Then all of a sudden, it's full-scale ambushes."
He was speaking in the predawn hours Tuesday while his convoy recovered from a roadside attack just west of the Euphrates River that began with a bomb and was followed by bursts of red tracer fire from a machine gun and several volleys of rocket-propelled grenades. One U.S. soldier was mortally wounded in the attack; another soldier and a civilian contractor were less seriously injured.
In a separate ambush east of Najaf, a group of fighters suspected to be part of Sadr's militia let a group of six U.S. armored vehicles pass their position, then placed obstacles across the highway behind them, cutting off their line of retreat. The armored vehicles were forced to move forward across a bridge. While they were on the bridge approaching a police checkpoint, Iraqi fighters, some of them wearing police uniforms, began firing on them. No U.S. troops were hurt in the incident.
In another departure being studied by U.S. military intelligence, groups of fighters launched synchronized attacks Friday on several U.S. and Iraqi installations in Baqubah, a provincial capital north of Baghdad. By simultaneously striking U.S. troops at the police station, the provincial governors' office and a U.S. military office, the insurgents displayed not only a considerable amount of planning and positioning but also a level of aggressiveness far beyond the roadside bombings and firing of rocket-propelled grenades that occur daily in Iraq.
"This ain't just 15-year-old kids with RPGs," said a combat engineer in the 1st Infantry Division.
The new assertiveness of the anti-U.S. fighters was displayed further later that day on the outskirts of Baqubah, where dozens of RPG-toting fighters confronted a platoon of four Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to a 1st Infantry Division after-action report. "The platoon was literally surrounded by the enemy," the report said. One U.S. soldier and about 20 Iraqis were killed in the encounter, the report said.
"More and more, they're starting to stand and shoot," said Sgt. Maj. John Fourhman, the top enlisted soldier in the 1st Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "Before, they just ran."
In addition, Iraqi fighters have begun dynamiting highway overpasses in Baghdad. Though they did not destroy the spans, they succeeded in slowing traffic, depriving U.S. supply convoys of their best defense against ambushes -- speed. It is far easier to use roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades against a truck mired in traffic than it is to hit one moving at 60 mph.
The evolution of the insurgents' tactics is particularly surprising, military analysts say, because many such moves had been expected but did not occur during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last spring.
Attacks on bridges were widely expected within the Army because it was clear that the U.S. troops heading for Baghdad would have to cross the Euphrates. Also, while much of the Iraqi military, including its armored units and air force, was believed to have deteriorated badly after a decade of crippling economic sanctions, Iraqi military engineers, who would have overseen the destruction of bridges, were judged to be extremely competent. As it happened, not one bridge was detonated to block the path of the invasion force.
--------
U.S. Launches Heavy Fire on Fallujah
April 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. warplanes and helicopters firing heavy machine-guns, rockets and cannons hammered fighters in the besieged city of Fallujah, and the commander of Marines here warned Wednesday that a fragile, often-shaken truce will not last much longer.
With four more dead Marines reported, more U.S. troops have been killed halfway into April -- a total of at least 87 -- than in any month since the military set foot in Iraq.
A top U.N. envoy tried to keep the vital political process moving forward amid the violence, with a proposal that deviated from a plan favored by the United States.
Lakhdar Brahimi called for the creation of a caretaker government led by respected national figures -- with a prime minister, president and two vice-presidents -- to run the country from the handover of power by the Americans on June 30 until national elections in January.
Under the Brahimi plan, the U.S.-picked Governing Council would be dissolved June 30, rather than expanded to form an assembly as called for in an earlier U.S.-favored proposal.
The White House, which has sought U.N. involvement, thanked Brahimi for his plan.
``We welcome and appreciate Mr. Brahimi's comments, and we appreciated the United Nations' help in moving forward on our strategy to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by June 30,'' said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
In the south, the country's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, persuaded radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to drop defiant negotiating demands -- including that U.S. troops withdraw from all Iraqi cities. An Iranian envoy was also getting involved in the mediation with al-Sadr, an aide to the cleric said.
Al-Sadr was in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Outside Najaf, 2,500 U.S. troops prepared for a possible assault to capture al-Sadr. Troops scoured the area around the city, combing through mangroves, villages and the desert in search of al-Sadr's militiamen.
A U.S. attack on Najaf would likely outrage Iraq's Shiite majority, a community that -- aside from al-Sadr's militia -- has so far shunned anti-U.S. violence.
Meanwhile, Russia will evacuate its citizens from Iraq following a spate of kidnappings of at least 22 foreigners that erupted with the violence this month.
A kidnapped French journalist was freed, but there were reports that two Japanese were abducted -- in addition to three Japanese already held captive by gunmen threatening to kill them.
U.S. officials and the top American contractor in Iraq, Halliburton, were trying to determine whether four bodies found belonged to seven Americans missing since gunmen attacked their convoy outside Baghdad on Friday. One of the seven, Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss., is known to have been kidnapped, and his captors threatened to kill him.
U.S. troops were holding back their full firepower on both fronts to allow Iraqis to try to negotiate a resolution, but President Bush said he was prepared to send more troops and has told his commanders to be ready to use ``decisive force.''
``Our work may become more difficult before it is finished,'' Bush said. ``No one can predict all the hazards that lie ahead or the cost that they will bring. Yet, in this conflict, there is no safe alternative to resolute action.''
The fighting has already been difficult. Some 880 Iraqis have also been killed this month -- including more than 600 -- mostly civilians -- killed in Fallujah, according to the city hospital's director.
The truce in Fallujah, where Sunni Muslims are waging an insurgency, was severely shaken by fighting Tuesday and Wednesday morning -- though Marines underlined that their halt to offensive operations, called Friday, was still in effect.
``I don't forecast that this stalemate will go on for long,'' said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. ``It's hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us. We are trying to maintain the cease-fire, but the enemy is not maintaining the cease-fire.''
A U.S. Cobra attack helicopter fired rockets and heavy machine-guns before dawn Wednesday at gunmen gathered on the northern edge of Fallujah. Rocket-propelled grenades arched up from the ground toward the helicopter and a second gunship providing support, but none apparently hit the gunships.
Early Wednesday, an A-130 gunship pounded a row of buildings from which Marines say ambushes have repeatedly been launched in a residential area of the city.
Gunmen repeatedly attacked one house in Fallujah that the Marines were using. At least 12 gunmen were killed in two nights of attacks.
``They came to play but we returned the serve quite well,'' said 1st Lt. Louis Langella.
Many -- but not all -- residents have fled neighborhoods around the Marine positions, the front lines of the exchanges. Marines have taken over abandoned houses and were using sledgehammers to bash through walls and move between buildings without exposing themselves to fire from gunmen.
Marines fought fierce battles Monday and Tuesday with insurgents in Karma, a village outside of Fallujah. Some 100 gunmen were killed in battles in palm groves and over canals that were so intense that wounded Marines were sent out to fight.
``They ran in there with bandages and all,'' said Col. B.P. McCoy, commander of the 3rd Battalion.
Marines on Tuesday came under two heavy ambushes, the best coordinated and largest guerrilla operations in days, said Capt. James Edge. Two Marines were killed Tuesday and two Monday, the military announced.
Insurgents on Wednesday offered $7,000 to anyone who kills Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, after he called for Fallujah's residents to hand over militants to the United States.
In the south, al-Sistani persuaded the volatile al-Sadr to drop tough demands in negotiations aimed at averting a U.S. attack on the city of Najaf, home to one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines.
Al-Sadr ``is now ready to negotiate without preconditions,'' said an al-Sadr aide, Amer al-Husseini.
The initial demands, issued through a mediator, were for the cessation of all military operations, U.S. withdrawal from all Iraqi cities and release of all ``innocent detainees.''
But al-Sadr dropped the conditions at al-Sistani's request.
The sometimes erratic al-Sadr, holed up in his office in Najaf, has shown both flashes of defiance and signs of conciliation in recent days.
--------
U.N. Envoy Suggests Initial Caretaker Government in Iraq
April 14, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/middleeast/14CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 14 - The short-term political transition of Iraq, from the departure of the American-occupation authority to national elections, should be led by a caretaker government headed by a prime minister and advised by a widely representative assembly, a top United Nations envoy said today.
The interim government would comprise "Iraqi men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence," and would include a president and two vice presidents in addition to the prime minister, the envoy, Landhdar Brahimi, said.
Mr. Brahimi has been in Iraq for two weeks to explore possible frameworks for the transfer of sovereignty, scheduled for June 30, and will make recommendations to Secretary General Kofi Annan on a plan for the transition. His comments, which he called "still-tentative ideas," are the first indication of what a United Nations blueprint for Iraq might look like.
Mr. Brahimi, speaking at a news conference here, said he supported the idea of a "consultative assembly" to advise the interim government until national elections could be held, and said the assembly could be elected by a "large national conference" that would "serve the all-important aim of promoting national dialogue, consensus-building and national reconciliation in Iraq."
He was emphatic that national elections, scheduled for January 2005, were "the most important milestone" in the Iraqi political process. "There is no doubt that there is no substitute for the legitimacy that comes from free and fair elections," he said. "Therefore, Iraq will have a genuinely representative government only after January 2005."
But he cautioned that the security situation in Iraq must improve "significantly" for elections to take place as planned.
Mr. Brahimi's visit to Iraq has coincided with the worst violence to erupt in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago. American-led coalition troops have been battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja, west of Baghdad, and Shiite rebels in southern Iraq led by Moktada al-Sadr, a radical young cleric.
The United Nations envoy said the violence had hampered his ability to move freely around the country and had mostly restricted him to Baghdad.
A political solution to the standoff between the American-led coalition and Mr. Sadr was "imperative," Mr. Brahimi insisted.
A 2,500-member American force backed by tanks and artillery took up positions outside Najaf on Tuesday when Mr. Sadr resisted demands that he disband his militia.
Reuters, quoting Mr. Sadr's spokesman, reported today that the cleric had dropped his conditions for entering into negotiations with American authorities. Mr. Sadr had previously demanded an American pullout from residential areas and the release of imprisoned Sadr supporters before he would engage in talks.
In recent days, Mr. Sadr had taunted the occupation authorities, and on Tuesday he gave a television interview that was broadcast widely across Iraq and the Middle East in which he dared the Americans to try to seize him by force.
"I say a big `No!' to negotiations with the occupiers, who are shedding the blood of the Iraqi people," Mr. Sadr said in the interview, with a Lebanon-based television channel, Al Manar, which is controlled by Hezbollah, a radical Shiite group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States. "All Iraq is the Mahdi Army, God willing, and the Mahdi Army is the army of God. Eventually, it will triumph."
But he also hinted at a face-saving compromise, saying he was ready to "implement any order" issued by the religious establishment. His declarations came a day after a delegation sent by some of the most powerful Shiite clerics appealed to him to avoid a showdown.
A spokesman for the clerics who met with Mr. Sadr on Monday, Ali Adnan, told the BBC on Tuesday that a tentative deal had been struck.
Mr. Adnan said that if the Americans agreed not to send forces into Najaf, and not to seek the immediate arrest of Mr. Sadr on the pending warrant, which charges him with complicity in the April 2003 murder of a rival cleric, Mr. Sadr would agree to dismantle his militia. The clerics at the meeting included the sons of three of Iraq's most venerated grand ayatollahs, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is regarded as the country's most powerful religious figure.
On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said the fighting was complicating the work of Mr. Brahimi to broker an Iraqi consensus on a transfer plan for June 30, and was throwing into question the full return of the United Nations to Baghdad.
Mr. Annan told reporters at the United Nations that the mission was proving to be "rather difficult, given the deteriorating situation and the violence on the ground."
"For the foreseeable future, insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us," he said, "and so I cannot say right now that I am going to be sending in a large U.N. team."
Asked whether the current mayhem threatened the plan to return sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30, he said: "The date has been out there for some time. It has been embraced by the Iraqis themselves, who are anxious to see the end of occupation as soon as possible, and I believe it is going to be difficult to pull it back."
The officials have emphasized disbanding the Sadr militia; on the murder warrant, they were evasive, suggesting that was a matter for an Iraqi judge, a position some Iraqi leaders believe could allow the warrant to be deferred until after June 30.
American commanders have hinted that they would like to avoid an attack on Najaf.
Mr. Sadr, 31, is regarded by many in the Shiite religious hierarchy as an upstart who relies more on his ragtag militia than on any credible religious authority.
His father, Muhammad, was a grand ayatollah with a wide following who was assassinated in 1999 by agents of Saddam Hussein. In the complex world of Shiite politics in Iraq, that makes Mr. Sadr vulnerable to his religious superiors, who could issue a religious decree against him, or take some other action that might divide him from his followers.
In any case, Mr. Sadr, in the television interview, seemed at pains to say that he would in the end obey any order from the grand ayatollahs "that would bring about relief."
John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article, and Kirk Semple contributed reporting from New York.
--------
CASUALTIES
War Reports From Civilians Stir Up Iraqis Against U.S.
April 14, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/middleeast/14PRES.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 13 - The memories were so raw that the boy's words tumbled out of his mouth on Tuesday, a day after he survived an American attack that destroyed his house outside Falluja.
"The house shuddered," said Haider Abdel-Wahab, a 6-year-old taken to a Baghdad hospital after being dug out of the rubble. "The room turned red."
His father died of a bullet wound to the head and his mother was shot and killed while hanging laundry, he said. After that, he said, a "missile fell on us." His brothers were crushed, but he said he was dug out by neighbors using shovels.
Iraqis who have fled Falluja tell of random gunfire, dead and wounded lying in the streets, and ambulances being shot up. Their accounts of the American offensive on Falluja, mounted after the ambush and mutilation of four American security contractors there, are the ones many Arabs in the region are hearing.
The battle in this Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad has gripped the attention of much of Iraq, serving as a rallying point for both Sunnis and Shiites, who have joined to provide aid and donate blood. It has also put the American-installed Iraqi Governing Council at odds with the occupation authorities, with some council members threatening to resign and criticizing the use of military force.
Two Arabic television stations, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, based correspondents in Falluja during the offensive, beaming footage of American airstrikes and rows of Iraqi bodies laid out under blankets. Iraqi doctors have gone on camera saying hundreds of Iraqis had been killed.
Such reports, highlighting the Iraqi civilian toll, have put American military officials on the offensive. At a news conference on Monday, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in the Middle East, said of his troops: "They have been very precise. They have attempted to protect civilians to the best of their ability.
"The Arab press, in particular Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, are portraying their actions as purposely targeting civilians, and we absolutely do not do that, and I think everybody knows that."
The chaos of battle complicates the task of those seeking the truth.
"At the present time, because of the security situation, our movements are rather limited," said a Human Rights Watch researcher, Hania Mufti. "One needs to verify the information directly. There are eyewitnesses that need to be interviewed, and people who we need to talk for forensic evidence that may be available.
"One needs to see whether they were unarmed civilians going about their business, what kind of force the United States was using, and the circumstances surrounding the killing of civilians in Falluja," she said.
Jo Wilding, a volunteer who accompanied other foreigners and Iraqis carrying medical supplies to a clinic in Falluja on Saturday, gave her account of civilians caught up the offensive.
"Two children had head wounds from bullets, both died," she said in Baghdad after her return. "In another room was an old woman with a bullet wound - she was still holding a white flag."
She described helping Iraqis collect bodies. One was a dead gunman. Another was an elderly man, lying dead face down at his gate. In the house, she said, "girls were screaming, saying `Baba, baba.' "
She said that while in an ambulance with sirens on and lights flashing, they were fired on from the direction of American marines who had taken over a rooftop. "We started reversing," she said. "There was still firing. There were people with guns all over the place."
Since a cease-fire was declared over the weekend, more and more Iraqis have fled Falluja for Baghdad, seeking safety and medical care. Although the circumstances behind their injuries may be difficult to determine, their cost is not.
Four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil lies in a Baghdad hospital, his eyes wide and fixed on a spot on the ceiling. Before reaching the hospital, his left leg was crudely amputated by Iraqi doctors. A deep gash across his groin and upper thigh was barely stitched up when he was brought in.
"He was in danger of dying," said Dr. Alessandro Bartolini, who had to amputate Ali's left hand. "It is blast injuries," he said.
Ali's father said he moved his children to their grandfather's house on the outskirts of Falluja for safety, but the area was hit in an American air strike. "When I reached my child," he said, "it was as if he was sleeping."
Elsewhere, 10-year-old Waed Joda spoke for his father, who wounded by shrapnel. The bandage swathing the man's shoulder and arm was soaked through with blood.
"American snipers shot at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," he said. "We were in the car, we jumped out and tried to take cover in some shops. Falluja has become destroyed."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel's Claim to Some Outposts Is Recognized by President
April 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/middleeast/14CND-DIPL.html?hp
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Wednesday endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza and parts of the West Bank as "historic and courageous actions." An elated Sharon said his plan would create "a new and better reality for the state of Israel."
In what appeared to be a major shift in U.S. policy, Bush said it is now "unrealistic" to expect that Israel, in any final peace deal with the Palestinians, would make "a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." That is significant because Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war.
And, in a concession sought by Sharon, Bush also said a final peace deal should call for Palestinian refugees to be settled in a Palestinian state, not in Israel.
Bush said the "realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly" and should be reflected in any final peace deal -- a key concession, also sought by Sharon, to the fact that Israel has large groups of settlers in the West Bank.
Bush urged the Palestinians to match Israel's "boldness and courage." But Palestinians, who want all of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem as well for a state, have signaled their disapproval.
They fear Sharon is sacrificing Gaza and parts of the West Bank as a prelude to keeping other areas.
Sharon, who smiled ebulliently during the exchange with reporters, said he was encouraged by Bush's support for his plan, which the Israeli leader had sought as a way to boost his own party's support.
The Israeli leader said his disengagement plan would improve Israel's security and economy, and set the right conditions for negotiations with the Palestinians.
Asked outright if the United States recognized Israel's right to keep some settlements in the West Bank, Bush said Sharon had started the process of removing settlements from the West Bank.
He said final decisions about Israeli settlements in the West Bank had to wait for "final status" negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians on a Palestinian state.
Bush emphasized that Israeli settlements "should be temporary rather than permanent, and therefore not prejudice any final status issues, including final borders."
Both the Palestinians and Israelis have responsibilities to undertake in the search for peace, Bush said. Today, Israel "stepped up to those responsibilities," Bush said, and Palestinians must do the same.
"If all parties choose to embrace this moment, they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's longest-running conflicts," Bush said.
Sharon is hoping Bush can help him persuade hardliners in his Likud Party to back a withdrawal. Some 200,000 Likud members are to vote on the "disengagement" plan, and approval is not assured.
Sharon has said he would honor the outcome of the vote, but has not spoken about resigning if he loses. However, his vice premier, Ehud Olmert, on Tuesday referred to such a possibility. If the Likud members vote no, "they are destroying the political basis of the government headed by Sharon," Olmert told Israel Army Radio. Olmert said some opponents of the disengagement are trying to topple Sharon.
--------
Bush Also Appears to Side With Israel on 'Right of Return'
April 14, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/international/middleeast/14CND-DIPL.html
President Bush, in a significant shift in American policy, told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today that the United States would not object if Israel retained some West Bank settlements under a future peace accord.
Mr. Bush, answering reporters questions after a White House meeting with Mr. Sharon, called the prime minister's proposals to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank "an opportunity" that would help accelerate moves toward the creation of a Palestinian state.
The president also offered a second concession sought by Israel. He said that in future, Palestinian refugees should immigrate to a new Palestinian state, not to Israeli lands they say their families were forced to flee in the fighting of 1947-1948.
Mr. Bush thus condoned the notion of a larger Israel than Palestinians have said they are ready to accept
Together, the announcements seemed sure to anger many Arabs and Muslims, many of them already deeply resentful of the United States occupation of Iraq.
Anticipating the United States-Israeli agreement on these points, both Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian president, and Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister, issued powerful denunciations earlier today, saying that any such United States. assurances would destroy prospects for an eventual peace accord, news agencies reported.
"The Palestinian leadership warns of the dangers of reaching such an accord, because it means clearly the complete end of the peace process," Mr. Arafat said in a faxed statement.
Mr. Bush said that it was unrealistic to expect that the negotiations for a Palestinian state would lead to a "full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."
The Palestinian refugee issue, Bush said, would have to be settled with a Palestinian state, and by the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.
Both changes, which the president said were laid out in letters he and Mr. Sharon exchanged, were inspired by the Israeli leader's proposal to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. They were made in recognition, Mr. Bush added, of undeniable changes that have occurred since lines were drawn at the time of Israel's creation.
"Realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly," Mr. Bush said.
The president emphasized that any Israeli settlements "should be temporary rather than permanent, and therefore not prejudice any final status issues, including final borders."
He also insisted that the new American approach, and Mr. Sharon's proposed withdrawals, were meant to bring Israel and the Palestinians closer to the final agreements that will lead to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. The United States, he said, would not prejudice the outcome of the so-called final status negotiations.
That, however, appeared to be a clear shift from a longtime United States position that issues such as borders, the "right of return" for refugees and the status of Jerusalem be resolved in final-status talks.
Mr. Sharon's sought-after concessions had been the subject of intense, months-long negotiations between aides from both sides.
While the president had indicated as recently as Monday - when he met with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt - that he favored Mr. Sharon's proposed Gaza withdrawal, the White House has also made clear that it did not want to do anything that would set back the United States-favored "road map" plan for peace, stability and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Mr. Bush praised Mr. Sharon for what he said was the "bold and courageous decision" to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
Mr. Sharon, who smiled widely and appeared deeply pleased by the meeting, said he was "encouraged" by the president's reaction.
The prime minister promised that his disengagement plan would "reduce friction and tensions between Israelis and Palestinians," while helping advance Mr. Bush's plan for two states living together in peace.
The texts of the United States and Israeli letters were not immediately available, and it remained unclear how broadly or narrowly the American assurances might be worded, or how carefully finessed to reflect strong Palestinian objections.
But Mr. Bush did not hedge or qualify his statements, and so the ultimate impact on prospects for Palestinian cooperation could not be judged.
One reporter asked Mr. Bush about a recent suggestion by former President Jimmy Carter, that the administration was viewed as tilting toward Israel, and thus not helping the peace process.
But Mr. Bush replied that if he was leaning in any direction, it was toward peace.
But the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, had warned hours earlier that the United States should avoid language "that is considered a reward for a party or a side at the expense of the other party."
"Otherwise," he said, "there will be no peace."
-------- mideast
Mubarak offers aid
April 14, 2004
By Joseph Curl and David W. Jones
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040414-010333-1413r.htm
HOUSTON - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday that his nation is prepared to train policemen - "as many as they can bring" - to secure Iraq's major cities, but that U.S. forces should pull back from populated areas after a planned June 30 turnover of power.
The offer, which Mr. Mubarak said is supported by unnamed nations in the region, would mark the strongest effort to date by Arab leaders to help the U.S.-led coalition adhere to the transfer of sovereignty scheduled to take place in just 10 weeks.
It also comes at a time when U.S. commanders in Baghdad are re-examining their training programs after many Iraqi police failed to resist the takeover of their posts during attacks last week by a radical Shi'ite militia.
During a meeting with President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on Monday, Mr. Mubarak said he told the president, "I am ready to train you some police, more police, enough police before [June 30] to work in Baghdad and some big cities."
During a later interview with The Washington Times in a Houston hotel, the Egyptian leader said, "We have May, June. We are ready to train the maximum number of policemen in our country in a very short period of time."
Asked how many police Egypt could train in the time available, he said, "As many as they can bring." In the 45-minute interview, Mr. Mubarak also:
•Expressed confidence that the United States will be able to transfer authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30. "If we can prepare all these forces, I think it could happen."
•Demanded that Israel consult "on each step" with Palestinians as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon moves forward with his unilateral plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
•Offered to train Palestinian police to serve in Gaza after any such withdrawal.
•Acknowledged, by gesture and laughter, that the world, and specifically the Middle East, is better off without Saddam Hussein. He acknowledged this was a touchy subject in the Arab world.
The Egyptian president's offer to help train Iraqi police was welcomed yesterday by the White House.
"We view that as a very helpful offer," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council. "The details will need to be worked out and we are working on that."
Mr. Mubarak said in the interview that stability in Iraq can only be restored if the people there see that their security is in the hands of Iraqis and not a foreign occupation force.
"There should be a police, well trained, who will take over, any town or any place, and the foreign forces should pull out and stay far away, to give the impression to the people that you are being controlled by yourselves, by your police," he said.
"Train the police, give them the mission, put them there and tell them, 'Work independently, we are going to leave this area.' ... Test them."
The Iraqi police force of more than 70,000 has failed to meet expectations and the Iraqi interior minister, handpicked by the United States to oversee the police force, resigned over the weekend after complaining about divided loyalties among the officers.
The force has been short of equipment and training since its inception, and some officers have recently been accused of targeting coalition forces, prompting U.S. officials to question whether an adequate screening process is in place.
Other nations, including France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are either training police officers or have offered to do so.
Mr. Mubarak, the leader of the Arab world's most populous nation, also weighed in on a proposal by Mr. Sharon to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, which will be put to a vote of his Likud Party.
Mr. Sharon is expected to receive a letter when he meets today at the White House with Mr. Bush that promises Israel will be permitted to retain portions of the West Bank in exchange for the pullout from Gaza.
But Mr. Mubarak said the Palestinians would never accept a division of the West Bank that did not result from negotiations.
"If we are looking for peace and stability between both sides, we have to consult on each step toward withdrawal. To keep some settlements without the acceptance of the Palestinians, this will never happen. Let us be realistic: If you want peace, if you want to live together in harmony, we have to consult with each other," he said.
However, the Egyptian leader appeared pleased with a statement from Mr. Bush at their joint press conference Monday saying the Gaza withdrawal should be seen in the context of the U.S.-backed "road map," a peace plan that would lead to a Palestinian state.
"I told [Mr. Bush] that the withdrawal from Gaza should be coordinated with the Palestinians, should be in consultation with the Palestinians for one single reason: so they can prepare themselves to have the power to control Gaza after that.... Otherwise it would be a big mistake. To just withdraw and leave everything would be very complicated."
Mr. Mubarak said Egypt was ready to train Palestinians to serve in Gaza, "to give them instructions in how to work as police for the security ... and to coordinate with them in how they can work in maintaining security against terror."
But he bristled when asked what Egypt would do to halt the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from its territory, arguing that his government was already doing everything possible to seal the frontier.
Mr. Mubarak took pains to stress that Egypt had set out on a program of democratic reforms long before the United States began developing a new initiative on the subject, which is to be made public at a Group of Eight summit this summer.
"We started maybe seven or eight years ago, liberalizing the economy. We have an independent judicial system, we have a free press, we have free expression. We have been much more active than any other country on women's rights, than any other country there [in the Arab League]. We have a council on that, we have a multiparty system. Maybe they are not so strong, but we have to accept them," he said.
He also argued against trying to impose a single model for democracy on the region, saying it should be different for every culture.
"We cannot take the American example which is not like the British example, is not like the French example, is not like the German example or the Italian model of democracy. But the basis of democracy should be adopted: free press, independent judiciary system, parliament, multiparty system."
While noting Egypt's strong efforts over a period of years to fight its own Islamist terrorists, Mr. Mubarak avoided a question as to whether Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Mr. Sharon have the same definition of terrorism.
"Don't open this issue, please. Some people may get offended by my ideas," he said.
Asked whether the Middle East and Iraq are better off without Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, Mr. Mubarak, who smiled often throughout the interview as he answered questions in somewhat broken English, said:
"Better off? Now you're asking me a difficult question." His aides, who also attended the interview, laughed.
"This question makes me fail in the exam," he said to more laughter before acknowledging: "Of course, such an element is not acceptable in the Arab world."
----
Jordan's King Thanks Intelligence Chief
Apr 14, 2004,
(AP)
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/J/JORDAN_TERRORISM?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordanian King Abdullah II published a letter of thanks Wednesday to his intelligence chief for reportedly uncovering a terrorist plot and making arrests that saved thousands of lives.
In the letter to Saad Kheir, chief of the General Intelligence Department, Abdullah expressed his gratitude for authorities' hard work in arresting terrorists who plotted attacks against government establishments and civilian targets. Those arrested also had plotted to attack the U.S. Embassy in Amman.
In the letter, published in Wednesday newspapers, the king said that had the plot not been uncovered, Jordan would have seen "a crime that would have been unprecedented in the country in terms of the size of explosives mounted on the vehicles and the methods of carrying out the attacks or the civilian locations chosen for the attacks."
Abdullah also praised Jordanians' cooperation with security officers during the hunt for the suspects and their vehicles.
During the past two weeks, security forces have arrested several terror suspects and seized a few vehicles loaded with explosives allegedly for attacks in Jordan.
Security officials have not said how many suspects were involved.
At least some of the suspects rounded up were believed to be affiliated with al-Qaida, and interrogators were looking into whether they were specifically linked to Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, government officials have said.
The United States has offered a $10 million reward for the capture of al-Zarqawi, who was sentenced to death in absentia Tuesday by a Jordanian military court for leading a conspiracy to kill U.S. aid worker Laurence Foley, 60, who was gunned down outside his Amman home in 2002.
In conjunction with the arrests, security was visibly tightened around government offices, especially the prime ministry and interior ministry. Beyond the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian government has said only that the group's targets included sensitive public offices.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian firm evacuates 370
By Marian Wilkinson
United States Correspondent
Washington April 14, 2004
The Age (Australia)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/13/1081838719322.html
Russia's biggest contractor in Iraq is evacuating all its 370 staff from the country after at least 40 civilians being taken hostage.
The state-owned Tekhpromexport company, which employs most of the 500 Russians working to rebuild the country, is building a power station about 60 kilometres outside Baghdad.
Earlier, eight workers from a Russian engineering firm - five Ukrainians and three Russians - were released after being kidnapped in Baghdad.
The hostage crisis has added a new dimension to the conflict as US forces fought Sunni and Shiite guerillas in the bloodiest violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago.
Russia, a vocal critic of the US-led military operation, had said it was considering evacuating all its 500 or so nationals.
Japan grappled with contradictory information yesterday on the fate of three of its civilians taken hostage in Iraq.
Japan, which is sharply divided over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's dispatch of troops to help rebuild Iraq, has been on tenterhooks since kidnappers released a video showing the three blindfolded and with guns to their heads.
The US military also confirmed that seven US civilian contractors from a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, had been kidnapped, including Thomas Hamill, who was seen on ABC television. Two US soldiers have also been taken by insurgents.
Further attempts were being made to negotiate an end to the revolt by militants loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the separate Sunni insurgency in Fallujah.
The hostage-taking coincided with a request from the top US commander in Iraq, General John Abizaid, for an extra 10,000 troops to contain the insurgency. The general admitted that some Iraqi security forces and police had abandoned their posts.
In the south, Iraqi security forces "did not stand up to the intimidators of the forces of Sheikh Sadr's militia", General Abizaid said.
The collapse of the Iraqi forces undermines claims by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that local forces could increasingly handle security in towns and cities and reduce the need for coalition troops.
General Abizaid's request for extra troops came as his officers confirmed 71 US soldiers had been killed since April 1. It compares with 89 killed in the three-week war that toppled Saddam.
General Mark Kemmitt also acknowledged that up to 700 Iraqis had died in Fallujah, but he insisted most of these were insurgents. However, a mediator from the Iraqi Islamic Party leading ceasefire negotiations said half the Iraqis killed were women, children and the elderly.
"Among those killed were 160 women, 141 children and many elderly," Fouda Rawi said, providing the first precise figures for civilian deaths.
A powerful delegation of Shiite clerics met Sheikh Sadr in Najaf on Monday, beginning negotiations that appeared to offer the best hope of resolving the stand-off between the US military and the cleric, whose followers threw much of central and southern Iraq into anarchy over the past week.
Shiite clerics had largely stayed silent while his followers briefly seized control of several southern cities, but their influence could be a crucial check on the sheikh.
Under pressure from the rising casualty figures and the sharp upsurge in violence, US President George Bush was to hold a prime-time news conference at the White House today.
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark said a contingent of the country's army engineers might have to leave Iraq if the unrest continues. For days the engineers have been confined to their quarters at a former naval academy near the southern city of Basra, unable to carry out reconstruction work because of the fighting.
"The issue now is how long will they be confined to their camp," Ms Clark told National Radio. "If it went on week after week after week after week, you'd question whether they should stay, but this is very early days at this point."
-------- spies
Ex-spy: Australian intelligence distorted to back government
Reuters News Service
April 14, 2004
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2504887
SYDNEY - Australian intelligence on key issues from East Timor to Iraq has been distorted to support government policy, says a former top army spy whose claims have been backed by a secret report published today.
Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins has called on Prime Minister John Howard to stage a high-level inquiry into systemic failures of Australian intelligence used to justify sending troops into Iraq and the former Indonesian province of East Timor.
In a letter to Howard, Collins said a proper investigation was necessary to end the "putrefaction" of Australia's intelligence system. Howard has confirmed receipt of the letter, but has refused to launch an inquiry.
"I have full confidence in Australia's intelligence services," Howard told reporters.
The Bulletin news magazine published a secret intelligence report on Wednesday which backed Collins's charges.
"Systemic issues remain in Australia's intelligence system, primarily the fact that the product is driven by the policy of the government of the day," said the September 2003 report by Captain Martin Toohey, former deputy director of naval security.
Toohey found that Australian intelligence was formulated by "officers with little or no career intelligence background."
Last month Howard bowed to growing pressure to follow the United States and Britain and hold an independent inquiry into pre-Iraq war intelligence after a parliamentary report found the threat of weapons of mass destruction had been overstated.
Australia sent 2,000 military personnel to the Iraq invasion.
In his letter to Howard, Collins detailed what he said was a series of intelligence failures: faulty assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a lack of warning before the 2002 Bali bombings, and misjudging the violence by Indonesian-backed militias in East Timor after it voted for independence in 1999.
He also cited failure by Australian intelligence to predict a mercenary crisis in neighbouring Papua New Guinea in 1997 and a 2000 coup in the South Pacific nation of Fiji.
Collins, Australia's chief intelligence officer during the U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping operation in East Timor in 1999, singled out intelligence on Indonesia and East Timor, claiming it was prepared by a "Jakarta lobby" in the secretive Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO).
Toohey's report details two other intelligence officers who claim defence intelligence was prepared by "Jakarta apologists." One lieutenant colonel told Toohey that defence intelligence analysts tell their superiors "what they want to know."
Toohey concluded that a "pro-Jakarta lobby" existed within DIO which distorted intelligence to match government policy, which at the time was pro-Indonesia and overlooked or shifted blame for atrocities in East Timor away from the Indonesian army.
"In other words DIO reports what the government wants to hear," he said.
DIO has categorically rejected claims of a political agenda.
Toohey was appointed to investigate Collins's claims that he had been unfairly treated since he was taken off intelligence duties after the Timor operation. He described him as arguably the army's top analyst whose loyalty was beyond reproach.
"The army's treatment of this officer over the last three years has been nothing short of disgraceful," said Toohey, recommending that Collins be reinstated to intelligence duties.
----
Howard rejects spy probe
April 14, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/14/1081838759848.html
Prime Minister John Howard has again rejected calls for a royal commission into Australia's spy agencies despite serious concerns raised by the army's top ranked intelligence analyst.
But Opposition Leader Mark Latham, the Australian Democrats and the Greens said Mr Howard should put the interests of Australia ahead of political considerations and establish an inquiry.
Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins has requested a royal commission into the performance of Australia's spy agencies in assessing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, warning of the Bali terrorist bombing and the case of French terrorist suspect Willie Brigitte.
Lt Col Collins has written to Mr Howard, outlining how Australia's spy agencies had failed Australia many times from the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to the outbreak of violence in East Timor following independence elections.
Visiting Ballina in northern NSW today, Mr Howard said Lt Col Collins had raised a number of important issues, but most related to circumstances some years ago.
"I don't think you set up royal commissions willy-nilly," Mr Howard said.
"We already have an inquiry into our intelligence services and it's the inquiry recommended by an all-party parliamentary committee.
"And in those circumstances I think that is the proper course of action.
"Beyond that, I don't have anything further to say."
Mr Howard said he would gather information on the detailed matters raised and respond to them fully in a letter to Lt Col Collins.
But Mr Latham said the government could not afford to sweep the claims under the carpet.
"Nothing matters more to Australia than our national security," Mr Latham told reporters in Perth.
"We recognise that the war against terror is an intelligence war.
"If we haven't got the best intelligence available for Australia's future then we are so much weaker in conflicts.
"So the government cannot afford to sweep these matters under the carpet."
Mr Latham said the government should give the existing Flood inquiry the powers of a royal commission and broaden its terms of reference to take in Lt Col Collins' concerns.
Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett said the government had been derelict in its duty.
"It clearly has to be shown that this government, if it continues to fail to act, is basically being derelict in its duty to the Australian people," Senator Bartlett told reporters in Canberra.
"If Mr Howard wants to take that dereliction of duty to the election, then that can be on his head."
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown said a royal commission must look at East Timor, Bali and Iraq and the government's failure to fix the mistakes and shortcomings.
"The problem here is that it's left to the prime minister to decide how to fix this and he's not up to it," Senator Brown told reporters in Canberra.
----
C.I.A. Chief Defends Agency but Allows 'We Made Mistakes'
April 14, 2004
New York Times
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14CND-PANE.html?hp
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, testified today that the threat posed by Al Qaeda was passed along to senior policymakers in mid-2001, "even if the timing and method of attacks were not."
He told the independent, bipartisan commission investigating the 9/11 attacks planned by Osama bin Laden that the intelligence community's actions had no doubt saved lives.
"However," he acknowledged, "we never penetrated the 9/11 plot overseas," adding, "We made mistakes."
"We all understood bin Laden's attempt to strike the homeland, but we never translated this knowledge into an effective defense of the country," he said.
Mr. Tenet also conceded in an answer to a panel member, Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic former congressman from Indiana, that while other C.I.A. personnel had briefed President Bush during the summer of 2001, he himself did not talk to the president during August 2001. That was the same month that Mr. Bush received a controversial briefing prepared by the C.I.A. on domestic threats posed by Al Qaeda to the United States.
Much of the questioning seemed to echo the theme of a staff report issued today, which criticized intelligence agencies before Sept. 11, 2001, as being so narrowly focused on details that it missed the broader picture of a huge threat forming against the United States.
For instance, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic commission member, said the spy agency seemed to have paid a lot of attention to the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who had aroused the suspicion of a Minnesota flight school, instead of picking up on Mr. Moussaoui's activities as suggesting the possible use of airplanes as weapons.
Former Senator Bob Kerrey, another Democratic panel member, pressed Mr. Tenet on whether information that Al Qaeda was involved in training the insurgents who killed American soldiers in Somalia in 1993 had been passed on to President Bill Clinton.
And a Republican on the commission, John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary, called the staff report issued this morning a "damning evaluation of a system that is broken, that doesn't function." He said an Aug. 6, 2001, briefing paper for President Bush contained a crucial line that said, "We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, like the intention of bin Laden to hijack U.S. aircraft."
He added: "All the king's horses and all the king's men in the C.I.A. could not corroborate what turned out to be true and told the president of the United States almost a month before the attack that they couldn't corroborate these reports. That's an institutional failure."
In reply, Mr. Tenet said he had "serious issues" with the staff report. Referring to his post as director of central intelligence by that title's initials, he said: "When the staff statement says the D.C.I. had no strategic plan to manage the war on terrorism, that's flat wrong. When the staff statement says I had no program, strategic direction in place to integrate, correlate data and move data across the community, that's wrong."
Mr. Lehman also talked of a "train coming down the track," referring to a reorganization of intelligence agencies.
In his opening statement, Mr. Tenet said, "It will take us another five years to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs."
Later, however, the commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, said: "I wonder if we have five years. When you say five years to rebuild the agency, that worries me a little bit."
Mr. Tenet, who became the director of central intelligence in 1997, testified that intelligence agencies had spent considerable time and energy during his tenure transforming their ability to collect and act on information, adding that in the mid-1990's the agencies were in disarray because new analysts were not being hired or given the tools they needed.
On Somalia, Mr. Kerrey pressed Mr. Tenet on whether Mr. Clinton had been told about an intelligence report from 1997 that discussed the terror group's involvement.
Mr. Tenet said he could not recall such a conversation, and would have to check his records, a reply he gave to a number of direct questions about what he did and when.
Mr. Kerrey said, "Now, I got to tell you, I think if the president of the United States of America had come and said that Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, is responsible for shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu in 1993, I believe that that speech would have galvanized the United States of America against bin Laden."
Mr. Tenet also said that the "products" of what he called an integrated intelligence collection cell set up in 1999 were passed on to policymakers.
"How do I assess our performance?" Mr. Tenet said. "The intelligence that we provided our senior policymakers about the threat Al Qaeda posed, its leadership and its operational span across over 60 countries, and the use of Afghanistan as a sanctuary was clear and direct. Warning was well understood, even if the timing and method of attacks were not."
--------
9/11 Panel Report Faults Culture of Spy Agencies
April 14, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14CND-REPO.html
WASHINGTON, April 14 - American intelligence agencies failed to anticipate the Sept. 11 terror attacks in part because of their piecemeal approach to the ever-growing torrents of information they tried to process, the staff of the 9/11 commission said in a report today.
the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, recognized the weakness of that approach and tried to do something about it, but not in time to avert the attacks, the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said in its report.
As have previous reports about the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies whose work has been criticized since Sept. 11, 2001, today's report cites a failure of imagination, a bureaucratic culture more appropriate for the cold war and, most poignantly, clues that seem so obvious with the benefit of hindsight.
"In late 2000, D.C.I. Tenet recognized the deficiency of strategic analysis against Al Qaeda," the report notes. Mr. Tenet then appointed a senior manager to tackle the problem within the Counterterrorist Center, a unit within the C.I.A. that oversees the efforts of all United States intelligence agencies.
Nor was that initiative the first by Mr. Tenet in addressing the new kinds of threats posed in an era of terrorists linked by ideology rather than to nation-states. The director issued a directive on Dec. 4, 1998, to several officials of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"We are at war," Mr. Tenet wrote, several months after terrorists bombed two United States embassies in Africa, killing hundreds of people. "I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside the C.I.A. or the community."
By "the community," Mr. Tenet meant the numerous other intelligence agencies within the federal bureaucracy, gathering data from human beings or by satellite, compiling arcane information and preparing maps. Coordinating the efforts of all these agencies is ultimately the responsibility of the director of central intelligence.
As for the 1998 memo, the staff report said, "Unfortunately, we found the memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the C.I.A. or the intelligence community." In fact, even though one of Mr. Tenet's deputies forwarded it to other agencies, almost all the people interviewed by the 9/11 commission staff "had never seen the memo or only learned of it after 9/11," today's report notes.
And while there have been spirited debates in recent years on whether intelligence agencies have big enough budgets, money is not the only answer. "The United States spends more on intelligence than most nations spend on national security as a whole," the report notes.
Almost inexplicably, at least in retrospect, American intelligence agencies were not fully aware of the dangers posed by suicide-bent terrorists hijacking airliners.
One exception was Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who has accused President Bush of underestimating the threat of Al Qaeda. The commission staff said Mr. Clarke recalled being concerned about hijacked airplanes being used to wreak carnage at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
"But he attributed his awareness to novels more than any warnings from the intelligence community," the staff report notes.
Alluding to the numerous loosely affiliated intelligence agencies, some little-known outside the vast federal bureaucracy, the staff report asks: "Who is in charge of intelligence?"
And as for Mr. Tenet's efforts to impose a more far-seeing, strategic approach to intelligence, a new "strategic assessments branch" with about 10 analysts was set up to do just that.
The manager reported for duty on Sept. 10, 2001.
-------- un
Kofi Annan says Iraq too violent for U.N. role
April 14, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040414-010336-6554r.htm
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that the violence and anarchy sweeping Iraq will prevent the world body from re-establishing a major presence in the country anytime in the near future.
Mr. Annan also deplored the kidnapping of civilians in Iraq, many of whom were trying to rebuild the nation, and called for their release.
"I think it's unacceptable that these civilians should be mistreated in the way that they are now. I would want to see all of them released and allowed to go about, return to their countries or go about their business," he said.
Mr. Annan also told reporters in New York that the small U.N. team in Iraq, led by top official Lakhdar Brahimi, had been hampered in advising Iraqis on forming an interim government and planning for elections early next year.
"Given the deteriorating situation and the violence on the ground, even that task has been rather difficult," Mr. Annan said.
"For the foreseeable future, insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us. And so I cannot say right now that I am going to be sending in a large U.N. team," he said.
U.S. officials played down the statement, saying a smaller presence might be all that is needed to accomplish important goals.
"It's not a deal killer," said a U.S. official at the United Nations' headquarters, noting that Mr. Annan had voiced concern about the security situation before. "A lot of work can be done in small teams" in Iraq and outside the country, the official said.
There were "important things being done by the United Nations right now without sending in a big U.N. team," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. He acknowledged that as Iraq moved closer to the January 2005 election deadline, larger U.N. teams would be needed.
But Jonathan Tepperman, senior editor at the policy journal Foreign Affairs, said Mr. Annan's decision was "a political blow to the administration, which is anxious to get the U.N. involved because it would give greater international legitimacy to the mission and help the U.S. share the [financial] burden."
The United Nations withdrew its permanent foreign staff from Iraq in October after attacks on aid organizations and the August bombing of its headquarters that killed 22 persons.
Others think that the role of the United Nations in shaping the future of the Iraqi people should be strictly limited anyway, pointing out the organization's failure to call for regime change in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Although it is important for the United Nations to mediate between leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, the world body "should not be in the driving seat" said Nile Gardiner, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Asked whether, in light of the current tumult, the turnover of power should still occur by June 30, Mr. Annan said there was little choice.
"The date has been out there for some time. It has been embraced by the Iraqis themselves, who are anxious to see the end of occupation as soon as possible, and I believe it is going to be difficult to pull it back," he said.
With Iraq in turmoil and increasing numbers of foreign civilians caught in the cross fire or kidnapped, many nations are urging their citizens to leave the country.
The Czech Republic, which has sent troops to Iraq, called on all nonmilitary citizens to get out as officials tried to locate three Czech journalists who disappeared last week near Fallujah.
Four Italians were reported to be held by a previously unknown Iraqi Islamic group, the Mujahideen Brigades, which demanded that Italy withdraw its forces from Iraq, according to a tape aired by Al Jazeera television.
Kremlin officials advised Russian firms to leave after eight workers at a Russian company were kidnapped and released. Two contractors - representing the bulk of Russians working in Iraq - said they planned to pull out.
Romania and Denmark, both of whom have troops helping the U.S.-led occupation, advised citizens to leave. Danish aid organizations said yesterday that they were pulling out their remaining workers in Iraq.
Poland, a U.S. ally leading a multinational army division in central Iraq, said it has advised companies and organizations to postpone plans to go to Iraq.
"As for those who are already in Iraq, we advise extreme caution," a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman said, according to Reuters news agency.
France and Russia, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also have urged their citizens to leave the country or postpone traveling there. News of the disappearance of a French cameraman came soon after the advisories were issued.
Among others abducted and let go were seven Chinese nationals, a Briton, three Pakistanis, two Turks, an Indian, a Nepalese and a Filipino. Earlier, seven Koreans were kidnapped and released.
--------
U.N. Envoy To Outline New Plan For Iraq
Wary of Sending Team, Annan Awaits Report
By Colum Lynch and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9624-2004Apr13.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 13 -- U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to wrap up his mission to salvage Iraq's political transition on Wednesday and to publicly outline elements of a new formula for creating a provisional Iraqi government, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
But Secretary General Kofi Annan warned Tuesday that the surge of violence endangers the ability of the United Nations to reopen a mission in Baghdad to help during and after the transfer of power from the U.S.-led occupation. "For the foreseeable future, insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us," Annan said. "So I cannot say I'm going to be sending in a large U.N. team."
After two of its proposals were rejected by influential Iraqi leaders, the Bush administration turned to the United Nations to mediate an alternative so the occupation can end as scheduled on June 30. After more than a week of talks with Iraqis, Brahimi on Monday previewed his plan to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and Robert Blackwill, the National Security Council's Iraq troubleshooter who has been in Baghdad during the Brahimi mission, U.S. officials said. Brahimi is expected to discuss parts of the plan at a news conference Wednesday in Baghdad, officials said.
The draft includes two possible steps to form a government more representative than the current 25-member Governing Council, which includes former exiles who have limited popular support, according to recent polls.
One step calls for the United Nations, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi leaders to choose members of a provisional government that would assume sovereignty on June 30. The second step calls for a small national convention, similar to the loya jirga held to select Afghanistan's postwar government, to create a large consultative body, according to officials from coalition countries familiar with the plan.
If this plan is adopted, it could mean disbanding the Governing Council, although some of its members may have roles in either the first or second step.
U.S. officials said they expect Brahimi to meet Wednesday with the son of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the popular Iraqi religious leader who rejected the earlier U.S. plans and called for direct elections. Sistani has also rejected the interim constitution because it was not produced by elected representatives. Brahimi is expected to discuss both issues with Sistani, U.S. officials said. Brahimi is then to return to New York for talks with Annan, officials said.
The Bush administration hopes the new U.N. plan will be a turning point that revives the deadlocked political process and provides momentum to counterbalance recent security problems, the officials say.
"The United Nations is indeed moving the ball forward on the political issues, even while we deal with other issues of security," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher told reporters Tuesday.
Annan said he will delay a final decision on the future of the United Nations in Iraq until Brahimi returns to New York and "we reassess the situation." But his grim appraisal of what he called a "deteriorating situation" reflected mounting concern about the prospects for a significant U.N. role if violence does not subside.
The U.N. chief said he was committed to U.S. plans to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, noting that Iraqis "are anxious to see the end of occupation as soon as possible." But he indicated that a U.N. timetable for holding national elections as early as January may lapse if the Iraqis fail to reach agreement on an election law by next month.
"I'm not in a position to ascertain whether the legal framework is in place or not," he said. "And therefore, it is difficult for me to say that the January date is still a viable one."
Annan's concern about security in Iraq comes as he battles a bureaucratic insurgency within the United Nations over Iraq policy. A group of about 60 midlevel U.N. staffers has formally protested Annan's decision to discipline a handful of U.N. officials for failing to provide adequate security at the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations before the Aug. 19 terrorist attack killed 22 people there. The staffers said the organization's top leaders should accept greater responsibility for the tragedy.
Officials from the organization's peacekeeping, political affairs and emergency relief operations signed the letter, urging Annan to reconsider his decision and provide some of those punished with an opportunity to defend themselves, according to several officials who signed the document.
Wright reported from Washington. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
-------- us
Analysis: US 'emulates' Israeli tactics
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC defence correspondent
Wednesday, 14 April, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3625315.stm
US soldiers in Iraq have been faced with revolts on more than one front With sporadic fighting in Falluja and US forces moving into position outside Najaf, the Arab press is pointing to similarities between US military operations in Iraq and the tactics Israeli forces employ in the West Bank and Gaza.
Such similarities are not coincidental.
The Israeli army has long experience of offensive operations in urban areas and it is experience that the Pentagon has been eager to draw upon.
Israel and the US have developed a close military relationship over the years.
Two-way exchange
Israel's armed forces are undergoing a process of transformation similar to that advocated by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the emphasis on lighter, more agile units employing devastating firepower and drawing on a variety of new information and intelligence gathering systems.
Go to any US military exercise and Israeli observers are much in evidence.
But the transfer of doctrine and tactics is not just a one-way street.
US commanders have drawn extensively on Israel's experiences in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for lessons that might be applicable to Iraq.
Urban trap
Fighting in urban areas is something that modern armies tend to avoid wherever possible.
In the low-rise warren of alleys and narrow streets the advantages of technologically sophisticated soldiers are much reduced.
Even lightly armed opponents with local knowledge can constitute serious opposition.
Many Palestinians have demonstrated against the occupation of Iraq
And the proximity of civilians adds the risk of significant loss of innocent life and widespread damage to property.
While many of Israel's methods are controversial it has, in purely military terms, developed highly effective tactics for offensive operations in urban areas along with a range of specialised equipment which, for example, can help troops to breach walls, gather intelligence, and locate snipers.
The Pentagon has already bought some Israeli equipment. It is planning to buy more.
And senior US commanders have visited Israel specifically to discuss what the Pentagon jargon calls "Military Operations on Urban Terrain".
----
Pentagon says 688 US soldiers killed in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040414170901.uz3k6uuh.html
The Defence Department said Wednesday that 688 US soldiers have now been killed in Iraq since the invasion in March last year.
The Pentagon said that 3,269 had been wounded as of 1500 GMT on Wednesday.
More than 80 American soldiers have been killed in a surge of violence in April, according to military sources.
Of the total, 548 soldiers have been killed since President George W. Bush declared major conflict over in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
Combat left 494 soldiers dead and accidents and other circumstances killed another 194.
Out of those injured, 1,137 have since resumed military duties, the department said.
----
Pentagon crash 'too unrealistic'
By Bryan Bender,
Boston Globe Staff,
4/14/2004
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/04/14/pentagon_crash_too_unrealistic/
WASHINGTON -- Five months before Sept. 11, 2001, the officers responsible for defending American airspace wanted to test their ability to prevent a hijacked airliner from being crashed into the Pentagon, but the scenario was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as impractical, a Joint Chiefs spokesman confirmed yesterday.
The disclosure was made after a government watchdog group released a leaked e-mail from a former official at the North American Air Defense Command. In the message, the official told colleagues a week after the attacks that in April 2001 NORAD requested that war games run by the Joint Chiefs include an ''event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial airline . . . and fly it into the Pentagon."
Last night, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Dan Hetlage confirmed the account, saying: ''That scenario was rejected because it would have become a whole exercise in and of itself. It wasn't looked on at the time as being practicable."
The NORAD proposal is the clearest sign yet that national security officials were worried before 9/11 about terrorists using hijacked airliners as missiles, despite testimony that senior leaders, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, didn't know of such concerns.
A secret Aug. 6, 2001, memo prepared for President Bush said Al Qaeda terrorists in the United States might be planning to hijack airliners, but it did not raise the possibility that Al Qaeda could slam those planes into buildings -- let alone the Pentagon, which was struck by American Airlines Flight 77.
Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks last week that ''it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles."
However, she held out the possibility that some government officials might have raised concerns, without senior officials' knowledge, about such a mode of attack.
Officials at NORAD apparently were concerned. But the e-mail said, the US Pacific Command, which was overseeing the exercises simulating a war with North Korea, ''didn't want it because it would take attention away from their exercise objectives, and Joint Staff action officers rejected it as too unrealistic."
The author of the message, a former NORAD official, could not be located yesterday.
Peter Stockton, chief investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, said yesterday he was told by the source who provided the memo that a special forces officer attached to the NORAD command at the time had first proposed the Pentagon scenario be practiced.
Concerns that terrorists might use hijacked airliners as missiles dates back to the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when jets were placed on patrol to guard against such a threat.
Testifying before the 9/11 commission yesterday, former FBI Director Louis Freeh said that ''I believe it came up in a series of these, as we call them, special events."
But Freeh said, ''I never was aware of a plan that contemplated commercial airliners being used as weapons after a hijacking."
-------- propaganda wars
FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard
9-11 Commission disregards survivor families' interests
April 14th, 2004
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo10.php
WASHINGTON D.C.-Despite the best efforts of the Jersey Girls, leaders of the 9-11 Family Steering Committee, no member of the 9-11 commission this afternoon asked FBI chief Robert Mueller embarrassing questions about two former FBI translators who claim to have knowledge bearing on the attacks. One of them says she is being suppressed and can't talk because Attorney general John Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her.
Instead, the commissioners lauded Mueller for his running of the agency, which only yesterday they were bitterly attacking as incompetent and ineffective. Today one commissioner after another lavished praise on Mueller.
Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste briefly alluded to accusations by the translators, and said he would pursue it in private.
In particular the Jersey Girls wanted the commission to closely question Mueller about Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who is openly challenging the agency's veracity in the 9-11 investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a gag order on Edmonds by making her internal complaint to the inspector general secret. Soon after she came out publicly, Edmonds was fired.
She subsequently told the commission that the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before September 11. "Some of our group has met several times with Edmonds, and from what we can tell, we think her claims are extremely credible," Lori van Auken, one of the leaders of the Jersey Girls, told The Voice. "So much so that some of our group hand walked her in to testify before the 9-11 commissioners."
They are also eager to find out more about the unconfirmed story of a second FBI linguist, Behrooz Sarshar, who claims he translated for an FBI informant with information on a supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. with planes back in April 2001. "Some of the group have also met with Sarshar," said van Auken. "His claims seem to back up what Edmonds is saying."
Edmonds came to attention most recently following Condoleezza Rice's assertion in a Washington Post op-ed piece that the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes as "an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie," according to Edmonds.
Edmonds, a Turkish American, has been a citizen for 10 years and speaks Farsi, Turkish, and Arabic. The FBI assigned her to translate documents seized by agents in its post-9-11 probe. "President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we were facing."
In 2002, then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, a senior member, asked John Ashcroft about Edmonds's statements to the committee in a closed briefing that she was told by a superior "not to translate important, intelligence-related information, instead limiting her translation to unimportant and innocuous information." She also claimed her superior had previous contacts with one of the people whose work she had been prevented from translating.
The FBI, the senators noted at the time, "verified that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain material properly, but has attributed the failure to a lack of training as opposed to a malicious act."
The Justice Department inspector general has been looking into the case over the last two years, and still has not produced a report. Ashcroft, on the advice of Mueller in 2002, invoked the "state secret privilege," making the entire matter secret, "to prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information." That effectively put a gag order on Edmonds.
Among other things, she now suggests one translator sent to Guantánamo by the FBI "was not even qualified in basic English." She is questioning whether translators handling terrorism-related information are so poorly trained they can't make competent sense of what they are translating.
A second FBI whistle-blower case involves another former FBI translator, Behrooz Sarshar, who left the agency in 2002. He supposedly translated an interview between an Iranian source, once a member of the Shah's secret police, with two FBI agents in which the informant told the agents he had heard in Afghanistan of an Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. in a suicide mission with planes. Details of the story were first reported by the WorldNetDaily website.
----
Heads Up ... from Michael Moore
From: mailinglist@michaelmoore.com
April 14, 2004
Friends,
I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the "news conference" given by George W. Bush. He's still talking about finding "weapons of mass destruction" -- this time on Saddam's "turkey farm." Turkey indeed. Clearly the White House believes there are enough idiots in the 17 swing states who will buy this. I think they are in for a rude awakening.
I've been holed up for weeks in the editing room finishing my film ("Fahrenheit 911"). That's why you haven't heard from me lately. But after last night's Lyndon Johnson impersonation from the East Room -- essentially promising to send even more troops into the Iraq sinkhole -- I had to write you all a note.
First, can we stop the Orwellian language and start using the proper names for things? Those are not "contractors" in Iraq. They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it.
Halliburton is not a "company" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested -- or worse.
The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush? You closed down a friggin' weekly newspaper, you great giver of freedom and democracy! Then all hell broke loose. The paper only had 10,000 readers! Why are you smirking?
One year after we wiped the face of the Saddam statue with our American flag before yanking him down, it is now too dangerous for a single media person to go to that square in Baghdad and file a report on the wonderful one-year anniversary celebration. Of course, there is no celebration, and those brave blow-dried "embeds" can't even leave the safety of the fort in downtown Baghdad. They never actually SEE what is taking place across Iraq (most of the pictures we see on TV are shot by Arab media and some Europeans). When you watch a report "from Iraq" what you are getting is the press release handed out by the U.S. occupation force and repeated to you as "news."
I currently have two cameramen/reporters doing work for me in Iraq for my movie (unbeknownst to the Army). They are talking to soldiers and gathering the true sentiment about what is really going on. They Fed Ex the footage back to me each week. That's right, Fed Ex. Who said we haven't brought freedom to Iraq! The funniest story my guys tell me is how when they fly into Baghdad, they don't have to show a passport or go through immigration. Why not? Because they have not traveled from a foreign country -- they're coming from America TO America, a place that is ours, a new American territory called Iraq.
There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.
Until then, enjoy the "pacification" of Falluja, the "containment" of Sadr City, and the next Tet Offensive - oops, I mean, "terrorist attack by a small group of Baathist loyalists" (Hahaha! I love writing those words, Baathist loyalists, it makes me sound so Peter Jennings!) -- followed by a "news conference" where we will be told that we must "stay the course" because we are "winning the hearts and minds of the people."
I'll write again soon. Don't despair. Remember, the American people are not that stupid. Sure, we can be frightened into a war, but we always come around sooner or later -- and the one way this is NOT like Vietnam is that it hasn't taken the public four long years to figure out they were lied to.
Now if Bush would just quit speaking in public and giving me more free material for my movie, I can get back to work and get it done. I've got four weeks left 'til completion.
Yours,
Michael Moore mmflint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com
----
In the Shadow of Wolves: Shame on you, Corporate Media
By Manuel Valenzuela, Contributing Editor
Apr 14, 2004,
Axis of Logic
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_6519.shtml
Discomforting as it might seem for us to acknowledge, the corporate media is our enemy. In concert, the ABCNBCCBSCNNFOX hydra has declared open war against our right to truth and open democracy. Americans have been made ignorant to the world that encapsulates them thanks to the purposeful sequestering of information and open dissemination of propaganda by entities controlled by the great Corporate Leviathan.
In this age of corporatism - the entangled power of government and corporations dancing together - our right to know what our leaders are doing has been extinguished. Government accountability has in many ways become an oxymoron as corporate media whitewashes the chicanery and corruption transpiring at the highest levels of governance. Since this malfeasance involves the same spoon that feeds today's media, hiding of truth becomes second nature. Corporate media, we must understand, is protecting its mother, the great Leviathan.
Once noble seekers of truth have been replaced by seekers of deception, censoring and cleansing any and all news seen as harmful to the government and Leviathan. Honor and integrity in journalism has disappeared, only to give rise to manipulation and conditioning. What was once an institution of American democracy has mutated into a compliant prostitute to the oligarchy. As a result, the US has been made blind to the evils done in our name and the crimes committed against us.
We are living in times where truth on the airwaves has ceased to exist. Realities are hidden, fictions are espoused and the indelible fogged mirror over our monitors continues to grow. With government/Leviathan entities controlling most every channel in the vast array of escapism we are inundated with on television it becomes a rather easy endeavor to control a population. One only needs to look at the enormous canyon separating the views of the world with those of Americans when it comes to the actions of the Pax Americana.
It has become apparent that the ignorance of most Americans is directly tied to the manipulation prevalent in the corporate media. Incurious and spineless journalists have become, selling out their integrity for fame and greed. How people of supposed intelligence can spew distortion and propaganda on such a massive scale and be able to live with themselves is beyond my scope of understanding. American media has become a farce, nothing more than a mouthpiece for government/Leviathan interests and a censor to truth and reality. From the mouths of journalists have been born the spurious sons and daughters of manipulated conditioning.
In the shadow of wolves we find ourselves living, trapped in caverns of distortion, seeking truth but finding only the sharp fangs of fiction. Reality has been hidden from our ever-curious eyes, buried deep in the lair of mouth-foaming beasts intent on making us subservient creatures of passivity. We see not what transpires but only what expires, filtered and washed, censored and distorted. The expiration of fact has yielded to the renunciation of truth.
The greatest victim of today's corporate media has been the American people. We are being lied to, manipulated, conditioned and robbed of our democratic right to question authority and seek accountability. News has become a charade, an Orwellian mutation extending the tentacles of government and business into our homes and lives. It is used to control and pacify, numb and brainwash. The corporate media has become a tool to protect vital interests necessary for the continued existence of the oligarchy. What we don't know won't hurt us; what we are told to believe simply becomes history.
The debacle in Iraq has been transformed into a whitewashed version of "a bad week." Except the bad weeks keep coming and coming, with no reasonable end in sight and no will or leadership apparent to help guide us out of the cesspool that has been engendered. The ruination of American forces, falling deeper and deeper into the abyss, has been hidden from the spectrum of American curiosity.
We are led to believe otherwise, however, as a censored and edited version of the "fight against evil" is rerun for tens of millions to feast on. We are battling terrorists, after all, waging a war of good versus evil, right versus wrong, freedom versus tyranny. Of course George Washington, Paul Revere and all American freedom fighters battling the British would take exception to being labeled "terrorists" or "insurgents" as today's resistance fighters are.
Yet the corporate media lives to label and stereotype, casting this most ignoble battle as America bringing freedom and democracy to a beleaguered people in desperate need of our assistance. The screenplay is typical of Hollywood fantasy, pure bull manure designed to captivate a fiction-loving audience conditioned through years of escapist propaganda to seeing America playing the role of hero and liberator to the world.
Reality demands, however, that we look beyond the golden shores of our oceans and into the eyes of a world altogether different. It is the corporate media, that most innocent looking nebula that alters our definition of the planet, rendering us believers of mirages and charred truths. It is the corporate media that grants us the illusion of our leaders' noble and altruistic intentions at the same time the world considers us a bigger threat than terrorism.
We live in a fantasy world, America in Wonderland, where everything that is cannot possibly exist and where everything we see must therefore be. The alteration of reality for the continued existence of the Leviathan and oligarchs has made us creatures of conformism and ignorance. Lies about our greatness, manipulations about our atrocities, delusions about our place in history and charades over our role in leading the brotherhood of nations has permeated into our minds, making our existence the grandest Hollywood fantasy that ever existed.
The pulsating echo of reality is made to vanish like a bad dream while the hemorrhaging screams of falsity reigns supreme in the nightmare called corporate media. America has become the most incurious nation on Earth, easily believing its injurious government and absorbing the propaganda spawned by the mouths of the Leviathan. It is this grave imperfection, thrust upon the people of the world, that endangers our future and helps release the demons of man upon the globe.
An incurious and easily manipulated population, unwilling to question authority or the falsity of their beliefs has helped launch the brazen grip of terror the Bush administration has unleashed onto the world. Yet corporate media filters prevent us from seeing this most important of facts. Why? Because America's government and corporate entities are today one and the same, BushCo, Inc. To have the citizenry controlled, believing the trash thrown into our living rooms, is to have the power to exploit and oppress at will, not only the world at large but the American people as well.
From the beginning of the Iraq war corporate media was spewing propaganda beneficial to the Bush administration and to the Leviathan. Rose petals awaited our triumphant soldiers, millions greeted us as liberators, we were made to believe tens of thousands toppled Saddam's statue. Once again, however, the fictions promulgated and the realities concealed were mutually exclusive.
In the year since the invasion and subsequent occupation, the corporate media has ensnarled itself with the Bush administration, following the president like a lost little puppy. The crumbs thrown at the pack of wolves is quickly gobbled up and regurgitated back to us. The most incurious, deceptive and acquiescent media the US has ever known has helped transform democracy into plutocracy, a once questioning populace into an accepting one and the global corporate empire into a most malicious evil empire.
Journalists of honor still exist, espousing truth and ideology to make a difference in a troubled world. They are the exception rather than the rule, however. Many more have been washed away by the tide of patriotic fervor questioning dissenters and making traitors of seekers of truth. Many have sold out to the demons of the Leviathan, easily gobbled up and bought, transformed into loudspeakers seeking nothing but the lies and deceptions they are spoon-fed.
What has happened to American media? What has become of a once noble institution of change and accountability? What has happened to reporting truths and masking away the lies and propaganda the government gives birth to? Where is Walter Cronkite?
Today's diluted versions of Cronkite have been corrupted by the system. They have fallen prey to greed and the evils of corporatist capitalism that serves them up as pawns in the game of power and control. They are used in order to wage war against the people, becoming nothing more than voices declaring what those in power want the populace to believe, and follow.
It is a sad day when we can no longer place trust in corporate media news or in the seemingly intelligent newscasters, reporters, pundits, talking heads and purveyors of information we once thought so highly of. Their words can no longer be trusted, their information no longer believed. Censoring so much truth, fabricating so much hogwash, questioning nothing but the viewers themselves and helping turn democracy into the illusion it has become is today the job of the corporate news.
I for one no longer blink an eye to the fallacies preached over the television set. I have stopped listening altogether, and the world has suddenly become a bastion of information readily available at the click of a mouse. Reality has returned, encaged I no longer am and the chains of enslavement making me captive to corporate media have disintegrated with the enlightenment the Internet has provided. The world and its truths are at my fingertips. I am no longer relegated to American propaganda and the festering crap that constitutes for news. Goodbye Wolf Blitzer.
Suddenly the horrors of depleted uranium have opened my mind to the nuclear war in Iraq. Why does the corporate media not cover DU, I wonder, even when American troops in both Gulf Wars have died and become sick in enormous numbers? Where is the coverage of their deformed and diseased newborns waking to the reality of depleted uranium? Why is there no mention of the voluminous number of tons of DU shells, munitions, bombs and missiles dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, even when both nations have become a nuclear waste dump giving birth to cancers, birth mutations and disease that will last into perpetuity? Shame on you, corporate media!
I am now able to see the deaths of American soldiers, the atrocities of American bombs, the blown to bits Iraqi children and the inherent absurdity of war. I see the damage done by cluster bombs, carpet bombing and oppressive occupation. Eyewitness accounts of Fallujah collective punishment and Baghdad war crimes have sickened me to my stomach. The reality of war has manifested itself to me, and trust me, we are not the good guys nor the heroes nor the gods of honor. Where is the corporate media to report to us the truths of this most heinous and immoral of wars? Shame on you, corporate media!
I know more about the neocons than I care to admit, discovering their ideology and fascination with Israel. Where is the corporate media coverage of this slithering group of vipers that falsely led us to war in Iraq and manipulated government in order to achieve its goals? This conniving cabal of corrosiveness has made us less safe by their delusional foray into the Middle East that has only served to heat up the conveyor belt of hatred and resentment against the US. Why are they not held to accountability? Shame on you, corporate media!
I have become outraged at the dehumanization being committed to the Palestinian people in the name of the Star of David. I can see myself walking along a horridly indigent, waste infested, overpopulated and encaged refuge camp in the West Bank, ducking for cover as IDF soldiers shoot indiscriminately while their tanks and bulldozers demolish lives, homes and orchards. I become Palestinian, living in an utter state of apartheid, humiliated at every turn, enslaved, encaged and enraged. Now I comprehend what makes a suicide bomber turn himself or herself into a guided missile, similar to those used by the IDF on Palestinian populated areas.
Yet the corporate media fails to lift a hair to report these truths, deciding instead to turn its attention to protecting the interests of Israel. Where is the objectivity? Where is the fair and balanced approach to truthful reporting? It isn't found in the corporate media - that much is certain. Why are Palestinians stereotyped, vilified, smeared and condemned while the occupiers/oppressors are protected, cherished, honored, and elevated on a pedestal? Shame on you, corporate media!
I have been made aware of the corruption within the Bush administration, of the sheer malfeasant leadership we have in Washington. John Kerry was not wrong when he labeled this cabal crooks and liars. If the constant stream of emerging patterns is any indication, an elected George W. Bush could mean the implosion of America. Where is the corporate media on this issue? For three years it has allowed Bush to trample on the Constitution and on the American people without raising an eyebrow. It has allowed the chicanery and the sleaze to continue. When the sole beneficiary of the pillaging of America is the hand that feeds it, however, only lip service is paid lest the people be informed to what is in effect their enslavement and exploitation. Shame on you, corporate media! Now, more than ever, I have become aware of the coming decimation caused by global warming, itself a creation of man. We are destroying ourselves and our progeny by our continued use of carbon in our lives. The reality of global warming is upon us, so much so that the Pentagon is worried. The planet is reeling, changing and will soon purge the plague of locusts devouring it from its surface. Is there any concerted effort by the corporate media to report this most dangerous threat to the American people? Absolutely not, even when experts have stated that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. Shame on you, corporate media!
In the shadow of wolves we find ourselves in, trapped in their den, unable to see light emanating from outside. In the shadow of wolves our reality exists, altering our perception of what truly is. War has been declared against us and truth, fact and reality. In battle we have yet to win, being brainwashed to accept sin. America in Wonderland is what we are, seeing the world change from so very far.
Corporate Media is turning us into obedient drones that allow the Leviathan carte blanche to exploit, suffocate, exterminate and obliterate both minds and lives. Numb creatures of ignorance we are meticulously being turned into, unable, unwilling and uninspired to question the authority that technically answers to us. The corporate media has turned its back on the American people. It now acts as a tool of dominance and control.
The age of the Internet is upon us, however, revolutionary as the printing press and as informative as the world's best libraries, combined. Throw away your remote and pick up your mouse, evade the feces thrown at you by ABCNBCCBSCNNFOX, and become witness to a world of truth, fact and reality. The chains of bondage gripping you will cease to exist just as the shadow of the wolves dissolves into the dark light of a full moon burning bright.
Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net
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Bush fresh out of ideas
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey,
Pravda.Ru
04/14/2004
http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/12508_Bush.html
US President in checkmate
George W. Bush is a worried man. He tried, and failed, to protect Condoleeza Rice from questioning over 9/11 and he himself only faces the press as a last resort. He launched an illegal war against a sovereign nation, causing wholesale slaughter of civilians, doled out contracts to his buddies without tender, sees Saddam's wife state that the man what crawled out of a hole was not her husband - http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/366/12494_saddam.html - and now faces the nightmare of seeing his troops trapped inside Iraq.
"They will get in but they won't get out" was the claim from the Iraqi Ambassador in Brasilia when questioned by Armando Costa Rocha of Pravda.Ru about the outcome of the war. How true this is now proving to be. The Iraqi Armed Forces melted into the desert with hardly a shot being fired, only to show up all over the country, in the north, in the centre and in the south, where Moqtada Al Sadr's Shia army has over one million men blocking any exit through to Kuwait.
The US Armed Forces are surrounded in a hostile territory where they stirred up hatred due to their murderous, heavy-handed tactics. They were caught on camera kicking down the doors of civilian houses and forcing women to lie on the floor while they were searched, they were caught on camera pointing automatic weapons into the faces of terrified six-year-old boys, yelling, "Get your fucking hands up, NOW!!"
Great public relations exercise, these acts of terrorism. The nonchalance with which this invasion force was greeted at first has been replaced by seething hatred which has united the Sunni and Shia communities inside Iraq, against the common enemy. George Bush has created a monster that he does not know how to control.
If the situation now is so bad that almost one year after he declared an end to hostilities, he sees the country in chaos, with hundreds of thousands of determined, armed militia willing to give up their lives to fight off the invader, if the situation is so bad that he has to call up more troops, how can he possibly hand over power to the new authorities in June and pull out?
George W. Bush has willingly frittered away over one hundred and sixty billion USD of his taxpayer's hard-earned money (which means little to the moneyed elite clique of corporate bosses surrounding him) and some experts say that this is not nearly enough. Who pays? The US taxpayer. No wonder he dare not speak about domestic policy any more. No wonder he dare not step off a plane in most countries.
George Bush may claim "We have finished the work of the fallen" - which sounds good but his demeanour as he approached the cameras and his body language during his speech last night spells the story of a frightened and broken man, who knows he made a grave mistake, despite being warned by Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Brasilia, Peking and other members of the international community, to use the United Nations, the organization he derided so crudely.
He knows he lied to his people, lied to the UNO and lied to the international community. He knows there were no weapons of mass destruction, despite the documents, despite the forgeries, despite the maquettes with arrows and labels. He knows he sent his troops to their deaths, he knows he is ultimately responsible for the deaths of 10.000 civilians and the mutilation of tens of thousands of others.
He knows his armed forces deployed depleted uranium in civilian areas, despite knowing that this has a lasting effect on the battlefield, he knows that they deployed brightly coloured shiny cluster bombs in civilian areas, where children mistake them for sweets and get their faces blown off.
He knows these are against the Geneva Convention, he knows he broke international law by breaking the UN Charter and he knows he is a war criminal, a mass murderer and a liar.
What he says makes no difference, because once a liar, always a liar. Now, even the capture of Saddam Hussein is put to question, because the carefully-staged meeting of him with his wife of 25 years last week brought chaos - she immediately claimed that this is not her husband, but a double. If documents can be forged, DNA tests can be faked.
Once a liar, always a liar. For George W. Bush it is the beginning of the end, it is time to face the music that he wrote. He can blame nobody but himself, for he was warned, but would not listen. George W. Bush is the victim of his own short-sightedness and the greed of the regime that created him.
They should have known better. After all, what to expect from a man who gets a black eye and a split lip from eating a biscuit?
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Bush's press conference
Shanti Renfrew <autodelete66@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004
I am not trying to start something here, I just want you all to be aware of how the Bush Admin uses technology.
Did you watch the President's press conference last night?
Have you seen tape of Bush speaking 'off tele-prompter' before?
Have you noticed...
How President Bush...
Only speaks in three...
Or Four word sentences...
With long pauses...
In between?
This is exactly how...
People speak...
When being prompted...
By and in-ear monitor.
That is, President Bush...
Is listening to...
Someone else's voice...
Through a micro-receiver...
Hidden in his ear.
He's getting better...
But that still means...
That he can not...
Speak in public...
Without someone else...
Telling him exactly what...
To say.
And then there was...
That one reporter...
That did not ask...
President Bush the question...
He was supposed to.
Bush castigated this reporter...
For not submitting...
The question in advance...
And then President Bush...
Keeps saying 'Something'...
'will pop into my head soon'.
There is even a moment...
Where President Bush shakes...
His head, 'No', just like...
A pitcher in a ball game...
Waving off a bad sign...
From the catcher.
It's as though the voice...
In his ear had given...
Him an answer he...
Refused to repeat on...
Camera.
Just something to think...
About the next time...
President Bush holds one...
Of these "Scripted Press Conferences".
Karl Rove through Robin Grant
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Trust, Don't Verify
Bush's incredible definition of credibility
By William Saletan,
Slate
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
http://slate.msn.com/id/2098810/
One thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.
That's the summation President Bush delivered as he wrapped up his press conference Tuesday night. It's the message he emphasized throughout: Our commitment. Our pledge. Our word. My conviction. Given the stakes in Iraq and the war against terrorism, it would be petty to poke fun at Bush for calling credibility "incredibly important." His routine misuse of the word "incredible," while illiterate, is harmless. His misunderstanding of the word "credible," however, isn't harmless. It's catastrophic.
To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. "A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America's word, once given, can be relied upon," he argued Tuesday night. When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush's most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush's notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true.
Outside Bush's head, his statements keep crashing into reality. Tuesday night, ABC's Terry Moran reminded him, "Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq: that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, 'We know where they are.' How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong?"
Inside Bush's head, however, all is peaceful. "The oil revenues, they're bigger than we thought they would be," Bush boasted to Moran, evidently unaware that this heightened the mystery of why the revenues weren't covering the reconstruction. As to the WMD, Bush said the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq had confirmed that Iraq was "hiding things. A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught." See the logic? A country that hides something must be afraid of getting caught, and a country afraid of getting caught must be hiding something. Each statement validates the other, sparing Bush the need to find the WMD.
Bush does occasionally cite other people's statements to support his credibility. Saddam Hussein "was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States," Bush told Moran. "That's ... the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence. That's the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence." Actually, the Security Council didn't say Iraq was a threat to the United States, but never mind. The more fundamental problem with Bush's appeal to prewar assessments by Congress and the Security Council is that these assessments weren't reality. They were attempts-not even independent attempts, since the administration heavily lobbied both bodies-to approximate reality. When they turned out not to match reality, members of Congress (including Republicans) and the Security Council (including U.S. allies) repudiated them.
Not Bush. He's impervious to evidence. "I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where [the WMD] are," he told Time's John Dickerson at the press conference. A year after Saddam's ouster and four months after Saddam's capture, Bush continued to insist that "people who should know about weapons" are still "worried about getting killed, and therefore they're not going to talk. ... We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point." You can agree or disagree with this theory. But you can't falsify it.
Bush doesn't see the problem. He's too preoccupied with self-consistency to notice whether he's consistent with anything else. "I thought it was important for the United Nations Security Council that when it says something, it means something," he told Moran. "The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, 'Disarm or face serious consequences.' And [Saddam] refused to disarm." Never mind that the Security Council didn't see what Bush saw in terms of Iraqi disarmament and didn't mean what Bush meant in terms of serious consequences. Never mind that this difference in perception was so vast that Bush ducked a second Security Council vote on a use-of-force resolution. What's important is that when the Security Council says something, it must mean something, even if the something the council said isn't the something Bush meant.
As Tuesday night's questions turned to the 9/11 investigation, Bush retreated again to the incontrovertible truths in his head. "There was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale," he told NBC's David Gregory. Never mind that somebody who had worked in Bush's administration and the prior administration-namely, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke-had raised precisely this concern about the 1996 Olympics. Never mind that the president's daily intelligence brief on Aug. 6, 2001-titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in U.S."-had warned Bush, "FBI information since [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." These were external phenomena and therefore irrelevant. What mattered was that Bush couldn't "envision" the scenario.
Three times, Bush repeated the answer he gave to Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times: "Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it." Outside Bush's head, the statement was patently false: The 9/11 threat required action, and Bush failed to deal with it. But inside Bush's head, the statement was tautological: If there were a threat that required action, Bush would have dealt with it; Bush didn't deal with it; therefore, there was no threat that required action. The third time Bush repeated this answer-in response to a question about whether he owed an "apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11"-he added, "The person responsible for the attacks was Osama Bin Laden." This is how Bush's mind works: Only a bad person can bear responsibility for a bad thing. I am a good person. Therefore, I bear no responsibility.
On 9/11, as on WMD, Bush mistakes affirmation for verification, description for reality, and words for deeds. "I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me," he told Chen. "I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats." This was Bush's notion of dealing with terrorism: being briefed by the CIA director. The world that mattered was the Oval Office.
Did the briefings lead to action outside the office? No, because there was no "threat that required action." What about the Aug. 6 brief? "I asked for the briefing," Bush told Chen. "And that's what triggered the [Aug. 6] report." Tuesday's Washington Post tells a different story: "According to senior intelligence officials familiar with the document, work on it began at the end of July, at the initiative of the CIA analyst [who] wanted to raise the issue" of Bin Laden's threat to the U.S. mainland. But Bush can't believe that someone outside his head was trying to tell him something. He's certain he "triggered" the brief. That's why, as he explained to Chen, he "didn't think there was anything new" in it: He assumed it was his idea. He doesn't understand that the point of a briefing is to be told something you hadn't already thought of.
This explains the most amazing part of Bush's answer to Chen: "What was interesting in [the brief] was that there was a report that the FBI was conducting field investigations. And that was good news, that they were doing their job." Here is a president who reads that the FBI has found "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijacking" and concludes that all is well because the FBI is "investigating" such activity. Why does Bush make this mistake? Because he doesn't understand that the "suspicious activity" is the subject of the brief. He thinks the "investigations" are the subject. He thinks he's being told about his version of reality-the world inside his administration-not the world of plots beyond his awareness.
How does Bush square his obtuseness to the threat from Bin Laden with his obtuseness to the absence of a threat from Saddam? "After 9/11, the world changed for me," he explained Tuesday night. That's Bush in a nutshell: The world changed for him. Out went the assumption of safety, and in came the assumption of peril. In the real world, Bin Laden was still a religious fanatic with global reach, and Saddam was still a secular tyrant boxed in by sanctions and no-fly zones. But in Bush's head, everything changed.
To many Americans, the gap between Bush's statements about the months before 9/11, on the one hand, and the emerging evidence about those months, on the other, raises doubts about the credibility of their government. To other nations, the gap between Bush's statements about Iraqi weapons, on the one hand, and the emerging evidence about those weapons, on the other, has become the central reason to distrust the United States in other matters of enormous consequence, such as North Korea's nuclear program.
To all of this, however, Bush is blind. He doesn't measure his version of the world against anybody else's. He measures his version against itself. He says the same thing today that he said yesterday. That's why, when he was asked Tuesday whether he felt any responsibility for failing to stop the 9/11 plot, he kept shrugging that "the country"-not the president-wasn't on the lookout. It's also why, when he was asked to name his biggest mistake since 9/11, he insisted, "Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons [not found in Iraq], I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein." Bush believes now what he believed then. Incredible, but true. William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Ashcroft denies taking little interest in terrorism
Commission: FBI failed to connect warnings before attacks
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/13/911.commission/index.html
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft defended himself Tuesday against accusations that he showed little interest in terrorist threats before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and he blamed the Clinton administration for hobbling antiterrorism efforts.
The FBI, meanwhile, came in for tough criticism from the commission investigating the attacks, faulted in a staff report for not piecing together "connections" about terrorist activity.
The day's testimony featured key figures from the Bush and Clinton administrations, who alternately blamed inadequate resources, tight budgets, unreasonable restrictions and disinterested superiors for why antiterrorism efforts were not stronger before September 11. (Gallery: Quotes from the testimony)
Ashcroft appeared to criticize the Clinton administration early on in his testimony.
"We did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies," he said. "Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions and starved for basic information technology."
Ashcroft criticized his predecessors at the Justice Department, saying a 1995 memorandum by then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick -- now a member of the commission -- hamstrung the FBI beyond what the law required.
But former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard said Ashcroft dismissed warnings of terrorist threats that summer and rejected appeals for additional counterterrorism funds.
Pickard said that "in late June and through July, he met with Attorney General Ashcroft once a week," the report says. "He told us that though he initially briefed the attorney general regarding these threats, after two such briefings the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore."
Ashcroft disputed Pickard's account when he appeared before the commission, saying he met with him on more than two occasions.
"Secondly, I did never speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism," Ashcroft said.
Pickard also said that though President Bush had been warned on August 6, 2001, in an intelligence memo that al Qaeda was "determined" to strike U.S. targets, neither Bush nor Ashcroft asked to meet with him between then and the attacks.
But Pickard said he was unsure whether "pulsing" the FBI -- shaking up field offices to produce information about the threat -- would have turned up those items in time to stop the plot. FBI faulted
A staff report by the 9/11 commission says the agency failed to connect terrorism warnings in 2001 with the presence of al Qaeda operatives in the United States and failed to locate two of the hijackers in the weeks before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"Despite recognition by the FBI of the growing terrorist threat, it was still hobbled by significant deficiencies," the commission concluded in staff reports.
But former FBI Director Louis Freeh said the agency's request for more agents and analysts were not fulfilled before 9/11 and he said the country was not on a "war footing" before the attacks.
"We were using grand jury subpoenas and arrest warrants to fight an enemy that was using suicide boats to attack our warships," he said, referring to the attack on the Cole. The fight against terrorism at that time, he said, was not "a real war."
The commission also heard from J. Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, who said that intelligence reports in the summer of 2001 indicated a "massive" terrorist strike was in the works.
"None of this, unfortunately, specified method, time or place. Where we had clues, it looked like planning was under way for an attack in the Middle East or Europe," he said. 'Profoundly sorry'
Black said he and his colleagues at the time "are profoundly sorry. We did all we could. We did our best." But he said the agency faced a shortage of money and staff that "seriously hurt our operations and analysis."
The commission reported Tuesday that an effort to locate eventual 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in late August 2001 failed, hampered by disputes over how widely agents could share information and a failure of coordination.
Both men -- who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon -- had been identified as attending a meeting of terrorist suspects in Malaysia. They could have been held on immigration charges or as material witnesses in the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole, the report found.
"Investigation or interrogation of these individuals, and their travel and financial activities, also may have yielded evidence of connections to other participants in the 9/11 plot," the commission concluded. "In any case, the opportunity did not arise.
"Notably, the lead did not draw any connections between the threat reporting that had been coming in for months and the presence of two possible al Qaeda operatives in the United States," the report continued. "Moreover, there is no evidence that the issue was substantively discussed at any level above deputy chief of a section within the Counterterrorism Division at FBI headquarters." Former FBI Director Louis Freeh says the country was not on a "war footing" before September 11, 2001.
But Pickard testified that restrictions within the bureau on sharing intelligence with criminal investigators "hampered greatly" efforts to penetrate al Qaeda cells. He said the hijackers were picked because their background would raise no red flags among U.S. law enforcement.
"These 19 acted flawlessly in their planning and execution," he said. "They successfully exploited every weakness, from our borders to our cockpit doors."
In addition, FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson "told us that he almost fell out of his chair" when Ashcroft outlined his budget priorities in May 2001, because the list made no mention of counterterrorism, the commission reported earlier Tuesday,
"The attorney general on May 10 issued budget guidance for us, and I did not see that as a top item on the agenda," Pickard said.
The Justice Department proposal did not include an increase in counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002, and Pickard said Ashcroft rejected his appeal for additional counterterrorism funds on Sept. 10 -- a day before the al Qaeda attacks.
But Ashcroft said the Justice Department's budget requests actually sought more money for counterterrorism.
Earlier, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, testified that she called on the FBI to improve its ability to share information, both internally and with other agencies. She said she did not know of any legal reason the FBI could not share with other agencies information it had about Almihdhar and Alhazmi.
Reno told the commission that she felt a "certain amount of frustration" in early 2000 in trying to improve the FBI's information-sharing capabilities.
Both Reno and Freeh said the agency had regular contact with U.S. intelligence services and held frequent meetings with former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel Berger.
Reno said she instituted the regular meetings because of complaints that information was not being shared quickly and efficiently. And Freeh said he recalled "extremely close cooperation" between his agency and the CIA in terrorist investigations.
----
Spitzer Wants Wiretap Law to Include New Technologies
April 14, 2004
New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/nyregion/14phones.html
ALBANY, April 13 - State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer criticized the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, saying it has failed to close a loophole that allows criminals to evade surveillance by using new wireless and Internet technologies not covered by a decade-old federal wiretapping law.
Mr. Spitzer wants the commission to compel communications companies to build surveillance capabilities into cellphones that use new technology, and into the new Internet-based telephone services. That puts Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat who is said to be considering a run for governor, in step with the Bush administration's Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, which have similarly asked the commission for the change.
Mr. Spitzer said that the current law - which covers telecommunications services but not information services - has not kept pace as the two areas have been blurred with the advent of text messages and picture messages on cellphones, and of phonelike services that communicate via the Internet instead of old copper wires.
"It's giving the bad guys an opportunity to communicate in a way that is beyond our reach," he said in a telephone interview. "It's creating a tap-free zone."
David Fiske, an F.C.C. spokesman, said that the commission has solicited recommendations and opinions as it considers changing the rules. "We have an open proceeding, and we welcome comment," he said, adding that he would not discuss specific comments filed with the F.C.C.
The communications industry and privacy advocates oppose the move to include the new technologies under the 1994 law. They have said that the communications industry already cooperates on surveillance with law enforcement agencies, and noted that Congress explicitly exempted information services from the law at issue.
Any change to that law should come in the form of new legislation from Congress, they said, and not through new rules issued by the commission.
New York State accounts for roughly 30 percent of all the wiretaps done in the nation, Mr. Spitzer said in a filing with the commission.
J. Christopher Prather, a deputy attorney general in charge of the state's Organized Crime Task Force, said in an affidavit that the task force had "encountered instances where criminals, to avoid interception, purposefully conducted criminal conversations over what was then an untappable point-to-point feature."
Michael K. Powell, the F.C.C.'s chairman, has said that he is reluctant to overregulate new technologies in ways that could hinder their development. But law enforcement agencies want to make sure that surveillance is possible with such technologies.
Mr. Spitzer criticized the commission for not acting faster. "The choice they're confronting is law enforcement versus the corporations, and unfortunately they're choosing the corporations, which is astonishing," he said.
Mr. Spitzer recently joined with Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, in proposing new legislation that would expand the state's wiretapping powers. The proposal is opposed by some Democrats in the Assembly.
-------- immigration / refugees
New Rules Shorten Holding Time for Detained Immigrants
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9311-2004Apr13.html
The Department of Homeland Security announced new rules yesterday designed to prevent a recurrence of the lengthy detention of hundreds of foreign nationals, many of whom were prevented from making telephone calls or contacting lawyers for months after they were jailed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The guidelines, made public yesterday by Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security, were welcomed by civil rights groups that had bitterly denounced the detention of 762 immigration violators after the attacks, based on sometimes ill-founded FBI suspicions that they had links to terrorism.
The new rules are a response to a highly critical 198-page report last June by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. It concluded that in the chaotic aftermath of the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hundreds of Arab and South Asian men who had committed sometimes minor immigration violations languished in jail without timely review by U.S. officials. Guards mistreated some of them.
The average detention lasted three months, and the longest was 10 months before the immigrants were cleared of terrorism ties and released from jail.
The old rules called for a hearing to be held or a detainee released on bond within 48 hours of arrest, unless the FBI asserted a national security emergency and invoked an exception. To declare an exception, the new homeland security rules require high-ranking FBI officials -- a special agent in charge or above -- to formally sign off on the detention.
The new rules are "a very significant correction," said Hutchinson, who noted that they could come into play if terrorists attack the United States again.
In addition, the new rules require officials of the Homeland Security Department or its component agencies, such as the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to formally review FBI requests for detention.
"ICE personnel and attorneys are directed to independently review the individual circumstances of each case in which the FBI requests detention," the new rules state. "ICE attorneys are officers of the court and must have confidence in the representations made to the court."
Hutchinson told reporters yesterday: "This brings greater checks and balances, and greater clarity in the decision-making process."
The Homeland Security Department, which for the past year has housed the former Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service, is the agency whose lawyers advocate the release or detention of immigrants before immigration judges, sometimes based on FBI information.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization welcomes "the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to reform policies that did so much harm."
The homeland security guidelines do not address the conditions at holding facilities for immigrants, some run by the Justice Department, where Fine said prison guards engaged in "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" against some detainees.
--------
Stateless, Man Avoids Deportation From U.S.
April 14, 2004
By JANON FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/nyregion/14palestinian.html
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when many Muslim men without proper immigration papers were heading underground, Farouk Abdel-Muhti went on the radio.
As the second intifada was beginning in March 2002, Mr. Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian rights advocate, took a job on the morning radio program "Wake-Up Call" on WBAI-FM (99.5) in New York. Using his contacts in the West Bank, he would set up interviews with people like the mayor of Ramallah for the call-in program.
But that did not last long. On April 26, 2002, immigration authorities arrested him on a 1995 deportation order. His supporters said he had been singled out because of his outspoken support for Palestinian causes.
On Monday, after nearly two years, seven jails, months of solitary confinement and a hunger strike, Mr. Abdel-Muhti was released by order of a federal judge in Atlanta. Judge Yvette Kane ruled that as a Palestinian born before the creation of Israel, Mr. Abdel-Muhti was stateless and could not be properly deported.
Judge Kane chastened the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calling their tactics "Kafkaesque" and noting in her order that the law did not allow the agency to detain Mr. Abdel-Muhti "until he supplies answers it likes."
Mr. Abdel-Muhti, however, could still be deported if an agreement is worked out between Israel and the United States.
"He's still an illegal immigrant and theoretically still deportable," said his lawyer, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. By Monday evening, Mr. Abdel-Muhti had landed at La Guardia Airport, where in front of a group of friends and supporters, he bent down and kissed the ground.
"I come to New York, and it is my duty to kiss the ground because I feel an attachment to the place where I have fought for freedom and equality for 27 years," said Mr. Abdel-Muhti, who has been a longtime activist for the rights of indigenous people and Palestinians. He has been arrested several times for civil disobedience during public protests.
Daryl Bloom, the assistant United States attorney in Philadelphia who argued the case for the federal government, said that he was not authorized to speak about the case. Two calls to the United States attorney's office were not returned.
Mr. Abdel-Muhti's lawyer and supporters said that his confinement was an attempt to curtail his activism. "The reality was, he wasn't in hiding," Mr. Kadidal said. "It was only after he started doing stuff on the radio that they went after him."
At one point his case was transferred from Newark to Philadelphia in what his lawyer said was an attempt to delay his case further.
Court documents show that the government's case weighed heavily on Mr. Abdel-Muhti's history of disregard for United States immigration laws.
"A convicted criminal several times over, he has twice unlawfully re-entered the United States after being deported, failed to surrender for his deportation or to appear at deportation proceedings, and again and again misrepresented under oath and in official documents his true identity and nationality," wrote Thomas Calgani, an assistant United States attorney who also worked on the case. In his brief to the court, Mr. Calgani catalogued Mr. Abdel-Muhti's brushes with the law.
He pleaded guilty in 1993 to an attempted assault charge that arose from a fight with his wife. He had also held seven different aliases and evaded immigration authorities several times during his 27 years in the United States.
Mr. Abdel-Muhti did not dispute the revelations. In the end, the decision rested on his birth in Ramallah in 1947, the year before Israel was created.
But even with the threat of deportation still hanging over him, Mr. Abdel-Muhti recited the same language of civil disobedience and civil rights that he claims landed him in jail in the first place.
"It is a victory, but we have to continue this war for justice and equality," he said. "No one wants to talk about rights because of the martial law that rules this country."
-------- investigations
Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9642-2004Apr13?language=printer
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
The intelligence included reports of a hostage plot against Americans. It noted that operatives might choose to hijack an aircraft or storm a U.S. embassy. Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA "consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil," according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.
"Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet," the commission staff said.
The information offers the most detailed account to date of the warnings the intelligence community gave top Bush administration officials, and it provides the context in which a CIA briefer put together a memo on Osama bin Laden's activities in the Aug. 6 brief for Bush.
The government moved on several fronts to counter the threats. The CIA launched "disruption operations" in 20 countries. Tenet met or phoned 20 foreign intelligence officials. Units of the 5th Fleet were redeployed. Embassies went on alert. Cheney called Crown Prince Adbullah of Saudi Arabia to ask for help. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked the CIA to brief Attorney General John D. Ashcroft about an "imminent" terrorist attack whose location was unknown.
"The system was blinking red," Tenet told the commission in private testimony, the panel's report noted.
In this context, Bush "had occasionally asked his briefers whether any of the threats pointed to the United States," the report said. Or, as one U.S. senior official more intimately involved in the summer reporting paraphrased the president's question to the CIA: "This guy going to strike here?"
A partial answer was contained in the very first sentence of the Aug. 6 President's Daily Brief: "Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US."
The document ended with two paragraphs of circumstantial evidence that al Qaeda operatives might already be in the United States preparing "for hijackings or other types of attacks" and said that the FBI and the CIA were investigating a call to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May "saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
The commission also released new details showing how the CIA and FBI failures to track the movements of two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and share information foiled what now appears to have been the best chance to disrupt the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The CIA knew Almihdhar had attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000 where, officials later learned, he had helped plan the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Aden, Yemen. After the meeting, Almihdhar and others went to Bangkok, but the CIA station in Malaysia did not inform the CIA station in Bangkok in a timely manner. Only two months later, in March, did the CIA learn that Almihdhar had left Bangkok with a visa to the United States.
In January 2001, two surveillance photographs from the Kuala Lumpur meeting were shown to an informant who was helping both the CIA and the FBI. He helped them understand that Almihdhar was at the meeting with a man identified as "Khallad" -- who by then was known to have planned the Cole bombing. But "we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for [Almihdhar] or his traveling companions," the staff report noted.
Also, contrary to the previous testimony of Tenet, the CIA did not tell the FBI about this discovery until late August 2001, according to the report.
Almihdhar had left the United States in June 2000 but had plans to return.
"It is possible that if, in January 2001, agencies had resumed their search for him" or had placed him on a terrorist watch list, "they might have found him" before he applied for a new visa in June 2001, the report said. "Or they might have been alerted to him when he returned to the United States the following month. We cannot know."
In mid-May 2001, during the height of threat reporting, a CIA official went back through the Almihdhar files and discovered that he had a U.S. visa and that Alhazmi had come to Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000. The official concluded "something bad was definitely up," the staff report said, but he did not alert his FBI counterparts. "He was focused on Malaysia."
But the report said he did ask an FBI analyst detailed to the CIA to review the Kuala Lumpur material again -- "in her free time." She began on July 24, 2001, and learned from the Immigration and Naturalization Service that the two might be in the country. She drafted a cable asking that Almihdhar and Alhazmi be put on a terrorist watch list. The FBI analyst, meanwhile, "took responsibility for the search effort inside the United States."
The analyst thought Almihdhar was in New York and informed the FBI's New York field office. But she labeled her first e-mail to the office "routine," which gave the FBI 30 days to respond.
"No one apparently felt they needed to inform higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case," the commission staff said.
The search was assigned to an FBI agent who had never before handled a counterterrorism lead.
"Many witnesses have suggested that even if [Almihdhar] had been found, there was nothing the agents could have done except follow him onto the planes," the report said. "We believe this is incorrect.
"Both [Alhazmi] and [Almihdhar] could have been held for immigration violations, or as material witnesses in the Cole bombing case," the commission report said. Interrogations "also may have yielded evidence of connections to other participants in the 9/11 plot. In any case, the opportunity did not arise."
--------
Ashcroft's Efforts on Terrorism Criticized
Ex-FBI Official Doubted Priorities
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9653-2004Apr13?language=printer
The former acting director of the FBI testified yesterday that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft rejected any further briefings on terrorist threats in the weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and did not view combating al Qaeda as "a top item on his agenda."
Thomas J. Pickard, who ran the FBI for several months before the attacks, also told the commission investigating the terrorist strikes that Ashcroft rejected a plea that summer for an extra $58 million to combat al Qaeda. Pickard testified that he received the formal denial on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks.
The allegations came during another day of dramatic and often tense testimony before the panel. They prompted an aggressive defense from Ashcroft, who denied barring Pickard from offering him threat reports and said he was highly focused on the dangers posed by terrorists that summer.
Ashcroft sought to blame the Clinton administration for many of the shortcomings in counterterrorism strategies before the attacks, taking the unusual step of publicly citing the work of a Democratic member of the commission, Jamie S. Gorelick, who served as a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. Ashcroft announced the declassification and release of a 1995 memo she wrote that outlined legal rules on sharing intelligence information, characterizing the guidelines as "the single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem."
"We did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies," Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft's pointed remarks capped a day of finger-pointing by current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials, who defended their own roles in assessing and fighting the al Qaeda threat while generally criticizing the missteps of others.
The staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the panel is known, also released two new reports that broadly condemned the FBI and the CIA for missing clues that might have revealed the workings of the Sept. 11 plot. The reports repeated a now familiar list of lost opportunities in 2001 to follow leads that might have helped them unravel the impending assault, and disclosed new details about financial and policy failures contributing to the problems.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean called one of the reports "an indictment of the FBI over a long period of time."
In a news conference last night, President Bush defended his administration's counterterrorism efforts before the attacks, saying that there was no evidence that such a plot was in the works and that he was "sick when I think about the death that took place on that day." He also supported Ashcroft's complaints about legal restrictions before the hijackings.
"We weren't on a war footing," Bush said. "The country was not on a war footing, and yet the enemy was at war with us."
Disclosures at yesterday's commission hearing included:
• The panel last week obtained a copy of a previously unknown secret order that may clarify a long-raging debate over whether the CIA had the authority to assassinate Osama bin Laden during the Clinton administration, or whether it was required to attempt to capture him. Commissioners were vague on details, citing secrecy rules, but indicated that the document rebutted assertions by Ashcroft and others that no clear kill order existed.
• One day after telling the Senate that combating terrorist attacks was his highest priority, Ashcroft issued a memo on May 10, 2001, outlining the Justice Department's strategic goals that contained no mention of counterterrorism. Dale Watson, the FBI's terrorism chief at the time, told the commission staff that he "almost fell out of his chair" when he read it.
Ashcroft said he based his memo on a strategic plan issued by former attorney general Janet Reno, although he acknowledged that the original included several goals relating to terrorism.
• The FBI's computers were woefully outdated, its counterterrorism training was abysmal and the bureau had a poor grasp of al Qaeda's presence in the United States, the commission reports said. White House officials, including counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, complained about the "FBI's unwillingness or inability to share information," and an internal review found that "66 percent of the bureau's analysts were not qualified to perform analytic duties."
The FBI hopes to hold on to its counterterrorism mandate even as Bush indicated Monday that he is considering a revamping of U.S. intelligence services.
• Ashcroft said he never saw a copy of an Aug. 6, 2001, memo given to Bush that warned, "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," which was declassified Saturday. He also testified that he did not recall seeing a similar, less restricted summary that was widely distributed the next day with the title: "Terrorism: Bin Laden Determined to Strike In The United States."
• The same Aug. 6 briefing document apparently overstated the FBI's capabilities by citing "70 full field investigations" throughout the United States that the FBI considered related to bin Laden. Pickard said that number was high and would have referred to individuals rather than whole cases; he provided details on only 27.
"I expect information that comes to my desk to be real and valid," Bush said at last night's news conference, reacting to the uncertainty over the number of field investigations contained in the August memo. " . . . I can't make good decisions unless I get valid information."
Commission officials also said yesterday that the CIA had granted them access late Monday to the CIA analyst who wrote the Aug. 6 document. Kean and other members said previously that the administration had refused to allow the commission to question the analyst.
As the hearing began, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh sharply criticized Congress and, less directly, the Clinton administration for not giving the FBI resources it requested for counterterrorism.
"We weren't fighting a real war," Freeh said. "We hadn't declared war on these enemies. . . . We were using grand jury subpoenas and arrest warrants to fight an enemy that was using missiles and suicide boats to attack our warships."
But in the afternoon, J. Cofer Black, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, told the commission: "I've heard some people say this country wasn't at war. I want to tell you, Mr. Chairman, the Counterterrorism Center was at war, we conducted ourselves at war." Reno offered complaints about the FBI. "When I came into office, I learned that the FBI didn't know what it had," Reno testified. "We found stuff in files here that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing."
But the most heated questioning, and perhaps the most dramatic testimony, centered on separate appearances by Pickard -- a career FBI agent and accountant who joked about his inability to type -- and Ashcroft, the former Republican senator and Missouri governor who has not shied from defending himself from critics.
Pickard said that just hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, he learned about two of the three most important clues ignored by the FBI that year. They were a July 10 memo from a Phoenix FBI agent that warned that al Qaeda followers might be seeking aviation training in the United States, and the Aug. 15 apprehension of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national who had aroused suspicion while seeking flight training in Minnesota.
A day or two later, Pickard said, he learned that the FBI had been searching since late August for Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the hijackers on the plane that struck the Pentagon.
"It's a frightening thought to think that that could have been on my desk on September 10th, and would I have done something differently or not?" Pickard said. ". . . It keeps me up at night, thinking: If I had that information, would I have had the intuitiveness to recognize, to go to the president, to do something different?"
During his testimony, Pickard confirmed the commission's report that after he briefed Ashcroft twice on terrorist threats during the summer of 2001, "the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore," according to the findings. Pickard indicated concern about the May 10, 2001, memo that included no counterterrorism strategies, and recounted his plea for more funds that summer after being disappointed by initial 2003 budget proposals.
Pickard said that while counterterrorism was a "top tier" item for the FBI, "I did not see that as a top item on his agenda."
Ashcroft strongly denied Pickard's version of his briefing instructions, and his former deputy and chief of staff have no recollection of that exchange, according to the staff report.
Ashcroft also laid out an aggressive defense of his counterterrorism record before the attacks. He argued that a set of classified 1995 guidelines provided a foundation for the "wall separating the criminal and intelligence investigations" that had "debilitating impacts" on terrorism investigations by restricting the FBI from mixing intelligence and criminal investigations.
Ashcroft said that he had the guidelines declassified and that "full disclosure" required him to indicate they had been drafted by Gorelick. Gorelick did not address the criticism in her questioning and declined to comment afterward.
Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, asked Ashcroft why he had not changed those guidelines on his own, noting that Ashcroft's deputy wrote in an Aug. 6, 2001, memorandum that "the 1995 procedures remain in effect today." Ashcroft said the 2001 order made some improvements.
Ashcroft also said that one of the first things he did after becoming attorney general was to conduct a "thorough review" of the authorities that the Clinton administration had given the CIA to take covert action against bin Laden. His review showed, he testified, that there was "no covert action program to kill bin Laden."
But several commissioners disagreed. They cited the 1998 "memorandum of notification" signed by Clinton, which was found among the documents that the Bush White House originally refused to turn over to the commission.
-------- justice
'DNA Dragnet' Makes Charlottesville Uneasy
Race Profiling Suspected in Hunt for Rapist
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9625-2004Apr13?language=printer
CHARLOTTESVILLE -- It was hopping at the Aberdeen Barn restaurant the March night the police came to see Jeffery Johnson. He was in the back, grilling steaks, when his boss called his name and pointed him out to the officer.
Johnson, 47, said the Charlottesville officer told him that someone had reported him as a "potential suspect" in a string of brutal rapes that spanned seven years. He could easily clear himself, the officer said, by voluntarily giving police his DNA to compare with the rapist's.
People were staring and the orders were piling up, Johnson said. He was angry and humiliated, but he wanted the encounter to end. So he walked outside and let the officer run a swab resembling a large Q-tip along the inside of his cheek.
Johnson is among 197 black men in the Charlottesville area who have been asked to provide genetic samples in recent months as part of a police hunt for a serial rapist, Charlottesville police said. The so-called DNA dragnet has caused racial tensions and raised questions about civil liberties and basic human rights in the city that is home to the University of Virginia. Some say the DNA sampling smacks of racial profiling.
Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo Sr. and the city's chief prosecutor, David Chapman, have defended the tactic, saying that it is legal and that they are simply doing everything possible to catch a man who has terrorized the community. But after the practice was criticized at a community meeting on the U-Va. campus Monday night, the two men said they would review the massive DNA sampling.
"The long-term damage outweighs the short-term gain," said the Rev. Bruce A. Beard, pastor at Transformation Ministries First Baptist Church. Although he sympathizes with frustrated detectives, Beard said, the DNA sampling is a step backward in a place where the echoes of slavery and segregation can still be heard.
"Everybody in this community wants the guy to be caught, but there are other ways to go about it," Beard said. "This is a community that is still struggling with the divisions and hurts from the past."
Longo said that he is sensitive to the concerns of the community but that he also wants desperately to stop a rapist who has attacked at least six women. Although DNA sweeps are rare, they have been used, and have generated controversy, across the country and in England. Last year, police in Baton Rouge, La., collected DNA samples from about 1,000 men as they searched for a serial killer.
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said authorities have cast too broad a net, and he has asked Charlottesville police to develop "more precise criteria" about which men should be approached.
Longo maintains that the DNA sampling is not racial profiling, because several victims identified the rapist as a black man. If the rapist were white, he said, his officers would be swabbing the cheeks of white men. But he conceded that he is unsure whether the sampling should continue.
"Is it the right balance between individual rights and what we all agree the community wants us to do, which is to catch a serial rapist?" Longo asked.
The rapist first struck the Charlottesville community in 1997, police said, and his last confirmed assault was in April 2003. In November 2002, a woman was assaulted when she returned home from taking her children to school and was beaten so badly that she needed reconstructive surgery, Longo said.
Longo stressed that officers are not stopping black men at random. In most cases, he said, police are responding to reports from residents about men who resemble a composite sketch of the suspect or who seem to be acting strangely.
So far, the names of 690 "candidates" have surfaced in the investigation, Longo said. Detectives quickly eliminated 400 because their DNA samples already were in the state database or because they were in jail when one of the attacks occurred.
Of the other men, 99 were placed on the list when someone reported that they resembled the sketch, Longo said. He said 116 were added because someone reported "suspicious behavior." The remaining 75 had criminal histories.
Longo said his officers asked 197 of the men for DNA samples. All but 10 agreed, he said.
The swabs are sent to the state crime laboratory in Richmond, where they are compared with the rapist's DNA, police said. The DNA profiles are not entered into the state database, and the swabs are returned to the Charlottesville police and will be held until the rapist goes to trial. They will not be used for any other reason or for any other case, police said. "There's this picture out there that hundreds of people have had a Q-tip stuck in their mouths, and that ain't it," Longo said.
Stephen Gottlieb, a professor at Albany Law School, said that similar practices are being challenged in court but that police are acting legally if they have reason to suspect someone and then ask that person to provide a genetic sample.
But the criteria police are using seem weak to Steven Turner, 27, a graduate student at U-Va.'s Curry School of Education, who twice has been asked to provide a DNA sample and twice refused.
"The suspect is a black man, and he needs to be caught," Turner said. "But the way the police are conducting this investigation, because the suspect is a black man, every black man is a suspect."
Turner said he was first approached by police on a balmy August night as he rode his bicycle. A police van pulled up, he said, and the officer who jumped out told him that someone had reported that he was acting suspiciously. The officer then told him that he resembled the serial rapist and asked for a DNA sample.
After the police left, Turner said, he rode around in circles for a long time. "I felt broken," he said. "I felt like I didn't have a home anymore. It was devastating."
A few weeks later, Turner said, police visited his home and again asked for a sample. This time, Turner said, he got angry.
Johnson, the cook at the Aberdeen Barn, still wonders why he was approached. He sees no resemblance between himself and the sketch. Perhaps, he said, someone thought he looked out of place when he stopped recently at a gas station near the area of one of the rapes. He said he wonders whether he should have refused to give a sample.
"I was mad. It was in a pressure situation. I had to get back to my post," Johnson said. "But the rest of the night, I'm tripping over my feet, can't concentrate on my job."
-------- police
F.B.I. Is Assailed for Its Handling of Terror Risks
April 14, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14PANE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 13 - The F.B.I. came under withering criticism on Tuesday from the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, with its chairman describing new staff reports on the bureau's performance before and after the attacks as an "indictment of the F.B.I."
"It failed and it failed and it failed and it failed," the chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the bureau at a public hearing of the 10-member panel. "This is an agency that does not work. It makes you angry. And I don't know how to fix it."
As the commission released a pair of interim staff reports that offered extensive and agonizing new details about how the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. may have bungled opportunities to thwart the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Kean said he welcomed President Bush's comments this week that the White House would consider an overhaul of the nation's intelligence agencies, including the F.B.I.
Mr. Kean's criticisms of the bureau were echoed by others on the bipartisan commission on Tuesday and came as the panel conducted sometimes harsh questioning of Louis J. Freeh, director of the F.B.I. from 1993 until he retired three months before the Sept. 11 attacks; Thomas J. Pickard, who was the bureau's acting director during the summer of 2001; Attorney General John Ashcroft and his predecessor, Janet Reno.
In their testimony, all four insisted that they had no higher priority than counterterrorism before Sept. 11.
Mr. Freeh said the bureau had performed heroically in dealing with terrorist threats for years despite an inadequate budget. Mr. Pickard said that in his three months as head of the F.B.I. he repeatedly ordered his deputies to be ready for a possible domestic attack. Mr. Ashcroft suggested that the failings of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. before Sept. 11 were largely the fault of the Clinton administration. Ms. Reno said that she was aware of the F.B.I.'s faults but she believed that the bureau should retain its responsibility for counterterrorism.
There were sharp contradictions between the sworn testimony of Mr. Pickard and Mr. Ashcroft, with Mr. Pickard testifying that Mr. Ashcroft had not made a high priority of counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 and had told Mr. Pickard that summer that he no longer wished to discuss terrorist threats during regular F.B.I. briefings.
One of the staff reports said that Mr. Pickard "told us that although he initially briefed the attorney general regarding these threats, after two such briefings the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore."
Mr. Ashcroft angrily testified that he had never made such a comment to Mr. Pickard.
"I never did speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism," said the attorney general, whose law enforcement priorities before Sept. 11 were also questioned in the commission's interim reports. "I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism, and specifically interrogated him about threats to the American people."
Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Pickard agreed, however, that neither of them had been informed by the White House during the summer of 2001 that President Bush had taken an interest in the question of domestic threats posed by Al Qaeda and had received a special C.I.A. briefing on the issue on Aug. 6, after months of dire intelligence warnings that suggested an imminent, possibly catastrophic attack.
They also testified that the White House had not provided them the written intelligence report that accompanied the briefing, even though the so-called Presidential Daily Brief outlined investigations by the F.B.I. that summer into the possibility that Qaeda terrorist cells were present in the United States.
Had they known of Mr. Bush's interest, they said, they would have ordered the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to gather up whatever information was available on domestic terrorist threats. "I was not aware that the president of the United States had made a request in that respect," Mr. Ashcroft said. "It would have been my intention to provide the president with a comprehensive report from the F.B.I."
In opening comments to the commission, Mr. Ashcroft, appearing drawn and somewhat weak after gallbladder surgery last month, took a veiled swipe at the Clinton administration and said the nation had been caught off guard because "for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies." Mr. Ashcroft insisted that it was the Justice Department under Ms. Reno that built up a wall between intelligence and criminal investigations and underfinanced crucial areas of the operations of the department, which oversees the F.B.I.
He surprised the commission by introducing a 1995 memo - declassified by the Justice Department two days earlier - that was written by one of the commission's Democratic members, Jamie S. Gorelick, when she was the deputy to Ms. Reno.
The memo, Mr. Ashcroft said, put in place the wall that had a "debilitating impact" on the ability of counterterrorism investigators to share information with their counterparts in criminal investigations. "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission," he said, looking warily toward Ms. Gorelick. Commission officials said they had never seen the memo before.
Ms. Gorelick declined to comment on the issue after the hearing. "I don't really want to be a witness here," she said.
Mr. Freeh, who is now an executive at MBNA, the giant financial services company, offered a spirited and sometimes angry defense of the bureau's handling of counterterrorism, saying that his agents did the best they could with limited resources and legal restraints.
"We had a very effective program with respect to counterterrorism before Sept. 11, given the resources and, in my view, the authority that we had," he said, adding that before the Sept. 11 attacks, fighting terrorism "was not a national priority."
Mr. Freeh, a former federal judge, met tough and occasionally skeptical questioning from several commission members, who questioned why he devoted only 6 percent of his agents to counterterrorism at the end of his tenure and why he did not push more aggressively to correct systemic problems in collecting and analyzing threats.
His harshest questioning came from Mr. Kean, a courtly, patrician figure who is usually the most gentle and polite of the commissioners in questioning witnesses.
"I read our staff statements as an indictment of the F.B.I. over a long period of time," he said. "You tried reforms. You tried very hard to reform the agency. According to our staff report, those reforms failed."
He said the bureau's current director, Robert S. Mueller III, was trying to make additional changes to the bureau's counterterrorism programs. "But can those reforms work?" Mr. Kean asked. "Or should there be some more fundamental changes to the agency in the way we get our intelligence?"
His criticism drew a sharp rejoinder from Mr. Freeh. "I take exception to your comment that your staff report is an indictment of the F.B.I.," he said. "I think your staff report evidences some very good work and some very diligent interviews and a very technical, almost auditing analysis of some of the programs. I think the centerpiece of your executive director's report, as I heard it, came down to resources and legal authorities.
"So, I would ask that you balance what you call an indictment, which I don't agree with at all, with the two primary findings of your staff - one is that there was a lack of resources and, two, there were legal impediments."
Ms. Reno said that in briefing Mr. Ashcroft in 2001, she emphasized that terrorism was one of the most important issues facing the Justice Department, but she did not specifically remember discussing Al Qaeda or the possibility that members of the terrorist network were already in the United States.
"I never focused just on Al Qaeda, because I stood there and watched the Murrah building in rubble, just as we saw the beginnings of the Oklahoma City bombing on CNN and tended to jump to conclusions," she said. "You can't jump to conclusions. You can't say that one thing is going to be our overriding issue."
Both Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh also said the idea of creating a new domestic intelligence agency to supplant the F.B.I., as some lawmakers are now suggesting, would be a major mistake. "Don't create another agency," Ms. Reno urged. "The worst thing you can do is create another agency and then we'll be back talking about whether they can share here or there or what. Let's try to work through it."
The staff report on intelligence failures offered fresh details on the warnings that counterterrorism officials received in the summer of 2001, showing that their tone was even more dire and urgent than many had realized.
Alerts from intelligence agencies were stark, with headlines like "Bin Laden threats are real" and "Bin Laden planning high profile attacks." Other alerts warned that there was "a high probability of near-term `spectacular attacks' " that would result in numerous casualties and "cause the world to be in turmoil," the commission said. But Bush administration officials said the warnings were too vague to act on.
--------
A Secret Service Worker Is Accused of Stealing Cars From Ground Zero
April 14, 2004
By ANDY NEWMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/nyregion/14car.html
Hundreds of cars were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed. But several United States Secret Service cars listed as "crushed," prosecutors said yesterday, were actually stolen by the head of the agency's motor pool at 7 World Trade Center, a retired police sergeant who received a commendation for rescue work on Sept. 11, 2001.
The man, William Bennette, 52, confessed to giving cars to his mother and daughter after creating false paperwork on them, according to a complaint by the Secret Service unsealed yesterday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
Mr. Bennette pleaded not guilty yesterday to theft of government property - five cars worth a total of $35,000 - but his lawyer, rather than proclaiming his client's innocence, indicated that psychological effects from 9/11 might have caused his behavior.
"It seems to me that we need to explain why a man of his stature and exemplary life would be involved in something like this," said the lawyer, Alan M. Lieberman.
According to the complaint, investigators found one of the cars, a 2001 Chevrolet Impala, at Mr. Bennette's home in Bayside, Queens, and two others, a 2001 Ford Taurus and a 1998 Mercury Sable, at the home of his mother in Manson, N.C. Two others, a 1994 Plymouth Acclaim and a 1994 Ford Taurus, were found at an auto repair shop in Queens.
The thefts came to light last month during a Secret Service inventory of its cars. When agents called Larry's Auto Collision in Queens, a repair shop it uses, an employee said that Mr. Bennette had told him a few weeks before that two Secret Service cars were his for the taking, the complaint says.
The agency found a memo that Mr. Bennette had helped prepare that listed one of the cars found at the auto repair shop and three of the others as having been recovered at ground zero and crushed at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. The discovery prompted a search of Mr. Bennette's desk, where, the complaint said, agents found a receipt dated last June showing the sale of three of the cars - the two 2001 models and the 1998 model - to a Danielle Bennette of Larry's Auto Collision.
Danielle Bennette is the name of one of Mr. Bennette's daughters. A man who answered the phone at Larry's yesterday said he did not know the name. The Secret Service never authorized the transactions, the agency said. Federal prosecutors declined to say yesterday if anyone at the auto collision shop would be charged in the scheme.
When called in to the Brooklyn field office for questioning on April 2, Mr. Bennette, who joined the Secret Service in 1999 after retiring from the New York Police Department, said he had forged signatures of agency managers to transfer the titles of the cars, the complaint says.
Mr. Bennette was released after his arraignment yesterday, after his wife signed a $75,000 bond. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
-------- terrorism
Pentagon Crash Scenario Was Rejected for Military Exercise
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9449-2004Apr13.html
While planning a high-level training exercise months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. military officials considered a scenario in which a hijacked foreign commercial airliner flew into the Pentagon, defense officials said yesterday.
But the scenario was rejected as not in keeping with the theme of the April 2001 exercise, which dealt with how command of U.S. forces would be maintained in the event the Pentagon became unusable during a major war, the officials said.
The episode came to light in a 21/2-year-old e-mail message that surfaced yesterday. The message, written a week after airliners commandeered by terrorists were flown into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, begins, "In defense of my last unit, NORAD." NORAD is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is responsible for defending U.S. skies.
Addressed to several friends of the author, a retired Army officer, the brief message said the hijacking scenario had been suggested by a NORAD planner and rejected by "Joint Staff action officers" as "too unrealistic." It also said that U.S. Pacific Command had objected to the idea "because it would take attention away from their exercise objectives."
The contents of the message were first reported by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group here. A member of the group, Peter Stockton, said a military official had provided a copy of the e-mail "to show at least that someone was paying attention" to the threat of an air assault on the Pentagon.
Defense officials confirmed that a NORAD planner had suggested the airliner scenario for the exercise, which was known as Positive Force. But they said the idea was deemed not to fit with the exercise's general purpose.
"It wasn't a counterterrorism exercise or an air defense exercise," said Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
San Francisco Test Drives Fuel Cell Cars
SAN FRANCISCO, California, (ENS)
April 14, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-14-09.asp#anchor2
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome will be driving one of the few hydrogen fuel cell cars in existence to some official events this year. The city's Environment Department has leased two fuel cell vehicles from SF Honda, and they will be rotated among various city officials including Mayor Newsom.
"In these times when breaking our dependence on fossil fuels and gaining energy self-sufficiency is critical, San Francisco is demonstrating the viability of clean, alternative technologies," said Mayor Gavin Newsom.
"San Francisco is poised to become the premier stop on California's hydrogen highway," the mayor said.
The Honda FCX cars will fuel up at a new hydrogen fueling station to be built by the end of April at the City's Central Shop facility, which already services the City's other alternative fuel vehicles.
A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device that converts hydrogen and oxygen into water, producing electricity and heat in the process with no other emissions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the Honda FCX can travel 170 miles between fuelings. The cars have a braking system that recharges the vehicle's ultra-capacitor, as well as an advanced computer system that monitors and regulates their performance.
The Honda FCX is the first fuel cell vehicle to be certified by the California Air Resources Board and the EPA, and is considered a zero emission vehicle.
"Ten years ago fuel cell vehicles seemed like science fiction, but the fact that we're able to drive these cars today on the streets of San Francisco makes me believe that eliminating harmful vehicle emissions is not only possible, but certain," said SF Environment director Jared Blumenfeld.
While San Francisco was able to lease these vehicles as part of an early demonstration program, fuel cell cars will not likely be commercially available to the public for another 10 years. Funding for this program came from a variety of sources including the Goldman Fund, PG&E, Transportation Fund for Clean Air, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The hydrogen fuel cell pilot project will demonstrate how well these vehicles will perform in San Francisco's hilly terrain.
The city's Fire Marshall, health and safety officials and fleet maintenance personnel will have opportunities to understand hydrogen's unique properties, paving the way for the future use of this fuel. The city will share its experience with other fleet operators and municipalities in the Bay Area and beyond.
"San Francisco is demonstrating great vision by taking part today in what will likely be the transportation standard of the future. This program helps bring the vision of a hydrogen economy closer to reality, and demonstrates the Honda FCX is a practical vehicle for today's world," said Gunnar Lindstrom of American Honda Motors.
The city's currently operates over 700 clean air vehicles, including street sweepers, parking control vehicles, and police squad cars that run on natural gas; zero emission battery electric vehicles in the vehicle pool; and neighborhood electric vehicles for use in parks and open spaces. Other city sponsored programs include low emission taxicabs and a fleet of natural gas long haul garbage trucks.
-------- environment
Kremlin aide officially advises Putin to kill Kyoto
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
By Oliver Bullough,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-14/s_22790.asp
MOSCOW - Global outrage over Russia killing off the Kyoto Protocol environmental pact would be better than harming the nation's economy by limiting gas emissions, according to a Kremlin adviser's recommendation to President Vladimir Putin.
Andrei Illarionov, Putin's economic adviser and an opponent of the landmark Kyoto pact, advised him to reject it in a document obtained by Reuters Tuesday.
Illarionov is one of the key players in Russian policy on Kyoto. The government, which includes several influential pro-Kyoto ministers, will also make a recommendation.
The treaty, which seeks to rein in global warming with restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, must be approved by Russia to come into force. Initially, it would cut emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Illarionov said any limits would harm Russia's economy.
"The exit of Russia from the Kyoto Protocol at the end of the First Phase would be an act unlikely in terms of domestic politics and at the same time fraught with the most serious consequences for foreign policy and moral standing," Illarionov said in the document, dated March 16. "The possible psychological costs linked to a complete refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (now) appear preferable against this background."
The document, which bore Illarionov's signature, was obtained from environmental groups. It was not clear what influence it might have over Russia's final decision on ratifying the pact.
The protocol has depended on Russia since the United States pulled out in 2001. Russia is under pressure from the European Union, which backs Kyoto, and the United States, which opposes it.
Under its terms, developed countries responsible for 55 percent of emissions must ratify for it to come into force, meaning Russia's 17 percent share gives it the casting vote.
Illarionov said Russia should allow no outside interference.
Ratifying Kyoto, he said, would mean setting up bodies to "limit economic growth not only on a national level but also on a supranational level. An organ of legal interference in the internal affairs of the country would be created."
The pact, he said, was based on flawed science, with no evidence of human-made factors behind global warming.
Most analysts see Kyoto approval as risk-free for Russia, since greenhouse gas emissions have been much reduced by the collapse of major Soviet-era industry since 1991. Russia could therefore trade its spare quota with countries that are over their pollution quotas.
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Pollution Study Favors Regulation
April 14, 2004
By BARNABY J. FEDER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/business/14smog.html
Regulation is more effective than relying on voluntary programs to reduce air pollution, according to the authors of a new review of the environmental record of the nation's 100 largest electric power companies.
The report, to be released today, was sponsored by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, which includes environmental, investor and business groups; the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group; and the Public Service Enterprise Group, the parent of New Jersey's largest utility. It focuses on data collected by the federal government from the utility industry covering 1991 to 2002.
The data showed progress in reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, two federally regulated pollutants that contribute to smog and acid rain and are associated with increased risk of heart and lung disease.
But unregulated carbon dioxide emissions, which most scientists say are raising the temperature of the atmosphere and contributing to more violent weather, rose substantially in the 1990's. Utilities generate roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide for each kilowatt of power produced that they did in 1991, according to the report.
"Voluntary programs don't work at all in the utility sector," said David G. Hawkins, a former assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who now directs the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Mr. Hawkins said that the 35 percent decline in sulfur dioxide emissions and the 28 percent decline in nitrogen compounds since 1990 were limited victories given the E.P.A.'s estimates that roughly 30,000 people are still dying prematurely each year from exposure to particulate forms of the two chemicals emitted by power plants.
American Electric Power, the nation's largest utility and the owner of numerous coal-fired plants, was the largest producer of air pollutants, while Exelon, the fourth-largest utility and a major operator of nuclear power plants, had far lower emissions. For example, American Electric generated 70 percent more power in 2002 than Exelon and emitted 15 times more carbon dioxide.
American Electric, which has advocated relying on voluntary efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, argued yesterday against drawing broad regulatory lessons from such different pollutants.
Power plants generate almost 70 percent of the sulfur dioxide air pollution, and reasonably priced technology exists to cut such emissions, so imposing regulations like caps on the industry makes sense, said John M. McManus, vice president for environmental services at the company, based in Columbus, Ohio.
But, he said, utilities represent a third of the carbon dioxide emissions; no technology exists to capture carbon dioxide from its smokestacks at a reasonable cost; and other air pollutants are far more potent contributors to global warming.
Thus, Mr. McManus said, it was sound policy to not focus on power plants in considering what to do about greenhouse gases.
The report, titled "Benchmarking Air Emissions," is available at www.nrdc.org.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Physicians can change nuclear views
By Dale Rodebaugh
April 14, 2004
Durango Herald Herald Staff Writer
http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/04/news040414_3.htm
The health-care community has the credibility to confront politicians and banish the threat of nuclear weapons, nuclear war and nuclear waste, a pediatrician-turned-advocate said Tuesday.
"We're on the edge of a precipice," Helen Caldicott told 80 physicians, nurses and community members in a talk at Mercy Medical Center. "The introduction of a nuclear winter would end life on Earth."
Caldicott, president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in Washington and Nobel Prize nominee, grounded attendees with a 30-minute physics lesson in which she went over the characteristics and effects of uranium, radium and plutonium. One pound of plutonium, she said, uniformly distributed, could kill every human on Earth.
The world almost got rid of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, Caldicott said. Eighty percent of U.S. citizens supported the Nuclear Weapons Freeze, and President Reagan and Soviet Prime Minister Gorbachev almost reached agreement on such a pact. But the deal fell through, leaving the world as President John F. Kennedy noted earlier with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over its head.
The United States holds the fate of the world in its hands, Caldicott said. She urged people in the health-care field to join the effort to end the reliance on and threat of nuclear power.
"We have the credibility to take on politicians," Caldicott said. "This is the ultimate issue of global preventive medicine."
Caldicott also talked about the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, inter-governmental close calls with nuclear disaster and existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons that could wipe out civilization.
The realization of what the development of atomic power wrought, Caldicott said, led J. Robert Oppenheimer, credited as the father of the atomic bomb, to say: "I've become Death, the shatterer of worlds. I've known sin and have been sinning ever since."
Caldicott, 65, graduated from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961. She began her anti-nuclear activism in 1971 with a warning to the Australian public about the potential consequences of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the French in the South Pacific. In 1975, Caldicott moved to the United States and became an associate at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston and an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
She revived the group Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1978 - redirecting its efforts to the health risks posed by nuclear power.
Her books include Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War (1984) and If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth (1992).
Caldicott said heroes the world over - honored by public statues - have been people who killed. In primitive times, the killer instinct was useful because it drove men to fight the mastodon and saber-toothed tiger and preserve their civilization. But the modern world must outgrow such a mentality, she said.
Great literature, music and art, too, pay homage to war, she said.
Caldicott quoted Albert Einstein: "The splitting of the atom changed everything except men's mode of thinking."
Reach Staff Writer Dale Rodebaugh here http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/contact_form.asp?email_id=daler!durangoherald.com .
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Hung Jury in Trial of St. Patrick's 4 in Ithaca NY
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004
From: Jonah House <disarmnow@erols.com>
What follows is a summary of the St. Patrick 4 Trial, which started 4/6 in Ithaca, NY and ended on 4/13 at 9pm with the 12 person jury stating they were deadlocked after 20 hours of deliberation and the judge declaring a mistrial.
The defendants - Daniel Burns, Peter De Mott, Clare Grady and Teresa Grady - felt it was critical to draw attention to the tragedy unfolding in Iraq at the time of their action (March 17, 2003) and feel that now it is more essential than ever to stop the war against Iraq and bring the troops home before any more deaths and injuries occur. In light of the horrors taking place this week in Iraq and the devastating loss of life, it is clear their action, and the actions of millions of others around the world, to oppose the war against Iraq, was essential.
The St. Patrick 4 were charged with felony criminal mischief for pouring their own blood in the Marine/Army Recruitment Office in Ithaca on March 17, 2003.
They stated they carefully poured their blood on the walls, door, flag and floor of the recruitment office as an emergency measure to alert potential recruits to the danger of military service and to expose the disinformation that recruiters provide the public about job training, adventure and money for college after military service.
Judge Sherman denied the defendants' request for expert witnesses, including respected author and professor Howard Zinn and Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General. They were prepared to testify regarding the legality of the defendants actions under International Law. The defendants were also denied testimony from Damacio Lopez of the International Depleted Uranium Study Team, who has testified at the World Court in The Hague, the UN in Geneva and New York, and at the UN Development Program in Iraq. Lopez was to testify about the hazards health effects of depleted uranium (DU) on U.S. soldiers and U.S. citizens who live near the DU test site in New Mexico, such as himself.
All 4 defendants represented themselves with the assistance of attorney advisor's and each took the witness stand to explain their intent for their action. They were permitted to give personal background as to their religious beliefs, the history of non-violent civil resistance in the U.S. and its role in changing oppressive and violent policy, and the reasons why they poured their blood and knelt in prayer at the recruitment office two days before the onslaught of "Shock and Awe" in Iraq in 2003, which continues to devastate life and the environment in Iraq to this day.
All testified that they were raised Catholic and that the non-violent teachings of Jesus strongly influenced them, as did the teachings of the works of mercy, as opposed to the works of war.
Clare Grady testified regarding her eyewitness knowledge of the suffering in Iraq at the hands of the U.S. sanctions when she visited there with a Voices in the Wilderness Delegation in 1999. Clare spoke of her strong religious belief that there is never justification for killing. She spoke of her father's acquittal in the Camden 28 trial, in which he and 27 others were involved in destroying the draft files of men about to be drafted for the Vietnam War. Clare said that she was raised to oppose injustice, to oppose racism, war making and the injustices of poverty. She spoke of her work as kitchen coordinator for 15 years in the community kitchen in Ithaca, serving free meals 5 times per week.
Teresa Grady also testified about being raised to embrace all of God's children and to greatly appreciate the diversity of people while growing up in New York City. She said her religious convictions were a strong motivation for her to take her action. Teresa spoke as the parent of a teenage boy and how important it is to educate young people about the real impact of signing up for the military, the reality that the recruiters gloss over. She pointed to the numbers of people killed in Iraq during the time of the trial alone, and how that pointed to the desperate need for the prevention of this war.
Daniel Burns testified that as a parent of a small child, he felt that the loss of a child would be too great for anyone to bear, and that he was thinking very much of that when he took his action. He thought of the parents of soldiers and Iraqi citizens and how horrible it was for any of them to lose their children to war. The prosecutor said to Danny, "Why didn't you just bring your own flag to the recruitment station and pour your blood on it outside? That would have been fine." He stated that Rosa Parks didn't just stand outside the bus and hold a sign. She went inside the bus and took more serious action. Danny said he felt there was an emergency about to occur in Iraq and that our country is essentially "on fire", with the emergency continuing in Iraq and the tragedy continuing here as well in the form of U.S. military people still coming home dead, wounded and scarred. He felt his action was taken as an emergency measure, in conjunction with many others around the world who were also saying "NO" to this war.
Peter DeMott testified as a Marine and Army Veteran, who served in the war against Vietnam. He stated it was his duty under International Law and the Nuremberg Principles to take non-violent action to stop an illegal and immoral war undertaken by his country. He spoke of his sincere concern for the Iraqi people suffering under the U.S. sanction, invasion and occupation. He also spoke of great concern about the U.S. service people who are suffering in Iraq and elsewhere from the ravages of war, and especially about the toxic effects of depleted uranium (DU) on the troops in Iraq and the Iraqi people. Peter also spoke of the contamination of the air, soil and water for millions of years as a result of the U.S. dropping tons of DU in Iraq in the current war and the first Gulf War. At one point, the prosecutor asked him about the command to "Love Your Enemies", and he responded by saying he had no enemies.
On Saturday April 10, two days after Peter's testimony, Peter suffered a small sub-arachnoid hemorrhage of the brain and had to be hospitalized for 4 days. His condition was serious, however he is now home recuperating and in good spirits. The judge allowed the trial to go on as scheduled on 4/12, as was the wish of all the co-defendants including Peter, because all that was left was closing statements and the judges instructions to the jury, followed by jury deliberation. Peter was able to send a closing statement through his attorney adviser, Joani Brandon.
The jury deliberated for 20 hours. At one point a few hours before their final declaration of deadlock, the jury sent a question to the judge. It said, since the jury is supposed to consider what the defendants knew prior to their action, does their knowledge include their religious, political and moral beliefs? The judge stated yes, all the above DOES constitute their knowledge. The defendants maintained throughout the trial that they had a right and a duty to be in the recruiters' office taking non-violent measures to stop recruitment for the imminent war, and they strongly felt they had reasonable belief that their action was right, justified and legal.
The jury also asked in their note, is it appropriate to speculate on the effect of our verdict on the further actions of the defendants or other people? The judge instructed them they were not to speculate on this.
Four hours later, the jury stated there was no possible way for them to have a unanimous verdict.
News reports have stated that the jury was divided into 2 groups, indicating it was more than 1 or 2 jurors holding out for one decision or another.
Judge Sherman gave the defendants until April 30 to file a motion for dismissal in the interest of justice.
The DA's office today indicated they were planning to re-try the case.
----
Radical environmentalist sentenced to prison for damaging SUVs, vandalism
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-14/s_22794.asp
RICHMOND, Virginia - A former Boy Scout with ties to a radical environmentalist group was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for vandalizing sport utility vehicles and trying to blow up construction equipment.
Aaron L. Linas, who was 17 at the time of the vandalism spree, pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy charges and was sentenced Monday.
Prosecutors said Linas was a member of the Earth Liberation Front, an international underground organization that the FBI says has caused more than $100 million in damage since 1996. The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of crimes, including setting logging trucks on fire and spray-painting SUVs.
Linas, now 19, and co-defendants John B. Wade and Adam V. Blackwell unsuccessfully tried to blow up construction vehicles at a shopping center in suburban Richmond, prosecutors said. They also used glass-etching cream to deface restaurants and 25 SUVs at a car dealership.
"This young man crossed an important line in the expression of personal views when he destroyed property and endangered the lives of others," said U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty.
Attorneys for Linas described him as bright, caring and determined and said he was a Boy Scout, a camp counselor, and had volunteered at a local nursing home.
"Unfortunately, he allowed his passions for the environment ... to take him down the wrong path, to go too far," said defense lawyer Matt Geary.
Linas will have three additional years of probation after prison. He also was ordered to pay $204,000 to 12 victims. Wade and Blackwell are scheduled for sentencing this month.
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