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NUCLEAR
N.D. Students Testing Homes for Radon
North Korean Leader Is Reported in China
Nuke-for-energy deal for Kim?
S.Korea Eyes China's Nuclear Power Market
G.I.s press Army for uranium test
Returning soldiers do not have dangerous DU radiation levels
Parts Of Iraqi Nuclear Reactor 'Resettled'
Bush's Hope of Finding Weapons in Iraq Is Futile
Vanunu: Israel Should Destroy Reactors
Nuke Whistleblower Wants Israel's Reactor Destroyed
The Vanunu Myths and Israeli Deterrence Policy
S. Korea Eyes China's Nuclear Power Market
Rocky roads
Researcher: open Rocky Flats slowly to public
No more nuclear waste
President Bush's Global Nonproliferation Policy: Seven More Proposals
Kerry would change war on terror
With CIA Push, Movement to War Accelerated
Special-Interest Add-Ons Weigh Down Tax-Cut Bill
Kerry Calls Bush's Iraq Policy 'Ineffective'
Airing of Powell's Misgivings Tests Ties in the Cabinet
Saudi envoy had knowlege of Iraq invasion
MILITARY
Bush Plans Aid to Build Foreign Peace Forces
U.S. General in Afghanistan Says Pakistan Has Hurt Al Qaeda
Blair Expected to Allow Vote on a European Constitution
US Army buy anti-armor weapons, training systems from Swedish Saab
British troops 'in Iraq for ten years'
Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq
U.S. Rice Growers Push for Iraq Contracts
Pentagon to Award $25 Bln in Contracts
Robot plane drops bomb in test
Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq
Top European Backs Spain on Pullout
Pullout takes Poland by surprise
10 GIs Die in Attacks In Iraq
Leaders in Falluja Urge Rebels to Halt Attacks on U.S. Forces
Bremer Is Increasing Pressure for a Quick End to Iraqi Uprisings
Iraq Peacekeepers Deal With Spain Pullout
Carnage dims hopes for political way
Will Cheney Flash Sharon 'Green' To Kill Arafat?
Hamas Chief Mourned By Thousands in Gaza
No 'Heads-Up' on Israeli Attack, Rice Says
Israeli Rightists Endorse Plan to Withdraw From the Gaza Strip
Russia and NATO
Pentagon, Justice Department sparred
Top Guerrilla Killed in Chechnya
Russia kills key Chechen rebels
Saudi-Born Leader Killed in Chechnya
Intel: The CIA vs. the DIA
Lack of Resolution in Iraq Finds Conservatives Divided
Records of Buried Veterans on Web Site
Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq
US marines down to two hot meals a day
Chambliss, Sessions propose closing European bases
'They Hate Us Because of Our Freedom'
Tony Blair lied to us over war in Iraq
Chinese Gave Cheney Speech Their Own Form of Openness
George W. Bush Goes Mad, Right Before Our Eyes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Man Upset Over Brother's Redeployment Shot
High Court to Clarify Judge-Only Sentencing
U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Argument
FTC to Look Closer at 'Spyware'
Police Lineups Falling Out of Favor
Study Suspects Thousands of False Convictions
ACTIVISTS
Israel must not impose conditions on Vanunu after release: Amnesty
I'm not a traitor, says Israeli nuclear whistleblower on eve of release
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Makes Appeal
GEORGIA Laws limit G-8 protests
Scottish protester arrested in West Bank
Pro-life teachers angered by march
US 'soldiers of conscience' take Sixties route to Canada
G-8 Protest Organizer Finds Hurdles on Path to a Permit
Earth Day celebration educates despite rain
A Letter From An Iraqi Mother
Truth still not told in killing of Rachel Corrie
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
N.D. Students Testing Homes for Radon
April 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Radon-Studies.html
BELCOURT, N.D. (AP) -- Science students at Turtle Mountain Community College are testing homes on the reservation for radon, a radioactive gas linked to lung cancer.
The first round of preliminary sampling found nearly a third of homes tested high for the radioactive gas, but the project coordinator says more tests likely will change those results.
Project coordinator Gale Harmes said homes are tested in the winter, when they are sealed against the weather, to get the highest readings. He said testing also must be done in the summer to determine the annual average.
About 30 percent of the 250 homes tested for radon this winter had high readings, Harms said. That figure is not a major worry at this point, because many will fall within the recommended limit once the average is obtained, Harms said.
The study is funded through the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If the grant funding continues, the project aims to test 600 homes before it concludes next year.
Radon is an invisible, odorless radioactive gas created by the decay of uranium found in rocks and soil. It is estimated to be a health risk in as many as one in 15 homes in the country, according to the American Lung Association.
Test kits in the college project use activated charcoal to collect dust particles to which the radon attaches itself. Turtle Mountain Community College gets the kits from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
Students go to the home of each resident who signs up for the testing and place a kit in the area of the house that is most used. The students retrieve the kits after 3.8 days, considered to be the half life of radon, and the kits are returned to the Colorado lab for results.
``One of the things we do in this program is encourage people to quit smoking, because if a person smokes and lives in an atmosphere of radon, their chances of contracting lung cancer are at least a magnitude of 10 to 100 times more likely,'' Harms said.
Radon seems to be higher in clay soils, found on much of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, Harms said.
As part of the Turtle Mountain project, students are mapping the location of homes tested. The information will be overlaid on a map of soil types and analyzed.
About 10 students are involved in the project, which began in February. They receive a stipend for their time and travel.
Many of the students are taking a life science course at the college as part of their study in nursing, chemistry or environmental science. The project provides a varied education in skills ranging from social skills to scientific analysis, Harms said.
``They are learning teamwork. They are learning self motivation. They are learning what running a scientific sample really is,'' he said. ``There are more benefits than what meets the eye.''
A variety of methods can be used to reduce indoor radon levels, such as sealing cracks in floors and walls or changing the air flow in a home. Sometimes, eliminating the radon source is as simple as putting a cover over a sump pump hole or a plastic barrier in a crawl space.
On the Net: Radon specialists: www.health.state.nd.us/ndhd/environ/ee/rad/Radon/index.htm
Information from: Minot Daily News, http://www.ndweb.com
-------- asia
North Korean Leader Is Reported in China
By REUTERS
April 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/international/asia/19BEIJ.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Monday, April 19(Reuters) - The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, entered China by train on Sunday and arrived in Beijing on Monday for talks on the crisis over his country's nuclear weapons program, South Korean media outlets reported.
Mr. Kim will meet with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in the first summit meeting since the new Chinese leaders took office last year, the South Korean YTN cable television network said.
China has been the host for two rounds of talks with North and South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia. North Korea is being urged to give up its programs for producing nuclear weapons.
The reports on Mr. Kim's arrival in the Chinese capital follow a visit to Japan, China and South Korea by Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney appealed to the three countries to help speed up efforts to end North Korea's nuclear programs.
Chinese leaders are likely to dangle the prospect of significant economic help before Mr. Kim, while pressing home the point that it firmly opposes a nuclear-armed North Korea and insists that the problem be resolved peacefully, analysts say.
Mr. Kim last visited China, North Korea's ally, in May 2001.
YTN said Mr. Kim had crossed into China late on Sunday in his special train amid heavy secrecy and had traveled overnight to reach Beijing at midday.
No mention of the visit was made by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, or by China's official New China News Agency.
----
Nuke-for-energy deal for Kim?
By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
4/19/2004
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040419-071645-8417r
SEOUL, South Korea, April 19 (UPI) -- Will North Korean leader Kim Jong Il bring a breakthrough on the nuclear impasse?
Kim's surprise visit to Bejing this week for a summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao raised hopes of progress in the long-stalled nuclear issue.
China is considered one of few nations that have leverage over Kim's defiant regime, which has been heavily dependent on Beijing's food and energy aid. Beijing's economic assistance is vital for the North's tattered economy. China also needs North Korea to ease the nuclear standoff to boost its leverage in pressing for a more accommodating U.S. stance toward Taiwan.
"The two nations need each other's help. The Beijing summit was arranged for mutual benefit," said Moon Heung-ho, a China expert at Hanyang University in Seoul. "We hope to see progress in the nuclear stalemate in the North Korea-China summit," Seoul's Foreign Ministry official said.
Kim held talks with Chinese President Hu on Monday in Beijing after arriving in the Chinese capital by train earlier in the day for an informal visit, according to South Korea's media reports and diplomatic sources in Seoul.
Neither the South Korean nor the Chinese government would confirm Kim's visit, which was cloaked in secrecy. But both sides are widely expected to announce his visit after Kim returns to Pyongyang, as they have done in the past.
When Kim visited China in 2000 and 2001, neither side announced the visits in advance or commented on the trips until after he returned home. "North Korea has requested that Kim's schedule be kept secret due to security concerns," a diplomatic source in Seoul said.
Kim crossed the border city of Sinuiju into China around 9 p.m. Sunday after leaving his office in Pyongyang at 1 p.m. that day by special train. Kim was greeted at the Chinese border city of Dandong by Wang Jiarui, the Communist Party's director of international relations, South Korea's official Yonhap News Agency said in a report from the Chinese capital that quoted "informed diplomatic sources."
Kim's train, carrying an entourage of some 40 high-level ruling party, state and military officials, drew into Beijing's main railway station around 6 a.m. Monday amid tight security. Beijing's railway station was guarded by military police and a station official said it was closed for the arrival of a "special visitor."
A convoy of unmarked cars, including a black Mercedes limousine, pulled out of the railway station and headed west towards the state guesthouse, where Kim has stayed on previous trips, said Yonhap and Seoul's state-run television, KBS.
Kim reportedly met Hu over lunch at Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing. It was the first summit between the two communist allies since the new Chinese leaders took office last year.
No details of the summit were available, but media reports quoted sources as saying it was focused on how to end the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear arms ambitions, Beijing's food and energy assistance, and North Korea's economic reforms.
At the summit, Kim said his country was ready to give up its nuclear development program if the United States dropped its hostile policy towards Pyongyang. He also asked for economic and energy aid from China.
In return, Hu reportedly called for Pyongyang to move to ease the nuclear crisis, saying U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on a visit to Beijing last week warned that time was running out for a resolution on the issue.
Analysts in Seoul said Beijing wanted to hear Kim's position on North Korea's nuclear program and use the summit to make progress toward six-party talks to end the nuclear crisis. "China invited the North Korean leader to visit Beijing to offer economic aid and persuade Pyongyang to make concessions to break the nuclear impasse," said Paek Seung-joo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis in Seoul.
China has been mediating between North Korea and the United States at the six-way talks, which also involve South Korea, Japan and Russia, aimed at seeking a peaceful resolution to the crisis. China hosted two rounds of six-party talks, the latest one in February, but no agreement has been reached.
"North Korea is not in a position to dismiss Chinese pressure," said Lee Tae-hwan, a China specialist at the Sejong Institute, a private think tank in Seoul, "because China provides between 70 percent and 90 percent of North Korea's oil and more than one-third of its imports and food aid."
"Beijing wants to use its role in defusing the nuclear crisis as leverage in dealing with Washington over the Taiwan issue," a Western diplomat said, requesting anonymity. "With the North Korea card in hand, China would call for the United States to discourage Taiwan from adopting a confrontational stance with the mainland following Chen Shui-bian's re-election as the island's president.
Kim Jong Il's China trip came after Cheney came to China last week armed with fresh evidence of North Korea's nuclear weapons capabilities and pressing Beijing to take a tougher line with its communist neighbor.
After the summit, Kim visited Zhongguancun technology park, China's leading high-tech development zone. He is scheduled to have a series of meetings with Chinese leaders, including former President Jiang Zemin, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, parliamentary leader Wu Bangguo and Vice President Zeng Qinghong.
On his way back to North Korea on Wednesday, he is expected to visit Shenyang or Dalian in China's northeast to study government efforts to boost the economy with outside investment.
-------- china
S.Korea Eyes China's Nuclear Power Market
April 19, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-utilities-korea-china.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's state-run nuclear power firm said on Monday it had formed a consortium with local companies to bid for nuclear power projects abroad, including the growing Chinese market.
A spokesman for Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co (KHNP), a unit of state-run power monopoly Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO), said the consortium included builder Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Ltd and two other KEPCO units.
KHNP operates all 18 of the country's nuclear power plants.
``We formed the consortium to bid for overseas orders, but we haven't been awarded any contracts as yet,'' he said, adding that no bids had been submitted so far.
``We are awaiting tenders from China.''
KHNP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian government for a three-year feasibility study on nuclear power plants.
Competition for a bigger slice of energy-hungry China's growing nuclear power market is heating up as France, the United States and Russia vie to win lucrative Chinese energy projects.
The spokesman said the two other KEPCO units were focused on fuel supply and plant design and that Doosan Heavy had already exported steam generators to China, the United States and Taiwan.
South Korea, which relies on nuclear energy for 40 percent of its electricity needs, built its first nuclear power plants decades ago with U.S. or European technology, but now has the capability to export its own reactors.
Robust economic growth and a worsening power shortage has spurred China to accelerate construction of nuclear power plants. Beijing hopes to quadruple its nuclear power capacity to more than 32,000 megawatts (MW) by building roughly two plants per year between 2005 and 2020.
China has built eight reactors over the past two decades.
The Chinese government is evaluating proposals to build four 1,000-MW plants costing an estimated $6 billion in eastern and Guangdong provinces, but no time frame has been set for a decision.
Framatome ANP, a venture between France's Areva and Germany's Siemens, Electricite de France, and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, an unlisted global nuclear equipment maker have shown keen interest in breaking into the Chinese market.
-------- depleted uranium
G.I.s press Army for uranium test
April 19, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/185258p-160518c.html
Hundreds of soldiers back from Iraq have asked the Army to test them for radiation exposure after the Daily News revealed four members of a New York Army National Guard unit are contaminated with depleted uranium.
Up to 800 G.I.s already have handed in their 24-hour urine samples, and hundreds more are waiting for appointments, according to a source at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
But several independent uranium experts who reviewed one of the first official lab results that Walter Reed doctors provided to a soldier last week are questioning whether the Army's testing methods are adequate.
"They are using an instrument that apparently isn't very accurate," said Glen Lawrence, a professor of biochemistry at Long Island University.
"The instruments they used are just not sophisticated enough to give accurate readings," agreed Leonard Dietz, a retired scientist from the Knolls Atomic Laboratories who invented one of the instruments for measuring uranium isotopes.
The demand for tests was sparked by a News investigation that found four soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.
One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, was told at Walter Reed last week that the Army's testing of his urine had come back negative.
Ramos, who has suffered for months from unexplained ailments, demanded copies of reports from the two Army labs that analyzed his urine.
One lab reported that different uranium isotopes in the sample were "not detectable."
The other lab listed an error ratio so large in its analysis that it was impossible to tell for certain whether the uranium in Ramos' urine was natural, depleted or enriched.
"We know the way this data is reported can be confusing," said Lt. Col. Mark Melanson, the program manger for health physics at the second lab.
The main issue, Melanson said, is how much total uranium was found in Ramos - and his total was 6.3 nanograms (parts per billion) per liter.
That "is within the dietary ranges reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is safe," Melanson said.
The Army, according to Melanson, does not even bother to analyze a sample for depleted uranium unless the total natural uranium concentration is more than 268 nanograms per liter.
"That's an extraordinarily high cutoff," said Dr. Tom Fasy, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
When told of the criticisms of the Army's methods, Melanson said, "As an additional check, we are sending samples to the CDC for independent analysis."
This is not the first time the Army's depleted uranium screening operation has come under scrutiny. Last December, two congressmen demanded an investigation of the program by the General Accounting Office.
Reps. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Tex.) and Robert Filner (D-Calif.) charged the Defense Department has previously misled investigators about soldiers' depleted uranium exposure during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
----
Returning soldiers do not have dangerous DU radiation levels officials say
'No one can say with confidence there are no health problems related to DU exposures,' Gulf War vets group says
By Deborah Funk
Army and Marine Times staff writer
April 19, 2004
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2831251.php http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2831251.php
Army officials say none of more than 1,000 troops returning from Iraq who have been tested show dangerous amounts of radiation from the depleted uranium used in many munitions.
Three of the tested Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers had levels of uranium above that of the average U.S. population, but still within acceptable levels for workers in the nuclear industry, said Army Col. (Dr.) Dallas Hack, chief preventive medicine officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Those three soldiers had depleted uranium shrapnel embedded in them, and the levels of uranium found were not high enough to warrant medical intervention, he said.
Depleted uranium, a heavy metal with low levels of radiation, is used to make armor-piercing munitions, as well as to reinforce tank armor.
The issue of whether depleted uranium components are responsible for any of the illnesses suffered by veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War has been the subject of debate, and researchers still are trying to learn what long-term adverse health effects DU may cause.
Most research has focused on kidney problems and cancer. Research in rodent studies indicate that embedded DU shrapnel can cause tumor growth in animals, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, which recently received a presentation on the subject.
But Hack said the animal model studies are not completed, so conclusions cannot be drawn.
The New York Daily News has reported that it has tested some returning soldiers and found depleted uranium in four soldiers suffering from "unexplained illnesses."
The National Gulf War Resource Center, an umbrella group of military associations and veterans, is calling for large-scale scientific studies on soldiers, and in Iraq where depleted uranium was used 13 years ago.
"No one can say with confidence that there are no health problems related to DU exposures," the group said in a prepared statement. "Now is the time for real science to take the place of spin."
U.S. troops who have concerns about exposure to depleted uranium can be administered a test to measure the amounts of and types of uranium in their bodies, Hack said.
"We're redoubling our efforts to make sure anybody who has a concern is tested," Hack said. "We remain committed to taking care of the medical problems these people have."
-------- iraq / inspections
Parts Of Iraqi Nuclear Reactor 'Resettled': Sources
There is "extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings", ElBaradei
By Hossam Al-Sayed, IOL Staff,
April 19, 2004
(IslamOnline.net)
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-04/19/article06.shtml
CAIRO - Parts of Iraq's neutralized nuclear reactor have been resettled somewhere in the far-reaching country, an Iraqi scientist told IslamOnline.net Sunday, April18 .
"This can help the United States find a way out of the current limbo of failing to come across a sniff of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction," the central rationale of the U.S.-led war one year ago, said the source, who asked not to be named.
Material and equipment from the facility, some 40 kilometers from Baghdad, have also disappeared and been looted under the watchful eye of the U.S.-led occupation troops, well-placed sources here told IOL.
Backed by U.S. warplanes, gunmen disembarked frequently from unidentified jets in the location of the Osirak reactor, looting some of its material, the sources at the Iraqi Atomic Agency (IAA) said.
'None Of Your Business'
They noted that some IAA scientists reported the incident to the U.S.-led occupation authorities, asking for a protection to the facility and its depots.
The request fell on deaf ears as a U.S. Let. Gen. told the scientists "it is none of your business", according to the source.
"They [the gunmen] were instructed by someone from his KIA and tampering with the reactor under U.S. protection," another Iraqi scientist, who requested anonymity, told IOL.
"I myself happened on some non-registered materials in the reactor." he added. "We complained umpteen times to the U.S. occupation troops, who eventually denied us access to the facility."
An Iraqi translator working for the occupation troops confirmed the incident, claiming that the gunmen were Israelis.
He asserted that they dismantled parts of the Russian-made reactor, which was struck by Israeli warplanes in 1981 in a preemptive strike to undermine Iraq's nuclear capabilities.
The translator added that the parts were rushed to unknown destinations in armored vehicles.
On Friday, April16 , the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBardei said he was concerned about the disappearance of nuclear material from the occupied country.
Baradei said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on the findings, which were based on satellite images.
The U.N. Security Council was also kept posted on the situation in another letter from ElBaradei.
According to the letter, satellite imagery shows "extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings". in Iraq.
"Large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq," it added.
"It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their locations," ElBaradei said in his letter.
The IAEA chief told the Security Council March 7 that documents allegedly proving that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger were forgeries.
David Kay, the head of the1 ,400-member Iraq Survey Group which has been searching Iraq for alleged WMD, had recently resigned his post over failure to find any truce of such weapons.
--------
Bush's Hope of Finding Weapons in Iraq Is Futile, Kay, Blix Say
April 19, 2004
(Bloomberg)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=asd.MzIjZ_t8&refer=europe
President George W. Bush said last Tuesday there ``could still be'' weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Arms experts including David Kay, who led the search for the weapons until three months ago, say Bush is wrong.
``I don't know what evidence there is aside from hope,'' Kay, the chief U.S. arms inspector from June 2003 through January 2004, said in an interview. ``I don't want to use the term zero possibility, but I have no optimism.''
Bush argued prior to the war that Iraq had to be attacked because it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet had told Bush ``it's a slam-dunk case'' that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had the weapons at his disposal, according to ``Plan of Attack,'' a book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that was to go on sale today. Those weapons haven't been found.
As violence in Iraq mounts, Americans' backing for the president has slipped. Support for Bush's policies in Iraq fell 7 percentage points to 44 percent in a CNN/Time magazine poll released April 9.
Bush, 57, cited at his press conference last week the discovery of 24 tons of mustard gas at a Libyan turkey farm by U.S. inspectors in January as an example of how weapons can be hard to locate. The inspectors were guided by Libyan officials to a metal barn at the farm outside Tripoli.
Exaggerated Threat
In December, Libya agreed to eliminate ``all elements'' of its chemical and nuclear weapons programs, declare all nuclear activities to UN inspectors, and eliminate all chemical weapons stocks and munitions. Thousands of pounds of documents and equipment used to develop nuclear weapons are now in a secure facility in Tennessee, the White House said.
While Iraq is twice the size of Idaho and swaths of the country are almost off limits because of armed resistance, the weapons won't be found because they probably aren't there, arms experts said.
Hans Blix, a former United Nations chief weapons inspector, said in a recently published book, ``Disarming Iraq -- The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction,'' that Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair exaggerated the Iraq threat when seeking support for the war.
Seeking Answers
Bush is under pressure from Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate for president, to say that prewar U.S. intelligence was flawed and prove his administration didn't skew the information.
Kerry, 60, a four-term senator who received a Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor while serving in Vietnam, said yesterday that Bush's international policies have been ``arrogant'' and may keep other countries from working with the U.S. in the future.
Appearing on NBC's ``Meet The Press,'' Kerry said he would take the ``poison out of'' U.S. policies and seek more foreign assistance in Iraq.
The president said at his press conference that he was looking ``forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where'' the weapons are, from a commission he formed on Feb. 6 in response to calls for an investigation into intelligence failures prior to the war. ``That's why we set up the independent commission,'' he said.
The commission has until March 2005 to complete its probe, four months after the November presidential election.
`Unresolved Ambiguity'
Since the U.S. invasion began on March 20 of last year, 687 U.s. troops have been killed, including more than 380 since Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, the Defense Department said as of Friday. More than 90 U.S. troops have been killed in action this month, making it the most deadly month since the invasion began.
Bush said the U.S. could yet find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq if it got cooperation from the ousted government. He said the discovery of mustard gas near Tripoli was a result of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's willingness to assist inspectors, in contrast to Hussein's refusal to do so.
There will always be ``unresolved ambiguity'' with a government as secretive as Iraq under Hussein, said Kay, who also searched for weapons on behalf of the UN in the 1990s. ``What mitigates against'' finding weapons in Iraq is that ``we have not found a facility --nor have we found any Iraqi to come forward and said this is how it is done,'' he said.
Kay resigned as head of the U.S. weapons inspection team and was replaced by Charles Duelfer, the former number two UN weapons inspector in Iraq.
Getting Caught
Bush said at his press conference that Duelfer was ``amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been toward Unmovic and Unscom,'' inspection teams that searched Iraq for more than a decade.
``We knew they were hiding things,'' Bush said. ``A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught, and that was part of our calculation. Charlie confirmed that.''
Duelfer told Congress last month that Iraq's failure to cooperate in his search was undermining efforts to determine whether the country had a weapons program, the New York Times reported on March 31. Duelfer said his team hadn't found evidence of weapons, although he said they were continuing to pursue leads, the Times said, citing testimony he delivered to two Senate committees behind closed doors.
Duelfer didn't return calls seeking comment. Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment beyond Bush's remarks.
`One in 100'
Representative Curt Weldon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who backed the war, believes Iraq may still harbor weapons of mass destruction, said Michael Conallen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Republican.
``The congressman would agree and support'' Bush in his contention that the weapons may exist, Conallen said.
Weldon led a group a lawmakers who traveled to Iraq in February to meet with Army Major General Keith Dayton, director of the group searching for the weapons.
Dayton ``indicated to the congressman and the delegation that there was a lot of work to do'' in tracking down leads and sifting through documents, Conallen said.
The chances that U.S. weapons inspectors will make a discovery in Iraq similar to the one in Libya are remote, said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for foreign policy for the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group based in Washington.
``You can't rule it out entirely,'' Carpenter said. ``We have been in the country for a year and had access to their scientists. It's one in 100 at best.''
Either Bush was misleading the public or he was poorly briefed before the press conference, said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
``There is no likelihood that we will find these stockpiles of chemical and biological compounds that were advertised before the war,'' Mathews said. ``I think there was reason to know they were not there.''
To contact the reporter on the story: William McQuillen in Washington, or bmcquillen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor of this story: Glenn Hall, or ghall@bloomberg.net
-------- israel
Vanunu: Israel Should Destroy Reactors
April 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Vanunu.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu said he has no more secrets to reveal, but he believes Israel's nuclear reactor near the desert town of Dimona should be destroyed, according to remarks published Monday.
Vanunu is to be released Wednesday, after serving 18 years for treason.
In 1986, the former Dimona technician provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London. Based on his information, experts at the time said Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Mossad agents kidnapped Vanunu from Italy in 1986, and he has largely been kept out of sight since then, except for occasional court appearances.
On Monday, Israeli newspapers ran rare photographs of Vanunu, provided by Israel's Prisons Authority. The white-haired, balding Vanunu was shown in a prison courtyard, wearing jeans, a brown prison uniform shirt and a blue ski jacket. The convert to Christianity wore a cross on a gold chain around his neck.
The Yediot Ahronot and Maariv newspapers published excerpts from what they said was Vanunu's interrogation by Shin Bet security agents two weeks ago. Vanunu appeared to be rambling at times, sometimes referring to himself in the third person and other times as ``we.''
Vanunu spent 12 years of his term in solitary confinement, and his mental health suffered during that time, his brother Meir and his attorney have said. Vanunu has improved since getting out of solitary, they said.
Israel is concerned that Vanunu's release will refocus attention on its nuclear program. As part of its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Israel neither confirms nor denies it has nuclear weapons.
After his release, Vanunu will be prevented from traveling abroad for a year, from contacting foreigners and from discussing his work at the nuclear reactor and the circumstances of his capture. Vanunu plans to appeal to the Supreme Court if the restrictions are not rescinded.
In his conversation with the Shin Bet agents, Vanunu said the United States and Europe already know everything they need to know about Israel's nuclear program.
``As for myself, I just want to repeat the things I already said and that were published,'' Vanunu was quoted as saying. He suggested it would be difficult for the Shin Bet to monitor him, noting that he'll have access to a computer.
Vanunu said he hoped the debate over Israel's nuclear program would be revived, and he expressed disappointment that Israel hasn't come under greater pressure to dismantle Dimona.
``I want them to take the reactor, more than that, I want them to destroy the reactor, as they destroyed the reactor in Iraq,'' Vanunu said. Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981, to prevent Baghdad from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Vanunu, who began working at Dimona in 1977, said Israel should not have trusted him with sensitive information. While working at Dimona, Vanunu studied philosophy at Ben Gurion University and joined left-wing groups on campus.
Vanunu said ``bigshot psychologists'' from the Shin Bet and the Mossad should have spotted him as a potential security risk. ``You gave information to the wrong man,'' Maariv quoted him as saying. However, he insisted he was not a spy.
Vanunu said he believes he is considered a hero by much of the world.
Asked about his political beliefs, Vanunu said there is no need for a Jewish state, and that he would prefer for his family -- he is one of 11 children of Jewish immigrants from Morocco -- to live in Morocco or in a Palestinian state.
--------
Nuke Whistleblower Wants Israel's Reactor Destroyed
April 19, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-vanunu.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Mordechai Vanunu, about to complete an 18-year jail term for spilling Israeli nuclear secrets, has called for the destruction of Israel's secretive Dimona reactor, newspapers reported on Monday.
``Just like the Iraqi reactor was destroyed, I want the Israeli reactor destroyed,'' Vanunu, referring to Israel's 1981 bombing near Baghdad, was quoted as saying in a videotaped meeting recently with security officers.
``I am defending the Arab world,'' he said in the interview, according to a transcript carried by newspapers. The tape was to be broadcast later in the day.
Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona reactor, was jailed in 1986 as a traitor after disclosing information to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper which led analysts to conclude Israel had produced as many as 200 nuclear bombs at the facility.
Israel maintains a strategic ambiguity over its nuclear program in an attempt to ward off its foes while avoiding a regional arms race. It has kept the Dimona facility, in southern Israel, closed to international inspection. Vanunu, 49, is expected to be placed under restrictions as soon as he is released on Wednesday, the government having decided to bar him from leaving the country, tap his phone and bar his access to the press for a probationary period.
Release of the videotape appeared aimed at bolstering the government's case in a court challenge Israel's civil liberties union is mounting on Vanunu's behalf against the edicts.
Challenging Israel's right to exist, he declared: ``There is no need for a Jewish state. There should be a Palestinian state. Whoever wants to be Jewish can live anywhere.''
Vanunu said he hoped to fight the restrictions and move overseas. He denied having anything sensitive left to divulge and threatened to defy some restrictions using the Internet.
``I've been inside for 20 years, everything has changed. Science has advanced...so what I saw seems very outdated to me,'' Vanunu said.
Vanunu also maintained he was neither a spy nor a traitor.
``I wanted to inform the world about what happened. It's not treason,'' and outside Israel ``five or six billion people (see me)...as a positive figure.''
Asked why he had chosen to convert to Christianity back in the 1980s, Vanunu replied: ``I think Islam and Judaism are both the same backward religion...Christianity is progressive.''
--------
The Vanunu Myths and Israeli Deterrence Policy
Gerald M. Steinberg
Institute for Contemporary Affairs founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
JERUSALEM ISSUE BRIEF
Vol. 3, No. 22
19 April 2004
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief3-22.htm
- The concept of "whistle blower" refers to individuals who go public with information on corrupt practices and violations of the law, enabling the constituted authorities to hold the culprits accountable. In contrast, by seeking to impose his personal views of Israeli security requirements on the elected representatives of the Israeli government, Vanunu acted in violation of the law and the core principles of democracy.
- The development of Israel's strategic deterrent capability resulted from the threat to national survival posed by Arab and Islamic rejectionism, and any decision to dismantle this deterrent depends on the end of this threat.
- Vanunu's supporters do not offer any pragmatic alternatives or strategies to prevent attacks against Israel, or evidence to support claims that if Israel were to give up its nuclear deterrent, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and other regional powers would cease to be threats.
- Israel's nuclear option is credited with forcing Egypt and Syria to limit their attacks in the 1973 war; with bringing Sadat to the realization that he must make peace with Israel; and with deterring Saddam Hussein from using chemical warheads in the 1991 missile attacks against Israel.
- Unlike Iran, Iraq under Saddam, and Libya, Israel did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not violated any of its terms. Israel has not tested nuclear weapons and declared itself officially to be a nuclear power.
Increasing attention in the Arab world and Europe is being devoted to "nuclear whistle blower" Mordechai Vanunu, scheduled to be released this month at the end of his 18-year prison sentence. Therefore, a review of the facts and context of the Vanunu case may be helpful in order to clarify Israel's nuclear policy.
For the past three decades, Israel's nuclear deterrent is widely credited with offsetting the asymmetries that encouraged major attacks, creating a degree of stability, and convincing some Arab leaders, including Sadat, of the need for peace. Unlike Iran, Iraq under Saddam, and Libya, which blatantly violated the terms of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to seek illicit weapons, Israel did not sign the treaty, and has not violated any of its terms. Furthermore, unlike India and Pakistan, Israel has not tested nuclear weapons and declared itself officially to be a nuclear power.
Vanunu undermined the core security policies of the democratically elected government of Israel, and, with external assistance, sought to transform his private views into national policy. In this context, the accolade "whistle blower" is entirely inappropriate. He violated the terms of his employment at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility and sold information to journalists. This was the basis for his trial, conviction, and prison sentence.
Israeli Strategic Deterrence and the Vanunu Case
The ostensible reason for Vanunu's revelation of Israel's "nuclear secrets" is his opposition, on what he claims to be moral grounds, to Israel's nuclear deterrence strategy. On this basis, Vanunu's cause has been adopted by anti-nuclear campaigners around the world, who have also nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet this messianic crusade is based on a very unrealistic view of history, in which wars, terrorism, and Arab threats to destroy Israel have been conveniently erased. Vanunu's supporters do not offer any pragmatic alternatives or strategies to prevent attacks against Israel, or evidence to support claims that if Israel were to give up its nuclear deterrent, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and other regional powers would cease to be threats.
In contrast, a large majority of Israelis support Israel's current nuclear policy.1 They view the development of a nuclear option as necessary to deter the possibility of combined Arab attacks, as have occurred in the past. All Israeli prime ministers have realized that the geographic and demographic asymmetries in the region leave Israel quite vulnerable to attack. Its tiny size prevents the possibility of "strategic depth" - the ability to absorb a first strike or surprise attack and then launch a counter-attack. Geographically, Israel appears to be a very weak state, wide open to attack by any external enemy.
As British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently noted, the threat of extinction "places Israel in a different security category from any other country in the world." Similarly, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "Israel is a small state with a small population. It's a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood [where many] prefer it not be there and they'd like it to be put in the sea. And Israel...has arranged itself so it hasn't been put in the sea."2
The Logic of Deterrence
Based on the uniqueness of the Israeli threat environment, David Ben-Gurion authorized the development of a strategic deterrent designed to overcome the inherent geographic asymmetry by demonstrating that an attack that endangers Israel's survival would trigger a counter-attack that would have a parallel impact. The logic of deterrence is based on the assumption that Israel's enemies - Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. - would recognize that they could not destroy Israel without causing their own destruction. This threat did not have to be explicit - rational decision-makers would understand the implications and act accordingly, even without overt declarations and nuclear tests.
The core of this policy of "strategic ambiguity" is the Dimona nuclear reactor, where construction began in the late 1950s, providing Israel with a clear potential for retaliation. At the same time, the low profile meant that this did not trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, and also allowed for reduction of friction with the United States over this issue.
Since the mid-1960s, when Dimona became operational, Israel's ambiguous deterrence policy has worked well, and has enjoyed consistent and wide support from all political and military leaders, as well as the Israeli political consensus. With the singular exception of Vanunu, no one has taken it upon himself to reverse this strategy through unilateral action.
Israel's nuclear option is credited with forcing Egypt and Syria to limit their attacks in the 1973 war; with bringing Sadat to the realization that he must make peace with Israel; and with deterring Saddam Hussein from using chemical warheads in the 1991 missile attacks against Israel. If, as expected, Iran's fundamentalist Islamic government, which repeatedly declares its goal of destroying Israel, succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, Israeli planners will rely on deterrence to prevent Iranian aggression.3
Israel's policy of deterrence based on nuclear ambiguity - neither confirming the existence of a weapons capability, nor denying it - is dependent on keeping the details out of the spotlight. Vanunu's tale and the accompanying photographs had exactly the opposite impact. International attention was suddenly focused on exposing "Israel's nuclear secrets," raising questions of the size of the Israeli nuclear stockpile and the nature of its weapons.
Vanunu gave away few, if any, real "secrets." Most of the information that he divulged was either already known among experts or was of questionable reliability, concerning areas and details to which Vanunu - a low-level technician - had no access. (Indeed, some foreign analysts and conspiracy enthusiasts claimed that Vanunu was really a Mossad agent, and that his "revelations" were really part of a clever plot to boost the credibility of Israel's deterrent.) The decision of the Israeli government under Prime Minister Shimon Peres to lure Vanunu to Rome and then bring him to Israel for trial added to his credibility and helped to confirm the reliability of the newspaper interviews. In retrospect, it might have been better, in terms of Israeli interests and policy, had Vanunu's revelations been ignored and ridiculed, although this might have been seen as weakness, and allowed for more self-styled crusaders to sell their secrets to journalists.
In recent years, in international frameworks such as the UN and NPT review conferences, Israel has come under increasing pressure, largely led by Egypt (particularly during Amr Musa's tenure as foreign minister), to end the ambiguity and deterrence capability. The simplistic campaign to tie the image of Israel to nuclear weapons and mass destruction is consistent with the efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel in the international arena. Arab officials,4 European government representatives, UN diplomats, journalists, and NGOs that are spearheading the demonization of Israel in other dimensions are also active on the nuclear issue.5 From this perspective, the campaign in support of Vanunu and against Israel's nuclear deterrent policy is an important instrument in the broader political war against Israel.
The Myth of the "Whistle Blower"
Beyond the critical issues of deterrence and survival, the use of "whistle blower" to describe Vanunu is entirely inappropriate and false. The concept refers to individuals who go public with information on corrupt practices and violations of the law, enabling the constituted authorities to hold the culprits accountable through due process of law. Real whistle blowers have been instrumental in publicizing and ending illegal pollution of the environmental, secret kickbacks paid to politicians for government contracts, and similar violations.
In contrast, by seeking to impose his personal views of Israeli security requirements on the elected representatives of the Israeli government, Vanunu acted in violation of the law and the core principles of democracy. Vanunu never claimed that his former employer - the Israel Atomic Energy Commission - violated any statutes or obligations, or acted illegally or without authorization.
The primary claim voiced by Vanunu and his supporters (most of whom are not Israelis) is that in maintaining a policy of ambiguity regarding its nuclear option, Israel has infringed on moral principles and norms. This is a personal position - an opinion - and no individual, including Vanunu, has any right to impose his views on others. But this is exactly what Vanunu attempted to do.
After Vanunu left his job at Dimona, he began to travel and ended up in Sydney, Australia, without funds or skills. In 1986 he converted to Christianity, and church officials there, learning of his "unusual" background, got in touch with journalists. The Sunday Times flew him to London, negotiated a substantial payment, and published the information and photos that Vanunu provided, as well as considerable speculation and mythology.
Of the many Israelis who have been involved in Israel's nuclear program since the 1950s, only one - Vanunu - has violated the rules of the game and gone public.6 This makes his singular betrayal of trust all the more unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis.
Given the continuing messianic self-image of Vanunu and his supporters, and the readiness of Arab, Iranian, and other officials to seek to use this case to strip Israel of its strategic deterrent, efforts to restrict his movements are understandable. Vanunu might provide information not previously revealed, such as the names of his co-workers. As a result, after his release, Vanunu will be barred from leaving the country, speaking to journalists or diplomats, and his freedom of movement will be limited and monitored. There is concern that he will try to seek asylum in a foreign embassy or church, and Jerusalem Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal (a Palestinian Arab) declared his readiness to assist.
A Middle East Free of Nuclear Weapons - Dreams and Realities
The development of Israel's strategic deterrent capability resulted from the threat to national survival posed by Arab and Islamic rejectionism, and any decision to dismantle this deterrent depends on the end of this threat. As long as the open hostility of these regimes continues, the concept of a Middle East nuclear-weapons free zone (MENWFZ) remains very far-fetched.
The continued Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, in violation of its undertakings under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the failure, to date, of the International Atomic Energy Agency (charged with verifying the treaty) to halt this activity, highlights the continuing dangers.
Notes
1. Poll of Israel Public Opinion - National Security Survey - 2002, Almidan/Mahshov Research Institute, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2003.
2. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040207-0432.html.
3. Gerald M. Steinberg, "Parameters of Stable Deterrence in a Proliferated Middle East," NonProliferation Review, 7:1 (Fall-Winter 2000); http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/conflict/armspapers/Parameters_of_Stable%20Deterrence_in_ a_Proliferated_Middle_East.htm.
4. For example, Amr Mousa, who served for many years as Egyptian Foreign Minister and led the anti-Israel campaign during the 1995 NPT Review conference, is also active in the delegitimization activities as head of the Arab League. The Arab press is also active in promoting the Vanunu myths; see http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/680/re103.htm and http://www.palestinemonitor.org/takpoints/the_man_who_ knew_too_much_mordechai_vanunu.htm.
5. For example, Robert Fisk of The Independent (UK) is one of the leading anti-Israel publicists campaigning against Israeli defense against Palestinian terrorism, and is also very active in promoting Vanunu and condemning Israel's nuclear policy. Among the NGOs, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are also active in both dimensions, and HRW sponsors the screening of films "exposing the secrets of Dimona." See http://www.hrw.org/iff/2003/london/dimona.html.
6. Unlike Vanunu, Avner Cohen (author of Israel and the Bomb) was not involved in nuclear policy on an official level, but published his book in the U.S. after the military censor prohibited Israeli publication of an earlier manuscript. In another case, Brigadier General Yitzhak Yaakov, who had held high-level positions in the security structure, was tried for attempting to publicize his own role in the development of the nuclear deterrent, which is also very different from the Vanunu case.
--
Gerald M. Steinberg is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and director of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University.
Dore Gold, Publisher; Mark Ami-El, Managing Editor. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Registered Amuta), 13 Tel-Hai St., Jerusalem, Israel; Tel. 972-2-5619281, Fax. 972-2-5619112, Email: jcpa@n.... In U.S.A.: Center for Jewish Community Studies, 5800 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21215 USA, Tel. (410) 664-5222; Fax. (410) 664-1228. Website: www.jcpa.org.
The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
The Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) is dedicated to providing a forum for Israeli policy discussion and debate.
-------- korea
S. Korea Eyes China's Nuclear Power Market
By REUTERS
April 19, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-utilities-korea-china.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's state-run nuclear power firm said on Monday it had formed a consortium with local companies to bid for nuclear power projects abroad, including the growing Chinese market.
A spokesman for Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co (KHNP), a unit of state-run power monopoly Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO), said the consortium included builder Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Ltd and two other KEPCO units.
KHNP operates all 18 of the country's nuclear power plants.
``We formed the consortium to bid for overseas orders, but we haven't been awarded any contracts as yet,'' he said, adding that no bids had been submitted so far.
``We are awaiting tenders from China.''
KHNP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian government for a three-year feasibility study on nuclear power plants.
Competition for a bigger slice of energy-hungry China's growing nuclear power market is heating up as France, the United States and Russia vie to win lucrative Chinese energy projects.
The spokesman said the two other KEPCO units were focused on fuel supply and plant design and that Doosan Heavy had already exported steam generators to China, the United States and Taiwan.
South Korea, which relies on nuclear energy for 40 percent of its electricity needs, built its first nuclear power plants decades ago with U.S. or European technology, but now has the capability to export its own reactors.
Robust economic growth and a worsening power shortage has spurred China to accelerate construction of nuclear power plants. Beijing hopes to quadruple its nuclear power capacity to more than 32,000 megawatts (MW) by building roughly two plants per year between 2005 and 2020.
China has built eight reactors over the past two decades.
The Chinese government is evaluating proposals to build four 1,000-MW plants costing an estimated $6 billion in eastern and Guangdong provinces, but no time frame has been set for a decision.
Framatome ANP, a venture between France's Areva and Germany's Siemens, Electricite de France, and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, an unlisted global nuclear equipment maker have shown keen interest in breaking into the Chinese market.
-------- missile defense
Rocky roads
By SAM BISHOP
News-Miner Washington Bureau
Monday, April 19, 2004
http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113%7E7244%7E2093912,00.html
WASHINGTON--Interceptors for the new missile defense system can't be landed at Fort Greely's airfield until it is fixed sometime this summer, according to military officials.
The military has the money to do the job, thanks to about $45 million delivered in the last two federal fiscal years.
The work should be starting soon, said Maj. Eric Maxon, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency's site activation command in Alaska.
Missile Defense Agency officials have said in reports released in recent months that the missile system may be functioning at Fort Greely as early as midsummer.
Until the Allen Army Airfield is fixed, though, the interceptors must be flown into Eielson Air Force Base southeast of Fairbanks and then trucked 80 miles to Fort Greely, Maxon said.
The official goal is still to have up to six interceptors ready to fire by the end of the year, Maxon said.
Even with the airfield difficulties, the MDA expects to meet that goal, he said.
"We are on track to provide the initial capability by the end of the year," he said.
Critics of the missile defense system have said that the Bush administration is rushing it into operation to meet a political deadline--the November election.
The Pentagon's chief testing and evaluation official said in a report earlier this year that the system might be put in place by this fall, but it will not have had the testing necessary to tell whether it will work in a real emergency.
Missile defense officials say it's better to have some capability than none at all.
For security reasons, Maxon said, he couldn't say when the first interceptors will be arriving in Alaska.
"Those components will be delivered to Fort Greely throughout the course of this year to meet initial defensive operations," he said.
According to last year's environmental impact statement on the system, the interceptors are about 54 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, and weigh up to 25 tons. They hold about 45,000 pounds of solid propellant.
Alaskans driving between Eielson and Greely shouldn't expect the Richardson Highway to be blocked during transport of the missiles, Maxon said.
"We're not expecting any significant delays in traffic," Maxon said. "They may slow traffic on inclines but no more than a motor home caravan--that's pretty common in the summer in Alaska."
Military officials have been aware of trouble at the Allen Army Airfield for several years.
The runway fell out of use in the first part of the decade as the base was all but shut down through the nationwide base closing and realignment process. In November 2001, a 10-year-old boy had to be driven by ambulance to Fairbanks after a trailer tongue fell on him, because the field hadn't been plowed and a medevac plane couldn't land. The nearby town of Delta Junction only has a daylight airport.
"We don't really have a mission there," said an Army Alaska spokesman at the time. "There's no system in place, nor is there a requirement to do it."
During the next year, as it became clearer that the fort would house a missile defense site of some sort, the military's interest in the field renewed.
In the fall of 2002, Congress agreed to spend $12 million for design and construction work on the main runway. That money was to extend the field, build turn-arounds and install a de-icing system.
The big money didn't arrive until September of last year, though. Congress approved another $33 million in the Defense Department's fiscal 2004 appropriations bill for repairs and new paving.
Two months later, the Air Force's Air Mobility Command issued a report on the field's condition.
"Air Mobility Command officials did find Allen Army Airfield to be unsuitable for heavylift aircraft operations due to lack of adequate weight-bearing capabilities and deteriorating runway conditions," said Mark Voorhis, spokesman at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, in an e-mail this week.
Heavylift aircraft include the C-141 Starlifter, the C-17 Globemaster III and the C-5 Galaxy, Voorhis said.
"Once AAAF runways are repaired, AMC officials will reassess them and the Airfield Suitability Report will be updated," Voorhis said.
Maxon, with the MDA's site activation command, said he didn't have information immediately available about whether a contract to fix the field had been issued yet.
"That work will commence here as soon as weather conditions allow it, and spring is arriving rapidly," he said. "Things are warming up and the snow is melting pretty fast."
Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached at sbishop@newsminer.com or (202) 662-8721.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Researcher: open Rocky Flats slowly to public
Associated Press
Apr. 19, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0419rockyflats-ON.html
GOLDEN, Colo. - A University of Colorado researcher says visitors will face little risk of contamination at a wildlife refuge at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, but the area should be opened to the public slowly.
James Ruttenber of the CU's School of Medicine has conducted extensive studies of cancer rates among people who worked at Rocky Flats. He said the risk of contamination would be minimal in outlying areas of the 6,200-acre site northwest of Denver.
Still, Ruttenber said, the reasonable approach would be to take time in allowing visitors to the site, which will be a national wildlife refuge once cleaned up.
Boulder County and the cities of Boulder and Superior say recreational use of the site should be restricted because of the plutonium and other materials that were at the plant for decades.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will manage the refuge, is taking comments on plans for the site. Fish and Wildlife proposes limited public access on designated trails.
Ruttenber said a reasonable approach would be to monitor the area for a while before allowing regular visits. Fish and Wildlife workers should be on the lookout for places where things might be buried.
"A lot of this is perception and building confidence," Ruttenber said.
He noted that bomblets containing the nerve agent sarin have been found at the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Commerce City, also being converted to a federal wildlife refuge.
Parts of the arsenal, a Superfund cleanup site, were closed to public while crews searched for more munitions. Chemical weapons and pesticides were produced at the arsenal for decades.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons from the 1950s to 1989. The last weapons-grade plutonium was removed in August.
-------- washington
No more nuclear waste
MONDAY April 19, 2004
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Apr/04192004/public_f/158539.asp
I read "Hanford nuclear site workers' concerns prompt investigation of facility, protocol" (Tribune, April 10) with great interest. The Hanford site, the infamous Fernald site, Rocky Flats and a number of other facilities that were used to manufacture uranium and plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons are now contaminated with highly radioactive waste that no one wants. Turns out, a lot of this waste has been dumped in Utah.
An issue that is frequently glossed over in discussions of resuming nuclear testing is waste generation. As the article discusses, the cleanup at Hanford is expected to cost upward of $50 billion in taxes and will not be finished until 2035 at best. The administration is seeking nearly $30 million for the construction of a new Hanford, known as the Modern Pit Facility. What deadly waste and contamination will be generated there? How much will the cleanup and decontamination of that site cost? Could any of that waste be slated for Utah?
In upcoming months, Sens. Bennett and Hatch will have the opportunity to vote on whether to appropriate funding for this new nuclear bomb factory. If our senators are serious about representing Utahns' interests, they will vote against funding the Modern Pit Facility and against all government activities that pave the way toward resuming nuclear weapons testing.
Vanessa Pierce Salt Lake City
-------- us politics
President Bush's Global Nonproliferation Policy: Seven More Proposals
by Henry Sokolski
Heritage Lecture #829
April 19, 2004
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl829.cfm
Among post-Cold War presidencies, the Bush Administration is unique and deserves credit in emphasizing nonproliferation enforcement--particularly in the cases of North Korea, Iraq, and Libya. In fact, the example the Bush Administration has set in these cases has prompted the most significant debate about how to strengthen nonproliferation since India exploded its first bomb in 1974. We need to exploit this window of interest to toughen nonproliferation enforcement, close as many loopholes as we can, and do so in as country-neutral a fashion as possible.
To this end, the Administration itself has proposed a new, tougher set of nonproliferation rules. By far, the most important of these have to do with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Nearly all of these suggestions can be found among the seven specific proposals the President made on February 11, 2004, in an address at the National Defense University (NDU). These proposals are significant. Properly understood, they recommend an accurate reading of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)--one that is truer to the NPT's original intent and one that deflates mistaken treaty interpretations that have enabled North Korea, Libya, Iran, and, earlier, Iraq to acquire much of what is needed to make bombs.
President George W. Bush rightly characterized these misguided views as a "cynical manipulation" of the NPT. Specifically, those who want to acquire or share nuclear weapons technology have twisted the NPT's call for the sharing of peaceful nuclear technology into an unqualified right to "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information."
This it clearly is not. As the NPT's first article makes clear, no nuclear weapons state that is a party to the NPT (the United States, Russia, China, France, or the United Kingdom) is permitted to "in any way...assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon state to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Similarly, the NPT's second article prohibits all other members of the treaty from "manufactur[ing] or otherwise acquir[ing] nuclear weapons" and from "seek[ing] or receiv[ing] any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons." When the NPT speaks in Article IV about "the inalienable right" of NPT members to develop nuclear energy "without discrimination," it explicitly circumscribes this right by demanding that it be exercised "in conformity" with the first and second articles.
For years, too little effort has been made to define what "in conformity" means. This is what President Bush tackled in his February 11 address. He rightly emphasized that nations seeking to develop peaceful nuclear energy have no need for either materials that can be used directly to fuel bombs--separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium--or the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants required to produce these materials. As such, he proposed that the world's leading nuclear suppliers of relatively safer lightly enriched uranium fuel only supply this fuel to nuclear energy-developing states that are willing to renounce trying to build enrichment and reprocessing facilities themselves. He further proposed that nuclear supplier states should refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment or technology to any state that does not already "possess full-scale functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants."
Beyond this, the President proposed to strengthen international efforts to interdict illicit nuclear shipments and procurement networks; do more to reduce the accessibility to nuclear weapons-usable materials; and tighten procedures at the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Finally, President Bush urged that within a year, no nuclear supplier should export nuclear equipment to any state that has not yet signed the new, tougher IAEA inspections agreement known as the Additional Protocol.
All of these proposals constitute a needed departure from nuclear "business as usual." They all give teeth to the NPT's prohibitions against the export and acquisition of nuclear weapons. They also constitute a useful extension of the calls by former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, nearly 30 years ago, to discourage the use of nuclear weapons-usable fuels for commercial purposes.
President Bush's proposals, though, should not be seen as being all that is required, but rather as first steps. In fact, several additional measures logically follow from the President's seven proposals and will be needed to assure their success. Building on the Bush proposals, the U.S., other nuclear suppliers, and like-minded states will also need to:
1. Suspend efforts now to sell controlled nuclear goods to countries that export nuclear commodities in defiance of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines;
2. View large civilian nuclear projects--including nuclear power and desalinization plants, large research reactors, and regional fuel cycle centers--with suspicion if they are not privately financed or approved after an open bidding process against less risky alternatives;
3. Starting with the U.S., but including Pakistan and India, formally get as many declared nuclear weapons states as possible to agree henceforth to not redeploy nuclear weapons onto any other state's soil in peacetime and to make the transfer of nuclear weapons-usable material to other nations illicit if the transfer is made for a purpose other than to dispose of the material or to make it less accessible;
4. Refuse to buy or sell any controlled nuclear items or materials from or to new states attempting to develop enrichment or reprocessing plants;
5. Demand that states that fail to declare nuclear facilities to the IAEA (as required by their safeguards agreement) dismantle them in order to come back into full compliance and disallow states that are not clearly in full compliance from legally leaving the NPT without first surrendering the nuclear capabilities they gained while NPT members;
6. Support U.N. adoption of a series of country-neutral rules that track the above recommendations to be applied to any nation that the IAEA and the United Nations Security Council cannot clearly find in full compliance with the NPT; and
7. Build on the successful precedent of Libya's nuclear renunciation by getting its neighbors--starting with Algeria--to shut down their largest nuclear facilities.
What do these proposals entail? How do they relate to the President's efforts? Why do they deserve attention now? To answer these questions, each proposal is examined more closely below.
1. Suspend efforts now to sell controlled nuclear goods to countries that export nuclear commodities in defiance of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines.
Nearly half of President Bush's seven nuclear nonproliferation proposals were aimed at restricting what nuclear suppliers can export under the guidelines of the NSG--a multilateral nuclear control regime. One of the most important of his proposals is "that by next year, only states that have signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to import equipment for the civilian nuclear programs."
This is a sensible restriction, but it ought not to wait. Indeed, its credibility may be undermined unless we speak up and act to back it now. In this regard, a clear test case is China's recently announced reactor sales to the world's worst proliferator, Pakistan--a nation that has neither allowed full-scope IAEA safeguards (as required by the NSG) nor signed the Additional Protocol. China announced January 27, 2004, that it intends to become a full-fledged member of the NSG. Yet, only weeks later, news reports emerged detailing Chinese plans to build Pakistan two large power reactors.
The NSG guidelines proscribe such sales: NSG members are not allowed to sell any such controlled nuclear items to states that do not allow the IAEA to inspect all of their nuclear facilities. Technically, of course, China may claim it can make these sales because it is not yet formally a member of the NSG. Yet this hardly recommends U.S. silence. Certainly, if we can't find anything sufficiently wrong to publicly protest these reactor sales to Pakistan--a country that would have difficulty justifying the financial extravagance of two new nuclear power plants, has the world's worst proliferation record, and is the least bound by nonproliferation pledges or agreements--on what basis could we protest any other nation's nuclear imports?
Yet, to date, there is no evidence that the U.S. or any of its allies have protested. Instead, our government apparently is preparing to do all that it can during Vice President Dick Cheney's April visit to Beijing to sell China a heavily U.S.-subsidized Westinghouse reactor design known as the AP 1000. This pitch could not be more poorly timed. Admittedly, the French and the Japanese are also trying to sell reactors to China, so competition exists. Still, it would make far more sense for the U.S. to protest China's sale to Pakistan and to urge Japan and France to join us in withholding nuclear sales to China until it drops its proposed Pakistani reactor bid.
China should at least be urged to hold off until Pakistan reveals its proliferation activities. Such an appeal is clearly within our power to pursue. To fail to do so now simply suggests that we are not serious about the President's proposal, about backing or strengthening the NSG, or about promoting nuclear restraint in general.
1. View large civilian nuclear projects--including nuclear power and desalinization plants, large research reactors, and regional fuel cycle centers--with suspicion if they are not privately financed or approved after an open bidding process against less risky alternatives.
Among the most important of President Bush's proposals are those that would restrict fresh reactor fuel exports to nations that fail to renounce enrichment and reprocessing, and to ban reprocessing and enrichment exports to states that do not already have "full-scale functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants." As the President noted in his February 11 NDU speech, these steps are essential to prevent new states from making nuclear weapons fuel.
This is not because we can detect covert reprocessing or enrichment activities in a timely fashion. As our experience with covert enrichment and reprocessing activities in Iran and North Korea demonstrates, we cannot. Nonetheless, it is still important to make new reprocessing and enrichment activities illicit, if only to prevent discovered covert reprocessors and enrichers from legally excusing themselves by claiming--as Iran did--that they merely "forgot" to notify the IAEA of their activities.
Making the mere possession of such facilities illicit should at least make exposed covert reprocessing and enrichment activities clearly out-of-bounds. However, the only surefire technical safeguard against suspect nations quickly acquiring nuclear weapons is to prevent them from acquiring significant amounts of fresh, lightly enriched fuel or from generating significant quantities of spent reactor fuel. Lightly enriched uranium can be fed into a covert enrichment line to make a bomb's worth of highly enriched uranium in a matter of days: Spent fuel can be covertly reprocessed to extract a bomb's worth of plutonium just as quickly. Both of these materials are part and parcel of nearly any large reactor's operation. This means that not only will we need a rule that will help make suspect reprocessing and enrichment-related facilities illicit, but we will need a country-neutral way to spotlight suspect nuclear reactors as well.
How might this be done? Fortunately, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of free markets and competition can help. As it turns out, many large commercial nuclear projects and all suspect nuclear projects in less developed nations are demonstrably uneconomical compared to less risky options. Nuclear power and desalinization plants have significantly higher capital costs than their non-nuclear alternatives. In poorly developed countries, the performance of these plants has been abysmal.
Given the surfeit of isotope-producing research reactors--nearly 300 are in operation in 69 countries worldwide--there is scarcely any economic justification for the further construction of additional large research reactors: One can import medical, agricultural, and industrial isotopes from existing machines and send one's scientists to do research much more cheaply than one can build a large research reactor. Virtually all of the existing reactors can be converted to run on non-weapons-useable fuels.
As for recent Department of Energy (DOE) and IAEA proposals to create regional reprocessing and enrichment parks, these too are a bad buy. Right now, we have more than enough enrichment capacity to supply lightly enriched fuel to the on-line civilian reactors. If anything, the lack of demand would suggest the need to further downsize existing enrichment capacity.
Reprocessing, meanwhile, is an uneconomical answer to a problem that doesn't exit: It makes much more sense, from a security and economic perspective, to store spent fuel in casks and to use fresh reactor fuel rather than to recycle weapons-usable plutonium for civilian reactor use.
What this suggests, then, is a simple tenet: Any large civilian nuclear project that is started before considering safer alternatives in an open international bidding process should be regarded as suspect. Certainly, Iran's power reactor and enrichment activities, as well as North Korea's entire program, Pakistan's import of Chinese reactors, Algeria's large research reactor, and Brazil's proposed uranium enrichment undertaking, would all fail this test. To make this guideline credible, however, the U.S. and its allies will have to apply it to their own civilian nuclear undertakings as well.
The good news is that we are well on our way to doing this. Germany and the United Kingdom have either terminated state support of their nuclear industry or established clear deadlines for doing so. Recently, the U.S. Congress refused to pass an energy bill that contained billions of dollars in guaranteed loans to utilities that might buy new reactors and also put aside hundreds of millions of dollars more to build a commercial-sized hydrogen-producing reactor. This year, the Department of Energy quietly killed plans to build commercial-sized versions of its Generation IV reactors.
We need to continue this sensible trend. Further federal funding of commercial-sized undertakings such as the Westinghouse AP1000 and the ill-starred $6 billion-plus mixed oxide plutonium disposition program should also cease. This should not be seen as anti-nuclear, but rather as anti-subsidized commercialization. Certainly, if it made sense for Congress and Ronald Reagan to oppose federal funding of such large and potentially dangerous energy projects on economic grounds 20 years ago, it makes even more sense today--after 9/11 and the clear lag now in nuclear demand.
1. Starting with the U.S., but including Pakistan and India, formally get as many declared nuclear weapons states as possible to agree henceforth to not redeploy nuclear weapons onto any other state's soil in peacetime and to make the transfer of nuclear weapons - usable material to other nations illicit if the transfer is made for a purpose other than to dispose of the material or to make it less accessible.
One of the most nettlesome nonproliferation challenges President Bush discussed in his February 11 NDU speech was reining in the nuclear proliferation activities of non-NPT states such as Pakistan. Islamabad's blatant proliferation activities technically broke no law. Even worse proliferation, however, is possible: There is reason to worry that a future Pakistan might transfer nuclear weapons to another country. Saudi Arabian officials are reported to be studying how they might acquire nuclear weapons from another country such as Pakistan.
What makes these plans plausible--besides Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's close security ties--is that they could be carried out legally under the NPT. The treaty, in fact, allows nuclear weapons to be transferred to non-weapons state members (e.g., to nations like Saudi Arabia) so long as the weapons remain under the control of the exporting state. This loophole was explicitly inserted into the NPT in the l960s by U.S. officials who were anxious to continue deploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on NATO's and Pacific allies' soil.
Today, keeping this loophole open no longer looks so attractive. In fact, the U.S. has already withdrawn its tactical nuclear weapons from foreign allied bases it had in the Pacific, including South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The reason is simple: With air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, nuclear-capable carrier-based aircraft, stealth bombers, and accurate submarine-launched and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles to quickly deliver nuclear weapons, there is no longer any need to base tactical nuclear weapons on foreign soil.
The U.S. is now withdrawing much of its military from Europe. As these troops are withdrawn and as concerns about nuclear terrorism and proliferation grow, the rationale for keeping U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in places like Germany will become weaker, and the desire to prevent other states from redeploying their nuclear weapons onto other states' soil will increase. To address this concern, it would be useful to close the loophole in the NPT that allows this.
The question is how. Some have suggested that we simply make these nations nuclear weapons state members of the NPT. The problem with this approach is that such a move would appear to reward states that have stayed out of the treaty and violated its tenets. A sensible alternative would be for the United States to work with as many nuclear weapons states as possible to get a formal agreement that, henceforth, no nation will redeploy nuclear weapons onto another nation's soil during peacetime. The U.S. could also try to get other nuclear weapons states to agree to make the redeployment of such weapons or the transfer of nuclear weapons-usable materials illicit so long as the transfer was for purposes other than disposing of these materials or making them less accessible.
If the U.S. agreed to impose such limits on itself, it could help persuade other nuclear weapons states--including those that have not yet signed the NPT--to agree to do so as well. Finally, one could match such diplomatic efforts with initiatives to get as many non-weapons states as possible to agree not to receive nuclear weapons in peacetime.
1. Refuse to buy or sell any controlled nuclear items or materials from or to new states attempting to develop enrichment or reprocessing plants.
President Bush proposed that nuclear supplier states not sell fresh fuel to nations that are unwilling to renounce reprocessing or enrichment, and that they should refuse to sell any enrichment or reprocessing technology and equipment to states that do not already possess "full-scale functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants." Implementing these rules would certainly help establish a norm against the further spread of commercial reprocessing and enrichment plants. What would be more effective in deterring new states from developing reprocessing or enrichment, however, would be to cut off the nuclear commercial intercourse with such states by getting the NSG membership, and as many other states as possible, to refuse to buy or sell any controlled nuclear commodities from or to new states attempting to develop enrichment or reprocessing plants.
Who would this rule hit hardest? Iran is a prime example. Nuclear officials in Iran claim that they intend to export reactor fuel from their uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication facilities.
If the U.S. is firm about what constitutes "full-scale functioning plants," Brazil and Argentina could also be affected. Brazil is about to launch a commercial enrichment effort at Resende. Officials there concede, however, that their effort would not be able to supply even 60 percent of Brazil's own fuel requirements until the year 2010. They have not even reached an agreement with the IAEA about the proper safeguarding of Brazil's enrichment facility. Still, Brazilian officials have already announced that they intend to export enriched uranium by 2014.
Certainly, if the U.S. and other like-minded nations grandfather Brazil's enrichment effort as being "full-scale and functioning" while demanding that Iran shut its facilities down, the hypocrisy would be more than just clumsy: It would undermine the credibility of the President's enrichment and reprocessing restrictions for any other country. As for Argentina, it is considering offering reprocessing services to states that buy its large export research reactors.
Neither of these countries' nuclear programs could survive in the short run without nuclear imports. More important, neither could credibly push their enrichment and reprocessing efforts without customers. If the U.S. is serious about achieving the President's goal of freezing the number of states that have reprocessing and enrichment plants, pursuing this complement to the President's proposals would be useful.
1. Demand that states that fail to declare nuclear facilities to the IAEA (as required by their safeguards agreement) dismantle them in order to come back into full compliance and disallow states that are not clearly in full compliance from legally leaving the NPT without first surrendering the nuclear capabilities they gained while NPT members.
The Bush Administration, indirectly by its actions and words in North Korea, Iraq, and Libya, has gone a long way toward establishing the rule that whenever a violating nation fails properly to declare nuclear facilities to the IAEA, it must dismantle them in order to come back into full compliance with its NPT obligations. What the U.S. should do now is to propose this requirement explicitly.
This would certainly be a helpful, country-neutral rule to have in place when dealing with countries like Iran. The U.S. should also make it clear that no nation that the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council is unable to clearly find in full compliance with the NPT will be allowed to leave the treaty legally without first surrendering all the nuclear capabilities it gained while a member of the NPT. The idea behind this is that one cannot enter into a contract, gain the means to violate it, proceed to do so (or announce the intent to do so), and not be held accountable.
Some U.S. government legal counsels have objected to this commonsense requirement out of fear that it might somehow raise questions about the legality of the U.S. withdrawing from treaty obligations, such as the ABM Treaty. Their concerns, however, are unfounded: The U.S. is a law-abiding nation that complies with its treaty obligations. If it takes actions inconsistent with a treaty, it only does so after it is no longer a member or because it has formally chosen not to be a party. This certainly was the case with the ABM Treaty.
1. Support U.N. adoption of a series of country-neutral rules that track the above recommendations to be applied to any nation that the IAEA and the United Nations Security Council cannot clearly find in full compliance with the NPT.
The idea here would be to take advantage of something that, so far, has frustrated U.S. and allied diplomats--the difficulty that the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council have in making definitive determinations. Rather than wait upon either of these bodies actually to find a specific country in clear violation of the NPT and then try to get a consensus to sanction, it would make far more sense to delineate in country-neutral terms and in advance what the minimal consequences should be for any country the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council cannot clearly find to be in full compliance. This approach has the clear advantage of being country-neutral and of forcing the IAEA and the U.N. Security Council to reach consensus only if they want to prevent action.
1. Build on the successful precedent of Libya's nuclear renunciation by getting its neighbors--starting with Algeria--to shut down their largest nuclear facilities.
President Bush has rightly spotlighted the success he has had in getting Libya to renounce its nuclear weapons program. The challenge now is figuring out how to establish this precedent as a practical nonproliferation standard that can be applied again in at least one other case. In this regard, neither North Korea nor Iran seem particularly promising prospects, since they are resisting cooperation--much less denuclearization.
The prospects, on the other hand, look much better closer to Libya itself. Specifically, now that Tripoli no longer has a nuclear program, it would seem reasonable for its neighbors to reciprocate by at least shutting down their largest nuclear plants.
Questions have been raised about Algeria's need for a second large research reactor. This reactor can make nearly a bomb's worth of plutonium per year; is located at a distant, isolated site; is surrounded by air defenses; and only makes sense if it is intended to make bombs. In fact, Algeria already has a second, smaller, less threatening research reactor in Algiers. Shutting down the larger plant at Ain Ousseara would save Algeria money and make everyone breathe easier.
Additionally, there is Egypt's large research reactor purchased from Argentina. It, too, can make nearly a bomb's worth of plutonium annually. Perhaps Egypt could offer to mothball this plant in exchange for Israel shutting down its large plutonium production reactor at Dimona. The latter is so old that it will take hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish it just to keep it operating. Israeli critics opposed to the continuing operation of the Dimona reactor have publicly called for its shutdown in the Knesset.
Certainly, progress on any of these fronts would be helpful in addressing other proliferation problems in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.
The point here, as with the other proposals above, is to build on the clear nonproliferation successes we now have. Certainly, if we do, we will be safer. If we don't, it is just as certain that we will be buying far more trouble than we can afford.
Henry Sokolski is Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C. These remarks are based on his testimony before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations on March 30, 2004.
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Kerry would change war on terror
April 19, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040418-113744-5087r.htm
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said yesterday that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action even as he pledged to remain committed to Iraq and to personally plead for international help in policing and rebuilding that nation.
"In order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law-enforcement cooperation in the world," the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort," he said. "And we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight."
Marc Racicot, chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign, said Mr. Kerry's formula won't work.
"Serving terrorists with legal papers will not win this war. This is a pre-9/11 attitude that turns a blind eye to the threats that face our country," he said.
In other comments on the show yesterday, Mr. Kerry stood by his statements that he received endorsements from numerous foreign leaders and made light of his 1971 assertion of having committed "atrocities" while serving in Vietnam.
Mr. Racicot also criticized Mr. Kerry for saying he would consider voting against funding for the war effort in the future, as he did last year, depending on the circumstances.
"This conditional support for the troops John Kerry voted to send to Iraq in the first place demonstrates a disturbing lack of judgment," Mr. Racicot said.
Mr. Kerry said a change of president also would help attract international efforts in stabilizing the situation in Iraq.
"It may well be that we need a new president, a breath of fresh air, to re-establish credibility with the rest of the world, so that we can have a believable administration as to how we proceed," he said.
In his appearance yesterday, Mr. Kerry also said he would uphold the trade embargo on Cuba, at least "for the moment," though he also suggested that he would lift U.S. limits on travel to the communist nation.
Four years ago, Mr. Kerry called for a re-evaluation of U.S. trade policy toward Cuba, but yesterday he said he since has become more attuned to what the Cuban-American community thinks about the issue.
"What I have done is sat down with members of the community and listened. And I find that there is a willingness within the community to begin to think about other alternatives and options," he said.
Under questioning from Tim Russert, Mr. Kerry defended his statement earlier this year that he has met foreign leaders who have told him that they want him to win this election.
An investigation by The Washington Times found no opportunities for Mr. Kerry to have had a face-to-face meeting with any foreign leader. Yesterday, Mr. Kerry did point to potential opportunities, but continued his campaign's refusal to identify names or specific opportunities.
"You can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader. There are plenty of places to meet people without traveling abroad," he said, adding that he "would be stupid" to name the leaders, because they still must deal with Mr. Bush.
Mr. Kerry said he still stands by his statement and challenged news organizations to investigate whether his point was correct.
"I invite you, I invite The Washington Times editorial, go to European, go to foreign capitals, travel in the world. Talk to any American businessman who has been abroad," he said. "Never has the United States of America been held in as low a regard internationally - and polls have shown this - as we are today. We're not trusted, and this administration is not liked."
Mr. Russert showed a clip of Mr. Kerry on "Meet the Press" in 1971, saying that in Vietnam: "I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed."
"You committed atrocities," Mr. Russert said yesterday. Mr. Kerry tried to interject some humor. "Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me," he said.
Mr. Kerry then said using the word "atrocities" and calling U.S. leaders "war criminals" were not the best choice of words.
"The words were honest, but, on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top," he said.
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With CIA Push, Movement to War Accelerated
Agency's Estimate of Saddam Hussein's Arsenal Became the White House's Rationale for Invasion
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22552-2004Apr18?language=printer
This is the second of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. (c) 2004.
On Jan. 2, 2002, CIA Director George J. Tenet met with Vice President Cheney -- at Cheney's request -- to brief him on what the agency could do in Iraq.
In the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Iraq was much less of a priority than terrorism for Tenet, but not for one of the agency officials who accompanied him to the meeting, the chief of the Iraqi Operations Group, a former covert operations officer who can be identified only by his nickname, Saul.
Within the CIA's Near East Division, which handled some of the hardest, most violent countries, the Iraqi Operations Group was referred to as "The House of Broken Toys." It was largely populated with new, green officers and problem officers, or old boys waiting for retirement. After taking it over in August 2001, Saul had begun a full review of where the CIA stood with Iraq.
At 43, Saul had worked for years in sensitive undercover posts as a case officer and senior operator in CIA stations around the world. Saul was born in a small town in Cuba; his father had been involved in one of the most spectacular CIA failures -- the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in which 1,200 Cuban exiles had been abandoned on the beach by their CIA sponsors. As Saul told associates, "I am here as the result of a failed CIA covert operation."
Now Saul had a blunt message for Cheney about covert operations and Saddam Hussein. He told Cheney that covert action would not remove Hussein. The CIA would not be the solution.
The one thing the dictator's regime was organized for was to stop a coup, he said. Hussein had taken power in a coup. He has put down coups. The son of a bitch knows what a coup is, Saul said. If you are an Iraqi military unit and you have the bullets to launch a coup, you don't have the gas to move your tanks. If you have gas, you don't have bullets. Nobody stays in power long enough to launch a coup.
Only a U.S. military operation and invasion that the CIA could support had a chance of ousting Hussein, Saul told Cheney. The agency had done a lessons-learned study of past Iraq covert operations, he said, and frankly the CIA was tainted.
"We've got a serious credibility problem," he said. The Kurds, the Shiites, former Iraqi military officers and probably most attuned people in Iraq knew the history of the CIA's cutting and running. To reestablish credibility, potential anti-Hussein forces would have to see a determined seriousness on the part of the United States. Preparations for a massive military invasion might send that signal, nothing else.
Saul laid out for Cheney the problems with standing up at the United Nations, talking negotiations and containment, while secretly telling the Saudis and Jordanians the United States was going to remove the regime covertly. They needed a single national policy that everyone supported and explained in the same way.
Another lesson was that the CIA couldn't sustain a covert action program for a lengthy period of time. The regime would find some of the human sources that the agency might recruit and roll them up. So they had to move fast.
Cheney was used to briefers coming to his office with ambitious declarations and promises that their department or agency would deliver. The CIA message, which Saul later delivered to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was the opposite, sobering, highly unusual in its judgment that it really could not do the job.
Saul was discovering that the CIA reporting sources inside Iraq were pretty thin.
What was thin?
"I can count them on one hand," Saul said, pausing for effect, "and I can still pick my nose."
In effectively casting a vote for military action as the only feasible way of removing Hussein, the CIA contributed to the gathering momentum that carried the United States to war in Iraq. It would make other contributions as well -- by successfully establishing a network of informants inside Iraq whose lives were in jeopardy as long as Hussein was in power; and by providing the evidence for what became the Bush administration's main rationale for the war: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Agents on the Ground in Iraq
With Tenet's approval, Saul, Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin and James L. Pavitt, the deputy director for operations, worked on a new Top Secret intelligence order for regime change in Iraq that Bush signed on Feb. 16, 2002. It directed the CIA to support the U.S. military in overthrowing Hussein and granted authority to support opposition groups and conduct sabotage operations inside Iraq.
The cost was set at $200 million a year for two years. The leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees were informed secretly. After some disputes in Congress, the budget was cut to $189 million for the first year.
Saul would be able to run what he called "offensive counterintelligence" operations to prevent Hussein's security apparatus from identifying CIA sources. But most important, the CIA could then work actively with anti-Hussein opposition forces inside Iraq and conduct paramilitary operations inside the country.
In March, Tenet met secretly with two individuals who would be critical to covert action inside Iraq: Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the leaders of the two main Kurdish groups in northern Iraq. The two controlled separate areas of a Kurdish region roughly the size of Maine. The areas were effectively autonomous from Hussein's Baghdad regime, but Iraqi military units were stationed just miles from the Kurdish strongholds and Hussein could easily send them to fight and slaughter the Kurds as he had done after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when they had risen up expecting U.S. protection, which was not provided.
Tenet had one message for Barzani and Talabani: The United States was serious, the military and the CIA were coming. It was different this time. The CIA was not going to be alone. The military would attack. Bush meant what he said. It was a new era. Hussein was going down. Of course, Tenet did not know if what he was saying was true, whether war was going to happen. But he had to raise the expectation of the Kurds to win cooperation and engagement. He was about to send some of his paramilitary and case officers into a very dangerous environment.
Tenet had a giant lever: money. He could pay millions, tens of millions of dollars in $100 bills. If Defense Department civilians or officers, or State Department diplomats, paid money to get anyone to act or change policy, it could be illegal bribery. The CIA was the one part of the U.S. government that was authorized to pay off people.
Tenet had told Bush that some money was going to be paid on speculation in order to establish relationships and demonstrate seriousness. And that not all of it might look as if it had been well spent. It was like chum, small pieces of fish scattered on the water to attract the big ones. In intelligence, you often had to chum far and wide. It was one more thing the president and Tenet bonded over. Bush, one of the biggest political fundraisers of all time, and Tenet, the U.S. government covert moneyman, knew the restorative power of cash.
Saul knew solid on-the-ground intelligence and effective lethal operations could not be done from the sidelines. Though the CIA had a massive effort going on all of Iraq's borders, the agency needed to be inside. Saul sent out messages seeking volunteers. At least one entire CIA station from the chief on down volunteered. Saul drafted Tim, a former Navy SEAL fluent in Arabic who was a covert operations officer at a CIA station in the region, to lead one of two paramilitary teams he was sending into northern Iraq.
Saul issued Tim oral instructions: I want Hussein's military penetrated. I want the intel service penetrated. I want the security apparatus penetrated. I want tribal networks inside Iraq who will do things for us -- paramilitary, sabotage, ground intelligence. Work the relationship with the Kurds. See if it is feasible to train and arm them so they can tie down Hussein's forces in the north.
In July, Tim and a team of CIA operatives made the 10-hour overland drive from Turkey into Iraq in a convoy of Land Cruisers, Jeeps and a truck to set up base in Sulaymaniyah in the mountainous Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq. In October, they returned to the same area carrying tens of millions of dollars in $100 bills stored in heavy cardboard boxes. They set up base in a lime-green building that they christened "Pistachio."
Find the weak points in the regime and push, Saul instructed. War was coming.
It was not long before they began to recruit some key sources. One was an officer in Hussein's Special Security Organization (SSO), who produced a CD-ROM with 6,000 SSO personnel files -- names, backgrounds, assignments and many personnel photos.
So rare, so mind-blowing were the informants that Tim recruited that the CIA gave them the crypt or secret designation DB/ROCKSTARS. (DB was the designator for Iraq.) Tim bought about 100 hand-held satellite telephones at $700 each and handed out phones to 87 ROCKSTAR agents from Umm Qasr in the south to Mosul in the north. The ROCKSTARS could then call in real-time intelligence to a phone bank that Tim's case officers manned.
For Tenet, the new factor was the absence of doubt at the top. Bush displayed no hesitation or uncertainty. It might be prudent to overrule an earlier decision, step back and debate the merits, but Bush was not that way. Tenet was finding that you paid the greatest price by doubting. There were often a hundred reasons not to act. Some people got overwhelmed by problems and did 50 permutations about why it was insoluble, ending up nowhere. But if you were not afraid of what you had to do, then you would work your way through the problems.
When he took problems to Bush, the president asked, Well, what's a solution? How do you fix it? How do you take the next step? How do you get around this? It was a new ethos for the intelligence business. Suddenly there seemed to be no penalty for taking risks and making mistakes.
Unequivocal Judgments Needed
The CIA had never declared categorically that it believed Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The formal December 2000 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that Hussein "retained a small stockpile" of chemical warfare agents -- not actual warheads -- perhaps up to 100 metric tons, and "might" have precursors for 200 metric tons more. This conclusion was drawn largely from accounting discrepancies between what Iraq had previously told U.N. weapons inspectors it possessed, and what records showed had been destroyed.
The classified NIE on biological weapons concluded that Iraq "continued" to work on development and was poised to have them.
Significantly, in public testimony before the Senate intelligence committee on Feb. 6, 2002, on worldwide threats, Tenet had not mentioned Iraq until page 10 of his 18-page statement, devoting only three paragraphs to Iraq.
Senate Democrats pressed the administration to provide a new comprehensive intelligence report or estimate on Iraq, and Tenet agreed reluctantly to do a rushed NIE on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability in the fall of 2002. The National Intelligence Council, a group of representatives from the key agencies, began sifting, sorting and assessing the raw intelligence. The council included the CIA; the National Security Agency, which does communications intercepts; the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency; the State Department's intelligence bureau; the Energy Department's intelligence arm; and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which performs satellite and other overhead reconnaissance.
The group had a massive amount of material, much of it old and not very reliable. Iraq was still one of the hardest intelligence targets. Hussein had improved his methods of deception and hiding his weapons programs -- whatever they might be -- underground. CIA human intelligence inside Iraq was still weak, and paramilitary teams such as those headed by Tim in northern Iraq had found nothing.
A National Intelligence Estimate is just that: an estimate. During the Cold War it became the document of choice because it was designed to give the president and his national security team an overall assessment of the capability and intentions of real threats, such as the Soviet Union and China. The format is designed for busy policymakers. So a long NIE of 50 or 100 pages has a kind of executive summary at the front called "Key Judgments" in which the intelligence analysts would try to give a bottom-line answer. Would Castro be overthrown? Would Syria attack Israel? Would the Communists win in Nicaragua? Over the decades there had been much criticism of NIEs by policymakers -- and presidents -- because the authors hedge and the "on-this-hand, on-the-other-hand" reports are littered with maddening qualifications. No matter what happened, someone could find a sentence or phrase in the NIE that had covered such a possibility.
Stuart A. Cohen, an intelligence professional for 30 years, was acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the Iraq assessment of WMD was being prepared. He confided to a colleague that he wanted to avoid equivocation, if possible. If the Key Judgments used words such as "maybe" or "probably" or "likely," the NIE would be "pablum," he said. Ironclad evidence in the intelligence business is scarce and analysts need to be able to make judgments beyond the ironclad, Cohen felt. The evidence was substantial but nonetheless circumstantial; no one had proof of a vial of biological agents or weapons, or a smoking vat of chemical warfare agents. Yet coupled with the incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein had had WMD in the past -- U.N. weapons inspectors in the 1990s had found them, tested them and destroyed them -- the conclusion seemed obvious.
The alternative view was that Hussein no longer had such weapons. No one wanted to say that because so much intelligence would have to be discounted. The real and best answer was that he probably had WMD, but that there was no proof and the case was circumstantial. Given the leeway to make a "judgment," which in the dictionary definition is merely an "opinion," the council was heading toward a strong declaration. No pablum.
Analysts at the CIA had long discussed the issue of avoiding equivocation. At times, many, including John McLaughlin, felt that they had to dare to be wrong to be clearer in their judgments. That summer McLaughlin had told the National Security Council principals that the CIA thought it had a pretty good case that Hussein had WMD, but that others would demand more direct proof. The CIA did not have an anthrax sample, and didn't have a chemical weapons sample in hand.
Intelligence analysts and officials worked on the estimate for three weeks. On Oct. 1, 2002, Tenet chaired the National Foreign Intelligence Board, the heads of all the intelligence agencies that released and certified the NIEs. No one disputed the central conclusions. Tenet felt he had a group of smart people at the table and that they knew how to craft the estimate properly.
The Top Secret 92-page document that was released said under the Key Judgments, without qualification, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." From that attention-getting assertion, the NIE takes a slow march back down the hill, with muted but clear equivocations. One hint of uncertainty was the second paragraph in the Key Judgments. "We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts." It is the kind of statement that might be included in any intelligence report -- only a portion of anything is ever seen. In the end, the hedging and backing off telegraphed immense doubt.
The State Department intelligence bureau filed an 11-page annex outlining its objections and disagreements with the NIE, particularly on nuclear weapons, saying the evidence did not add up to "a compelling case" that Iraq has "an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."
Failing to Persuade the 'Jury'
On Dec. 19, 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked Tenet and McLaughlin how strong the case was on weapons of mass destruction and what could be said publicly. The agency's October national estimate that had concluded that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons had been out for more than two months; the congressional resolutions supporting war had passed by nearly 3 to 1; and the U.N. Security Council, where a weapons inspection resolution had passed 15 to 0, was actively engaged in inspections inside Iraq. Still something was missing. Even Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had commented recently on the inconclusive nature of judgments about Hussein's WMD.
Two days later, Tenet and McLaughlin went to the Oval Office. The meeting was for presenting "The Case" on WMD as it might be presented to a jury with Top Secret security clearances. There was great expectation. In addition to the president, Cheney, Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. attended.
With some fanfare, McLaughlin stepped up to brief with a series of flip charts. This was the rough cut, he indicated, still highly classified and not cleared for public release. The CIA wanted to reserve on what would be revealed to protect sources and detection methods if there was no military conflict.
When McLaughlin concluded, there was a look on the president's face of, What's this? And then a brief moment of silence.
"Nice try," Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."
Card was also underwhelmed. The presentation was a flop. In terms of marketing, the examples didn't work, the charts didn't work, the photos were not gripping, the intercepts were less than compelling.
Bush turned to Tenet. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"
From the end of one of the couches in the Oval Office, Tenet rose up, threw him arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" the director of central intelligence said.
Bush pressed. "George, how confident are you?"
Tenet, a basketball fan who attended as many home games of his alma mater Georgetown University as possible, leaned forward and threw his arms up again. "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"
It was unusual for Tenet to be so certain. From McLaughlin's presentation, Card was worried that there might be no "there there," but Tenet's double reassurance on the slam dunk was memorable and comforting. Cheney could think of no reason to question Tenet's assertion. He was, after all, the head of the CIA and would know the most. The president later recalled that McLaughlin's presentation "wouldn't have stood the test of time." But, said Bush, Tenet's reassurance -- "That was very important."
"Needs a lot more work," Bush told Card and Rice. "Let's get some people who've actually put together a case for a jury." He wanted some lawyers, prosecutors if need be. They were going to have to go public with something.
The president told Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."
Libby Outlines the U.S. Case
Tenet and McLaughlin made it clear they did not want to write a speech for a political appointee or an elected official. That would be crossing the line. They cleared speeches for facts. They also did not want to write a document that had any sales or marketing element. So the result was the driest, most clinical account, with footnotes specifying the sourcing. The text, 40 pages, was sent to the White House on Jan. 22, 2003, specifying that it was still highly classified.
The president was determined to hand the evidence over to experienced lawyers who could use it to make the best possible case. The document was given to Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley (Yale Law '72) and Cheney's chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (Columbia Law '75). They visited the CIA and posed a series of questions that the agency answered in writing.
As far as Libby was concerned, the CIA had made the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and significant terrorist ties. The CIA had been collecting intelligence on Iraqi WMD for decades. There was no doubt where the agency stood: The October NIE had said Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, and Tenet had declared the case a slam dunk. Libby believed that the agency, which had the hard job of sifting and evaluating so much information, at times missed or overlooked potentially important material, intelligence that might not be definitive, but could add to the mosaic.
On Saturday, Jan. 25, Libby gave a lengthy presentation in the Situation Room to Rice, Hadley, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, Wolfowitz, White House communications director Dan Bartlett and speechwriter Michael Gerson. Though she had formally left the White House staff, Karen Hughes was there. White House political director Karl Rove was in and out of the meeting.
Holding a thick sheaf of paper, Libby outlined the latest version of the case against Hussein. He began with a long section on satellite, intercept and human intelligence showing the efforts at concealment and deception. Things were being dug up, moved and buried. No one knew for sure what it was precisely, but the locations and stealth fit the pattern of WMD concealment. He began each section with blunt conclusions -- Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, was producing and concealing them; his ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network were numerous and strong.
Libby said that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, was believed to have met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer and cited intelligence of as many as four meetings. The others knew the CIA had evidence of two meetings perhaps, and that there was no certainty about what Atta had been doing in Prague or whether he had met with the Iraqi official. Libby talked for about an hour.
Armitage was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads.
On the other hand, Wolfowitz, who had been convinced years ago of Iraq's complicity in anti-American terrorism, thought Libby presented a strong case. He subscribed to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's notion that lack of evidence did not mean something did not exist.
The most important response came from Karen Hughes. As a communications exercise, she said, it didn't work. The sweeping conclusions at the head of each section were too much. The president, she said, wanted it to be like the old television series "Dragnet": "Just the facts." Let people draw their own conclusions.
So who then should present the public case? Rice and Hadley pondered that. The case would have to be made to the United Nations, so the chief diplomat, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, was the logical choice. Hadley believed there were additional reasons to choose Powell. First, to have maximum credibility, it would be best to go counter to type and everyone knew that Powell was soft on Iraq, that he was the one who didn't want to go. Second, Powell was conscious of his credibility, and his reputation. He would examine the intelligence carefully. Third, when Powell was prepared, he was very persuasive.
"I want you to do it," Bush told the secretary of state. "You have the credibility to do it." Powell was flattered to be asked to do what no one else could.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
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Special-Interest Add-Ons Weigh Down Tax-Cut Bill
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22581-2004Apr18?language=printer
Congress's task seemed simple enough: Repeal an illegal $5 billion-a-year export subsidy and replace it with some modest tax breaks to ease the pain on U.S. exporters.
But out of that imperative has emerged one of the most complex, special-interest-riddled corporate tax bills in years, lawmakers, Senate aides and tax lobbyists say. The 930-page epic is packed with $170 billion in tax cuts aimed at cruise-ship operators, foreign dog-race gamblers, NASCAR track owners, bow-and-arrow makers and Oldsmobile dealers, to name a few. There is even a $94 million break for a single hotel in Sioux City, Iowa.
Even one of the tax lobbyists involved in drafting it conceded the bill "has risen to a new level of sleaze."
"I said a few months ago, any lobbyist worth his salt has something in this bill," said the lobbyist, who would only speak candidly on condition of anonymity. "Now you see what I'm talking about."
Senate tax aides say not even the tax bill's main architect, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), supports all of the provisions that have been slipped in to win passage. But, they say, the legislation still achieves its original goals. By repealing the export subsidy, it would force the European Union to lift retaliatory tariffs on a variety of U.S.-made goods. It would effectively lower the tax rate paid by ailing domestic manufacturers, and it would somewhat simplify the Byzantine tax system on overseas earnings of U.S companies.
Between the special-interest provisions are also some of the most ambitious curbs on corporate tax abuses to emerge since Enron Corp. imploded 21/2 years ago. The bill would ramp up penalties on corporate tax scofflaws, untie the Internal Revenue Service's hands to pursue more tax shelters, come down hard on affluent individuals who renounce their citizenship for tax purposes, and virtually eliminate the tax benefit for companies that transfer their "headquarters" t