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NUCLEAR
Japan's TEPCO sees better year after safety scandal
Koizumi gambles on progress in Pyongyang nuclear talks
U.S. considers reactor deal with North Korea
U.S. Rejects N.Korea Bid to Resume Building Reactors
'Hot' water at Santa Susana
Energy Department plans Pit 4 dig ...
SRS waste plan poses risk to environment
Tennessee is a rising star in supercomputing
Nuclear Waste Perspectives - Part II
MILITARY
Karzai Attempts Diplomacy With Afghan Warlords
Military to rule Nigerian state hit by religious violence
Pentagon Laser Project Exceeds Cost Estimates
Senate to Consider BioShield Measure
Capability of Boeing anti-missile project unknown, GAO says
Democrats Criticize Management Contracts
Senate OKs $5.6B for Chemical Attacks
Sistani Demands Exit of Najaf
U.S. Military Says Strike in Western Iraq Killed Up to 40
Fighting Continues in Holy Iraq City Despite Protest by Shiites
Israelis Kill 19 In Gaza Raids
Israeli Shells Hit Crowd of Palestinians, Killing at Least 9
ISRAEL'S MILITARY DEPLOYS LARGEST FORCE SINCE 1967
Death and Rage in Gaza
News Agency Employees Detail Abuse by U.S. Forces
Officers Say U.S. Colonel at Abu Ghraib Prison Felt Intense Pressure
UN Council Rebukes Israel on Demolitions
3 to Be Arraigned in Prison Abuse
First Soldier Pleads Guilty in Iraq Prisoner-Abuse Case
Abuse Inquiry Focuses on New Head of Iraq Jails
Army General Says U.S. Has 75 Prison Abuse Cases
Army Covering Up Serial Prisoner Abuse' Says US Soldier
U.S. Military Vows to Keep Afghan Jails Secret
Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. to Review Detainees' Cases
Lawmakers Push Agency to Develop ID Cards
Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq
U.S. Barred Legal Review of Detentions, Lawyer Says
State Troopers Join Terror Fight
Investigator or obstructionist?
Police Shootings Shake Austin
POLITICS
Clintonistas and September 11
U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure
9/11 Panel Cites N.Y. Communication Lapses
2 Generals Deny Issuing Orders to Allow Prison Abuse in Iraq
Group Cancels Events for GOP Convention
No Consensus on Iraq Bioweapons Labs -White House
ENERGY
Energy secretary to push for more oil
OTHER
U.S. Park Views Still in Haze
Probe Targets Government Scientists' Consulting
ACTIVISTS
Stop A High-level Nuclear Dump at Savannah River!
Greenpeace conspired to illegally board ship, says U.S. government
Black is for mourning
Berg father backs anti-war stance
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- japan
Japan's TEPCO sees better year after safety scandal
REUTERS JAPAN:
May 19, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25159/story.htm
TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , Japan's largest power utility, reported a fall in annual profit yesterday but said it expected earnings to improve as it emerges from a safety scandal that forced it to close its nuclear plants.
The supplier of power to the Tokyo region - which consumes more electricity than Italy - said it expected revenues to rise 3.6 percent in the year ahead to 5.03 trillion yen ($43.95 billion).
Electricity sales were forecast to rise 2.2 percent to 282 billion kilowatt hours.
After admitting in 2002 that it falsified data on maintenance checks, TEPCO was forced to shut down its nuclear reactors by April last year and consume massive quantities of oil and gas to run thermal generators.
It has since restarted 12 of its 17 reactors.
In addition to the safety scandal, TEPCO's earnings were hit by a cool summer and a mild winter that reduced demand for air-conditioning and heating.
TEPCO forecast consolidated net profit to climb 77 percent to 265 billion yen this business year, which beat an analysts' consensus estimate of 220 billion yen from Reuters Research.
Last year's result of 149.55 billion yen came in 9.5 percent under its 2002/03 result of 165 billion yen when it booked securities-related losses.
TEPCO said that shut-down related costs came in at 310 billion yen, adding that its decision to adopt early new accounting rules for valuing fixed assets had brought last year's result below its November forecast of 175 billion yen.
Oil purchases hurt as TEPCO consumed 5.85 million kilolitres of c-grade fuel in the year ended March, a jump of 43 percent and used 3.77 million kilolitres of crude oil, up 26 percent.
Soaring oil prices would hurt but the utility, unlike its U.S. and European peers, relies mainly on nuclear energy.
It also buys most of its oil at fixed rates on long-term contracts and is still benefiting from industry protection, meaning it can pass on its costs to its customers. The company said it expected its nuclear plant utilisation rate to rise to an average 70 percent this business year from 26.3 percent the year before.
TEPCO shares, a core holding for most Japanese fund managers, have risen 16 percent from a low near 2,000 yen last November partly on hopes that it will further solidify its dominant position with further deregulation of the electricity market.
They remain just under 2,400 yen, a level reached before news of safety problems began to appear in August 2002, and yesterday they closed up 0.43 percent prior to the earnings announcement.
----
Koizumi gambles on progress in Pyongyang nuclear talks
By Linda Sieg
REUTERS, TOKYO
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/05/19/2003156143
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will win kudos at home if he re-unites the families of kidnapped Japanese as a result of his upcoming summit in Pyongyang, but he needs to make progress in the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs to earn global applause as well.
Koizumi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on Saturday to seek both a breakthrough in the dispute over the Japanese abductees and progress in deadlocked six-party talks on the communist state's nuclear arms program.
"I think the prime minister has a very strong determination to act in a very proactive way to bring about peace and stability in the region," a government source said.
"We have no intention whatsoever of putting the question of nuclear weapons on the shelf," the source added.
Working level talks on the nuclear crisis ended in Beijing on Saturday with little apparent success in narrowing gaps between the two main protagonists, the US and North Korea. The other participants were South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
`Very little progress'
The nuclear question is the delicate part," said Masao Okonogi, a Korea specialist at Keio University in Tokyo.
"There was little progress at the working talks and it is very hard for North Korea to compromise with the US. Conversely, there is a chance that Kim wants to use Japan as a messenger, a mediator, and so will say something to Koizumi," he said.
North Korea wants compensation for giving up its nuclear arms program, with a deal for a freeze as a first step, and says it has the right to pursue nuclear projects for peaceful purposes.
The US wants North Korea to abandon completely both a program to make weapons-grade plutonium and a uranium enrichment program that Pyongyang now says does not exist.
"It's very hard to expect North Korea to accept in talks with Japan the demand for complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling that it has rejected in the six-way talks," defense policy analyst Satoshi Morimoto said in a TV talk show last weekend.
But he added: "While not accepting complete dismantle-ment, North Korea may show a more positive stance toward freezing its nuclear program."
The latest crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions emerged on October 2002, when US officials said Pyongyang had confessed to pursuing a project to enrich uranium for weapons.
One more time
That was just one month after Koizumi's first summit in Pyongyang, where Kim made the stunning admission that his agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies.
Five Japanese abductees then came home to Japan, but had to leave behind their seven North Korean-born children and an American spouse, who Washington says was a defector.
Japan wants all the relatives to be allowed to come to Japan. It also wants better information about eight abductees Pyongyang says are dead and another two Tokyo believes were also kid-napped.
Kim also promised Koizumi in 2002 that North Korea would keep its international pledges about its atomic ambitions.
But after the October disclosure by US officials -- later denied by North Korea -- Pyongyang pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelled UN inspectors and took a plutonium plant out of mothballs.
Talks on establishing diplomatic ties with Japan -- a prerequisite for Tokyo to give North Korea's struggling economy large-scale aid -- also stalled.
North Korea may now hope that by showing some flexibility on the nuclear issue to Koizumi, it can get Japan to help persuade the US to soften its tough stance, analysts said.
Mixed signals
The US publicly welcomed the planned Pyongyang summit despite suggestions it was not in favor of the meeting, since the trip might imply that Japan was giving some sort of approval to North Korea's administration before the nuclear dispute was resolved.
But Koizumi must take care not to give the impression Japan is parting ways with Washington on the matter, analysts said.
"The summit is an opportunity for Prime Minister Koizumi to tell Kim just how vital it is to resolve the nuclear problem," said Shunji Yanai, a former ambassador to the US.
Whether Pyongyang will make any concession is hard to predict and expectations in some quarters are low.
"If the two countries can make any kind of breakthrough [on the abductees] from the visit, it would allow them to focus more on the nuclear issue. This could create more favorable circumstances for the six-way talks," said Kim Kwang-yong, a professor at Hanyang University in Seoul.
"But the impact would still be limited because the nuclear issue is basically an issue between the US and North Korea," he said.
-------- korea
U.S. considers reactor deal with North Korea
May 19, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040518-115636-2708r.htm
The United States said it would consider again supplying North Korea with a light-water nuclear reactor as part of recent talks in Beijing, according to Bush administration officials.
The discussion came during a meeting at the six-party talks last week between Joseph DeTrani, the top U.S. representative to the talks, and his North Korean counterpart, Ri Gun.
"The North Koreans raised it," said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "They said, 'If we address the [highly enriched uranium] program, what would that mean for the light-water reactor program?' "
The private discussion, part of the working group talks on North Korea's nuclear arms program, also was the first time since 2002 that North Koreans acknowledged their covert uranium-based nuclear program. Publicly, North Korea has denied having a uranium-enrichment program.
Mr. DeTrani responded in the talks that providing the light-water reactor is possible and could be "one element" of a U.S. policy response, if the North Koreans abandoned their nuclear arms program.
However, Mr. DeTrani informed North Koreans that before the reactor deal could be discussed, Pyongyang would have to rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to return to monitor North Korean nuclear activities.
North Korea pulled out of the nonproliferation accord in January 2003 and expelled IAEA inspectors in December 2002.
The United States, Japan and South Korea agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors as part of the 1994 Agreed Framework, negotiated by the Clinton administration. The reactors - which use ordinary water instead of "heavy water" containing the hydrogen isotope deuterium - are designed to be less useful for making nuclear weapons.
The 1994 agreement was supposed to have halted Pyongyang's development of nuclear arms but was abandoned after North Korea's disclosure to a U.S. diplomat in October 2002 that it was working on uranium enrichment, a process that would allow North Korea to produce fuel for nuclear bombs.
The agreement called for supplying the reactors and fuel oil to North Korea but was put on hold after the disclosure of the secret uranium-enrichment effort. Concrete was poured for the foundation of the first reactor in August 2002. Construction was suspended - but not canceled - in December 2002.
The offer of the reactor last week set off interagency disputes between Bush administration officials who oppose making any deals with North Korea and others who favor compromise.
Within interagency councils, Defense Department officials generally have been opposed to making any concessions to North Koreans. State Department officials, specifically those in the East Asian bureau, are more supportive of reaching a new agreement.
"We've been that route before," said one U.S. official familiar with the talks who opposes any suggestion of giving North Korea a reactor.
This official said it appeared Mr. DeTrani went beyond the very limited talking points, prepared during U.S. interagency discussions, that prevent him from discussing concessions such as the reactor.
A second administration official said that Mr. DeTrani's discussion of the reactor with the North Koreans did not undermine the tough stance of the U.S. side at the talks.
The U.S. side is insisting that before any concessions are made to North Korea, Pyongyang must completely dismantle all its nuclear arms programs and provide ways to verify that the programs have been dismantled.
At the White House, a senior administration official said the U.S. policy toward the North Korean nuclear program "remains unchanged" in advocating a complete end to the program.
As for discussion of the light-water reactor program, the senior official said: "We see no future for the light-water project."
Henry Sokolski, director of the private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said any discussion of resuming the light-water reactor deal with North Korea is a bad idea.
"I think we should leave bad enough alone," Mr. Sokolski said in an interview. "This is no way to improve any aspect of the crisis. This is literally a radioactive idea that should be kept away from all people who care about keeping peace on the [Korean] peninsula for the future. If we are going to bribe them, find something else."
Mr. Sokolski said that the only thing that giving the North Koreans a light-water reactor would do is "increase the uncertainty of how many bombs' worth of plutonium they can produce."
"There is no way we should be going back to this," he said. "We were good enough to unplug this."
The six-party talks ended Friday with no real progress in reaching an agreement. No details of the secret talks have been public until now.
Publicly, Mr. DeTrani told reporters in Beijing that the talks were a "good meeting."
Asked if progress had been made, Mr. DeTrani said: "Yes, definitely." He did not elaborate.
The U.S. position remained that North Korea would not get any concessions until it carries out a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling," a position officials call CVID.
North Korea's chief negotiator, Ri Gun, told reporters that negotiators backed Pyongyang's call for aid in exchange for freezing the country's nuclear program.
"One thing that has been confirmed is that there is a shared view that we must get compensation when we freeze our nuclear weapons development plan," Mr. Ri told reporters in Beijing last week.
"But the United States kept demanding our promise of CVID, and there has been a shared view that this is the basic hurdle in discussions," he said. "We will, however, continue to participate in the talk process with patience."
--------
U.S. Rejects N.Korea Bid to Resume Building Reactors
May 19, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has rejected a North Korean push for a resumption of a nuclear power project in negotiations to dismantle its suspected nuclear arms programs, officials said on Wednesday.
In talks last week, the reclusive communist state offered to freeze its own nuclear activities in exchange for a U.S.-led consortium restarting construction of two light-water reactors, the officials said.
``We did not, I would say, welcome or entertain in any way that idea,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said. ``As a matter of policy ... we do not see a future for the light-water reactor project.''
The United States, which suspects North Korea has built nuclear weapons, has insisted it will not discuss any concessions unless the energy-starved country commits to completely dismantling its nuclear programs.
The rejection underlined how far the United States remains from resolving the nuclear crisis despite several face-to-face negotiations with a country President Bush has bracketed in an ``axis of evil'' with prewar Iraq and Iran.
``Before we talk about any one aspect of the program, we're going to want to get recognition that complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement is the agreed-upon goal,'' Ereli said.
That position and North Korea's resistance ensured last week's discussions ended with no more than an agreement on continuing dialogue as the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea seek to end the North's programs.
The power consortium, KEDO, had been building the reactors, which could not be used to make weapons, as reward for the communist state's pledge in 1994 to freeze its own nuclear program.
Funded by the United States and its allies, KEDO suspended its work last year to try to persuade North Korea to end its suspected nuclear weapons program after Washington said it had failed to make good on its 1994 agreement.
``It's deja vu all over again. It is a non-starter,'' a State Department official who asked not to be named said of North Korea's bid.
In keeping with its tactic of avoiding a showdown with an unpredictable nation, the United States quietly dismissed the offer, the official said.
``We didn't bang our fist against the table to reject it and I don't think they really expected to get anything out of it.
``They are offering to freeze their nuclear activities as if that is the maximum they can give. It's just their tactic to try to offer the minimum possible and seek a benefit for it,'' he added.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
'Hot' water at Santa Susana
High-level radioactivity found in groundwater at Rocketdyne lab
By Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2159479,00.html
High levels of radioactivity were found for the first time in groundwater at the Santa Susana Field Lab where nuclear reactors were tested beginning in the late 1940s, federal officials said Wednesday. Officials said the contamination does not pose a risk to the public or neighbors of the facility located in the Simi Hills above Chatsworth, but longtime critics of the operations and Department of Energy cleanup efforts questioned why the radioactive material was only showing up now after a 15-year cleanup effort.
The Daily News first disclosed in 1989 that a DOE survey had found massive radioactive and chemical contamination problems at the lab, triggering the effort.
'They have told us over and over and over again that they have no radioactivity showing up above a trip level at the site," said Dan Hirsch, president of the nuclear watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap. "(The public) should be concerned about what else may be there that Boeing and the Department of Energy hasn't found yet."
Groundwater samples taken in March show tritium at 80,000 picocuries per liter, or four times the national drinking water limit. The contamination was caused by nuclear research conducted at the lab.
"We have not seen levels of tritium at these concentrations before," said Mike Lopez, DOE project manager. The federal government funded nuclear testing at the lab, which was run by Rocketdyne, now a division of Boeing, from the 1950s through the 1980s and is now cleaning the property for future uses, which could include homes.
"We've been reviewing our data to see if there are any gaps in what we know. We found tritium. To me, it shows our process is working," Lopez said.
Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen with a half-life of 12 years, will degrade and meet drinking water standards in 25 years. It has been found before at low levels around the lab.
In 1991, it was found at the Brandeis Bardin Institute, a Jewish retreat and camp on the Simi Valley edge of the lab. The highest level was 5,400 picocuries per liter, well below the EPA's limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter.
In 1993, lab officials found elevated levels of tritium, along with strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium 238, in soil samples from Brandies Bardin taken near the lab property line. The readings again were considered low enough to not pose a health threat.
Officials with the Boeing Co., which owns the lab, said the tritium findings should be no surprise.
Earlier tests were conducted at the edge of the lab property or on neighboring property and the results always showed low levels of tritium.
The higher tritium levels were found after drilling three new wells near the old nuclear reactor site. One well showed tritium and two wells showed hits of chemical contamination, including trichloroethylene at 15 times the national limit.
"We're more likely to find higher concentrations closer to the source," said Majelle Lee with Boeing. "Again there is not an exposure to people. It's not used as drinking water and there's additional work to be done to create the characterization of it."
The Department of Energy will hold a public meeting to discuss the tritium findings at 6:30 p.m. June 3 at the Rancho Santa Susana Community Center at 5005 Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley.
Kerry Cavanaugh, (818) 713-3746 kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com
-------- idaho
Energy Department plans Pit 4 dig ...
Project follows successful results of Pit 9 test project
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
By Jennifer Sandmann
Magic Valley Times-News writer
http://www.magicvalley.com/news/localstate/index.asp?StoryID=9921
TWIN FALLS -- The Energy Department plans to dig up more radioactive waste threatening the regional aquifer following the success of a long-awaited test project.
For nearly a decade the public has heard about Pit 9. It became the mark of failed efforts and expensive delays in efforts to dig up buried nuclear waste in Idaho.
But success at Pit 9 finally arrived this year -- eight months ahead of schedule.
Now Pit 4 is up for discussion.
It's another burial pit at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls. Pit 4 contains Cold War-era nuclear weapons production waste shipped to Idaho from the Rocky Flats weapons lab near Denver. Waste in the project dig area was buried between 1966 and 1967.
The INEEL targeted half an acre of the burial pit for retrieval because it is known to contain a high concentration of transuranic waste including plutonium, beryllium and americium. It also contains uranium and volatile chemicals used as solvents and degreasers in weapons production.
Pit 4 contains about 7 percent of the transuranic waste buried in the entire landfill, said Jeff Perry, a project manager for waste retrieval.
Experience gleaned from Pit 9 excavation paved the way for Pit 4.
"We found out two things that were really important," Perry said.
Pit 9 project managers were concerned about over-exposing workers to radiation, primarily from airborne contaminants, he said. A misting system was used effectively to knock down contaminants contained inside a structure that had a ventilation system equipped with HEPA filters.
And a camera operator was able to get a good picture of the buried waste and direct the dig operator accordingly.
"We were able to visually identify what specific wastes were. This allows us to visually identify the transuranic waste and remove that for disposal at WIPP," Perry said.
Too much dilution of the transuranic waste with other matter such as soil means it no longer can qualify for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, he said.
Estimated retrieval cost at Pit 4 is $208 million. That's for half of an acre compared with the $80 million it cost to retrieve 75 cubic yards of waste in a small Pit 9 test plot.
"To actually dig up waste, and not to do it in a cost-prohibitive manner is a complete, 180-degree shift by the Energy Department," said Jeremy Maxand, director of the nuclear watchdog group Snake River Alliance.
But the Alliance remains concerned that ultimately only some of the waste will be removed and the rest will be left behind, he said.
The landfill's fate remains uncertain. The state of Idaho contends that the Energy Department must remove all of the transuranic waste from the landfill, but other radioactive and hazardous waste is buried there, too.
The Energy Department plans to issue a cleanup decision for the entire landfill in 2007.
Times-News writer Jennifer Sandmann can be reached at 733-0931, Ext. 237, or jsandmann@magicvalley.com.
Public meeting
A Pit 4 meeting will be held tonight at the College of Southern Idaho on the second floor of the Taylor Building.
Project staff will be available at 6 p.m. to answer questions. The public meeting begins at 7 p.m.
More information about the Pit 4 project is available online at http://cleanup.inel.gov.
Public comments will be accepted until June 4. Submit comments online through the cleanup Web site or send them to Jeff Perry, Department of Energy, P.O. Box 1625, MS 1222, Idaho Falls, 83415-1222. E-mail comments to Perry at perryjn@id.doe.gov.
-------- south carolina
SRS waste plan poses risk to environment
By HARRIET KEYSERLING Guest columnist
Wed, May. 19, 2004
The State (South Carolina)
http://www.thestate.com/mld/state/news/opinion/8699860.htm
Having spent a good portion of my time in the S.C. Legislature working on nuclear waste issues, any news on this subject grabs my attention - for instance, two articles on the same day (May 8), on the same page in The State.
The first covered the visit of Energy Secretary Abraham to the Savannah River Site to announce, to smiling South Carolina leaders, the designation of SRS as a national laboratory for nuclear research. There was a hope by USC that it would include research on hydrogen, but then it was noted that $150 million had been allotted to three other states for hydrogen storage research, so SRS would continue to focus on nuclear waste cleanup.
The second article focused on nuclear waste. As everyone in South Carolina should know by now, the SRS complex houses 34 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste, much of it in the form of liquid sludge. (That's about enough to fill a bathtub for every resident of Richland, Lexington and Aiken counties.) The waste is the leftovers from producing fuel and materials necessary to make nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.
It is being stored in old rusty tanks that have been known to leak into one of the largest and most important watersheds in the Southeast. The Savannah River, and the entire watershed, serves agriculture, industry and recreational activities.
Failing to clean up the tanks and remove the waste can lead to serious long-lasting pollution of the Savannah River, which provides water for drinking and irrigation. Many South Carolinians and Georgians also depend on it to provide fish for subsistence.
When SRS was built in the 1950s, the promise was that the waste would be moved out within 10 years, but it is still there 50 years later.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires that this waste be buried deep underground, in a repository chosen for disposal of this waste. The Yucca Mountain site in Nevada was selected after years of study and political maneuvering.
But the Bush administration wants to leave some of the highly radioactive waste on the SRS site forever, claiming it will be faster and cheaper to just dilute it with grout, than glassifiy it and move it to Nevada. How do officials propose getting around the Nuclear Waste Policy Act? By changing the definition of high-level nuclear waste.
By calling it less toxic than it really is, naming it "incidental waste" instead of high-level waste, presto, it will not have to be moved, even though the waste itself has not been altered and will still be dangerous for thousands of years. (This is consistent with many Bush administration environmental policies - ignore or redefine scientific facts to accomplish political or economic ends)
Sen. Lindsey Graham sponsored an amendment to the defense authorization bill to change the waste policy act as desired by the Energy Department. It will be under debate in the Senate this week. If passed, it will allow the rusty tanks to remain - barely above the water table - for the foreseeable future, instead of moving the sludge out of state, as the law now requires.
Last year a federal court in Idaho rejected the agency's attempt to reclassify the wastes as less hazardous through rulemaking. Attorney General Henry McMaster filed an amicus brief on behalf of South Carolina agreeing with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group that initiated the lawsuit against reclassifying the waste.
Another concern is that the amendment would allow the U.S. Energy Department sole discretion in deciding what constitutes high-level radioactive waste in South Carolina, severely limiting the state's voice on such matters.
Senators and other officials from the states of Washington and Idaho, where the same type of highly radioactive wastes are stored, oppose Sen. Graham's amendment, even though their wastes are not covered in the amendment: It applies only to South Carolina waste.
The Energy Department is negotiating with the other states on how the sludge will be handled. So far, our own Sen. Fritz Hollings is the lone South Carolina voice openly opposing Graham's amendment.
Our political leaders still seem to prefer the promise of new projects to long-term protection of our environment.
Ms. Keyserling is a former member of the S.C. House of Representatives.
-------- tennessee
Tennessee is a rising star in supercomputing
By W. David Gardner,
TechWeb News
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
http://www.itnews.com.au/storycontent.asp?ID=1&Art_ID=19658
The reputation of Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a centre of supercomputing is gaining recognition, not just because it received a US$25 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE), but also because the applications to be carried out there are open and public.
The supercomputing projects at the Energy Department's more famous supercomputing labs -- including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories -- are mostly secret.
"We will have the most powerful system in the open," said Dr. Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee's Computer Science Department, in an interview. Dongarra also carries the title of Distinguished Research Participant at the Oak Ridge lab. "We'll have the most powerful supercomputer outside the DOE."
While many participants in supercomputing talk about speed and power, Dongarra -- who is also the director of the university's Center for Information Technology Research (CITR) -- likes to talk about the applications to be carried out on the advanced machines.
Dongarra said he is focusing on two key applications initially -- climate modeling and materials science. Climate modeling is aimed at calculating and researching the impact of weather and is not concerned with weather forecasting. Materials science, as the name implies, involves advanced research into materials. Research involving superconducting materials is a particularly hot subject now, Dongarra said.
Efforts to drive Tennessee into the vanguard of supercomputing have centred on the Oak Ridge Lab and the University of Tennessee. The university established the CITR in 2001, with a goal of building "a thriving, well-funded community in basic and applied information-technology research."
With that in mind, Dongarra was named to head up the Innovative Computing Laboratory (ICL.) Today, the ICL's population numbers about 50, composed of a mix of professors, graduate students, and undergraduates.
In granting US$25 million to the ORNL last week, the DOE said its goal is to build the world's fastest [open] supercomputer by 2007. The plan is to produce a machine capable of producing 50 trillion calculations (teraflops) per second; that would surpass the current leader, Japan's 40-teraflop Earth Simulator.
Previously, the Energy Department has awarded more than US$200 million to IBM, with the goal of producing two very high-speed supercomputers: one capable of reaching 100 teraflops, the other hitting up to 367 teraflops. The IBM machines are slated to be used by the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration Labs at Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia.
"Distributed computing is important for us," said Dongarra. He added that research on numerical algorithms, numerical software, and techniques for exploiting parallel machines are likewise important research fields at the ICL.
Dongarra is also well known in supercomputing circles as the author of the Linpack report that benchmarks supercomputing. He is hoping that when he benchmarks the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge it will be the fastest open computer in the world.
The relationship between the Oak Ridge Lab and the University of Tennessee is more than symbiotic: the university and Battelle Science and Technology International operate the Lab.
The ORNL traces its origins to 1943, when it was established to separate plutonium for the World War II Manhattan Project. Today, the lab has branched out into several areas, ranging from environmental and biological issues to efforts to advance computational and engineering research.
Dongarra said researchers at the university and Oak Ridge don't need security clearances to use supercomputers.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear Waste Perspectives - Part II
5.19.04
John K. Sutherland,
Chief Scientist, Edutech Enterprises
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=724
This is the second of several articles on nuclear wastes. It examines the potential energy value in spent fuel, and in the world stockpiles of depleted uranium.
Spent Fuel is too valuable to be Nuclear Waste
'When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.' This describes the dominant environmental activist characteristic when faced by rational science of any kind. One could also add 'And never acknowledge the facts'.
This is especially true concerning the subject of nuclear waste management or disposal of relatively trivial quantities of well-managed waste; recycling spent nuclear fuel; or even admitting that nuclear power is the most socially valuable, cost-effective, versatile, capable, safe, and environmentally friendly of all of our reasonable primary energy options. Use of nuclear power does not lead to risk of war nearly as much as our increasing reliance upon politically unstable sources of expensive oil and gas, as several of the last few wars have shown.
What is Spent Fuel?
Uranium fuel that has been in a nuclear reactor at power, typically from about 1 year (CANDU) to about 6 years (PWR, BWR) or more (marine propulsion reactors - 20+ years), and which is then discharged from the reactor core, is described as 'spent' fuel.
The difficulty with this definition is that even this once-through fuel is NOT 'spent' in the true sense of the word. It is still a massive potential source of energy. 'Spent' fuel from commercial reactors still contains from 95 to 99% of unused uranium that can be and is re-cycled and re-used in some countries, but not in the U.S. although it once was.
If fully utilised, each kilogram of uranium could produce 3.5 million kWh of electricity rather than about 50,000 to 250,000+ kWh(e) as at present (about 7,800 MWdays (thermal)/tonne (CANDU) to about 45,000+ MWdays(th)/tonne - PWR).
However, even if not reprocessed in the short-term, the resource does not disappear or become worthless just because it has been through the reactor for only one cycle instead of many. Discarding it or managing it as 'waste', does not make it waste, as it is still a highly valuable resource.
Whether it is recycled in the short or long-term, is immaterial, as it can be (and will be) re-cycled and re-used in the future. It is extraordinarily valuable for its unused energy content, and it doesn't suddenly disappear from society as some seem to believe or would like to see. This will happen, once the politicians recognize that they will eventually have to make some difficult decisions about energy, and with them, their likelihood of re-election if they get it wrong. This recently happened in California, and it is likely to confront Governor Schwarzenegger in short order, maybe even this coming summer, even if he can eventually turn the political steamroller around.
Whether spent fuel actually gets put into the Yucca facility or not, is several years away (maybe 2015 now), and is also still very much up in the air, though few politicians would dare to admit it. Its fate can change with the stroke of a political pen or a court decision. If, through political inertia, spent fuel is placed into Yucca, it is worth taking bets as to how long it will reside there before it is recovered and re-processed in our rapidly changing, and increasingly vulnerable and politically-manipulated, energy climate.
We may choose not to recycle it at this time, but our descendants are likely to view any spent fuel we might discard, as a gold-mine of energy. Leaving it out of Yucca is the best thing we could do for everyone, so I hope the various activists don't realize that their obstruction to Yucca is desirable in some ways even though their concerns and fears are more science fiction than anyone inside of our Hollywood-media entertained populace (Silkwood, China Syndrome, Mutant Ninja Turtles) might believe.
The potential energy value in 'spent' nuclear fuel is 'impressive'
The use of individual fuels to produce electricity is compared in Table 1. It also shows the energy density of our common fuels along with a rough comparison of their fuel costs to produce 1 gigawatt-year (1,000 MW(e) for one year) - 8,760,000 MWh - of electricity.
At today's approximate electricity value (about $40/MWh for baseload electricity), the gross ultimate electrical value of the use of 1 tonne of various significant fuels is:
1. From nuclear fuel - natural uranium and once-through (as used in a CANDU reactor) - the gross potential electrical value is about $2,000,000 per tonne of natural uranium (costing about $29,000/tonne), for a ratio of gross value to cost of about 70. (Uranium recently reached a high of about $35,000/tonne)
2. From nuclear fuel - enriched and once-through (PWR) - the gross potential electrical value is about $10,000,000/tonne of uranium, ($10 million!) with uranium costing $29,000/tonne, for a ratio of gross value to cost of more than 300.
3. From nuclear fuel - enriched, with total recycling - the gross potential electrical value is about $140,000,000/tonne of uranium, ($140 million!) with uranium costing $29,000/tonne, for a ratio of gross value to cost of about 4.8 million. However, reprocessing and fuel re-fabrication costs are also high. With the fast breeder cycle and reprocessing, not only can the spent fuel resource be re-used, but so can the 7 tonnes or so of depleted uranium produced during enrichment, per tonne of fuel, and this is also potentially worth about $140E6/tonne!
4. From coal (about $120 worth of electricity, per tonne of coal, with coal costing about $35 per tonne) for a gross electrical value to cost of 3.4. The potential energy value of the uranium and thorium in the discarded bottom ash (sometimes above ore grade for uranium) is worth up to several thousand times more than the energy value of the coal itself before it was burned. Discarded coal ash (billions of tonnes), is typically a significant, but usually ignored, uranium/thorium resource of immense future value and significance - at least in a rational, technological society - and should be managed with this in mind;
5. From heavy oil (about $160 worth of electricity, per tonne of oil, with heavy oil costing about $120/T) for a gross electrical value to cost of about 1.3;
6. From natural Gas (about $240 worth of electricity from burning 1 tonne of natural gas, costing about $270/tonne when the price is just $5/GJ) for a gross electrical value to cost of 0.9, at this time! It was much better with gas at $2/GJ. With gas costs bouncing around above $5, and especially above $6 or $7/GJ, using gas for electricity, rather than for space heating (still cost effective), is not too smart unless you can charge a lot more than $40/MWh - which is usually the case - or operate with much greater than 40% efficiency. (One gigajoule (GJ) is almost the same as a million BTUs.)
But back to uranium. It comes out of the ground, is purified, refined, converted to yellowcake, and then sells for about $29,000/tonne (about $13/pound, or about $29/kg). It is usually then enriched to become 3% to 4% U-235 fuel that costs about $200,000/tonne in the reactor (plus fabrication costs), with about 7 tonnes of uranium-238 (depleted uranium) rejected and stockpiled (Table 2). In one pass through the reactor, which takes up to about 4 to 6 years, this 1 tonne of enriched fuel produces about $10,000,000 worth of electricity, despite only about 3% of it being fissioned (used) by the time of discharge. The depleted uranium is generally regarded as relatively worthless, even though it is far from this.
Now, would anyone - who claims to be rational - willingly choose to bury a refined product (spent fuel) that even after one cycle of use, still has a future potential gross electricity value of at least $130,000,000/tonne (or about 260 billion dollars for each year's worth of U.S. spent fuel) and is recyclable? It would be like junking a Mercedes after driving it for a few days. Even pure gold is worth only $14,000,000/tonne, and look how we protect and recover that.
Consider these approximate figures (assuming the resources were all used to produce electricity, for ease of comparison):
1. Each year's worth of U.S. spent fuel (2,000 tonnes), still contains about the same energy (electrical) potential value (7E12 kWh)(e)), as we actually derived in 2001 from all of our use of coal (555 millions of tonnes of oil equivalent, Mtoe - megatonnes of oil equivalent), oil (896 Mtoe), and natural gas (555 Mtoe) combined (about 8E12 kWh(e), assuming about 30% efficiency of use). And we propose to treat it as dangerous waste because a small part of it is highly radioactive for a relatively short time!
2. The depleted uranium (very low specific activity - i.e. not very radioactive) that we produce and stockpile (about 20,000 tonnes each year, containing about 7E13 kWh(e) of potential electrical energy equivalent), contains about one fifth of the energy contained in the entire Middle East oil reserves (almost 100E9 tonnes (BP statistical review), or about 3.72E14 kWh of potential electrical energy equivalent). (Thermal energy equivalents are 3 times higher).
3. The total U.S. refined DU stockpile so far (about 610,000 tonnes by 2002), sitting at the surface and neglected, though managed, potentially contains 2E15 kWh of electrical energy, or about 5 times the potential energy contained in the entire estimated Middle East oil resource.
4. The world combined spent fuel and DU total to about 2002 (about 240,000 tonnes of spent fuel, and about 1.45E6 T of DU respectively) most of which is sitting at the surface, is highly refined and contains enough potential energy (about 6E15 kWh of electrical energy equivalent) to make the entire known oil reserves (excluding the very significant tar sands and oil shales) of the whole world look very limited.
This analysis could go on, and evaluate the potential energy contained in the total world estimated uranium resource at increasing resource prices (including ocean uranium), and include the thorium resource, but I think I made my point already. Any spent fuel placed into Yucca would be worth (potentially) more than all of the gold in Fort Knox (Hollywood blockbuster anyone? But I'll be the technical advisor)! We're hording the wrong stuff folks! We should be recycling, reprocessing, and re-using this energy resource as befits a rational, technologically-advanced, energy-intensive society, so increasingly dependant upon energy imports.
To neglect it (as we do with DU), or to consider putting such a massive amount of potential wealth and energy back into the ground, and to behave as though it were waste - as is still considered for spent fuel - defies logic, especially when it can be safely and easily re-cycled.
The accumulated surface-stored stockpile of DU so far (Table 2), is potentially worth (for its untapped electrical energy) about $83 trillion in the U.S. alone, or about 8 times the value of the U.S. annual economy. It is sitting around, when it could all be eventually brought back into an advanced reactor cycle as originally planned, researched and defined almost 60 years ago, and exploited to the very great benefit of everyone. Rather than do this, however, we continue to agonize and moan about uncertain and high priced oil supplies from mostly unstable suppliers abroad; the availability and supplies of natural gas; and terrify ourselves about the possible extreme environmental effects from burning coal and other fossil fuels. Surely it is also time that we began to get concerned about the socially destructive aspects of having insufficient or unaffordable energy. Go figure!
Ah well! So much for environmentalist cant about recycling everything, and being concerned about resources, sustainability, waste, pollution, energy conservation, Global Climate Change, and the environment.
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=724#jump_comments
Stanton Friedman 5.18.04
This is an oustanding overview of the real energy situation and clearly demonstrates the superiority of nuclear techniques for both producing energy and protecting the environment. WELL DONE
James Hopf 5.19.04
It's definitely true that there is enormous energy remaining in spent fuel, especially if you count the U-238, in addition to the residual U-235 and Pu. However, this does not mean that reprocessing is a no-brainer. It all boils down to economics. The fact of the matter is that, based on the current uranium price, reprocessing (U, Pu recycle) is much more expensive than just mining/using new uranium, and burying the spent fuel. The price of uranium would have to jump dramatically (a factor of several, I think), before reprocessing makes raw economic sense.
Concerning the whether or not to define spent fuel as "waste", the economic definition of waste is something of negative economic value. That is, the costs of using the material exceed its economic value. Given the above, I would say that, with current reprocessing technology, spent fuel would meet the definition of "waste". That does not mean that it will be useless waste forever, however (more on that later).
Tragically, reprocessing doesn't help polticically either. As the author said, you'd think that the "environmentalists" would prefer nuclear waste recycling, where much of the resource is reused, and the long-term hazard of the buried waste is reduced (somewhat). Instead, far from being appeased by this, they are even more opposed to reprocessing than they are to the once-through cycle. Experience in Europe clearly shows this. It is the subject of endless shrill rhetoric concerning red-herring "non-proliferation" issues, and absolutely trivial environmental releases (which result in exposures several orders of magnitude below natural background, over a small local area).
Go figure. I didn't say it made sense, but the fact of the matter is that this is the political reality we face. In addition to being a losing proposition economically, reprocessing currently also incurs a political cost (as opposed to a benefit).
Finally, if and when uranium does get significantly more expensive, it seems that an extensive U/Pu recycle program, which involves full reprocessing but only increases ore utilization by a factor of ~2 (I think), would make less sense than going forward with breeder reactors, which would increase utilization by a factor of 60-70 (by using most of the U-238).
It is also not clear how helpful current reprocessing technology is from a waste management perspective. My old nuclear engineering text (Lamarsh) showed a very disappointing plot of total activity (from one unit of initial uranium) vs. time for the "once-through" and "U-Pu recycle" fuel cycles, along with a "fission products only" curve (which shows the "ultimate" performance that is possible). The U-Pu curve didn't reduce the long-term activity (say, at 10,000 years) very much at all, whereas the fission products alone are much better, decaying away to nothing in ~500 years. This is all due to a large quantity of residual long-term isotopes that remain after the current recycle process. These concentrations must be reduced greatly before any real long-term waste management benefit will accrue. The figure of merit is how much is the time required to reach the activity level of the original uranium ore shortened. Current technology is found wanting on this score.
For the reasons above, I do not favor moving forward with reprocessing at this time. We need reprocessing to be significantly less expensive, and a much greater performance level is needed in terms of residual long-term isotopes that remain after the recycle process. I'm not saying that reprocessing will never make sense. In fact, I'm confident that it will someday. Thus, I favor continued long-term research into improved reprocessing technologies, while we put the waste into Yucca Mtn., for now. I would expect we will start using this resource sometime after 2050.
The article is flexible on this issue, and merely states that the resource will be used at some point in the future. I absolutely agree with this. Going forward with Yucca Mtn., but not sealing the repository (i.e., keeping the fuel accessible) for an extended period (100-300 years) is a very solid, flexible, and wise approach. Note that we will still need a repository, even if it is for nothing other than the fission products.
Given that the waste will almost certainly be pulled out, all of the calculations of ultra-long-term waste behavior, health effects, and risks seem quite silly. What do you mean 10,000 years? The waste will almost certainly have been removed long before then! But alas, OF COURSE you can't take credit for that fact in the license application. We should be allowed to reduce all calculated long-term risks by a factor of 100, given the 99% (at least) likelihood that the waste will not still be there.
The good news is that the calculations show that the risks are negligible, EVEN IF the waste were just left there for all time. This makes Yucca Mtn. very useful from a political perspective.
The Author http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author.cfm?at_id=283
Email the author http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author_contact.cfm?auid=283&arid=724&meid=0 Phone: 506-455-6213
James Hopf 5.19.04
Part 2: The need for Yucca
The good news is that the conservative calculations show that the risks are negligible, EVEN IF the waste were just left there for all time. This makes Yucca Mtn. very useful, from a political perspective if nothing else. It makes it clear that the nuclear waste problem is SOLVED, i.e., that an acceptable solution is at hand RIGHT NOW (in addition to the fact that even better solutions are likely to actually be employed in the future). Specifically, if we bury it at Yucca, even if future generations do NOTHING, the risks (short-term, long-term, etc...) are completely acceptable. On top of that, it is overwhelmingly likely that we will vastly improve on that situation, as it is virtually certain that the technology will be developed to eliminate (and/or resuse) the waste. In other words, even if the worst possible set of events comes to pass (the waste is never retrieved), the risks are still negligible. Problem SOLVED.
This is (politically) necessary for the future of nuclear power in the US. This may not make sense, but it is our political reality. We are (apaprently) not cool-headed like the French. If Yucca fails, the anti's will be "vindicated" in their position that "there is no solution" to the nuclear waste problem, and no new plants will be built. The utility executives have made this very clear.
Of all the "issues" associated with Yucca vs. reprocessing, Yucca vs. leaving waste in dry storage (at plant sites), etc.... this is by far the most important issue, in terms of public health risk and environmental damage. Frankly, the risks of all the possible nuclear waste management approaches are negligible. The only significant risk to public health or the environment is not persuing new nuclear power plants (and largely building coal plants instead). The public health and environmental effects of building another generation of conventional coal plants (i.e., non-clean-coal, non-IGCC) coal plants, that will emit mass quantities of pollution (and CO2) for 50 years hence, is vastly greater than the nuclear approach (by several orders of magnitude) no matter what nuclear waste management approach is adopted.
Thus, this issue is the big issue, the only issue, the 800 lb gorilla in the room. The key (indeed, only) figure of merit is what will maximize the likelihood of building a new generation of nuclear power plants in the near future. All other issues are secondary. Based on what I know, the political reality, the political wisdom, is that getting Yucca Mtn. up and running will be tremendously beneficial (indeed, necessary) to attain that objective.
Who knows, maybe keeping the waste in above-ground storage and waiting to reprocess it someday (i.e., the French approach) is slightly better from a purely technical perspective. I don't care. Nothing will make up for the fact that, if we persue that approach, we'll all be choking on coal plant fumes (and building dikes) while we proceed with our "enlightened" nuclear waste management program. Sometimes one just has to recognize the political realties of the situation, and set policy accordingly.
The bottom line is that Yucca is, if nothing else, a great (very isolated and secure) long-term storage facility for the waste, a single facility being much more secure than 100 or so sites. Also, consider that even if (and when) we come up with an effective reprocessing technology, it will almost certainly require a large, centralized facility. Thus, the waste would have to be shipped to some central location anyway. What better place than Yucca? The processing facility would, of course, be co-located at Yucca, as all the waste is already (conveniently) there. The mountain would also serve as the staging / temp-storage facility for the processing plant, a storage facility that would have to be built anyway if the processing facility were built anywhere else. And just think, the storage facility is all deep underground (really safe from attack!!). The "more vulnerable" total waste inventory in the plant itself (above ground) could be greatly minimized.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Attempts Diplomacy With Afghan Warlords
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37736-2004May18?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 18 -- With efforts to disarm private militias faltering four months before scheduled national elections, the government of President Hamid Karzai is trying to appease powerful regional leaders who have repeatedly defied his authority and resisted attempts to dismantle their forces.
With the strong encouragement of U.S. officials, Karzai has retreated from potential armed confrontations with two of Afghanistan's most prominent militia bosses. He recently paid a long-distance courtesy call on one of them, Gov. Ismail Khan of Herat province, and reportedly has been negotiating with the other, Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, who is seeking a government post in exchange for decommissioning his tanks and troops.
Some Afghan officials and international observers are critical of Karzai's outreach efforts, saying that rewarding recalcitrant strongmen for the sake of short-term stability could imperil Afghanistan's long-term prospects for democracy.
But U.S. diplomats support the initiative and have become involved in efforts to persuade militia leaders to surrender their weapons and return thousands of their fighters to private life, in exchange for promises of regional economic aid and government positions.
"We can't expect people to give up their weapons and men, and at the same time tell them, 'There is no role for you,' because that will inevitably result in resistance" to the elections, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in a recent interview. To "civilianize" warlords requires the "proper balance of carrots and sticks," he said. "There must be a place of honor for those who cooperate."
The Bush administration backs Karzai's transitional government and is widely seen here as eager to ensure his victory at the polls, which have already been delayed three months.
The persistence of autonomous militias is regarded by many Afghans and foreign analysts as the most serious obstacle to successful elections. Until recently, U.S. and Afghan officials had voiced hopes that the disarmament and demobilization campaign alone would undermine the militia bosses' power before voting takes place.
The program began last fall with a pilot project to disarm 1,000 fighters in northern Kunduz province. It is now being undertaken in six other regions, including the capital, where thousands of fighters loyal to Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, another former militia commander, have remained for two years despite U.S. demands that that they withdraw.
At an international donors conference in March, Karzai pledged that the government would reduce nationwide militias by 40 percent and collect all heavy weapons in their possession by the end of June. This week, officials are launching the main phase of the disarmament scheme with a series of ceremonies at military posts around the capital, and they said 800 militia fighters in the Kabul area would be demobilized by Friday.
Altogether, however, only about 6,500 men have been demobilized nationwide. Many commanders have refused to provide lists of their troops and have turned in antiquated weapons. Moreover, Khan and Dostum have resisted cooperating with the program and launched military attacks on rival forces this spring.
"The failure to disarm and demobilize individual warlords and factional militias has sharply undercut progress" in Afghanistan, Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the nonprofit International Crisis Group, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. "Until the bulk of the militias are decommissioned, there is grave risk that the coming elections will be determined by those who control the guns."
Further Threats
American military efforts in Afghanistan, where about 15,000 U.S. troops are deployed, have focused on the threat posed by revived forces from the Taliban, the radical Islamic militia that was toppled in late 2001, and from other armed extremist groups operating along the Pakistani border.
But many Afghans say a greater threat comes from other ethnic militias that opposed the Taliban and are technically part of the government's defense forces. These groups are feared because they plunged the country into chaotic civil war in the 1990s, destroying Kabul and killing tens of thousands of people.
Jean Arnault, the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, said this week that the "main danger to the peace process is the return of civil war caused by factional armies." The United Nations' top priority, he said, is "fair and steady demilitarization ahead of the elections. . . . On this point we will be inflexible."
Some Afghan officials say Karzai should challenge the warlords head-on, and that he has missed several chances to do so in recent months.
In March, a bloody confrontation erupted between Khan's forces and those loyal to the central government. A contingent of newly trained Afghan army troops was sent to restore order in an apparent challenge to Khan's authority.
But Khan has continued to defy Karzai's demands that he give up troops, weapons and absolute power in wealthy Herat. He has reportedly demanded a post in a future Karzai government, and the president recently flew to Herat to meet him in a gesture that angered and embarrassed some officials.
A similar scenario unfolded in northern Afghanistan, where Dostum's forces attacked the city of Meymaneh in April. Again, army troops were sent from Kabul, and Dostum eventually withdrew. But the ethnic Uzbek leader has continued to resist disarming and reportedly has demanded a senior military position in return for his cooperation.
"If we had sent more troops, we could have gotten rid of both these warlords, but the international community pressured the government to take a softer approach," complained an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is foolish to negotiate with these people, because they never keep their promises."
Buying Time
Karzai has reached out to other controversial groups as well. Recently he embraced a group of former officials from the Hizb-i-Islami Party once headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fugitive militia leader who has declared war on the Afghan government. Karzai has also reportedly put out feelers to former Taliban leaders viewed as moderates.
One Afghan official said he was concerned that by making deals with strongmen, the government might buy peace and stability during the election season but jeopardize prospects for building democratic institutions, such as political parties and a civilian-led national army.
"It must be made very clear to those with private armies that they cannot meddle in politics," the official said. "If we do too much bargaining to ensure things go a certain way now, what will happen later? Will we have a government that promotes democracy or one that is dominated by more of the past?"
But other officials said Karzai and his international advisers had decided it was too risky to challenge mercurial leaders such as Dostum and Khan, whose armed actions this spring sent a shiver through foreign donors.
"We can't remove them by force. We don't want to start a war," said a government adviser. "We have to give them something that will allow the elections to happen and avoid tensions. We need to buy time for the [disarmament and demobilization] program to succeed. If it works, in a year's time the warlords as such won't exist anymore."
Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, expressed sympathy for the concerns of Islamic militia leaders who spent years fighting Soviet occupation and Taliban repression -- with support from the United States -- but who now fear being left out in the cold. Instead of "reinforcing their fears" of being marginalized, he said, officials should stress that disarming will earn them new respect.
Khalilzad took issue with critics who say Washington is trying to ensure a smooth and quick election here at any cost. The Bush administration is not "looking to declare victory and go home," he said, adding that the United States had erred by abandoning Afghanistan in 1989 after Soviet troops withdrew.
"It was a mistake we will not make again," he said.
At a news conference Tuesday, Khalilzad said he hoped the disarmament program would soon show "significant progress," adding that the number of militia fighters in Afghanistan was much smaller than initial estimates of 100,000. He reiterated that the militiamen should be given an "appropriate role" in the future to show that their "services have been appreciated."
In the public mind, however, the era of heroic anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" in the 1980s was eclipsed long ago by the era of rapacious militia rule and conflict in the 1990s. Many Afghans believe the militia leaders do not deserve a place in public life, and they express hope that Karzai, who is widely expected to win election, will exclude them from the next government.
An even greater concern is whether Afghanistan's ubiquitous commanders will be able to disrupt or manipulate elections for the lower house of parliament, which is planned for shortly after the presidential vote and viewed as crucial to establishing a balance of power.
Analysts said it would be difficult to prevent intimidation and abuse in the parliamentary vote, especially in remote areas.
The government has enacted several election laws designed to limit political interference by Islamic militias. One law bans any organization with a military wing from forming a political party. Another, not yet finalized, prohibits parties from running slates of parliamentary candidates and requires that all nominees run as individuals, giving more chance to local independents.
But both Afghan and international analysts said it may be impossible to ensure a fair legislative election, partly because voter registration has been extremely slow, with only 2.2 million of an estimated 9.5 million eligible voters registered so far. Guerrilla attacks have sabotaged registration efforts in the south and east, while voter rolls have grown steadily in the north, creating a worrisome imbalance between rival regional and ethnic groups.
"Parliamentary elections are going to be very, very difficult," said a foreign election consultant. The view of militia bosses like Khan and Dostum, the consultant said, is that "democracy is fine for the country, as long as I'm still at the top of my little tree." Yet he also said it might be more sensible to leave the militias in place than to create regional power vacuums and hordes of jobless fighters. If the elections are not handled carefully, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if we end up in civil war."
-------- africa
Military to rule Nigerian state hit by religious violence
telegraph.co.uk
By Tim Butcher
19/05/2004
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/19/wniger19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/19/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=30118
A state of emergency was declared in part of Nigeria yesterday as President Olusegun Obasanjo struggled to control religious violence that has left hundreds dead, threatening the stability of Africa's most populous nation.
Raids by Christian militia on Muslim farmers followed by retaliatory attacks by Muslim mobs rendered the Plateau state ungovernable, prompting Gen Obasanjo to suspend the civilian government and send in the army. Christians and muslims clashed in Kano leaving many dead
This was the first time Gen Obasanjo has invoked emergency powers since civilian rule was re-established in 1999. It represented a setback for Nigeria's attempt to shed its reputation for brutal military dictatorship, "The situation in Plateau state, to say the least, constitutes a challenge to our democracy," he said in a national address that was carried on state radio.
"We need to take very serious action to stem the tide of what has become a near mutual genocide.
"In my personal and official capacities, I am doing everything to bring lasting peace to Plateau state."
Under Nigeria's constitution a state of emergency allows Gen Obasanjo to rule by decree.
He immediately announced that he was suspending the state governor, Joshua Dariye, and replacing him with Major-Gen Chris Ali.
Violence among various tribal, religious and political groups has claimed as many as 10,000 lives across Nigeria, which has a population estimated at about 150 million, since the retired general was elected president.
"Violence in Plateau has reached unprecedented levels and hundreds have been killed with many more wounded or displaced from their homes on account of their ethnic or religious identification," the president said.
"Christians and Muslims who used to live together have become arch-enemies."
The agricultural state, in Nigeria's central highlands 200 miles east of the capital, Abuja, lies on the cusp between the broadly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.
In 2001 the previously peaceful city of Jos was gripped by religious fighting that left up to 1,000 dead and at the beginning of this month 1 another round of bloodletting began when Christian militia attacked Muslims in the town of Yelwa.
Scores were killed and in retaliation Muslim mobs in the northern city of Kano rioted last week killing dozens of Christians.
-------- arms
Pentagon Laser Project Exceeds Cost Estimates,
GAO Says Technical Problems, Schedule Delays Hinder Development of Key Element of Missile Defense System
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37606-2004May18.html
A Pentagon attempt to develop an airborne laser to blast enemy missiles out of the sky has already cost more than twice original estimates and faces continued technical hurdles, according to a congressional audit of the struggling program.
The laser project, begun eight years ago, has become a key element in the Bush administration's drive to erect a network of defenses against ballistic missile attack.
The lead part of that network -- a system of land-based missile interceptors -- is scheduled to go on alert in Alaska later this year. It will aim at knocking down enemy warheads in space. The airborne laser is meant to complement that system by going after enemy missiles soon after launch in their "boost phase."
But the audit by the General Accounting Office cites a history of technical troubles and schedule delays that have plagued the program. The GAO report, to be released today, also calls into question the ultimate usefulness of the planned system.
The $2 billion spent on the program from inception in 1996 to 2003 is double the initial estimate, the report says, adding that more cost overruns are likely. The Pentagon plans to spend an additional $3.1 billion from fiscal 2004 through 2009.
"The cost growth occurred primarily because the program did not adequately plan for -- and could not fully anticipate -- the complexities involved in developing the system," the report says.
The weapon consists of a high-energy chemical laser mounted in a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. By focusing on a rising enemy missile, the laser is supposed to rupture the missile's casing and cause it to lose power or flight control.
Originally envisioned to defeat short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, the system's role has been expanded by the Bush administration to include targeting intercontinental missiles. Pentagon officials have heralded it as a revolutionary technology promising a major leap ahead in U.S. missile defense. But the GAO report warns that predictions of usefulness are based so far only on computerized models and simulations, not "on any demonstrated capability of the system."
The report adds that if fielded, the system will have a number of special maintenance and refueling needs that must be factored into long-term costs. But the Missile Defense Agency "has not yet determined the cost" of the weapon's "unique support systems," the report says.
"The General Accounting Office's findings are truly astounding," said Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), who requested the study along with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). "They call into question whether or not it makes sense for Congress to continue funding this program at the requested level -- especially in this era of tight budgets."
In recent testimony to Congress and statements to reporters, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, who heads the Missile Defense Agency, has acknowledged problems with the laser project but argued strongly for proceeding with it, given the big payoff if it works. In a restructuring of the program earlier this year, Kadish decided to delay purchase of a second aircraft and concentrate on two aspects: developing an optics system and demonstrating, in ground tests, that individual laser modules can be combined to generate a single laser beam.
"Once we accomplish those two things, I'll be able to tell you when we can do the rest," he told a group of journalists last month.
-------- biological weapons
Senate to Consider BioShield Measure
May 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioshield.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The discovery of sarin in Iraq and the use of anthrax and ricin against Congress spurred the Senate Wednesday to consider spending $5.6 billion to help prepare for possible future bioterrorism attacks.
America is not prepared for a major bioterror attack, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who is helping push ``Project BioShield'' legislation to fund the research, production and stockpiling of vaccines and antidotes.
The sarin gas discovered in a roadside bomb Monday in Iraq, and the ricin and anthrax attacks on the Capitol complex ``demonstrated that bioterror is here,'' said Frist, whose office was mailed a letter laced with ricin last fall. ``It's on our own soil, it's hit this nation, hit this Capitol, hit the entire East Coast, and indeed it was deadly.''
The measure provides incentives to the pharmaceutical industry to research and develop bioterrorism countermeasures, accelerates the approval process for antidotes, and, in an emergency, allows the government to distribute certain treatments before the Food and Drug Administration approves them.
It also assures drug companies that there will be a market for new products that under normal circumstances would have little market value.
``The bill before the Senate guarantees that any company which develops a successful new product for these threats will find a willing buyer in the federal government,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. ``With that guarantee, companies will make the investments needed to prepare for any attack.''
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, said the effort will be expensive. But, he said, ``we had to set up a structure where we make it viable for our private-sector pharmaceutical industries and biotechnology industries to invest the extraordinary amount of money it takes to invest in the production of this type of response capability,'' he said.
In cases where the private sector does not respond, the bill allows the government to operate emergency programs to research and produce vaccines.
President Bush has been calling for the legislation since his 2003 State of the Union address.
``Project BioShield is critical for strengthening the nation's ability to protect Americans against biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological terrorist threats,'' the White House said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the agents to be included in Project BioShield are smallpox, anthrax, botulism toxin, plague and Ebola.
The House overwhelmingly passed the bill last year, and now the two sides will have to reach a compromise before the legislation heads to the White House for Bush's signature.
The Senate bill number is S.15 and the House bill is H.R. 2122.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/
-------- business
Capability of Boeing anti-missile project unknown, GAO says
By Tony Capaccio
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, May 19, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001932692_boelaser19.html
WASHINGTON - Boeing's program to develop an aircraft-mounted laser to destroy enemy missiles has almost doubled in cost and its effectiveness is "highly uncertain," the General Accounting Office (GAO) said in a new report.
The value of the laser contract has grown to $2 billion from about $1 billion since its inception in 1996, with additional increases of as much as $943 million expected before the first full aircraft demonstration later this decade, the GAO said in a report obtained by Bloomberg News. The demonstration was originally expected to take place in March 2003.
The laser, mounted on a 747 jumbo jet, was considered a centerpiece of the Bush administration's layered system of air-, ground- and sea-based weapons to destroy medium- and long-range nuclear missiles. Expectations that the weapon could be deployed on at least one aircraft this year for emergency use have been abandoned, with no new date set, the GAO said.
The Senate is considering a $422 billion defense bill for the fiscal year starting in October. The bill has about $10 billion for missile-defense research programs, including $474 million for the airborne laser. The report, scheduled for release today, could be used by lawmakers to press for a reduction in money for Boeing's program.
Once touted as potentially revolutionary, the laser project has from the start been plagued with cost, schedule and performance problems "due primarily to the unforeseen complexity in manufacturing and integrating critical technology," the GAO said in its report.
The Pentagon "has not yet assessed the Airborne Laser's military utility and has no fixed time frame for doing so," the GAO said. Similarly, predictions of the first aircraft's missile-killing capability "are highly uncertain" because they aren't based on any demonstrated capability from flight data, according to the report.
Boeing missile-defense spokeswoman Monica Aloisio referred all questions to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
The agency has recognized the laser program's problems and slowed the schedule to allow for more development time, agency spokesman Richard Lehner said, responding to the report.
"There is an element of uncertainty, as there is with any new technology, but there is no reason to believe that our expectations won't be met in terms of the ABL's (airborne laser's) effectiveness for the job it is designed to do," he said.
Boeing gets AirTran order
AirTran Airways, a U.S. low-cost airline, ordered six Boeing 717 airplanes in a contract Boeing valued at $225 million at list prices.
The deal includes orders for two new 717s and the exercise of options for the other four.
The aircraft, which will be delivered in 2005, will add to the 76 Boeing 717s that Orlando, Fla.-based AirTran Airways already has.
- Bloomberg News
Machinists to vote Sunday
ST. LOUIS - Boeing yesterday gave what it called its final contract offer to the Machinists union in St. Louis, setting up a Sunday vote by the union's membership hours before the current contract expires.
Tom Pinski, spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers' District 837, said the union's bargainers were reviewing the company's offer and would not reveal until Sunday whether they would urge members to approve or reject it.
The IAM's District 837 represents about 2,800 Boeing workers, mostly around St. Louis, headquarters of the company's defense business.
The offer from Boeing calls for a 3 percent general wage increase and a $3,000 signing bonus in the contract's first year. That wage increase is identical to the one in a previous proposal, which offered half the signing bonus now being pitched.
The second year's lump-sum wage payment would be $2,000, up $800 from the previous offer. And the latest offer includes a general wage increase of 3 percent in the third year, up from 2 percent in the earlier proposal.
If the contract fails, Pinski said, members will vote Sunday on whether to authorize a strike.
--------
Democrats Criticize Management Contracts
Conflicts of Interest In Iraq, Report Says
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37681-2004May18.html
Democrats called on the Bush administration yesterday to cancel contracts with private companies hired to oversee $1.7 billion in public works projects in Iraq, saying the companies have conflicts of interests and cannot be trusted to spend the government's money wisely.
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.) and Rep. John D. Dingell (Mich.) said their research showed that some of the management companies hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority have a tangle of close financial ties to the construction and engineering firms they are supposed to monitor.
Among the companies cited were Parsons Corp. and CH2M Hill Inc., engineering and construction businesses that received a $28.5 million contract in March to manage four other contractors. The report said that Parsons is a partner of one of those other contractors, Fluor Corp., on "a $2.6 billion joint venture to develop oil fields in Kazakhstan."
CH2M Hill does business with Fluor and two other contractors on the project, Washington Group International Inc. and AMEC Inc., the report said. In one project, CH2M Hill and Washington Group International are "integrated partners" on a $314 million contract with the Energy Department.
Those and other details were included in a brief report called "Contractors Overseeing Contractors: Conflicts of Interest Undermine Accountability In Iraq." In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, they said the administration has "abdicated its responsibility to ensure that U.S. taxpayers' dollars are spent wisely."
The Democrats said they would introduce amendments to the defense authorization bill to end the contracts and require the Pentagon to provide the management oversight.
"These contractors are being asked to carry out essential government oversight functions, including defining and prioritizing project requirements and actually overseeing the work of construction contractors," the Democrats said in their letter. "It is not appropriate for contractors to exercise these functions -- particularly in view of significant conflicts of interests among these companies."
In a written statement, Parsons said the relationships would have no bearing on the ability of the company to manage the project and that it operates under the supervision of U.S. government personnel.
CH2M Hill did not return phone calls. Jerry Holloway, a spokesman for Fluor, described Iraq as a "fishbowl" and said all the companies there are under great scrutiny. He said the business relationship between Fluor and Parsons has no bearing on their activities in Iraq. "Our contract is with the Defense Department to support the CPA," he said. "That's who we're accountable to."
Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said the management contracts are in keeping with a long trend toward use of private companies to provide a wide variety of services. Though he would not speak directly about activity in Iraq, he said the Defense Department has no problem with the oversight of contractors. "The military should focus on its core mission, which is fighting wars and winning battles," Flood said.
Wyden said the companies in Iraq have no incentive to "take out a sharp pencil' and protect taxpayers. "You have a situation," he said, "where there is a cozy nest of interlocking financial interests."
-------- chemical weapons
Senate OKs $5.6B for Chemical Attacks
May 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BioShield.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The discovery of sarin gas in Iraq and the use of anthrax and ricin against Congress spurred the Senate Wednesday to approve $5.6 billion to help prepare for possible germ or chemical attacks on American soil.
The Senate, on a 99-0 vote, approved ``Project BioShield'' legislation to pay for research, production and stockpiling of vaccines and antidotes for bioterror agents. The House already has approved the legislation, and lawmakers on both sides say they hope to soon have it to President Bush for his signature.
Bush commended the Senate for passing the legislation. ``BioShield will speed the development of new vaccines and treatments that would help prevent harm to Americans in a terrorist attack,'' the president said in a statement.
Lawmakers are moving quickly on the legislation because America is not prepared for a major bioterror attack, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. The sarin gas discovered in a roadside bomb Monday in Iraq, and the ricin and anthrax attacks on the Capitol complex ``demonstrated that bioterror is here,'' said Frist, whose office was mailed a letter containing ricin last fall. ``It's on our own soil, it's hit this nation, hit this Capitol, hit the entire East Coast, and indeed it was deadly.''
The legislation, covering the next 10 years, would provide incentives to the pharmaceutical industry to research and develop bioterrorism countermeasures, accelerate the approval process for antidotes and, in an emergency, allow the government to distribute certain treatments before the Food and Drug Administration approved them.
``The bill before the Senate guarantees that any company which develops a successful new product for these threats will find a willing buyer in the federal government,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. ``With that guarantee, companies will make the investments needed to prepare for any attack.''
Added Tommy Thompson, head of the Health and Human Services Department: ``We're going to be able to push the industry in order to do research in particular areas and then we're going to be able to provide them with a market after they find the kind of remedies and solutions that we need.''
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, said the effort will be expensive. But, he said, ``we had to set up a structure where we make it viable for our private-sector pharmaceutical industries and biotechnology industries to invest the extraordinary amount of money it takes to invest in the production of this type of response capability,'' he said.
In cases where the private sector does not respond, the bill allows the government to operate emergency programs to research and produce vaccines.
Bush has been calling for the legislation since his 2003 State of the Union address.
``Project BioShield is critical for strengthening the nation's ability to protect Americans against biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological terrorist threats,'' the White House said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the agents to be included in Project BioShield are smallpox, anthrax, botulism toxin, plague and Ebola.
The House overwhelmingly passed a version of the bill last year, and now the two sides will have to come to a compromise before it heads to the White House for Bush's signature.
But Gregg said, ``I expect the House to take our bill and move it on to the president.'' House Homeland Security chairman Chris Cox, R-Calif., also said he expected the legislation to go to the president without a formal House-Senate conference.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, D-Mass., did not vote.
The Senate bill number is S.15 and the House bill is H.R. 2122.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/
-------- iraq
Sistani Demands Exit of Najaf
Combatants Top Shiite Cleric Rebuffs Rival's Call to Arms
By Daniel Williams and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36436-2004May18.html
BAGHDAD, May 18 -- Iraq's supreme Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, demanded Tuesday that all armed forces leave the holy city of Najaf and called on fellow Shiites not to join in a bloody uprising there against U.S. forces. It was his first public effort to end a weeks-old rebellion mounted by the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Sistani was apparently responding to a call to arms issued earlier in the day by Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia has largely controlled Najaf for weeks. Sistani's words are often heeded by Shiites, although his call Tuesday was not a religious order, or fatwa.
Sadr had invited all Iraqis to come to the southern city and support his uprising, which U.S. troops are struggling to contain. The revolt is one of several serious security issues that U.S. officials face before the scheduled transfer of limited authority to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.
U.S. military options are constricted in part because Najaf is home to one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam, the Shrine of Imam Ali, and a vast graveyard that is the most favored burial spot among Shiites because of its proximity to the mosque.
For the past month, U.S. officials have been hoping that Sistani would challenge Sadr, whose authority stems largely from his militia, which numbers in the thousands. Sadr has said he would follow a request from Sistani to withdraw from the city, but his rhetoric has grown increasingly militant the longer he has kept U.S. forces at bay.
"So rise up my beloved people," Sadr said in the statement issued by his office in Najaf. He called on "the people of great Iraq to express your opinion" in Najaf "as a reply to the serial violations, in order to be the best people for the best sacred shrines."
Sistani has traditionally shied from political matters. His boldest such overture came last November, when he called for direct elections to establish a post-occupation government, rather than a caucus system favored at the time by U.S. officials.
Tuesday's formal statement, a rare personal message to the public by a man who usually communicates indirectly through aides, came a day after his offices in Najaf were fired on -- by Sadr's men, according to some accounts.
The conflicting statements by Sistani and Sadr appeared to open the way for a test of wills between two clerics with vastly different views of Islam's role in the political future of Iraq. After years of suffering under former president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led government, Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, are seeking a representative stake in a post-occupation government.
Shiite communities were once largely receptive to the U.S. invasion as the only viable way to oust Hussein. But the current divisions among Shiites are not only complicating U.S. efforts to establish a broadly acceptable interim government, they are also raising the specter of violence between armed militias loyal to rival Shiite groups.
"We could have a confrontation between Shiite groups in Najaf, and this would be dangerous," said Fatih Kashif Ghitta, a prominent Shiite cleric.
Sadr, who is wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with the killing last year of a rival Shiite cleric, has used his militia, made up largely of disenfranchised young men, to become a major player in Iraq's sectarian politics. Shiite leaders have suggested that Sadr, 31, be given a role in the next government as an incentive for him to demobilize his militia.
On Tuesday, Sadr's forces struck again at U.S. troops, after suffering heavy casualties on Monday. Using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, his men fired on a small U.S. military camp located between Najaf and Kufa, a town six miles to the northeast that is also a Sadr stronghold. Two U.S. tanks maneuvered toward the camp from a police station in town and were ambushed. There were no reports of casualties on either side.
Sustained fighting in the south has engaged U.S. troops for more than 10 days.
U.S. commanders initially urged patience, hoping to avoid damage to the shrine in Najaf and a pair of shrines in Karbala, a holy Shiite city farther north, where Sadr's militia has also mounted resistance to occupation forces. Rather than confronting U.S. troops directly at the outskirts of the cities, Sadr's men have taken up positions deep inside them and near religious sites. U.S. forces have pursued militia forces, risking damage to the shrines.
So far, Shiite religious leaders who want Sadr removed have complained little about the American tactics. In neighboring Iran, whose population is almost entirely Shiite, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader, this week called on Shiites worldwide to condemn the U.S. offensive across southern Iraq.
U.S. officials had hoped that Shiite leaders could persuade Sadr to abandon his rebellion, disband his militia and give himself up either to U.S. forces or religious leaders and face charges in the killing of Abdel-Majid Khoei, a cleric who was stabbed in April 2003 after returning to Iraq from exile in Britain.
Talks between Sadr and Shiite mediators have broken down over terms that would have put Sadr in their hands rather than in U.S. custody. Without specifying the exact cause, Shiite officials are blaming the United States for the breakdown. "The Americans have added a condition," said Hamid Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which wants Sadr out of Najaf.
The continuing violence has exasperated Najaf residents. "From the first day of the crisis, our business stopped. We depend on tourists, and now there are none," said Hadi Basheer, 50, who sells souvenirs.
Ali Hussein, 28, a taxi driver, accused Sadr's militia of harboring common criminals and sympathizers of Hussein. "I want the Americans to solve this, because the Mahdi Army is growing in power," he said.
Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Military Says Strike in Western Iraq Killed Up to 40
May 19, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19WIRE-STRIKE.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. Army said Thursday it killed around 40 people in an attack on suspected foreign fighters in Iraq near the Syrian border, but disputed reports that the victims were members of a wedding party.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the attack early Wednesday was within the military's rules of engagement.
"We conducted an operation about 85 kilometers (53 miles) southwest of al-Qaim...against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt said. "We took ground fire and we returned fire."
Kimmitt said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party. He said a large amount of money, Syrian passports and satellite communications equipment had been found at the site after the attack.
But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb before dawn had targeted people celebrating a wedding and had killed at least 41 civilians.
"We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12," Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told Al Arabiya. "We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition."
Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
"The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified man who said he was from the village said on Al Arabiya. "They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.
Guests and relatives at Arab weddings often fire guns in the air in jubilation.
The United States, which is facing a Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq, says foreign fighters are entering Iraq from Syria.
In July 2002, a U.S. air strike on an Afghan wedding party killed 48 civilians. A report released by the U.S. Central Command said the strike was justified because American planes had come under fire.
--------
Fighting Continues in Holy Iraq City Despite Protest by Shiites
May 19, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-KARB.html
KARBALA, Iraq, May 19 - Hundreds of people marched through the streets of this holy city today to protest fighting between American forces and militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric. Battles continued near revered shrines in the downtown area.
The protesters had gathered at the behest of the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential cleric in Iraq. The ayatollah's office here called Tuesday for a demonstration against the presence of both American and insurgent forces in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. The ayatollah issued a statement the same day demanding a military withdrawal from the cities.
It is the strongest criticism Ayatollah Sistani has made against the bloody fighting in recent weeks, though no commanders on either side have heeded him.
The crowd in Karbala numbered from 200 to 300 and gathered in the morning at the Hussein Hospital. It was significantly smaller than protests over other issues the ayatollah had called for before, possibly because of the firefights raging in the middle of this city. As the protesters marched toward the golden-domed Shrine of Hussein, they asked that tribal sheiks and police forces be given responsibility for security in this city.
American F-16 fighter jets swooped overhead as the marchers spilled into the streets.
For more than two weeks, the First Armored Division has been fighting insurgents led by Moktada al-Sadr, the 31-year-old rebel cleric who lives in Najaf. The battles here have crept closer and closer to two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the Shrine of Hussein and the Shrine of Abbas, dedicated to revered Shiite martyrs. Early Monday morning, an American AC-130 gunship fired 40-millimeter cannon shells at a group of insurgents clustered about 160 feet from the Shrine of Hussein.
Today, American tanks were parked about 600 feet from the shrine. One Iraqi witness said they appeared to be encircling it. There were firefights throughout the day in the alleyways of the downtown area, where American forces have holed up in the Mukhaiyam Mosque, which soldiers occupied on May 12 after a pitched battled with insurgents in the area. The mosque now comes under daily attack from militiamen launching mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades.
At least eight insurgents were killed in the fighting, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, a spokesman for the First Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment of the First Armored Division. There were no American casualties, he said. Polish forces also fought militiamen.
For the first time, the Americans called in F-16's to fly over the area and provide surveillance. They did not fire on any targets, Captain Gorospe said.
By evening, insurgents had fired at least three mortar rounds and 13 rocket-propelled grenades at American soldiers, the captain said. He added that soldiers came under sniper fire five times. One especially skilled sniper has killed two American soldiers and wounded four since the American forces took over the Mukhaiyam Mosque.
In total, four American soldiers have been killed and at least 52 wounded during the two-week offensive against Mr. Sadr's forces here. The battle for Karbala is the fiercest fighting in Iraq at the moment, and it is certainly the most intense fighting the soldiers of the First Armored Division have taken part in since they arrived last May.
The battle zone poses enormous risks for the American forces. There is the potential for damage to the shrines, which could anger Shiite Muslims around the world. Insurgents have grouped around the shrines, especially around the Shrine of Hussein, in hopes that the Americans will hold their fire or damage the shrines.
Col. Pete Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said rocket-propelled grenades have been fired at tanks at least once from the Shrine of Hussein. A Predator drone flying overhead at the time recorded the projectiles originating from the shrine, he said.
But today, it appeared that the Mahdi Army had been barred from entering the shrine by armed guards appointed by the offices of the marjaiah, the four grand ayatollahs living in Najaf. Mahdi fighters stood about 150 feet from the Shrine of Hussein, while about 80 men armed with automatic rifles and working for the Shrines Protection Force stood inside the two central shrines.
The wide plaza separating the two shrines was relatively empty, though it is usually thronged with Shiite pilgrims. Some residents of the area have barricaded themselves in their homes for two weeks as the fighting has raged. Men working to maintain the shrines have retreated from the plaza into the shrines to seek shelter.
Members of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite political party, were nowhere to be seen. American commanders said the group had promised to secure the shrines. But the group apparently is not popular among residents of Karbala and would have little support if it went into battle against the Mahdi Army.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Kill 19 In Gaza Raids
Rafah Hospital Overflows During Major Offensive
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37726-2004May18?language=printer
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 18 -- Israeli troops backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers went street by street and house by house in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods of this city and adjacent refugee camp Tuesday, seeking to root out Palestinian fighters and weapons. Local hospital officials said 19 Palestinians were killed and dozens were injured.
Operation Rainbow, as the Israelis called it, was the biggest incursion into the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian uprising began nearly four years ago, military officials said. Terrified residents in the targeted area fled gunfire and missile attacks and suffered casualties.
A dozen or more houses were destroyed in the Tel Sultan neighborhood, where the heaviest fighting occurred, and dozens of others were damaged or scorched.
By nightfall, officials at Najar Hospital, the main medical center in Rafah, reported receiving the bodies of 19 dead Palestinians, including a young brother and sister, along with 62 injured, 25 of them seriously. The Israeli army reported no casualties among its troops and said that 17 of the 19 dead Palestinians were militants.
Palestinian officials condemned the attack as a deliberate assault on civilians and pleaded for international support, while Arab nations called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The United Nations and the European Union both demanded that the incursion be stopped, and EU envoy Marc Otte was in Israel for talks with diplomats and security officials, news services reported.
Abu Qusay, identified as a commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza, a Palestinian group responsible for many suicide bombings inside Israel, told Freedom Radio in Gaza that his group would deliver "a very painful response" to what he called "the Zionist massacres."
Israeli officials said international criticism was based on the misconception that the army was on a mission to demolish the houses of innocent civilians. "We have no policy of destroying houses," said Avi Pazner, a government spokesman, adding: "You have in Rafah now an industry of terror. We want to stop that for our good and also for the good of the population of Rafah who are being terrorized."
Uzi Landau, a Likud Party minister, said Israel's treatment of civilians in Rafah compared favorably to the actions of U.S. and British forces who have caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Iraq. "I guess we are at least as careful as those who are trying to tell us how we should protect our people," he said.
The scene at Najar Hospital was one of chaos, with screaming ambulances ferrying the dead and wounded, who were hauled and shoved through a noisy mob of hysterical relatives and outraged residents into the overcrowded emergency room. The small morgue was quickly overrun, officials said, and bodies were sent to nearby shops for temporary storage.
Just inside the front door of the hospital, Ahmed Hussein, 11, lay on his side, pursing his lips to keep from crying as a male nurse stitched a hole in his left shoulder where he had been shot. His uncle said the boy had opened a living room window to sneak a look at the fighting outside when he was hit by a bullet. His mother was also wounded.
The boy's uncle, Tamim Hussein, said Israelis soldiers had entered the tallest houses in the area and set up sniper positions. "They go up to the roof, make a hole in the wall and shoot from it at anyone who's moving," he said. He saw three bodies in the street in the morning that no one could reach for several hours because of the shooting.
Leaning against a wall near Ahmed Hussein's bed was a paramedic ambulance worker, Eyad Foudah, 32, who was catching his breath after working 28 hours without a rest. He said the two ambulances he works with had carried 17 wounded and eight dead to the hospital since Monday evening. Among them were a young brother and sister, both shot in the head as they sought to take down laundry from a second-story balcony. The two were dead when he arrived, he said, and their family had laid them out on mattresses.
Hospital officials identified the victims as Ahmad and Asma Mougheir. Some reports put their ages as 10 and 11, others as 13 and 16.
Foudah, whose blue smock and pants were smeared with dried brown bloodstains, said soldiers had prevented his ambulance from entering Tel Sultan for an hour to 90 minutes each time it returned for more casualties. "Before they let us in, we have to empty all the things from inside and put them on the ground, raise our hands and lift up our shirts" he said.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman, said the army was investigating the deaths of the children. "We don't know exactly what happened there," he said.
As for the ambulance delays, Dallal said all ambulances are subjected to security checks because gunmen have used them to launch attacks and smuggle arms. He blamed the long delays on the fact that the ambulances were seeking to enter combat zones where firing was going on and some roads were booby-trapped with mines. "In a situation like this, also an ambulance passing by could be hurt," he said.
Operation Rainbow began Monday, when tanks and armored personnel carriers sealed off the Gaza Strip's southernmost city and refugee camp, with a population of about 165,000. Just after midnight, helicopter gunships fired missiles at areas where large numbers of fighters were allegedly concentrated, killing three people and wounding seven, as soldiers started moving into Tel Sultan, which they encircled and cut off from the rest of Rafah.
A few hours later, an attack helicopter fired two missiles at militants near a mosque, killing eight people and wounding 23. The mosque was damaged in the attack, witnesses said.
By dawn residents reported several gun battles. But for the most part, Tamim Hussein and other Palestinian witnesses said, armed Palestinians did not put up much of a struggle against the tanks and overwhelming numbers of soldiers arrayed against them.
The Israeli army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, told reporters that soldiers had demolished three houses overnight that concealed tunnels used for smuggling weapons across the nearby border with Egypt. He said the army could take several days to complete its mission.
[Two gunmen from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were killed early Wednesday in fighting in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, news services reported.]
Correspondent Robin Shulman and researcher Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Israeli Shells Hit Crowd of Palestinians, Killing at Least 9
May 19, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 19 - As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.
The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.
As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.
The Israeli Army expressed "deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives" and said it was investigating the "very grave incident," but it said its troops did not fire deliberately on the marchers.
In a statement, it said that a helicopter had shot flares and "warning fire" of one missile toward an open area. It said that, because the crowd "continued to converge toward the troops," machine gun fire was opened at an "abandoned structure," and four tanks shells were also fired at the same building.
"It is possible that the casualties were a result of the tank fire on the abandoned structure," the statement continued, adding that this was "an area of combat" and that Palestinians had planted explosives in the road.
Palestinian witnesses angrily denied that any gunmen were present in the march. A reporter who was present saw two young men with semi-automatic rifles standing on the sidewalk at the rear of the marchers' route, but did not see any guns or other weapons brandished among hundreds of protesters.
In wailing ambulances and battered sedans, the wounded were rushed through rutted sand lanes to Al Najar hospital. There, shouting, shoving men converged on each vehicle, grasping for the wounded and rushing them up a concrete ramp that was spotted crimson and into the hospital.
Inside, one boy wearing only blue shorts pressed a hand to a bulky white bandage over his right eye. He lay on a flowered mattress on the floor, his face a mask of bewilderment and fear. Someone had scrawled his name in ink on his chest.
Medics lowered another boy on a stretcher onto the floor beside the first. His left pants leg, which had been torn open, was soaked with blood, and his left leg was heavily bandaged below the knee.
Turning his face as he fought back tears, Kemal Breika, 38, hovered beside the stretcher of his son, Atta, 10. "When they fired the shell, I was knocked to the ground, and my son fell on me, with shrapnel in him," Mr. Breika said.
Hisham Ashoul, 45, said the marchers had just crossed Tel Zarub square here when a hovering helicopter unleashed a missile, and a tank on a hill about 150 yards ahead opened fire. "I saw the tank fire," he said. "When we were collecting the children from the ground, they fired again."
Hospital officials were still trying to identify some of mutilated bodies this evening, but they said they had identified at least three children, aged 12, 13, and 15. One of them died not from shrapnel but from a gunshot to the head, the officials said.
Together with several other Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy who was killed in Tel al-Sultan today, the fatalities among the protesters brought to at least 33 the number of Palestinians to die since Israeli bulldozers and tanks rolled into southern Gaza on Tuesday.
Palestinian officials called the incident an Israeli war crime, and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
At the White House, the press secretary, Scott McLellan, said that the Bush administration had asked Israel for "the facts about what happened today." He said, "We are very concerned about reports from Gaza and the number of Palestinians who are said to have been injured and killed."
And Mr. Bush said: "I continue to urge restraint. It is essential that people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace. And we'll get clarification from the government."
The deaths and injuries of the protesters received widespread news coverage in Israel, feeding a growing debate about this Israeli incursion and a broader one about any presence of Israeli settlers and soldiers in Gaza.
The justice minister, Joseph Lapid, a leader of the centrist Shinui faction, seized on the deaths as further evidence that Israel should withdraw. He called the incident "A mistake, a human and diplomatic tragedy that is a result of the army's presence in Gaza."
At the Israeli parliament, Zeev Boim, the deputy defense minister, said, "We must express regret at the loss, regardless of the numbers and details."
But, he said, the demonstration was not entirely innocent. "It's not the May first parade," he said. "This is a war zone, and there are civilians in war zones. Some of them are innocent. Some are far from it and are deeply involved in terror, even when they remain defined as civilians."
Until today, Rafah had been relatively quiet, as, to the residents' surprise, Israeli forces concentrated instead on Tel al-Sultan, just to the north. Palestinians here say that militants in the area are based in Rafah. Here, Israeli forces demolished more than 80 houses last week in what the Army said was a search for weapons smuggling tunnels under an Israeli-patrolled zone and across the border with Egypt.
Israeli drones buzzed overhead today, and residents kept a wary eye on passing helicopter gunships. But those are familiar sounds and sights here, and for the most part residents of Rafah went about their business, while in Tel al-Sultan, thousands were shut in their homes by an Israeli-imposed curfew. Electricity and water was also cut off from the area, Palestinian officials said.
Before the deaths here this afternoon, an Israeli colonel leading the operation briefed reporters on its goals and tactics. Although higher-ranking officers on Tuesday had stressed the search for smuggling tunnels, this officer, identified only as Colonel Erez, said that Israeli troops in Tel al-Sultan were going house-to-house in a search for ammunition and wanted men.
"The roads and alleys are all lined with bombs and many homes are booby-trapped," he said.
He argued that Israel's decision to use ground troops, rather than simply bomb the neighborhood from the air, showed its concern for Palestinian civilians and "maintaining our moral posture."
Several wounded Palestinians interviewed in the last 24 hours said they were shot by snipers when they stepped out into the street. Noting the curfew, Colonel Erez said, "Someone who exits is obviously someone who is looking for trouble" and was therefore "a legitimate target."
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ISRAEL'S MILITARY DEPLOYS LARGEST FORCE SINCE 1967
[MENL]
19 May 2004
http://menewsline.com/stories/2004/may/05_20_2.html
GAZA CITY [MENL] -- Israel's military was said to have deployed its largest force in the Gaza Strip since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli military sources said a force the size of nearly two brigades has been deployed in the Gaza Strip to participate in and support Operation Rainbow. The operation was meant to isolate the southern Gaza town of Rafah from the rest of the strip, capture Palestinian insurgents as well as destroy strongholds and weapons tunnels.
Palestinian sources said 20 people were killed in the first day of fighting between the military and insurgents, with the most intense fighting taking place in the area of Tel Sultan. Many of the Palestinian casualties stemmed from Israeli missile strikes by AH-64A Apache attack helicopters.
The combined Israeli force consisted of elite infantry units, including the Paratroop Brigade and Givati Brigade, and supported by nearly 100 main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers. The force has also been backed by attack helicopters and unmanned air vehicles.
-----
Death and Rage in Gaza
(Inter Press Service)
by Ferry Biedermann
May 19, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/biedermann.php?articleid=2607
The killing of at least 10 Palestinian demonstrators and the wounding of many others by Israeli forces in Rafah in the southern Gaza strip Wednesday increased domestic and international pressure on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to end the military operation in the town.
In Rafah a senior representative of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant offshoot of the Fatah movement, promised revenge for what he called a massacre.
"We will give an answer inside Tel Aviv, in the settlements anywhere inside the (Israeli) borders," said a commander of the group who called himself Abu Hamada.
He was speaking in a field outside a potato refrigerator that has been used for the last two days to keep the bodies of people killed in the Israeli operation. The hospital morgue in Rafah can only accommodate 12 bodies.
Moments earlier a crying father, Tareq Mansour, had pushed his way into the cold-storage space while others tried to hold him back. He went into the freezer and picked up the body of his 14 year-old son Mahmoud from the bodies on the cardboard covered floor.
He took his son wrapped in a blanket outside and kissed him. Then he put the body back inside, sat there for a while and said goodbye.
Another man cried uncontrollably after seeing his best friend Fuad Sega wrapped in a bloodstained shroud on the refrigerator floor. Sega was 32 and his wife was pregnant, the friend said.
They were killed in a demonstration in which an estimated 2,000 people participated. The demonstration was intended to protest the Israeli army operation in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah.
The demonstrators marched from the centre of Rafah down the Bahr street towards the neighborhood.
Well before reaching the Israeli tank that blocked access to the area, a helicopter gunship launched a missile that landed in front of the first line of protesters. Most victims seem to have been hit by shrapnel and debris.
The Israeli army later issued a statement saying that masked men carrying anti-tank weapons had been spotted among the crowd. Pictures taken by Palestinian TV show unarmed demonstrators marching past Zoroub Square near Tel al-Sultan and then running back in panic.
In Bahr Street trails of blood could be seen leading from Zoroub Square to where the missile hit. Eyewitnesses denied there were any armed men among the crowd, and said that the large majority of the demonstrators were children.
From a nearby Israeli army position where at least three armored personnel carriers and a tank cut off access to Tel al-Sultan, the missile could be heard streaking across the sky towards its target. A large cloud of dust went up where it hit. The attack seemed at odds with some Israeli statements that the missile was only a flare meant to deter the crowd.
From the army position, explosions could be heard around the neighborhood where Israeli troops were operating throughout the day.
The high number of dead and injured civilians led to an immediate increase in pressure on Israel to abandon its action in Rafah. The operation was launched Sunday when troops cut off Rafah from the rest of the Gaza Strip. It came after Israel suffered heavy losses in fighting in the area last week.
By Wednesday afternoon the toll of people killed since the beginning of the incursion had reached at least 39.
Israeli opposition parties demanded an immediate end to the operation after the killing of the demonstrators. One Parliamentarian from the Labor party said the army should get out "before it turns into another Lebanon." Since the escalation in the fighting last week, comparisons between Israel's occupation of South Lebanon and Gaza have been frequent.
The Palestinian Authority said it would protest to the United Nations, and demanded that sanctions be imposed on Israel.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the Rafah operation "unacceptable and wrong." The official Russian reaction spoke of "disproportionate use of force."
In the morning five Palestinians were reported killed in Tel al-Sultan. The Israeli army said they died in a gunfight.
Israeli army vans had gone around Tel al-Sultan and neighboring Canada camp calling on all male residents between the ages of 16 and 30 to come out and gather at a central point, several residents said.
One man who identified himself only as Mohammed said on phone around noon that he could see hundreds of residents of Canada camp moving through the neighborhood to a gathering point.
They were holding up their hands in surrender and some were carrying white flags, he said. Soldiers intermittently fired into the air to herd the crowd in the right direction, he said.
One resident of Canada camp also reached on phone said her husband and two sons had gone out to join the surrender. "I'm so worried about them, I haven't heard anything from them since they left," she said.
In Canada camp troops were carrying out searches of homes, and tanks had taken up positions in the streets, damaging the roads, she said.
In an apparent effort to counter negative press reports, the Israeli army had on Wednesday agreed to take several foreign correspondents into Tel al-Sultan. The reporters were taken only to the outskirts of the neighborhood, and witnessed the helicopter launching its missile.
After the incident the army rapidly offered several different explanations for the bloodbath, although the official spokesman said it was still under investigation. Some army sources said the real damage was done by a tank shell that was fired near the demonstration.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defense and a member of Prime Minister Sharon's Likud party, said what had happened was "tragic" but that Palestinians sometimes send civilians into dangerous places on purpose.
Israel has expressed regret for the incident, and the Israeli army says it is allowing ambulances to travel between Rafah and the rest of the Gaza strip to help Palestinians cope with the wounded.
In Rafah residents sneered at the gestures. Abu Hamada said "they call us terrorists, what should we call them?"
-------- prisoners of war
News Agency Employees Detail Abuse by U.S. Forces
Reuters
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37729-2004May18?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 18 -- U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for the Reuters news agency, subjecting them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Fallujah, the three said Tuesday.
The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release, but decided to make it public only after the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist working for NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday.
All three said they were forced into humiliating acts and compelled to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they had not wanted to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse.
The men said the soldiers deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them, forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods and told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a letter received by Reuters Monday, but dated March 5, that he was confident that the investigation had been "thorough and objective" and that its findings were sound.
The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by David Schlesinger, global managing editor for Reuters, to review the military's findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Asked for comment Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "There are a number of lines of inquiry underway with respect to prison operations in Iraq. If during the course of any inquiry, the commander believes it is appropriate to review a specific aspect of detention, he has the authority to do so."
The abuse happened at Forward Operating Base Volturno, near Fallujah, the Reuters staff said. They were detained Jan. 2 while covering the aftermath of the downing of a U.S. helicopter near Fallujah. They were held for three days, first at Volturno and then at Forward Operating Base St. Mere.
The three Iraqis -- Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Fallujah-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar Badrani -- were released without charge Jan. 5.
Ureibi, who understands English better than the two others, said that soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him and that he was afraid he would be raped.
NBC, whose stringer Ali Muhammed Hussein Ali Badrani was detained along with the Reuters staff, said he reported that a hood was placed over his head for hours, that he was forced to perform physically debilitating exercises, that he was prevented from sleeping, and that he was struck and kicked several times.
"Despite repeated requests, we have yet to receive the results of the Army investigation," said Bill Wheatley, NBC News vice president.
Schlesinger, the Reuters managing editor, sent a letter to Sanchez Jan. 9 demanding an investigation into the treatment of the three Iraqis.
The Army said it was investigating and requested further information. Reuters provided transcripts of initial interviews with the three following their release and offered to make them available to investigators for interviews.
A summary of the investigation by the 82nd Airborne Division, dated Jan. 28 and provided to Reuters, said that "no specific incidents of abuse were found." It said soldiers responsible for the detainees were interviewed under oath and "none admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture."
"The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured," it said. The version received Monday used the phrase "sleep management" instead.
The U.S. military never interviewed the three for its investigation.
On Feb. 3, Schlesinger wrote to Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying the investigation was "woefully inadequate" and should be reopened.
"The military's conclusion of its investigation without even interviewing the alleged victims, along with other inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the report, speaks volumes about the seriousness with which the U.S. government is taking this issue," he wrote.
The Associated Press reported from London:
At least one British soldier was arrested Tuesday in an investigation of faked photographs purporting to show Iraqi prisoners being abused by British forces, the Defense Ministry said. It said the arrest was part of its probe into the origin of the photos and that no charges were filed.
The photos appeared in Britain's Daily Mirror. The tabloid printed a front-page apology Saturday after announcing that its top editor would step down.
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THE COMMANDER
Officers Say U.S. Colonel at Abu Ghraib Prison Felt Intense Pressure to Get Inmates to Talk
May 19, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/politics/19PAPP.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 18 - As he took charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison last September, Col. Thomas M. Pappas was under enormous pressure from his superiors to extract more information from prisoners there, according to senior Army officers.
"He likened it to a root canal without novocaine," a senior officer who knows Colonel Pappas said of his meetings with his superiors in Baghdad. Often, the officer said, Colonel Pappas would emerge from discussions with two of them, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, without a word, but "clutching his face as if in pain."
Colonel Pappas, commander of the 205th Intelligence Brigade, relocated his headquarters from Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport, to Abu Ghraib just days after a visit to Iraq last fall by another high-ranking Army officer, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. General Miller encouraged the Army colonel to have his unit work more closely with military police to set the conditions for interrogations.
By the end of September, Colonel Pappas had asserted control of Tier 1 of the prison's "hard site," used for interrogation of Iraqi prisoners, which he maintained until February, when he and his brigade were transferred to Germany at the end of their yearlong tour. After Nov. 19, by order of General Sanchez, Colonel Pappas and his brigade took command of all of Abu Ghraib prison, taking over authority from the 800th Military Police Brigade.
Now Colonel Pappas, who in sworn testimony to a senior Army investigator acknowledged that his subordinates directed military police officers to strip Iraqi prisoners naked and to shackle them, is the highest-ranking officer on active duty known to be under investigation for the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison.
From his current post in Wiesbaden, Germany, he has declined all interview requests, but people who know him well described him as a smart, quiet, studious officer who was intent throughout his command on pleasing his superiors.
Less than a year ago, Colonel Pappas, then 44 and newly promoted, graduated from a one-year master's course at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., where he impressed professors as thoughtful, articulate and well-grounded.
In heading to Iraq to take charge of the 205th Intelligence Brigade, he was embarking on the most important assignment of a 22-year career.
"He was excited; he had been promoted, and he knew that the new challenges that he was taking on were important," said Prof. Jeffrey H. Norwitz, who taught Colonel Pappas in a three-month seminar on making national security decisions and described him as a superb student who appeared headed for the Army's highest ranks.
On Tuesday, however, the colonel's younger brother, John, said that he had called from Germany recently to say that he and his wife, Becky, were "maintaining" in the middle of the storm.
"They're just waiting for all the stuff to be finalized, and then whatever happens, happens," John Pappas, of Middletown, N.J., said.
He said he found it hard to believe his brother could have been involved in the worst of the abuses.
"It doesn't seem to me that he would throw away his career to do something like that," he said. "I don't see him as giving an order to sodomize a prisoner. If he had gotten directives or orders that they could strip someone down or something, maybe."
Colonel Pappas was born in Washington in 1959, and grew up on a quiet, leafy street in Belford, N.J., about two miles west of Sandy Hook. His father, Thomas A. Pappas, was a systems analyst at Bell Labs, John Pappas said, and the young Tom Pappas was a Boy Scout who took an early interest in camping and military affairs, a former neighbor said.
"The whole family would take camping trips, and Thomas, as far as I know, was always one to stay out of trouble," said Mary Beth Hall, who still lives in Belford, two doors down from the ranch-style house where the Pappas family lived for 30 years. "He was just a good kid."
A photograph of the young Thomas Pappas in the Rutgers yearbook of 1981, when he graduated with degrees in political science and English, shows a thin man with dark, penetrating eyes in a coat and tie. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army.
He climbed the Army ranks as an intelligence officer, with posts in South Korea, Europe and the United States, including stints at Fort Meade, Md., as commander of a unit that serves under the National Security Agency, and, in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., headquarters of the Army Intelligence School, from 2001 to 2003, where he served as a senior officer involved in planning and designing the future of the Army intelligence corps.
A former senior Army intelligence officer described Colonel Pappas as highly regarded, "with a reputation for professional competence and for being a straight shooter."
There is no indication that Colonel Pappas, whose expertise was in strategic and tactical intelligence, ever worked or was trained as a military interrogator, Army officials said. An Army officer who served with him at Abu Ghraib said that as far as interrogations at the Iraq prison were concerned, "he seemed to be learning on the fly."
During his year at the Naval War College, which serves as a prestigious finishing school for promising officers, Colonel Pappas was the highest-ranking officer in the seminar taught by Professor Norwitz. In that role, he was a leader as well as a student in the class of about 18, the professor said.
"Flat out, Tom was probably my best student in the seminar," Professor Norwitz said. "Here at the War College people say it's very hard to fail and very hard to get an A. That's true. In my seminar, Tom was an A-plus student."
In Iraq, as the new commander of the 205th Brigade, Colonel Pappas first set up his headquarters at Camp Victory, which was also the site of the home and office of General Sanchez and his staff.
But in September, at General Miller's encouragement, he moved to Abu Ghraib, and by the end of that month, by several accounts, his military intelligence unit had effectively taken control of Tier 1 from the 800th Military Police Brigade. The brigade was commanded by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer, although military police from that unit remained as guards.
It was in that part of Abu Ghraib that the acts of sexual humiliation and other abuse are reported to have taken place in a period that began after early October, as the anti-American insurgency was mounting.
To date, seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company have been charged in that affair. But a report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba identified Colonel Pappas and three others, two of them civilians, as having been "directly or indirectly responsible" for the actions.
"I know that they were absolutely pressuring him to get more out of the intelligence teams," a senior Army officer said of Colonel Pappas's superiors, including Generals Sanchez, Fast and Miller. "Tom was really really smart, but he was very much - I don't know if the right word is in awe or intimidated. But it was mostly them telling him what he was going to do."
John Holl contributed reporting from Belford, N.J., for this article.
-------- un
UN Council Rebukes Israel on Demolitions
May 19, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-gaza-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council rebuked Israel on Wednesday for demolishing Palestinian homes following widespread bulldozing in the Gaza Strip, with the United States abstaining on the resolution.
The other 14 council members voted in favor after negotiations with Algeria, representing Arab nations, resulted in a watered-down text to prevent a veto from Washington, Israel's closest ally, diplomats said.
The resolution calls on Israel to respect its obligations under international law and insists ``on its obligation not to undertake demolition of homes contrary to that law.'' But the text no longer ``demanded'' Israel stop demolitions.
The measure, which calls for an end to all violence, expresses ``grave concern'' about the humanitarian situation of Palestinians made homeless in the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border.
The United Nations says the demolitions threw some 1,600 people out of their homes. Israel says bulldozing homes is necessary to stop them being used by militants to carry out attacks.
The resolution came after an international outcry against both the demolitions and the killings of more than 30 people in the past two days near the Rafah refugee camp on the Egyptian border.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the shootings of demonstrators and said he talked to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, to see what could be done to control the violence.
NOT SERVING PEACE AND SECURITY
James Cunningham, the deputy U.S. ambassador said ``we do not see that (Israel's) operations in Gaza in the last few days serve the purposes of peace and security.''
``They have worsened the humanitarian situation and resulted in confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians and have not, we believe, enhanced Israel's security,'' Cunningham told the council.
But he said he abstained because the resolution did not address terror.
``It is clear that Palestinian terrorists have been smuggling weapons into Gaza through tunnels in Rafah,'' Cunningham said. ``It is clear that the Palestinian Authority has not taken serious action to address this threat or to put an end to terrorist acts.''
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman said he was disappointed at the council, which took no action when Israelis were killed. He contended seven Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, of which four to five were armed demonstrators.
Gillerman said high-quality weapons were being smuggled into Gaza, some of them through tunnels on the Egyptian border.
``In fact, the whole of Gaza, and Rafah in particular, is on the verge of becoming a missile base aimed at Israel's cities and civilians,'' he said. ``What would the international community have Israel do? Just sit back and wait for this horrific scenario to materialize?''
Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa told the council Israel killed innocent children, a telling illusion of the ``vicious and barbaric behavior and actions of this occupying power,'' by firing at least one missile into the crowd.
He said it was clear Israeli actions were to enlarge a so-called security zone along the Egyptian border, the real aim of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw 7,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza amid 1.3 million Palestinians.
``This is, of course an attempt to isolate the Gaza Strip from the outside world, ensuring that it has no border with Egypt, and thus ensuring the creation of a large prison for the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza,'' Kidwa said.
-------- us
3 to Be Arraigned in Prison Abuse
Defense to Argue Military Intelligence Officers Were in Charge
By Christian Davenport and Michael Amon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37749-2004May18?language=printer
An inmate of a Pennsylvania prison accused Charles A. Graner Jr. in a lawsuit of slipping a razor blade into his mashed potatoes and clubbing him with a baton. The case was later dismissed.
During a divorce proceeding, Graner's wife said he stalked and threatened to kill her. Judges issued three "protection from abuse" orders against him, though no criminal charges were filed.
Graner, described in an Army investigative report as a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, is scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of abusing and mistreating detainees, along with Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II and Sgt. Javal S. Davis, the two highest-ranking soldiers charged in the case who have also been accused of playing key roles.
Their arraignments are set to coincide with the court-martial today of Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, the first member of the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cresaptown, Md., to stand trial in the case.
In sworn statements to investigators, Sivits, 24, has implicated others in the unit, describing in detail how guards beat and forced detainees into sexually humiliating positions. He said that Davis, 26, stomped on detainees' fingers or toes. He said Frederick, 37, who like Graner worked in a prison in his civilian life, once punched a captive in the chest "for no reason." Graner, 35, punched one in the head so hard it knocked him unconscious, Sivits said.
Defense attorneys have dismissed Sivits's statements as fabrications and said he is hoping to get a lenient sentence by testifying against his fellow soldiers. As their cases move closer to trial, the lawyers have made it clear their defense will revolve around the contention that the military police officers were following orders from intelligence officials to set the conditions for interrogations.
In building Graner's defense, his attorney, Guy L. Womack, has said he intends to use one of the pictures showing naked detainees piled on top of one another on the floor to show that MPs were directed by others. In the photo, Graner is standing over the detainees, watching, Womack said.
The photo, he said, shows a civilian interrogator and several Army intelligence officers "directing the setup of an interrogation. . . . So we have visual proof of what we have been saying."
The military has maintained, however, that the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison was limited to a small band of unruly soldiers who acted on their own. One of the Army's criminal investigators reached the same conclusion. During an Article 32 hearing for one of the charged soldiers, the investigating agent, Tyler Pieron, said: "There was absolutely no evidence that the MI [military intelligence] or MP [military police] chain of command authorized any of this kind of treatment. These individuals acted on their own."
He said some of the abused prisoners had rioted, and they were singled out. "It is clear to me that the abuse was retaliation after the riot," Pieron said.
Graner, the son of an airline mechanic, grew up in a two-story house at the top of a hill in Whitehall, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. He went to college after graduating from Baldwin High School, but he left after two years, joined a Marine Reserve unit and became a construction worker, according to court records.
Tom Zavada, a neighbor at Graner's current home in Uniontown, Pa., said Graner told him that a sense of patriotism drove him to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "Some people get into the Reserves because there is some good money," Zavada said. "Others got into it because they figure it's their duty. He's the latter."
Both Graner and Davis, of Nottingham, Md., have fought accusations of violence in their civilian lives.
In 1999, Davis's wife told police that he beat and strangled her while she was pregnant. Davis pushed her to the floor, she said in a statement. "I got up and reached for the phone to call 911, but he fought me to get away from the phone," wrote Zeenethia Davis. Javal Davis was charged with two counts of assault but was found not guilty in District Court in Baltimore County after his wife declined to testify.
Paul Bergrin, Javal Davis's attorney, said the charges grew out of a heated dispute between Davis and his wife. No one was injured, he said. "She admitted that she was the aggressor. She struck him, and he grabbed her. Then the police came to the house and essentially what she said was 'I don't want to prosecute.' And that was the end of it."
Womack, Graner's attorney, said neither the ex-wife's allegations of abuse nor lawsuits brought by prisoners "were substantiated. And it is so common for a jailer or a prison guard to be accused of maltreatment of a prisoner. It's an everyday event." About the claims by his former wife, Womack said: "He was awarded equal custody [of two children] with his wife. The state of Pennsylvania probably would not have done that if they thought he was beating his wife."
Graner was one of several guards named in a federal lawsuit alleging that they routinely mistreated inmates at a Pennsylvania prison. Horatio Nimley, an inmate from 1997 to 2000 on a burglary conviction, charged that Graner beat his arm with a baton and tricked him into eating a razor blade stashed in his lunch meal.
In court records, Nimley said that he bit into the razor blade and severely cut his mouth. As he screamed for medical attention, he said, Graner ignored him and continued to serve the rest of the cellblock their meals. Nimley then went to the nurse's office, where Graner and another guard slammed his head into the floor, causing him to lose hearing in one ear, according to the lawsuit.
"Stop, stop," Nimley yelled, according to his lawsuit. "They're trying to kill me."
Graner had been cleared of wrongdoing by his superiors at the jail, according to the lawsuit. He alleged that Nimley had been "disruptive and aggressive" during the incident, and that Nimley was punished with 150 days in a restricted housing unit.
Nimley, who was released from prison in 2000, represented himself in the court case. When he failed to respond to several court motions, the suit was dismissed.
At the prison, Graner was suspended three times and given three written reprimands for being late and having attendance problems. In 2000, he was fired for refusing to work overtime and for leaving the prison without notifying his supervisor. He was reinstated two years later when an arbitrator cut the punishment to a three-day suspension.
His home life in those years was troubled.
Graner's former wife was granted three "protection from abuse" orders against him, from 1997 to 2001, as the couple went through a contentious divorce and custody battle. In court documents, Staci Graner, 33, alleged that Charles Graner sneaked into her house at night, threw her around the bedroom in a rage and set up a video camera in her house to record her movements.
In June 1997, the first of the orders was issued after she wrote in court papers that he had threatened to kill her and had told her mother that he did not need his guns "for what he was going to do to" her.
Less than a year later she was back in court, accusing him of sneaking into the house at night and scaring her. Once, he hid in the laundry room at night, Staci Graner wrote, and when she walked by he jumped out and startled her. She also alleged that he "picked me up and threw me into a wall. I had huge bruises on my arms. [He] picked me up and threw me a couple of times."
In 2001, Charles Graner told his ex-wife that, even though they had been divorced for more than a year, he still considered her his wife, according to another request for a "protection from abuse" order. She also said that her former husband had dragged her out of their then-10-year-old daughter's bedroom by her hair and tried to throw her down a staircase. The police eventually came that night. No charges were filed. Through her family, Staci Graner declined to comment.
Charles Graner denied abusing his wife, said Phyllis A. Jin, his attorney at the time. His main concern was that he see his children regularly, she said. A judge granted him generous visitation rights, Jin said; he had the kids for 31/2 days a week.
"His children were his life," Jin said. "That was his biggest concern: that she wouldn't allow him to be a part of their lives."
Researchers Bobbye Pratt and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
---------
First Soldier Pleads Guilty in Iraq Prisoner-Abuse Case
May 19, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 19 - Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits, the first person to stand trial in connection with the prisoner mistreatment scandal, pleaded guilty here today to abuse charges and was sentenced to the maximum one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad-conduct discharge from the military.
"I would like to apologize to the Iraqi people and to the detainees," he said during the special court-martial. "I want to apologize to the Army, to my unit, to the country. I want to apologize to my family. I let everybody down. This is not me. I should have protected the detainees. I've learned a huge lesson: You have to stand up for what is right."
Specialist Sivits, 24, a military police reservist, was found guilty of two counts of mistreating prisoners, dereliction of duty for failing to protect them from abuse, cruelty and forcing a prisoner "to be positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers," the military said after the proceedings, which were open to members of the news media, including reporters from Arab news services, but not representatives of human rights groups who had asked to attend.
American military officials said Specialist Sivits had agreed to testify against others under a plea agreement. His sentence will ultimately be reviewed by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, who can approve, reduce or vacate it. Specialist Sivits's conviction and sentence will also be automatically reviewed by the Army's legal branch.
According to his testimony, Specialist Sivits, who said he was sent to Iraq as a mechanic, was only briefly involved in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and as a result of happenstance.
On Nov. 8, he said he was putting gasoline in a generator at Abu Ghraib prison when he struck up a conversation with Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, one of three other soldiers who have been ordered to stand trial in connection with the case.
Sergeant Frederick led him to a cellblock where he saw prisoners being abused, the defendant said, adding that five soldiers, in addition to Sergeant Frederick, were present: Specialist Megan M. Ambuhl, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Pfc. Lynndie R. England, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. and Specialist Sabrina Harman.
Specialist Sivits said that on that same day he witnessed prisoners - some naked, some hooded - stacked in a human pyramid, and saw Sergeant Frederick punch a prisoner so hard that he thought it had caused the man to go into cardiac arrest.
He said he took a photograph of Specialist Graner with a prisoner in a headlock, faking a punch.
Specialist Sivits had earlier told investigators about brutal conduct by Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner, who, in turn, called him a liar.
"I should not have taken that picture," Specialist Sivits said. "I love the Army. I love the flag. All I ever wanted was to be an American soldier. I want to stay in. I think I can teach other soldiers the difference between right and wrong. I am truly sorry. I am truly sorry for what I did."
At least twice during his testimony, Specialist Sivits choked up, apparently holding back tears. He was contrite and apologetic throughout rigorous, extended questioning by the presiding judge, Col. James Pohl.
"You knew it was wrong to treat people like that," the judge said. "You knew it was wrong to treat people that way, didn't you?"
"Yes, your honor," Specialist Sivits replied.
"No doubt in your mind?"
"No doubt in my mind," the defendant responded.
But Specialist Sivits said that one of the other soldiers participating in the abuses - he said he could not remember who - said the soldiers had been told by people with military intelligence, commonly referred to as M.I., to mistreat the officials.
"They told me later they were asked to do this," the defendant said.
"Who told you that?" the judge asked.
"One of the six," Specialist Sivits replied. "They told me they were told by M.I. to keep doing what they were doing. It was working. They were talking."
Specialist Sivits - who the father of two children and a Little League baseball coach - described conditions in the prison as "hell."
"We were being attacked by mortars, rockets, small-arms fire," he said. "It was dark. The prison was overcrowded. It was dark. It was like hell, sir."
Specialist Sivits's lawyer, First Lt. Stanley L. Martin, cast his client - the first person in his family to graduate high school - as a small-town boy from the countryside along the Pennsylvania-Maryland-West Virginia border who was "out of his element" at the jail. He said Specialist Sivits was only in the cellblock for 30 minutes.
Lieutenant Martin appealed to the court for leniency, saying Specialist Sivits could be rehabilitated, and Specialist Sivits himself pleaded with the judge to allow him to remain in the Army, which he said had been his life's goal.
Six other soldiers have been charged in connection with the abuse case. Earlier today, three others from Specialist Sivits's company who are accused of abuse - Sergeant Davis, Sergeant Frederick and Specialist Graner - appeared for arraignment at the Baghdad Convention Center, in what's called the Green Zone here, the center for American operations in Iraq. But the entry of their pleas was deferred pending another hearing on June 21.
Sergeant Davis's lawyer, Capt. Scott Dunn, complained to the judge that he was being prevented by the occupation authorities from interviewing detainees at the prison who would be likely witnesses in the trial.
While Specialist Sivits faced what the Army calls a special court-martial, similar to a misdemeanor trial, the six others who have been charged will probably face general courts-martial, which can yield more severe punishments.
In Specialist Sivits's home town of Hyndman, Pa., more than 200 residents wore yellow ribbons and clutched small American flags during a candlelight vigil to support him, The Associated Press reported.
"I want to make explicitly clear, Jeremy, no matter what, is still my son," his father, Daniel Sivits, said. "We still love him.
"I am veteran of the Vietnam war and I want to say one thing: Jeremy is always a vet in my heart and in my mind."
The Associated Press reported that 9 Arabic-language newspapers and the the Arab television networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya were among 34 news organizations allowed to have reporters in the courtroom, although no audio or television recordings were permitted.
Human Rights Watch criticized the American occupation authorities today for their refusal to to allow Iraqi and international human rights groups to attend the court-martial.
"Barring human rights monitors from the court-martial is a bad decision in its own right," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa division, said in a statement. "It also sends a terrible signal to Iraqis and others deeply concerned about what transpired in Abu Ghraib."
Kirk Semple contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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Abuse Inquiry Focuses on New Head of Iraq Jails
Critics say Maj. Gen. Miller's suggestions allowed misconduct.
He calls himself a reformer.
Times Staff Writer
By Patrick J. McDonnell
May 19, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes151.htm
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq - He was on the other side of the globe at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when the now-infamous abuses at Abu Ghraib took place last fall and winter.
At the time, he had no authority in Iraq and was in charge of a different group of prisoners - suspected terrorists and Taliban militants detained by U.S. authorities after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who only recently took command of U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq, now finds himself deeply embroiled in the prison abuse scandal that has rocked the Pentagon and the Bush administration. Critics have suggested that Miller's recommendations for overhauling detention and interrogation procedures in Iraq after an inspection tour here last summer created a climate for the abuses to occur. Others said he declared it was time to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib by introducing the kind of aggressive techniques used to grill suspects in Guantanamo.
But Miller, who denies making such a declaration, casts himself as a reformer who sought to impose discipline and order on a fledgling prison system.
The Senate Armed Services Committee today will question Miller; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S. forces in Iraq; and Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, in its quest to determine who was responsible for the abuse.
"I'm going to want to find out chain of command, who gave the orders - the questions are obvious," committee member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday.
Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) has asked for a "discussion and legal review" by the Pentagon of interrogation techniques lawful under the Geneva Convention. Warner has requested all documentation of such interrogation techniques in Iraq and at the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Warner said he would call other witnesses in coming weeks, including L. Paul Bremer III, head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith; and Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, director of intelligence for U.S. operations in Iraq.
On Tuesday, the House Armed Services Committee held a closed session with Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, author of a critical report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Republicans said Taguba concluded that problems were confined to Abu Ghraib, but Democrats complained he would not testify beyond the scope of his investigation.
Miller, 54, a Texan who during 30 years in the military earned a reputation as a no-nonsense leader, said he welcomed scrutiny.
"The facts will support me," Miller said in an interview this week at the sprawling detention complex here, as he took a break from escorting journalists through a facility that he says has been revamped.
Human rights advocates portray Miller as an enabler of what they say is the Bush administration's determination to disregard international law to get information from suspected terrorists and insurgents.
"Miller seems to represent a rolling regime of lawless interrogation," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch in New York. "When he went to Iraq, he brought with him an entire system of interrogation that blatantly violated international conventions and treaties."
Miller said that he voluntarily eschewed most "aggressive" interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and recommended that they be banned in Iraq - a step taken last week by Sanchez.
"Interrogation works best, in my opinion, when you develop a rapport between the interrogator and he or she who is being interrogated," Miller said this week. "Intelligence is like golden threads. You piece each one of them to be able to weave together an intelligence picture."
Miller said he had always insisted on meeting the standards of the Geneva Convention - "except where military necessity dictates" - even in Guantanamo, where the Bush administration has declared the prisoners "enemy combatants" not subject to full Geneva safeguards.
"We followed all of the protections of the Geneva Convention for food, shelter, extraordinary medical care, access for the International Committee of the Red Cross," Miller said of U.S. policy at Guantanamo. "We're dealing with human beings. We have a ... responsibility to treat them with dignity and respect."
The Bush administration has maintained that detainees in Iraq are entitled to Geneva Convention protections.
Congressional testimony and interviews suggest that the Army was unprepared for a large-scale detention and intelligence-gathering operation in Iraq - just as the Pentagon was caught by surprise by postwar looting and the growing insurgency.
"We had just transitioned from a major combat operation," Miller said. "We were starting out with an interim facility."
Desperate for intelligence from thousands of prisoners pouring into makeshift camps, the brass turned last summer to Miller, a former artillery officer and paratrooper who earned high praise for his work in Guantanamo. He led a 30-member team commissioned to assess detention practices in Iraq.
Miller acknowledged that he was taken aback by the lack of "clarity" of rules in Iraq jails. At more than a dozen facilities, military intelligence interrogators followed an outdated Army manual. Interrogators had the opportunity to choose among dozens of techniques, a few of them questionable under the Geneva Convention - including sleep deprivation and pain-producing stress positions. And commanders at the facilities had the authority to approve these techniques.
"My recommendation was that they take a more conservative look at the interrogation techniques being used," Miller said.
During his inspection visit, Miller said he found it "odd" that no one appeared to be in charge at Abu Ghraib, where responsibilities were split among the military police and military intelligence units. His team recommended that "everyone should answer to one person," Miller said, adding that he made no specific suggestion about whom that should be.
Taguba's report suggested that Miller's insistence that military police assist with the interrogation process may have contributed to an atmosphere in which interrogators encouraged guards to "loosen ... up" detainees before questioning.
Miller said his team recommended guards' "passive" participation in the interrogation process - such as reporting on prisoners' habits and activities. He said he never suggested that guards become directly involved in interrogation.
Within weeks of receiving Miller's report, Sanchez approved a comprehensive interrogation policy for the U.S. military in Iraq. By mid-October, some techniques - including the use of stress positions and prolonged sleep deprivation - required Sanchez's approval.
On Nov. 19, Sanchez issued an order putting Abu Ghraib under the military intelligence unit. Critics have suggested that this may have contributed to an atmosphere in which intelligence gathering took priority over humane treatment of prisoners.
Miller said he has moved quickly to change the U.S. detention facilities in Iraq. The 3,600 detainees at Abu Ghraib are being moved into a new tent city dubbed "Camp Redemption."
Miller said he doesn't deny the need for U.S. military authorities to be redeemed in the wake of the scandal.
"We are all embarrassed and ashamed by the actions of a very small number of leaders and a very small number of soldiers," Miller told reporters recently while standing in the cellblocks where the abuse took place. "We are men and women of honor."
Miller cited "great improvements" at the prison. New training has been introduced for guards, interrogators and other staff members. Meals and amenities have been improved for prisoners. A new visitors center is allowing regular family contact - after months in which many relatives could not determine if their loved ones were being held. Some Iraqis have said they had to pay bribes to middlemen to facilitate visits.
Miller has accelerated the review of prisoners' cases and the release of those not considered threats. A Red Cross report found that as many as 90% of U.S. detainees were wrongly arrested.
"We're doing the right thing," Miller said.
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Army General Says U.S. Has 75 Prison Abuse Cases
Reuters
By Alan Elsner
May 19 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=1&u=/nm/20040519/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_dc_8
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has investigated 75 cases of abuse of prisoners in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) since late 2002, suggesting that mistreatment was more widespread than previously acknowledged, the head of the U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, who is responsible for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) there were systemic problems at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, where U.S. personnel took photographs of detainees being abused and sexually humiliated that have shocked and angered Americans and fueled anti-American anger overseas.
"The total number of detainee abuse cases that have been investigated since I believe the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan is around 75," Abizaid told the committee.
He said the army was still investigating several homicides in Afghanistan that went as far back as December 2002 and which needed to be resolved quickly.
"Abuse has happened in Afghanistan, it's happened in Iraq, it's happened at various places. I think the question before us: is there a systemic abuse problem with regard to interrogation that exists in the Central Command area of operations," Abizaid said.
He promised to follow the trail of evidence wherever it led and hold accountable those who are responsible
Committee Chairman John Warner told the hearing the Defense Department has located another disc of images related to abuses of Iraqi detainees.
"I've just been informed ... that another disc of pictures has been located, and I'll soon advise the committee on the conditions under which and the timing they can be viewed," the Virginia Republican said.
Also testifying were Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, deputy commander for detainee operations in Iraq.
Sanchez said that his order putting an intelligence officer in tactical control of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, previously used as a torture center under former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), was for security purposes. It did not place military police at the jail under the control of intelligence officials.
He also said he had issued several directives in 2003 and 2004 making it clear prisoners were to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and requiring that "all interrogations be conducted in a lawful and humane manner, with command oversight."
Some of the military police have charged that they were ordered to help "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
Warner said it was time for top U.S. military leaders to face American and world public opinion.
Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), a Michigan Democrat, asked about warnings from the International Committee of the Red Cross that Iraqi prisoners were being abused that surfaced as early as May 2003, months before the U.S. military launched its first investigation.
Abizaid said he was aware of the report and sent it for comments to a lower-ranking officer but never received a written reply. He acknowledged that this suggested there was a problem in the way the U.S. military handled Red Cross complaints.
In Iraq, a U.S. special court-martial sentenced Spc. Jeremy Sivits to the maximum possible one year in prison and ordered him discharged from the army for bad conduct over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Sivits, 24, pleaded guilty and promised to testify against some of the six other soldiers indicted. He also confessed to pushing a prisoner into the now infamous picture of a pile of naked Iraqis.
The hearing came as the Pentagon (news - web sites) was disputing a recent report that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners grew out of a secret plan approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to toughen interrogation methods to fight a growing insurgency.
But some Republicans have begun complaining that Congress is paying too much attention to the abuse and distracting attention from the main mission in Iraq.
House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, said he disagreed with Warner's plans to hold more hearings.
"I would hope that we can refocus now that we have spent this enormous amount of publicity on this prison thing. We have to refocus on this war."
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Army Covering Up Serial Prisoner Abuse' Says US Soldier
PA News, in New York
By Mark Sage,
Wed 19 May 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2945345
The US Army is trying to "cover up" widespread abuse of prisoners at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib jail, a witness in the investigation claimed today.
Sgt Samuel Provance made his damaging claims hours before the first of the courts martial against seven accused US prison guards was due to begin.
Sgt Provance claimed that dozens of soldiers were involved in mistreating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, despite claims by top Bush administration officials that it was perpetrated by a group of rogue soldiers.
"There's definitely a cover-up. People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet," Sgt Provance told ABC News.
Sgt Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib last September.
Speaking despite receiving orders not to, he said: "What I was surprised at was the silence. The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something."
Sgt Provance, now stationed in Germany, operated the top-secret computer network used by military intelligence at the prison.
He said he did not see incidents of abuse taking place himself, but said interrogators admitted mistreating prisoners.
"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," he said.
"If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."
Some of the abuse included US soldiers "striking
prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out", Sgt Provance said.
In one incident two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist.
The pair had to be restrained by a prison guard, he said.
Sgt Provance said anything the guards did "legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators".
Nearly all the military guards who have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad, claim that they were simply following orders.
The exception is Specialist Jeremy Sivits, 24, who faces a special court martial in Baghdad later today.
He is understood to have told interrogators it was a case of renegade soldiers attacking prisoners for their own amusement.
A further three former guards were appearing before court martial in Iraq today. It is not believed that they will be asked to enter a plea but Army Sgt Javal Davis, Spc Charles Graner and Staff Sgt Ivan Fredericks are expected plead not guilty at later hearings.
Sgt Provance said he felt that his evidence to military investigators was not taken seriously.
"It was almost as if I actually felt if all my statements were shredded and I said, like most everybody else, 'I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything, I don't know what you're talking about,' then my life would be just fine right now."
He added: "I would say many people are probably hiding and wishing to God that this storm passes without them having to be investigated
or] personally looked at."
Meanwhile, three journalists working for the Reuters news agency claimed they were mistreated when they were arrested by US troops.
They said they were beaten, taunted and forced to put shoes in their mouths during their detention at a military camp near the Iraqi city of Fallujah in January.
"The US investigation in this case remains totally unsatisfactory as far as we're concerned," Susan Allsopp, a Reuters spokeswoman in London said.
"We would urge them to re-evaluate the investigation in light of recent invents."
The three newsmen said they were detained after going to report on the shooting down of a US helicopter near Fallujah.
The men are Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Fallujah-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani. They were released without being charged.
A US military investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.
US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, told Reuters in a letter he was confident an investigation had been "thorough and objective" and its findings were sound.
Yesterday, it emerged that Private Lynndie England - the woman seen in photographs pointing at naked detainees and holding another by a leash - told investigators some inmates were made to crawl through broken glass. Others were forced to wear women's sanitary products.
In a statement to investigators, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, she said "everyone in the company from the commander down" knew what was going on.
She added: "We did what we were told."
Other former guards at the jail near Baghdad told investigators how a hooded detainee died after being taken to a shower room for interrogation by the CIA.
A CIA spokesman said he could not comment on the matter because it was under investigation by the agency's inspector general's office in conjunction with other military investigations.
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U.S. Military Vows to Keep Afghan Jails Secret
Reuters
By Mike Collett-White
May 19, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5191242
KABUL (Reuters) - Accused of failing to tackle prison abuses in Afghanistan while rushing to contain the scandal in Iraq, the U.S. military in Kabul said it would review its secretive jails but vowed to keep them shut to the outside world.
The families of two Afghans who died from wounds sustained in a U.S. detention center at Bagram, just north of Kabul, 18 months ago, are still waiting for the outcome of a U.S. investigation.
In Baghdad Wednesday, the first court-martial began of U.S. soldiers who abused inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail, weeks after an international outcry over mistreatment first broke.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno, has ordered a "top-to-bottom" review of conditions and methods used at a network of around 20 detention centers where Islamic militant suspects are held in Afghanistan.
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker Mansager told reporters Wednesday the review would be carried out by a general and completed within a month.
"The appointed general will visit every facility to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," he told a regular news briefing in Kabul.
Mansager said the U.S. military had yet to respond to a May 10 request from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has collected more than 40 recent complaints of mistreatment, for access to the main jail at Bagram.
He also said journalists would not be allowed to see it, despite reporters being given access this month to Abu Ghraib, depicted in images of abuse of prisoners by American soldiers that sparked a backlash across the Arab world.
"It's the coalition's continued policy to treat persons under confinement in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions.
"Part of that spirit is to ensure that the persons under confinement are not subject to any kind of exploitation. It is the coalition's position that allowing media into the facilities would compromise that protection."
The U.S. military, which leads 20,000 troops in the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban, has come under intense scrutiny since the prisoner abuse scandal broke in Iraq and fresh allegations of mistreatment surfaced in Afghanistan.
A former police officer from near the city of Gardez said he was beaten and sexually abused during around 40 days in U.S. custody last year, and Human Rights Watch has called the mistreatment of detainees "systemic" in Afghanistan.
Two new investigations have been launched this month into prisoner abuse. A third, into the death in custody of two Afghans 18 months ago, has yet to be completed, to the dismay of family and friends of the men who died.
Both suffered "blunt force injuries" to the legs at Bagram, according to press reports quoting their death certificates.
Mansager said a large number of changes were made to procedures at Bagram in the wake of the deaths, and the U.S. military had nothing to hide.
"We're very comfortable with what we're doing, but nonetheless we are always in search of improvements and changes."
But the involvement of Barno, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is a clear sign of unease at the potential fallout from complaints of abuse.
"Certainly the situation in Iraq has brought some more focus to this," Mansager said.
-------- war crimes
Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
Newsweek
By Michael Isikof
May 19, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734/
Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so Suspected Taliban and al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base kneel down before military police as prisoners are processed into the detention facility in January 2002
May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.
The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes-and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves- is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.
In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes-defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions-such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners-was "undefined."
One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales wrote.
"It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 [the War Crimes Act]," Gonzales wrote.
THE WAR CRIME MEMOS
The best way to guard against such "unwarranted charges," the White House lawyer concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision-then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell- to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Geneva convention provisions.
"Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that (the War Crimes Act) does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution," Gonzales wrote.
The memo-and strong dissents by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief legal advisor, William Howard Taft IV-are among hundreds of pages of internal administration documents on the Geneva Convention and related issues that have been obtained by NEWSWEEK and are reported for the first time in this week's magazine. Newsweek made some of them available online today.
RELATED STORY
A Secret History: How Torture Took Root
The memos provide fresh insights into a fierce internal administration debate over whether the United States should conform to international treaty obligations in pursuing the war on terror. Administration critics have charged that key legal decisions made in the months after September 11, 2001 including the White House's February 2002 declaration not to grant any Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoners of war status under the Geneva Convention, laid the groundwork for the interrogation abuses that have recently been revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
• Isikoff on war crimes memo
May 18: Newsweek's Michael Isikoff explains how White House counsel Alberto Gonzales' memo to President Bush on tough new measures of handling prisoners could leave U.S. officials vulnerable to charges of war crimes.
MSNBC
As reported in this week's magazine edition, the Gonzales memo urged Bush to declare all aspects of the war in Afghanistan-including the detention of both Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters-exempt from the strictures of the Geneva Convention. In the memo, Gonzales described the war against terorrism as a "new kind of war" and then added: "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians."
But while top White House officials publicly talked about trying Al Qaeda leaders for war crimes, the internal memos show that administration lawyers were privately concerned that they could tried for war crimes themselves based on actions the administration were taking, and might have to take in the future, to combat the terrorist threat.
The issue first arises in a January 9, 2002, draft memorandum written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) concluding that "neither the War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions" would apply to the detention conditions of Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The memo includes a lengthy discussion of the War Crimes Act, which it concludes has no binding effect on the president because it would interfere with his Commander in Chief powers to determine "how best to deploy troops in the field." (The memo, by Justice lawyers John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, also concludes-in response to a question by the Pentagon-that U.S. soldiers could not be tried for violations of the laws of war in Afghanistan because such international laws have "no binding legal effect on either the President or the military.")
But while the discussion in the Justice memo revolves around the possible application of the War Crimes Act to members of the U.S. military, there is some reason to believe that administration lawyers were worried that the law could even be used in the future against senior administration officials.
One lawyer involved in the interagency debates over the Geneva Conventions issue recalled a meeting in early 2002 in which participants challenged Yoo, a primary architect of the administration's legal strategy, when he raised the possibility of Justice Department war crimes prosecutions unless there was a clear presidential direction proclaiming the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. The concern seemed misplaced, Yoo was told, given that loyal Bush appointees were in charge of the Justice Department.
"Well, the political climate could change," Yoo replied, according to the lawyer who attended the meeting. "The implication was that a new president would come into office and start potential prosecutions of a bunch of ex-Bush officials," the lawyer said. (Yoo declined comment.)
This appears to be precisely the concern in Gonzales's memo dated January 25, 2002, in which he strongly urges Bush to stick to his decision to exempt the treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters from the provisons of the Geneva Conventions. (Powell and the State Department had wanted the U.S. to at least have individual reviews of Taliban fighters before concluding that they did not qualify for Geneva Convention provisions.)
One reason to do so, Gonzales wrote, is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." He added that "it is difficult to predict with confidence what actions might be deemed to constitute violations" of the War Crimes Act just as it was "difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism." Such uncertainties, Gonzales wrote, argued for the President to uphold his exclusion of Geneva Convention provisions to the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees who, he concluded, would still be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessarity, in a manner consistst with the principles" of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.
In the end, after strong protests from Powell, the White House retreated slightly. In February 2002, it proclaimed that, while the United States would adhere to the Geneva Conventions in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, captured Taliban and Qaeda fighters would not be given prisoner of war status under the conventions. It is a rendering that Administration lawyers believed would protect U.S. interrogators or their superiors in Washington from being subjected to prosecutions under the War Crimes Act based on their treatment of the prisoners.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
U.S. to Review Detainees' Cases
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37608-2004May18.html
The U.S. government is drawing up plans to hold periodic reviews of the cases of three alleged terrorists held as "enemy combatants" in a Navy brig in South Carolina, government officials said yesterday.
Pentagon officials revealed the plan at a news conference where they also released an order by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz establishing similar annual reviews for 595 prisoners at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld outlined the procedures for the Guantanamo Bay review hearings in a speech in February. The hearings, expected to begin within a few weeks, could result in detainees being held for an additional year, released or sent to jail in their home countries.
Each Guantanamo Bay detainee will have the help of a military officer in laying out his case for release to a three-person military panel, according to the order. His relatives and home government may submit remarks to the panel for use in the secret hearings. The panel would recommend action on each case to a presidentially appointed military official who would make the final decision.
A senior military official said that under international law, U.S. officials are not obligated to establish the hearing process, but are doing so "as a matter of discretion."
The U.S. government has been intensely criticized for holding the Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely without legal review. Some human rights activists have said officials initiated the process in an effort to blunt a lawsuit over the detentions that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices are expected to rule by early this summer.
Wendy Patten, a spokeswoman for the Human Rights Watch activist group, noted that detainees will not have attorneys during the hearings and will have no right to appeal decisions.
Pentagon officials said that within days they will announce similar hearings for the three men held in Charleston -- Saudi student Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan; alleged "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago; and Bradley University graduate Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari arrested in Illinois as an alleged al Qaeda associate.
-------- homeland security
Lawmakers Push Agency to Develop ID Cards
May 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Airport-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government must move faster to develop high-tech ID cards that could prevent armed terrorists from boarding a plane by posing as airport workers or law officers, lawmakers said Wednesday.
The Transportation Security Administration still is experimenting with biometric identification systems, which match people's unique physical characteristics to confirm who they are. However, the ID cards already are common in nuclear plants, hospitals and businesses.
House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John Mica said the agency needs to hasten the pace because terrorists are interested in gaining access to restricted airport areas.
``It has been 2 1/2 years since 9/11,'' Mica said during a Wednesday hearing. ``We need to address this issue without delay.''
Mica said congressional investigators created fake law enforcement IDs from software they downloaded from the Internet four years ago. Undercover agents were 100 percent successful penetrating federal buildings and two commercial airports using the phony IDs.
A copy of the report on the penetration test was found later in an al-Qaida cave in Afghanistan, Mica said.
He said the TSA recently reported several suspicious people who may have been conducting surveillance of airports, including a door allowing access to aircraft.
Stewart Verdery, assistant secretary for homeland security, told the committee that the agency is working on a project to develop a biometric identification card for 2 million transportation workers at airports, seaports and rail yards. TSA just began the seven-month process of evaluating how to collect biometric data, verify identities and conduct background checks, he said.
Verdery cautioned that implementing a biometric identification program is a ``potentially time-consuming, complex and expensive process.''
TSA also just announced it will start testing video surveillance and other technology to identify airport employees by fingerprints or eye scan matches on a special biometric ID card at eight airports. Verdery said the project's first phase will cost $8 million.
But another witness said that $8 million could pay to quickly outfit 45 of the biggest U.S. airports with biometric identification systems.
The witness, Martin Huddart, chairman of the board of the International Biometric Industry Association, said the TSA's long delay is unnecessary.
``Restaurant workers at McDonald's are punching in to work using biometrics,'' Huddart said.
Huddart said San Francisco International Airport already employs hand geometry, which uses the shape of a hand to identify the user. More than a dozen others are testing it. Fingerprint controls are used at Little Rock National Airport and Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York uses iris-recognition technology in its international arrivals terminal, he said.
Biometrics is the science of identifying, recording and matching unique physical characteristics to individuals. There are five basic kinds: facial recognition, fingerprint, hand geometry, iris recognition and voice recognition.
Verdery said hand geometry doesn't do any good in relation to the government's terrorist watch list, which is based on fingerprints.
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
-------- human rights
ABU GHRAIB
Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq
May 19, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/politics/19ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 18 - Army officials in Iraq responded late last year to a Red Cross report of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison by trying to curtail the international agency's spot inspections of the prison, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq said Tuesday.
After the International Committee of the Red Cross observed abuses in one cellblock on two unannounced inspections in October and complained in writing on Nov. 6, the military responded that inspectors should make appointments before visiting the cellblock. That area was the site of the worst abuses.
The Red Cross report in November was the earliest formal evidence known to have been presented to the military's headquarters in Baghdad before January, when photographs of the abuses came to the attention of criminal investigators and prompted a broad investigation. But the senior Army officer said the military did not start any criminal investigation before it replied to the Red Cross on Dec. 24.
The Red Cross report was made after its inspectors witnessed or heard about such practices as holding Iraqi prisoners naked in dark concrete cells for several days at a time and forcing them to wear women's underwear on their heads while being paraded and photographed.
Until now, the Army had described its response on Dec. 24 as evidence that the military was prompt in addressing Red Cross complaints, but it has declined to release the contents of the Army document, citing the tradition of confidentiality in dealing with the international agency.
An Army spokesman declined Tuesday to characterize the letter or to discuss what it said about the Red Cross's access to the cellblock.
In an interview, however, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, whose soldiers guarded the prisoners, said that despite the serious allegations in the Red Cross report, senior officers in Baghdad had treated it in "a light-hearted manner."
She said that she signed the Army's response on Dec. 24, but that it had been drafted primarily by Army lawyers who reported to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq.
General Karpinski said she did not see the Red Cross complaint until late November, and questioned how the staff judge advocate for General Sanchez, and his team of lawyers, had dealt with the matter. "It was an unusual routing because they had possession of it before I knew the letter existed," she said of the Red Cross complaint.
"If I had been informed, and I had been drawn into this in any way, I would have said, `Hold on a second, because not in my facility you don't,' " General Karpinski said of the abuses detailed in the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which she said she did not see until at least two weeks after it was submitted. "We followed the rules, and we gave unrestricted access to the I.C.R.C., and it validated our operations, actually."
General Karpinski, who has been disciplined for her performance as commander at the prison, would not say whether she had objected to any part of the Dec. 24 letter at the time. It was unclear whether she had felt compelled to sign a letter drafted by aides to her superiors.
For several months in Iraq, Red Cross inspectors had exercised the right to drop in on Army-run prisons without notifying prison officials in advance.
The senior Army officer questioned the rationale for the Army's assertion in November that Red Cross visits should be scheduled.
"I know what they were communicating in that letter: They wanted the I.C.R.C. to schedule visits for those particular cellblocks, because it could interrupt any of the military intelligence," said the officer. "The position that they were taking was that the I.C.R.C. could not have unrestricted access to those particular cellblocks."
Other top Army officers in Washington have said the behavior described by the Red Cross in October had warranted a criminal investigation.
"I do not know if she in fact started an investigation into those, because they are serious," Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of Army intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 11. "As soon as we hear about one of those allegations, an investigation should begin right away and we shouldn't wait for it."
General Alexander told senators that the abuses Red Cross inspectors witnessed "sounded the same as some of the abuses that we're seeing" in photographs taken by military guards that are now circulating worldwide.
In an interview on Tuesday, the White House general counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, said he had not been aware that the issue of whether the Red Cross should be allowed to conduct such inspections was a point of dispute. He added, however, that he might have had "concerns" about allowing such inspections.
"Part of the concerns is whether or not there were interrogations that might be interrupted under a spot check," Mr. Gonzales said. "Obviously, we would work with the I.C.R.C. to arrange visits" under appropriate circumstances, he said.
While he said he could not speak for everyone at the White House, he added that "I don't recall being made aware" of the issue.
The Red Cross report and General Karpinski's comments seem at odds with the accounts of other senior military officials.
Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, told senators that the military had no inkling of the magnitude of the prisoner abuses until a soldier turned over copies of incriminating pictures to investigators on Jan. 13.
"There were reports that there was trouble in those places, but not of the character we're talking about here," General Smith said. He said that after General Karpinski's Dec. 24 letter, improvements were made at the prison.
"The I.C.R.C. came back and visited 4 through 8 January and they - the indication from there was that there were improvements," he said.
The disclosures about the Army's response to the Red Cross complaints came as new details emerged about the death of an Iraqi prisoner in C.I.A. custody last fall.
Central Intelligence Agency officers who brought a hooded man to Abu Ghraib ordered military guards at the prison not to remove the empty sandbag that covered his head, according to the sworn testimony of a military guard. Only after the prisoner slumped over dead during questioning was the hood removed, revealing that the man had severe facial injuries.
The incident was described in testimony at a closed hearing early last month in the case of Sgt. Javal S. Davis, one of the accused prison guards. The statements were made by two members of Sergeant Davis's unit, Specialists Bruce Brown and Jason A. Kenner. Their testimony appears to provide fresh clues to the mysterious death of a man identified by the American authorities only by his last name, Jamadi.
Mr. Jamadi is believed to be the man whose body was packed in ice and photographed at Abu Ghraib. The picture, among a group that depicted degrading treatment of detainees, has circulated widely on computer networks as one of most graphic images in the prisoner abuse scandal.
Neither Specialist Brown nor Specialist Kenner identified Mr. Jamadi by name, but Mr. Jamadi appears to be the man they described because C.I.A. officials have said he is the only person who died during an interrogation carried out by an agency employee. Both men said that the detainee had been brought to Abu Ghraib by an "O.G.A.," or other government agency, which usually referred to the C.I.A. or another intelligence agency.
The two witnesses' statements are significant because the C.I.A.'s inspector general is investigating the death of Mr. Jamadi, along with two other deaths in which C.I.A. or contract workers for the agency were involved. One was in western Iraq in November 2003, the other in Afghanistan in June 2003. The Justice Department is also examining the three deaths to decide whether to open a criminal investigation into the matter.
A senior intelligence official said that Mr. Jamadi was hooded when he was picked up at the Baghdad airport after being captured earlier in the day by Navy Seals and that he had never been touched by C.I.A. interrogators or translators. A spokesman for the Seals has said the detainee had not been mistreated by its personnel. The witness accounts were first reported Tuesday by The Los Angeles Times.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon formally adopted regulations for dealing with the hardest-core detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who might be held for years, because they are judged to remain a threat to United States forces. The regulations provide for a quasi-parole board of three military officers who would conduct an annual review to determine if the detainees have ceased to be a threat and may be released.
The prisoners could have their home governments and family members take part in the review. Officials said, however, that the proceedings would be closed to the public because they would involve discussion of classified issues.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld met for about three hours behind closed doors with House Republicans on Tuesday to discuss a range of Iraq issues, but Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers had agreed to say nothing after the session, and Mr. Rumsfeld did not speak publicly.
On Wednesday, the first court-martial of a soldier accused of abusing Iraqi detainees, Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits of the Army, opens in Baghdad. On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the American occupation authorities had denied Iraqi and international human rights groups requests permission to attend the trial.
Reporting for this article was contributed by David E. Sanger, David Johnston, Carl Hulse and Neil A. Lewis.
--------
PROCEDURES
U.S. Barred Legal Review of Detentions, Lawyer Says
May 19, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19LAWY.html
Military lawyers, who had an active role in supervising interrogations in the first Gulf War, have been excluded from them in the current war in Iraq, a human rights lawyer who has studied the matter says.
The lawyer, Scott Horton, a former chairman of the Committee on International Human Rights of the City Bar Association in New York, said this might have played a part in the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"In the interrogation process," Mr. Horton said, "the fact that lawyers were cut out just opened the door for abuse."
Mr. Horton said he learned of the changed procedures from senior military lawyers in two confidential meetings last year. Prompted in part by the meetings, the committee issued a report in April on the interrogation of detainees.
A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
In the Gulf War of 1991, members of the military's Judge Advocate General's Corps, known as JAG's, took an active role, experts said.
"We had JAG officers at all of the detention facilities where interrogations took place," said John Norton Moore, a law professor at the University of Virginia and a former American diplomat.
Mr. Horton said, "There had been a process of lawyers being on duty on site at detention centers" in the first gulf war. Interrogation rooms there, he said, were equipped with two-way mirrors. "The interrogators never knew if a lawyer was on the other side," he said, "and lawyers had a right to intercede if interrogators crossed the line."
"This practice," Mr. Horton said, "has stopped."
Mr. Horton, a lawyer with Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in New York, said the military lawyers spoke in generalities and did not indicate that they were concerned about conditions in Iraq.
"We all thought that this has really got to be about Guantánamo and Afghanistan," Mr. Horton added, referring to sites at which the United States also holds prisoners, including members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Recent disclosures about abuse of prisoners in Iraq made him realize that the absence of lawyers there might have been a contributing factor.
Professor Moore said he did not know what procedures were in place at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq but said the current Bush administration seems less concerned with legal standards and the role lawyers can play than its predecessors.
"Something happened with the significance with which law was taken," he said.
Legal experts noted other instances of the phenomenon.
Miles P. Fischer, the chairman of the bar association's Committee on Military Affairs and Justice, said, for example, that "JAG officers were given very little opportunity to participate in the order establishing military commissions." The commissions, created by executive order in 2001, are to try prisoners designated unlawful combatants, including some held at Guantánamo Bay.
Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former member of the faculty at the Army's Judge Advocate General's School, noted similar concerns.
"I have seen for two years inklings and rumblings from active-duty JAG officers," he said, "about the attitude of this administration."
Mr. Fischer said that military lawyers can serve an important function.
"The commanders want it," he said, referring to readily available lawyers. "We have sensitized the commanders that they may be guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions" should they fail to comply with the law. The conventions protect prisoners of war, civilian detainees in wartime and others.
Sidney S. Rosdeitcher, an expert in human rights law and a member of the committee that released the report on interrogations, said that the United States had in recent years shown disdain for the conventions.
"The very fact that the lawyers were taken out says something," Mr. Rosdeitcher said. "There's just an aura of lawlessness. Once you depart, and once you start engaging in conduct that goes over the line, whatever your justification, it goes out of control."
He noted that previous administrations adhered to the Geneva Conventions even when they were not obviously applicable.
"During the Vietnam War," he said, "we treated the Vietcong as P.O.W.'s as a matter of policy," he said. "They were no more entitled to that treatment than Al Qaeda."
The Bush administration has said that the conventions do not apply to captured members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban held at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan. It has acknowledged, however, that the conventions apply in Iraq.
Mr. Fischer dismissed concerns that giving lawyers a significant role can slow and complicate military decision-making.
"The JAG's are so integrated that it normally doesn't cost time," he added.
Mr. Horton said the officers who met with him were disturbed by what they called the administration's disdain for international law.
"They talked about a dismissive attitude," Mr. Horton said. "They have a strong feeling of pride, of 50 years of compliance with the Geneva Conventions. They have a sacred feeling about this."
-------- immigration / refugees
State Troopers Join Terror Fight
foxnews
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120323,00.html
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - State troopers are joining the domestic front in the war on terror. Since September of last year, state police have had the authority to arrest and detain illegal immigrants and hand them over to federal authorities for possible deportation. Alabama is among the first states to help.
"We went through an entire series of document training," explained Gary Hetzel, one of 21 Alabama state troopers trained to enforce immigration laws. "So we can tell if [a document's] been altered, if it's an actual visa or, with the LPR cards, if it's fake."
Lawful permanent residence, or LPR, cards are more commonly known as "green cards."
Homeland Security officials welcome the police assistance, but some immigrant rights groups are skeptical.
"The concern [is] that people are going to go outside of the general duties that they've been given and use racial profiling (search)," said Isabel Rubio of the Hispanic Interest Coalition (search).
To prevent profiling, state troopers are permitted to enforce immigration rules only in connection to traffic violations.
So far, Alabama and Florida are the only states to partner troopers with the Department of Homeland Security (search). But others are expected to follow as federal, state and local authorities attempt to maximize resources in the domestic war on terror.
-------- justice
Investigator or obstructionist?
washtimes
By David N. Bossie
May 19, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040518-085536-7689r.htm
When Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared before the September Commission, he revealed that the much criticized wall, the Department of Justice policy limiting communication between law enforcement and intelligence agents, was put in place by Jamie Gorelick, while serving as deputy attorney general for President Clinton.
Ms. Gorelick immediately defended herself in The Washington Post, claiming pre-existence of the wall while distancing herself from its heightening. She downplayed it as a critical issue while The Post complicity accused Mr. Ashcroft of a "smear."
But multiple sources show the wall was central to any failure to connect dots prior to September 11. Mr. Ashcroft revealed for the first time Ms. Gorelick's central role and exposed to the other commissioners their colleague's role in implementing this much-criticized policy.
Before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1995, then-deputy attorney general Ms. Gorelick testified about taking on the "special project" relationship between law enforcement and intelligence and spending several months on the effort, principally to prepare Justice to fight transnational crimes, such as terrorism. Out of her project came the wall.
Documents just released by Justice trace the building of the wall, starting with Ms. Gorelick instructions to Mary Jo White, then prosecuting the blind sheik for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Ramsey Yousef for terrorist activities, to separate counterintelligence and criminal investigations.
Ms. Gorelick's direction to Ms. White created barriers "which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is being used to avoid procedural safeguards . . ." This was the very foundation of the wall.
Over Ms. White's complaints, this became the new Justice Department policy. Documents show Ms. Gorelick directly reviewed Ms. White's suggestions, some were changed, some rejected and some included. Ms. Gorelick then sent the policy with a hand-written note indicating her approval to the attorney general. The attorney general formalized Ms. Gorelick's new policy in July 1995.
Problems immediately surfaced of intelligence and law enforcement coordination and its hampering of terrorism investigations.
Justice Department investigators looking into the Wen Ho Lee fiasco examined this issue in their final report. In it, the relationship between Justice's criminal division and FBI intelligence is described as "dysfunction" and "broken." The General Accounting Office reached the same conclusion in a report, finding the policy led to "significant decline in coordination between the FBI and Criminal Division." Commission hearings have clearly established that the wall created extensive problems that remained until the Patriot Act tore it down.
Justice documents, and her testimony before the Intelligence Committee, prove Ms. Gorelick was directly involved in the building and guarding of the wall.
Incredibly, prior to Mr. Ashcroft's disclosure, the commission was not aware of these material facts. Ms. Gorelick failed to disclose the documents and her work on this central issue. In fact, the Commission's document request to the Justice Department only went back to 1998, after Ms. Gorelick left Justice. Just how active was Ms. Gorelick in shaping this document request and did she intentionally lead the commission away from finding out about her involvement?
Either way, how did Ms. Gorelick permit this inadequate document request to go forward? How did the commission remain in the dark about the Justice wall deliberations in 1995? Why hasn't the commission called upon Mary Jo White, a leading terrorism investigator and prosecutor, especially since she has repeatedly complained about Justice policies hurting her investigation?
Ms. White stated "If I could single out one significant concern that I had about our counter terrorism efforts prior to September 11th (dating from at least 1995), it was that I feared we could be hampered in our efforts to detect and prevent terrorist attacks because of the barriers between the intelligence side and law enforcement side of our government." Ms. Gorelick's policy.
As a commissioner, Ms. Gorelick has consistently questioned why senior members of the Bush administration failed to have enough meetings and "shake the tree" for information. She has led the commission away from the fact that her own work led to the atmosphere, which created intelligence failures.
In response to Sen. Kit Bond's call for Ms. Gorelick to testify, Commissioners Kean and Hamilton disclosed Ms. Gorelick has been privately interviewed by the commission - and not under oath, no doubt. The commission also said Justice witnesses were limited to those who worked at Justice within four years of September 11. Interestingly, that excludes Ms. Gorelick and her work on the wall.
As if her conflict of interest was not bad enough, Ms. Gorelick is now judge of fact and a witness in the same proceeding. Ms. Gorelick has recused herself from Justice matters while she was at Justice, but continues to attack the Bush administration's Justice. Apparently, she has also recused herself from disclosing her involvement in a key topic of the inquiry.
Ms. Gorelick is hopelessly conflicted and may even have obstructed the commission from gathering critical facts regarding government policies contributing to September 11. Any commission report or recommendations will be totally flawed if the commission does not study the blueprints and construction of the wall, which documents show, took place in 1995 and reveal the fingerprints of Commissioner Jamie Gorelick.
David N. Bossie is the president of Citizens United and the former chief Investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. His new book is "Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11."
-------- police
Police Shootings Shake Austin
Some See Racism as Three Officers Keep Their Jobs After Killing Blacks
By Karin Brulliard
The Washington Post
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37599-2004May18?language=printer
AUSTIN -- Early one morning last June, a white Austin police officer fatally shot an unarmed 20-year-old black man named Jessie Lee Owens as the officer tried to arrest him for driving a stolen car.
Owens was the second of three young black people killed in Austin by white law enforcement officers over a 13-month period in 2002 and 2003. Many community leaders here say the shootings, and the fact that the three officers kept their jobs, reflect a pattern of racism within the police force and throughout the city. Their accusations have roiled the town, put city leaders on the defensive and sparked turmoil among the police. Most of all, they have called into question the city's self-image of tolerance and diversity.
Home to the University of Texas, a thriving music scene and a robust high-tech industry, Austin markets itself as an outdoorsy city of laid-back brotherly love. It is staunchly Democratic and has been noted as one of the nation's best-managed cities. But to some local black leaders, that reputation rings hollow.
"This city is very tolerant of certain alternative lifestyles," said the Rev. Sterling Lands II, head of the Eastside Social Action Committee and pastor of Greater Calvary Baptist Church. "When it comes down to the area of race, that's where the tolerance ends."
Lands and other police critics said they do not have a problem with the entire police force but they believe the department has allowed racist officers to go unchecked. The shootings, they said, are just the most visible example of the racial discrimination they have protested for decades.
Austin's racial divide, some say, is symbolized by Interstate 35, which runs from Mexico to Canada and bisects the city. To the west are the prosperous, predominantly white parts of the city; to the east is a working-class area populated mostly by minorities. Local activists say the city has let the east side's schools, social services and infrastructure languish.
Toby Futrell, Austin's city manager, disputes that the city has turned a blind eye to east Austin. The city invests more than twice as much in facilities in east Austin as in other areas, and in recent years crime has decreased sharply there, she said. Nonetheless, Futrell acknowledged a history of racism in the city.
"It's thick and it's deep, and it's not something you make progress on by denying," she said.
All three of the recent shootings took place east of the freeway. A year before Owens's death, Sophia King, a mentally ill 23-year-old, was killed by an Austin police officer as she allegedly threatened her apartment manager with a knife. Last July, a Travis County sheriff's deputy fatally shot Lennon Johnson, 27, after Johnson pulled the deputy into his car and drove off.
Officer Scott Glasgow, who killed Owens, was indicted on one count of criminally negligent homicide, which a judge later dismissed. No charges were filed against the two other officers; in both cases, independent or internal investigations concluded the officers acted appropriately and no disciplinary action was warranted.
The Austin Police Department's use-of-force rates are far below the national average, according to a one-year 1999 Justice Department survey. Police here also have a reputation for helping illegal immigrants collect wages from employers who seek to take advantage of them. And the ethnic makeup of the department roughly reflects the local population -- 66 percent of officers are white, 21 percent are Hispanic, and 11 percent are black.
Even so, the Owens case became a rallying point for civil rights activists in Austin, as did some stark statistics. In January, the Austin American-Statesman reported that between 1998 and 2003, local police were twice as likely to use force against blacks as against whites, and 25 percent more likely to use it against Hispanics than against whites. In that period, seven people, six of them black or Hispanic, were fatally shot by Austin police officers. All of the officers were white.
Then two studies found racial profiling to be common in Austin and across the state. One, commissioned by a coalition of civil liberties groups, found that Austin police stopped black and Hispanic motorists at least 50 percent more often than whites. They searched blacks and Hispanics more than twice as often as they did whites, but they found contraband on whites twice as often as on blacks or Hispanics.
The reports enraged the department's rank and file, who said they had been unfairly branded racist and abusive. In February, the police union bought radio ads declaring that officers were dedicated civil servants who "have had a rough time recently with all the police-bashing in the newspaper."
Owens had a police record. In recent years, he had pleaded no contest to three misdemeanors -- marijuana possession, a family-violence charge and driving with a suspended license. But things were changing for Owens, said his great-aunt, Hazel Obey, who is a well-known local civil rights activist. After not holding a steady job since he dropped out of high school at 17, Owens had an appointment for a job interview at Jiffy Lube on June 16.
But early on the morning of June 14, Glasgow, a three-year veteran of the Austin Police Department, spotted Owens driving in east Austin in a Dodge Neon that had been reported stolen. Before any backup officers arrived, Glasgow approached the car and tried to arrest Owens. But Owens accelerated, trapping Glasgow in the car door and dragging him down the street, according to the department. That's when Glasgow fired.
In February, the city's civilian police monitor and a citizens review panel recommended that Glasgow be dismissed. Instead, Police Chief Stanley L. Knee suspended Glasgow for 90 days, concluding that he had failed to follow procedures, including waiting for backup. But, Knee said, Glasgow had reason to believe his life was in danger and he made a split-second decision.
The police union called the suspension too severe and accused Knee of not standing up for the force. But to Owens's friends and relatives and other activists, who have questioned Glasgow's account of the shooting, it amounted to a slap on Glasgow's wrist.
The Justice Department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas are investigating possible civil rights violations in the three shootings.
In January, Knee acknowledged long-standing perceptions of racial favoritism of police forces around the country and apologized publicly for the "history of my profession," though he did not specifically include Austin in his comments.
He proposed to equip police officers with stun guns -- which use electric shocks to temporarily immobilize suspects without killing them -- and he has called in national experts to evaluate the department's training and evaluation procedures. In addition, officers are now required to get signed consent from suspects before performing vehicle searches, which Knee said turn up contraband only 12 percent of the time. The purpose of the new consent forms is to decrease searches, which are seen as unfairly targeting minorities. If searches do not drop by 20 percent this year, Knee said, he will resign.
"It's my job to bring the community and police back together," he said in an interview.
The Rev. Ivie Rich, president of the Austin Baptist Ministers' Union, which has strongly criticized city leaders, said he hopes the debate will bring profound changes.
"We're not looking for any quick fix," Rich said. "What we're trying to do is heal our community."
-------- POLITICS
Clintonistas and September 11
washtimes
May 19, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040518-085537-5534r.htm
On today's Op-Ed page, David Bossie, former chief investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, makes a powerful case that Jamie Gorelick, a member of the September 11 commission, has a major conflict-of-interest problem. Mr. Bossie is right. Given that Ms. Gorelick, during her tenure as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department, helped strengthen the ill-conceived legal "wall" that choked off cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence agencies prior to September 11, she has no business serving as an investigator of the attacks.
It reflects poorly on the judgment and integrity of the commission that it refuses to question Ms. Gorelick under oath, and that it has limited its inquiries to officials who worked at the Justice Department within four years of September 11 - a time frame that conveniently excludes Ms. Gorelick, who left the agency a little over four years prior to the attacks. Given the fact that Ms. Gorelick's role in creating this barrier was not known to the commission until Attorney General John Ashcroft disclosed it last month, Mr. Bossie raises an important question: Did Ms. Gorelick intentionally lead the committee away from learning about her involvement in undercutting intelligence-gathering prior to September 11?
In his new book, "Intelligence Failure," Mr. Bossie demonstrates that Ms. Gorelick's role in creating the wall is just a small part of the damage the Clinton administration did to national security.
The problems were evident from the very beginning of the Clinton years. Bill Clinton refused to meet with his CIA director, James Woolsey. Mr. Woolsey's successor, John Deutch, instituted "diversity" quotas as well as human rights guidelines for agent recruitment that effectively made it impossible to infiltrate terrorist groups.
Mr. Bossie shows that, when it came to fighting terrorism, the Clinton years were a series of disastrous miscalculations. Several years prior to September 11, the administration dispatched U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson and Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth to Afghanistan to prevent the fall of the Taliban regime. The October 1993 catastrophe in Somalia - in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed - occurred after Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin denied U.S. Army Rangers critical troop backup - all of which emboldened Osama bin Laden to carry out further attacks on the United States.
Even this is only part of the malfeasance documented by Mr. Bossie. The Clinton administration, he shows, pressured investigators to abandon their examination of tax-exempt Islamic charities in the United States that were linked to terror groups. Perhaps Mr. Bossie's most powerful indictment of the Clinton administration's law enforcement-oriented approach to fighting terrorism (one jettisoned by the Bush administration after September 11) is his chapter on the investigation into the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia by Iranian-supported terrorists - which failed because the Clinton White House did nothing to back up FBI investigators. It would be interesting to have Ms. Gorelick testify about that.
-------- investigations
U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure
Wolfowitz Concedes Errors as Damage Control Continues
By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37745-2004May18?language=printer
The Bush administration is struggling to counter growing sentiment -- among U.S. lawmakers, Iraqis and even some of its own officials -- that the occupation of Iraq is verging on failure, forcing a top Pentagon official yesterday to concede serious mistakes over the past year.
Under tough questioning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading administration advocate of the Iraq intervention, acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a long occupation. A central flaw in planning, he added, was the premise that U.S. forces would be creating a peace, not fighting a war, after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
"We had a plan that anticipated, I think, that we could proceed with an occupation regime for much longer than it turned out the Iraqis would have patience for. We had a plan that assumed we'd have basically more stable security conditions than we've encountered," Wolfowitz told the senators.
The testy hearing reflected growing anxieties with only six weeks left before political power is to be handed over to Iraqis. The United States is now so deeply immersed in damage control -- combating security problems and recriminations from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and making a third attempt at crafting an interim government in Baghdad -- that lawmakers and others say Iraq faces greater uncertainty about the future than it did when the occupation began with great expectations a year ago.
"There are a lot of people across this country who are very, very worried about how this is progressing, what the endgame is, whether or not we are going to achieve even a part of our goals here -- and the growing fear that we may in fact have in some ways a worse situation if we're not careful at the end of all this," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), echoing comments of several committee members.
President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the United States is facing "hard work" in Iraq that is "approaching a crucial moment." But he said he will not be swayed from the goal of helping Iraq become a "free and democratic nation at the heart of the Middle East."
"My resolve is firm," he said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "This is an historic moment. The world watches for weakness in our resolve. They will see no weakness. We will answer every challenge." But lawmakers challenged Wolfowitz with their fears that the U.S.-led coalition still does not have a viable plan in place for the transition -- and that failure could be costly.
"A detailed plan is necessary to prove to our allies and to Iraqis that we have a strategy and that we are committed to making it work. If we cannot provide this clarity, we risk the loss of support of the American people, loss of potential contributions from our allies and the disillusionment of Iraqis," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the panel.
U.S. successes in Iraq have been "dwarfed" by two deficits created by the administration -- a "security deficit" and a "legitimacy deficit," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.).
The public criticism on Capitol Hill mirrors growing alarm expressed in private throughout the U.S. foreign policy community as well as among Iraqis about the political transition and deteriorating security. The U.S.-led coalition has dramatically lowered its goals, they say, from an early pledge to create a stable, democratic country that would be a model for transforming the greater Middle East, to scrambling to cobble together an interim government by June 30 that will have only limited political authority and still depend on more than 130,000 foreign troops.
"We've sacrificed the preferable to that which is most expedient," said a U.S. official involved with Iraq policy. "We've gone from hoping for a strong and empowered government to one that can survive, literally, until a new constitution is drafted."
With mounting instability, from the assassination of a top Iraqi politician to kidnappings for ransom of prominent professionals and their children, Iraqis close to the negotiations by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi are now warning that credible politicians or technocrats may not be willing to accept jobs in the interim Iraqi government.
"Anyone in his right mind would say, 'What you're giving me is an impossible task and a no-win situation,' " said an Iraqi adviser to a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.
The crisis over mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib has also complicated the political transition, with fears among Iraqis that any association with an interim government named by U.N. and U.S. diplomats will undermine their political aspirations.
Some military officers are also concerned that Washington is now cutting back on its original goal of eliminating major flash points in Iraq before June 30. They say the United States has basically retreated in Fallujah, handing over control of the Sunni city to a former Iraqi general who is now commanding some of the very insurgents U.S. forces were fighting -- again, in the name of expediency.
"What we're trying to do is extricate ourselves from Fallujah," said a senior U.S. official familiar with U.S. strategy who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. "There's overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq is proving uncooperative."
In his testimony, Wolfowitz expressed optimism about trends in Iraq. "We're not trying to suggest by any means that this is a rosy scenario, but we do think that Iraq is moving forward toward self-government and self-defense, and that's the key to winning," he said.
But in response to persistent questioning, Wolfowitz said the United States had been "slow" in creating Iraqi security forces and too severe in its early policy of de-Baathification, or barring from government jobs and political life tens of thousands of Iraqis who were members of Hussein's ruling Baath Party.
He listed other shortcomings in planning, including underestimating the resilience of Hussein or his supporters, their postwar operational capabilities and financial resources. Wolfowitz also said he did not know how many U.S. troops would remain posted to Iraq over the next 18 months. "It could be more, it could be less" than the level of 135,000 troops the Pentagon has said it plans to keep in Iraq through 2005.
And he conceded that the question of how Iraq will operate after June 30 remains unsettled, adding that officials would have a better idea of how Iraqi sovereignty will work "as soon as we know who our counterparts are."
In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also conceded that the Iraq situation is more troubled than the coalition predicted. "It's palpable that the difficulties which we faced have been more extensive than it was reasonable to assume nine months ago," he said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
--------
9/11 Panel Cites N.Y. Communication Lapses
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35488-2004May18?language=printer
NEW YORK, May 18 -- Firefighters and police officers struggling to save thousands of people in the World Trade Center complex on Sept. 11, 2001, were severely hampered by communication problems and turf battles, and almost no one believed that the twin towers were in danger of collapsing that morning, according to a report issued Tuesday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
In an emotional and often tense day-long hearing in Manhattan attended by hundreds of survivors and victims' relatives, several members of the commission sharply criticized current and former New York City officials for not adequately planning for a large-scale terrorist attack on skyscrapers, especially given the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Some members also criticized an emergency-management plan unveiled last week by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R), with Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton calling it "a prescription for confusion."
According to a painstaking, 26-page report by the commission's investigative staff, panic-stricken workers in the trade center were given conflicting information on the day of the attacks, including repeated instructions not to evacuate. Many emergency workers were uninformed or misinformed about the rapidly deteriorating situation, and there was no plan in place for rescuing those caught above the fire, the report found.
But the searing account also made it clear that, despite their history of feuding, officers and firefighters from the New York City Fire Department, the New York City Police Department and the Port Authority Police Department struggled valiantly, and in many cases against the odds, to save lives before the towers fell.
"That day we lost 2,752 people at the World Trade Center; 343 were firefighters," Deputy Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer told investigators in videotaped comments that were played at Tuesday's hearing. "But we also saved 25,000 people. And that's what people should remember, because firefighters and rescuers went in and they knew it was dangerous, but they went in to save people. And they saved many."
The report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the panel is formally known, highlighted many of the problems made evident by previous reports, including transcripts of radio transmissions and telephone calls released last year by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade center. But the commission's findings provide perhaps the most definitive and detailed account of the difficulties rescuers encountered.
The report was released at the start of two days of hearings at New School University in Greenwich Village, just 11/2 miles from Ground Zero. Unlike many of the commission's recent hearings in Washington, which focused on policy decisions and intelligence missteps by the federal government before Sept. 11, Tuesday's testimony concerned the attacks and the performance of local emergency responders.
The hearing began with a somber, dramatic presentation by the panel's staff members, who interspersed a reading of the report with videotaped testimony and footage of the attacks. Many who packed the Tishman Auditorium on West 12th Street, clutching pictures and posters of loved ones, were weeping by the end.
Much of the video aired Tuesday came from a French filmmaker, Jules Naudet, who was working on a documentary about New York firefighters and accompanied Pfeifer that day.
The hearing also featured a series of sharp exchanges between former New York fire and police officials and panel members, who were clearly frustrated by what they view as the city's inefficient system for handling emergencies. Commission member John F. Lehman (R), a former secretary of the Navy, argued that the lack of "command and control" in New York was a "scandal" that "is not worthy of the Boy Scouts, let alone this great city." He also said Bloomberg's plan "simply puts in concrete a clearly dysfunctional system."
Thomas Von Essen, who was New York's fire commissioner at the time of the attacks, responded angrily. "There's nothing scandalous about the way New York City handles its emergencies. . . . I think it's outrageous that you'd make a statement like that," he said.
The exchanges frequently prompted booing or clapping from scores of victims' family members, many of whom appeared to be skeptical of fire and police officials.
In their report, commission investigators stopped short of assigning blame in many instances and did not speculate about how many lives might have been saved if things had gone differently. The report also included chilling details, such as the finding that "the first FDNY fatality of the day occurred at approximately 9:25 a.m. when a civilian landed on a fireman on West Street."
According to the report, scores of workers in both towers rushed upward, unaware that doors to the skyscraper roofs were locked and that rescue helicopters would not be able to navigate the heat swells and rooftop antennas to rescue them. No one heard an evacuation announcement from the fire department minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., because the public address system was destroyed in the crash.
Early decisions were based on standard operating procedures for high-rise fires, which call for occupants to remain in place or move only a couple of floors to await rescue. There was no plan for reaching those caught above the fire, even though more than a dozen people had been saved by helicopter in the 1993 bombing.
Investigators, working from recordings and transcripts of emergency calls and radio traffic that morning, also concluded that 911 operators frequently gave misleading or inaccurate information, and that numerous callers could not get through or were put on hold.
"Calling 911 on September 11 was a pointless exercise," said commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington. "The 911 operators were clueless. . . . They didn't know as much as someone sitting home watching television."
By 9 a.m., fire officials had decided that the blaze in the North Tower could not be contained and that evacuation was the only choice.
"Several floors of fire would have been beyond the fire-extinguishing capability of the forces that we had on hand," Assistant Fire Chief Peter Hayden told investigators. "So we determined very early on that this was going to be strictly a rescue mission. We were going to evacuate the building, get everybody out, and then we were going to get out. . . . I had a strong inner sense throughout this entire operation that we were going to lose people this day."
In the South Tower, meanwhile, workers were initially instructed through an announcement and other means to stay -- or, if they were attempting to leave, to return to their offices -- largely because of concerns about fiery debris and other hazards from the crash into the North Tower. One fire chief also told investigators it was unimaginable that a second plane might hit the South Tower. At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 did just that.
"I am looking to the direction of the Statue of Liberty, and I am looking at an airplane coming, eye level, eye contact, towards me -- giant gray airplane," recalled Stanley Prainmath, a bank assistant vice president whose office was on the 81st floor. "I am still seeing the letter U on its tail, and the plane is bearing down on me. I dropped the phone and I screamed and I dove under my desk. It was the most ear-shattering sound ever. The plane just crashed into the building. The bottom wing sliced right through the office, and it stuck in my office door 20 feet from where I am huddled under my desk."
Prainmath was rescued by Brian Clark, president of Euro Brokers Relief Fund, who pulled him from the rubble. "Come on," Clark said, putting his arm around Prainmath. "Let's go home."
At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed, but because of communication glitches and other problems, many rescue workers and employees in the North Tower did not realize it.
"To our knowledge, none of the evacuation orders mentioned that the South Tower had collapsed," panel investigators wrote. "Firefighters who received these orders lacked a uniform sense of urgency in their evacuation."
The panel's hearing will continue Wednesday morning with testimony from Bloomberg, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Edward P. Plaugher, chief of the Arlington County Fire Department. Several commissioners have lauded the response to the Pentagon crash on Sept. 11.
--------
2 Generals Deny Issuing Orders to Allow Prison Abuse in Iraq
May 19, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 19 - The two generals in charge of the occupation of Iraq acknowledged today that there were systemic problems at Abu Ghraib prison, and they admitted to a "broken" approach to reacting to Red Cross complaints of mistreatment.
But the two - Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of the Central Command, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who leads United States forces in Iraq - also denied having issued or approved any orders that they said could have been interpreted to allow abuse, like that of Abu Ghraib.
The generals said that rules governing interrogations in a military theater, like Iraq, are decided by commanders in the theater and require no review by civilian leadership at the Pentagon.
They effectively placed responsibility on lower levels of command - not, as some senators have suggested, on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The abuse amounted to "isolated incidents," General Abizaid said.
Some of the soldiers implicated in the abuse scandal have said they felt severe pressure from superiors, or from people with military intelligence, to extract more intelligence from detainees at Abu Ghraib. But they have not publicly named those superiors.
Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, where the generals appeared, said that a new computer disc with more photos of abuse would soon be made available for lawmakers' private viewing. This development seemed likely to prolong the damaging scandal.
"We have suffered a setback," General Abizaid told the committee. "I accept responsibility for that setback."
He added, "We believe that systemic problems existed at the prison that may have contributed to events there." In all, General Abizaid said, 75 abuse cases in Afghanistan or Iraq had been investigated since American forces moved into Afghanistan.
Although acknowledging responsibility, General Sanchez said he had never approved such procedures as sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs or excessive noise to break the will of prisoners, or any others that would violate the Geneva Conventions for treatment of war prisoners.
General Abizaid said that on Tuesday he saw the preliminary findings of an inquiry by the Army inspector general, or I.G., on training and organizational problems in the region.
"I specifically asked the I.G. of the Army, did he believe that there was a pattern of abuse of prisoners in the Central Command area of operation," General Abizaid said, "and he looked at both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he said no."
General Abizaid also avowed that the military's relationship with the International Red Cross Committee had been flawed.
The generals were asked about a New York Times report that Army officials in Iraq had responded last year to a Red Cross report on abuses at Abu Ghraib by trying to limit the agency's unannounced inspections.
"We have a real problem with I.C.R.C. reports and the way that they're handled and the way that they move up and down the chain of command," General Abizaid told the panel. He said he had seen a February report from the Red Cross only this month.
"I won't make any excuses for it," he said. "We've got a problem there that's got to be fixed."
General Abizaid said he was installing a system to ensure that such Red Cross reports "surface up all the way through the chain of command." Before February, Red Cross reports went first to the staff judge advocate's office, General Sanchez said. "It was coming at the lowest level."
"If I may sir," General Abizaid interjected, "this system is broken."
General Sanchez said the interrogation policies he issued in September, October and this month, "reiterated the application of the Geneva Conventions," and that a summary issued for all soldiers in March - two months after the Abu Ghraib investigation was publicly announced - "emphasized the need to treat all Iraqis with dignity and respect."
The generals were loath to delve into specifics of the Abu Ghraib case. "We still do not know what we don't know," General Abizaid said, adding that senior officers are bound not to interfere with ongoing inquiries, like the courts-martial of six soldiers. (Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits pleaded guilty today to abuse charges and was sentenced to a year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.)
General Abizaid acknowledged that he and other commanders had been broadly aware of problems at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers. They were overcrowded and understaffed, often in buildings badly damaged by war. Combat commanders were pressing for better and quicker intelligence from detainees; and the Coalition Provisional Authority was insisting that more prisoners be released. But the abuse documented in pictures was outside the bounds of what they thought was happening.
Senators said they had learned much, but had not moved a great deal closer to nailing down final answers to the questions of who might have ordered or suggested abusive practices at Abu Ghraib.
"How did it happen?" Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, asked later on CNN. "Still not clear."
General Sanchez denied that an order he issued Nov. 19, giving effective control over Abu Ghraib to the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, had been intended to help intelligence officers apply greater pressure to detainees before interrogation. It was meant, he said, purely to improve the defenses of the prison, following deadly mortar attacks in September.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's ranking Democrat, asked General Sanchez whether he differed with Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who concluded in a report on prison abuses that to give control over prisoners' living conditions to military intelligence - the same unit that would oversee interrogations - was "not doctrinally sound."
"Yes, sir," General Sanchez said, he disagreed.
Senators sought to better understand the role or influence played by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who came from his command at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in August to review procedures in the Iraqi prisons.
He subsequently recommended that the military police be "actively engaged in setting the conditions" for successful interrogations, General Taguba wrote.
But General Miller, who is now in charge of all United States detention centers in Iraq, told the committee that his intention was only for military police to observe prisoners and pass on useful information to their interrogators.
He said he had made it clear to people in the military leadership that his recommendations "laid the base that they must be in concert with the Geneva Conventions." He blamed "a breakdown in leadership" for the Abu Ghraib abuses.
The generals said today that it was their responsibility, and not that of civilian leadership at the Pentagon, to approve interrogation rules for Iraq.
"Did the secretary of defense approve these rules of engagement?" asked Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia. General Sanchez's legal adviser, Col. Marc Warren, replied, "Sir, to my knowledge, no."
The generals said that they expected to learn far more about exactly what went wrong at Abu Ghraib and in other detention centers when the deputy chief of Army intelligence, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, completes his report on the scandal in coming weeks.
"We will follow the trail of evidence wherever it leads," General Abizaid said. "We will continue to correct systemic problems. We will hold people accountable."
The generals said sweeping changes had been put in place in the prisons this year.
The number of prisoners still at Abu Ghraib, now about 3,800, is to be cut sharply, to about 1,500, including 600 to 700 who General Miller said would pose "a high probability of attack" should they be released.
And the prison, General Sanchez said, is to be renamed Camp Redemption.
-------- propaganda wars
Group Cancels Events for GOP Convention
Plans Had Drawn Criticism
By Brian Faler
The Washington Post
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37760-2004May18.html
A charitable organization closely tied to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) announced yesterday that it has canceled a series of parties and other events it had scheduled around the Republican National Convention, after it drew sharp criticism from public watchdog groups.
The organization, Celebrations for Children Inc., said officials canceled the events after deciding they had become too expensive to hold. "It has become clear New York around the time of the Republican Convention is too expensive a venue, therefore CfC will not hold the New York events and instead will pursue other less expensive locations later this year," the organization said in a statement.
Neither DeLay's office nor the charitable group returned calls requesting comment.
Several public watchdog groups have criticized the activities of the organization. They say the events amounted to little more than a fundraising scheme designed to raise large contributions that would finance parties DeLay had planned to host at the convention, which will be held Aug. 30 through Sept. 2.
His aides have defended the group, saying that at least three-quarters of the money raised would have gone to help needy children. The remainder would have financed dinners, a golf tournament, Broadway tickets and other fundraising events.
"This is a capitulation by House Majority Leader DeLay and a correct one," said Fred Wertheimer, president of the group Democracy 21. "The DeLay effort to use this charity to finance his political operations was a misuse of this charity and an abuse of the nation's tax laws. It never should have happened in the first place."
--------
No Consensus on Iraq Bioweapons Labs -White House
(Reuters) WASHINGTON
Wed May 19, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5199287
It remains unclear whether the CIA was wrong about Iraq's purported prewar mobile biological weapons laboratories, the White House said on Wednesday, disputing a comment by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said it was still not known why Iraq had the rolling labs. They had been described in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq as part of an effort to build weapons of mass destruction.
"The latest that has been said by the intelligence community is that there is no consensus. There is disagreement on what the use of those biological laboratories were for," McClellan said at a briefing.
He said that an independent commission appointed by the president to look at prewar intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction would take another look at the laboratories.
Powell expressed regret on Sunday for having made claims in a U.N. Security Council speech now known to have been "inaccurate" and "wrong."
"When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed, and I regret it," he said.
As recently as January, Vice President Dick Cheney cited the discovery of two trucks as "conclusive" evidence of the mobile labs described by Powell. But CIA Director George Tenet later told Congress he had warned Cheney not to be so categorical about the discovery.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Energy secretary to push for more oil
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Patrice Hill
May 19, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040518-112117-3307r.htm
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday said he will urge OPEC ministers at a meeting this weekend to pump more oil, the administration's first gesture this year to show it is trying to do something about record-high gas prices above $2 a gallon.
Mr. Abraham said the administration would not stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to relieve pressure on oil prices, insisting those reserves may be needed in case an emergency disrupts U.S. oil supplies.
His comments come amid signs that the world's oil supplies - and U.S. gasoline supplies in particular - are tightening.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is considering a 1.5 million-barrels-a-day increase in production, proposed by Saudi Arabia, which would help reduce oil prices.
U.S. oil futures fell $1.01 yesterday from record highs on the news that OPEC may boost output. U.S. light crude futures settled at $40.54 per barrel after closing at $41.55 per barrel Monday.
Also impacting oil prices yesterday was news that exports from Iraq were set to increase. A key pipeline in southern Iraq was repaired following a May 9 attack by saboteurs, returning to prewar production levels of about 2 million barrels a day.
Meanwhile, Iraqi oil officials told Agence France-Presse that the country expects to sell 6 million barrels next week from Iraq's main oil center in Kirkuk.
Mr. Abraham said he would discuss the proposal with the Saudi minister at an international energy conference in Amsterdam this weekend. OPEC is due to decide June 3 whether to go ahead with the increase, which is supported mainly by U.S. allies on the cartel.
Mr. Abraham said he will warn OPEC of the harmful impact on world growth from "tight markets and high prices."
But with nearly every oil-producing nation except Saudi Arabia producing near capacity, analysts say any move by OPEC to unleash spare production could come close to tapping out global oil supplies.
That would leave the world with no spare cushion and vulnerable to serious disruptions by terrorists this summer, as well as more mundane stoppages caused by bad weather or striking oil workers, as in Nigeria and Venezuela last year.
"There are serious questions about the cartel's ability to pump much more oil," said Edward Yardeni, chief investment strategist with Prudential Securities.
Global production now totals about 79 million barrels a day, with about a quarter of that going to the United States. Saudi Arabia estimates its spare daily capacity at between 1.5 million and 3 million barrels.
The sharp rise in the price of oil this year probably is due in part to the risk of shortages resulting from "the tremendous potential demand in China and the rest of Asia," Mr. Yardeni said.
Roger Diwan, director of global oil markets for PFC Energy, said that even tapping out Saudi Arabia's reserves might not lower the $8 to $9 a barrel "premium" markets have added to oil prices this year because of the shortage of supplies and political turmoil in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
"Oil prices will go down a little bit, but the perception of risk actually will increase because you will be running the world with less excess capacity than you have right now," he said.
Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens yesterday, in a Bloomberg interview, predicted that the combination of dwindling supplies and strong demand will soon drive oil prices to $45 a barrel.
In view of the treacherous supply situation, he said the administration is right to keep stowing away emergency reserves.
"We're already so tight around the world, something is going to happen," he said.
Energy analysts say suspension of shipments into the petroleum reserve likely would help to lower the price of oil by a few dollars, a possibility Mr. Abraham seemed to acknowledge.
"If there's more oil on the marketplace, it's going to have a downward pressure on prices, and perhaps a disproportionate one because of the fact that it would signal a change of policy," he said.
But Mr. Abraham mostly blamed high oil prices on OPEC, which cut daily production by 1 million barrels last month despite evidence of growing demand. OPEC made its move because in the past, demand usually dipped in the spring.
While OPEC is nearing a ceiling on how much oil it can produce, U.S. refiners also are bumping up against their limits in their race to produce the highly refined gasolines needed to satisfy American demand during the peak summer driving season.
Refiners are able to produce less gasoline from each barrel of oil as a result of an environmental regulation that went into effect May 11 to curb sulfur emissions from diesel fuels. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that rule is adding about 7 cents a gallon to pump prices.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
U.S. Park Views Still in Haze
EPA Criticized for Not Doing Enough to Clear the Air
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37615-2004May18?language=printer
After nearly 30 years, the federal government has little to show for its efforts to reduce the haze that obscures the views at many national parks, a problem that was singled out for attention in 1977 under the Clean Air Act.
Saying it was time for results, the Bush administration took aim at the matter last month, issuing a regulation that requires power plants and other polluters to install technology to curb emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the two main contributors to the haze that often shrouds spectacular vistas in an impenetrable brown cloud.
But no sooner was it announced than the regulation became mired in controversy, with environmentalists saying the rule was a watered-down provision that would have little effect.
It is an accusation the Environmental Protection Agency rejects.
"What the administration's doing with regard to regional haze, we're charging down the road," said William Wehrum, counsel to the assistant administrator for air and radiation at the EPA.
The picture is complicated, however, by an agreement that EPA administrator Michael Leavitt forged with North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven (R) to allow the state to change how it measures air quality, a deal that environmentalists said would torpedo efforts to reduce the worsening haze at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, known for its rugged view of the North Dakota Badlands.
This pact, signed on Feb. 24, sparked a rare outcry from most of the EPA's own specialists in air quality monitoring, who warned in a memo that the "substantial changes" allowed under the agreement would underestimate the impact of air pollution and could "set a precedent" that would undermine cleanup efforts in other regions.
After taking stock of the administration's recent actions, environmentalists argue the end result will be little or no improvement in the vistas at the Great Smoky Mountains and many other iconic national parks.
"Clearly in North Dakota and in some of its national policy decisions there's an urgent need to redouble our efforts to protect national parks and other vital ecosystems from air pollution," said Vickie Patton, a senior lawyer at Environmental Defense. "They're letting some of these high-polluting sources off the hook."
John Stanton of the National Environmental Trust said: "Twenty-seven years ago, Congress told EPA to prevent the further deterioration in air quality. EPA really hasn't done a thing."
The current dispute -- which has drawn in at least one Democratic senator as well as numerous environmentalists -- highlights the contentious debate over air quality and visibility in national parks that attract millions of visitors a year.
Under ideal conditions, visibility from peaks in parks such as Shenandoah, Acadia and the Great Smoky Mountains should be more than 100 miles. But the year-round average at Shenandoah hovers closer to 25 miles, dipping to 15 miles during the summer. EPA monitoring data show that smog levels have increased and that visibility has worsened in parks including Bryce Canyon in Utah, Big Bend in Texas and the Great Smoky Mountains, along with others in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.
Most haze is caused by fine particles of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which become suspended in the atmosphere. Coal-fired plants account for most of the visibility impairment in eastern national parks and wilderness areas; in the West, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter and carbon monoxide -- often from mobile sources such as cars and trucks -- are the primary culprits.
Part of the controversy involves disagreements over which set of clean-air rules should be invoked to tackle the haze problem.
On April 16, the EPA announced that power plants contributing to visibility impairment would have to adopt "best available retrofit technology," or BART, by 2018 or prove that the cost of compliance was too high.
"Regional haze is a national problem caused by multiple sources over a wide area," the agency said, adding that reducing haze would have other benefits: "The same pollution that causes haze also poses serious health risks for people with chronic respiratory illnesses."
But administration critics say the EPA may undermine its own initiative by letting polluters rely on a different Clean Air regulation, the Interstate Air Quality Rule, to address fine-particle pollution. That approach -- which the agency is vetting for public comment -- will not translate into quick cuts in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, they argue. The rule gives power plants in the East the ability to trade pollution "credits."
The utility industry has fought the BART rule in court, seeking to head it off altogether. The industry scored a partial win in the D.C. circuit courts but is still under federal order to reduce emissions.
Quin Shea, executive director for the environment at the Edison Electric Institute, said the industry would prefer to see the Interstate Air Quality Rule adopted rather than BART, calling the regulation "an appropriate surrogate for the electric power sector." He added that the interstate rule, which calls for a two-thirds reduction in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, is "excellent at meeting a first milestone for visibility."
Air quality has been diminishing in many national parks, according to a study completed by Colorado State University in May 2000 that found that vistas deteriorated in Badlands National Park, Big Bend National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, among others.
Officials of the National Parks Conservation Association, a leading critic of the EPA's efforts to tackle haze over the years, also challenge the administration's timeline for reducing haze, which sets a final target 60 years from now. Joy Oakes, the group's mid-Atlantic regional director, called that far-off goal "fairly ridiculous."
The EPA's Wehrum said the agency hopes to make "reasonable progress" of 15 percent clearer air every decade. "From a technical standpoint, it's a very complex problem to work your way through," he said.
Critics who question the administration's commitment are pointing to the accord the EPA accepted for Theodore Roosevelt Park in North Dakota, which allows the state to choose what year to use as the baseline for measuring air-quality trends and to count average emissions over the entire year, rather than peak emissions.
The EPA's own specialists in measuring air quality trends wrote that the agreement marked "substantial changes from past air quality modeling guidance . . . and accepted methods."
But it drew the praise of Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). "The air in North Dakota is exceptionally clear," said Conrad, who says the agreement will promote economic development in his home state. "I do believe what happened in North Dakota was an appropriate outcome."
Wehrum, however, acknowledged the political firestorm the pact had prompted. "It has generated an amount of debate, I won't deny that," he said.
EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said "conversations are still ongoing" with the North Dakota officials on how to measure air pollution trends.
"The negative impact of pollution in our parks is real," said Stanton of the National Environmental Trust. "Why will people travel to scenic areas if they can't see the scenery?"
But Wehrum said it will take time for regulators to hit on the right formula. "How in the world would you do this?" he asked. "It takes a lot of sophistication and complicated analysis."
-------- science
Probe Targets Government Scientists' Consulting
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37744-2004May18?language=printer
Top legal and ethics officials in the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly allowed government scientists to engage in lucrative consulting deals with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies while ignoring the concerns of lower-level ethics officers, according to evidence presented at a House subcommittee hearing yesterday.
In one highlighted case, top HHS officials during the Clinton administration insisted that the director of the National Cancer Institute, Richard D. Klausner, be deemed eligible to receive a $40,000 award from the University of Pittsburgh even though the university is a major NCI grant recipient -- and despite the fact that the institute had just settled a lawsuit brought against it by a Pitt researcher, on terms favorable to the university.
At a minimum, the proximity of those events gave the appearance that Klausner was being rewarded by the university for helping to settle the suit, said ethics officers who told the subcommittee yesterday they were uncomfortable with the arrangement but were pushed by HHS general counsel to endorse it.
In a more recent case, a pair of scientists employed by the NCI and the Food and Drug Administration were twice approved to do outside consulting for a California technology company even though that company appears to be in competition with a Maryland firm that already had a formal arrangement with the government to use the same scientists' expertise.
How is it, the subcommittee chairman, James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), asked, that the scientists were allowed to profit personally from a deal that may have undercut a taxpayer-funded public-private collaboration?
Representatives' descriptions of these and other examples punctuated a tense five-hour hearing that significantly widened a congressional investigation into possible conflicts of interest in the federal biomedical enterprise.
The investigation by the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations -- and others ongoing by the General Accounting Office, the Office of Government Ethics and the HHS inspector general -- has prompted National Institutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni to make substantial changes in the way that agency approves and tracks its scientists' outside endeavors, which can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to researchers' annual income.
Yesterday the questions spilled over to the FDA, where ethics officers recently approved a request by agency scientist Emanuel Petricoin to accept payments from a company trying to develop products that would plausibly be regulated by the agency.
Officials there also approved Petricoin's request to accept free travel and an honorarium to speak at a beach resort conference sponsored by ImClone Systems Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. -- two companies not only regulated by FDA but also at the heart of the recent Martha Stewart scandal surrounding the cancer drug Erbitux. (Petricoin later decided not to take the trip.) "These decisions are the opposite of what people have the right to expect from their ethics officials," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
In response to congressional inquiries, acting FDA Commissioner Lester M. Crawford said yesterday that he has issued a new policy requiring that center directors -- not lower-ranking officials -- review all employee requests for outside work.
Crawford also has initiated an internal review of such arrangements involving FDA employees. And Zerhouni has begun to seek information on the amount of money NIH employees have received in their outside deals -- information that has until now been incomplete.
As with other cases of possible conflict of interest raised by the committee in recent months, none of the scientists involved has been accused of breaking government ethics rules, which vary by agency but generally forbid federal employees from directly leveraging their positions in ways that lead to real or perceived personal gain.
Greenwood expressed suspicion that the prize Klausner received -- the Dickson Prize for Medicine -- was a payoff for his cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh. The prize was given to Klausner in 1997 for work he did before 1995 -- a breach of university rules that say the prize is to be given for work in the current year, Greenwood said.
"Giving the prize to Klausner in 1997 was like giving the Academy Award to a well-liked actor who just didn't happen to make any movies that year," Greenwood said.
Edgar Swindell, who in 1997 was acting director of the HHS ethics division, told the subcommittee he and other ethics officers were under strict orders from then-HHS General Counsel Harriet S. Rabb to assess such requests in purely legal terms, without regard to concerns about ethics or "how this might appear on the front page of The Washington Post." Those ethics rules, while warning about appearances of conflict, allow federal officials to receive "bona fide" awards even from grantee institutions.
"So even though this is the ethics division, you're not supposed to use any ethics," Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) fumed.
"It's not a decision I look back on with fondness or pride," said Swindell, now HHS's associate general counsel for ethics.
Swindell said he has not felt the same pressure to approve marginally acceptable ethics decisions since the arrival of the Bush administration. But he conceded that he helped prepare the now controversial waiver that current HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson signed allowing then-Medicare administrator Thomas A. Scully to negotiate outside employment while he was still in his government position. In December Scully joined an Atlanta law firm that represents drug makers, hospitals and other health care businesses.
The FDA's Petricoin and NCI researcher Lance Liotta told the subcommittee they saw no conflict, at least at first, when they requested and received ethics approval to consult for Biospect of South San Francisco, a company developing technologies that may aid disease detection. The two were already part of a federal partnership in which they spend some of their government time collaborating with Bethesda-based Correlogic Systems.
The two scientists did not tell either company they were working for the other because, Liotta said, "there was no overlap in my mind." But Greenwood noted that the two companies' descriptions of their business goals are very similar, and that Correlogic's co-founder complained to the NCI when he found out about the Biospect deal.
Although ethics officials had twice approved the dual arrangements, both scientists terminated their Biospect arrangements last week because, they said, they began to see evidence that Biospect's business plan was evolving in a way that might constitute a conflict of interest for them.
Both Liotta -- who an NIH official said earned as much as $45,000 from the Biospect deal -- and Petricoin were accompanied yesterday by their lawyers.
The subcommittee also focused on the growing number of NIH employees hired under "Title 42," a special provision that boosts their salaries while allowing them to sidestep certain reporting requirements for outside collaborations.
Zerhouni has recently sought to tighten financial reporting requirements for many of those hired under that provision but has argued for the importance of allowing NIH scientists to earn competitive salaries and in some cases to do outside consulting.
Several subcommittee members said they are giving serious consideration to banning all such arrangements.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Stop A High-level Nuclear Dump at Savannah River!
ACTION ALERT:
Contact Sen. Hollings
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004
From: Louis Zeller <bredl@skybest.com>
Nationwide, grassroots action is having an effect, but Senator Hollings may be wavering. Congress is set to vote on a spending bill which would change federal rules for nuclear waste in South Carolina. If Congress approves, high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site would remain in underground tanks forever; they would not be cleaned up. This action would carve a loophole in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and would open the door for further exemptions for other wastes and other states.
Please call, write, or e-mail Senator Hollings now and request he vote to remove the US Department of Energy's authority to reclassify high-level radioactive waste in the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill.
Timing: Act Now! The US Senate is expected to bring the Fiscal Year 2005 Defense Authorization bill to the floor this week.
Call Senator Hollings in Washington at 202-224-6121 or fax to 202-224-4293. If busy, use the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121. E-mail Senators Hollings and/or Graham using the Congressional e-mail directory at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
Background: Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) pushed a provision through committee providing South Carolina with an exemption to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, allowing the Department of Energy to abandon millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in rusting tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Graham's provision applies only to South Carolina. The DOE wants the exemption so it can add cement to the waste, leave it underground, and reduce costs by billions of dollars. This would create a massive high level waste dump in South Carolina, pollute the Savannah River, and endanger the health of future generations.
The federal court in Idaho ruled against DOE's plan to reclassify waste in Washington, Idaho, and South Carolina. The DOE has appealed the case, but the affected states have all submitted friends of the court briefs opposing DOE's plan.
For more information
Call Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League at (336) 982-2691, (704) 756-7550
E-mail BREDL@skybest.com
Call Jim Bridgman at (202) 544-0217 or go to www.ananuclear.org.
----
Greenpeace conspired to illegally board ship, says U.S. government
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
By Michael Christie,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-19/s_24034.asp
MIAMI - Greenpeace conspired to break the law when it sent activists aboard a freighter carrying illegally felled mahogany, prosecutors said Tuesday, as they dusted off a law not used since 1890 to bring the first U.S. criminal prosecution of an advocacy group.
Kicking off the politically charged case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Watts-FitzGerald told a Miami court Greenpeace recruited "climbers" for the seaborne 2002 protest and footed the bill - all indications the organization and not individual members was in "command and control," he said.
A Greenpeace corporate credit card was even used to rent a boat, he said. "Greenpeace doesn't leave home without it," Watts-FitzGerald quipped in the prosecution's opening remarks, parodying the American Express advertising slogan.
The case - stemming from a windy April day in 2002 when two Greenpeace activists clambered onto the APL Jade freighter just off Miami to hang a sign reading: "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging" - is unprecedented.
Never before have U.S. authorities criminally prosecuted an advocacy group for civil disobedience, rather than the individual activists involved in a protest. Two Greenpeace members were actually charged and pleaded guilty after the incident. But 15 months later, prosecutors targeted the entire organization with a grand jury indictment.
The law used to take Greenpeace to court has also drawn attention, and civil rights advocates say its obscurity suggests the case is one of revenge for Greenpeace's criticism of President Bush's environmental policies.
Passed in 1872 to prevent "sailor mongering," the law has been gathering dust since it was last prosecuted in 1890. Sailor mongering was common in the 19th century, when brothels sent whores onto ships before they had reached harbor to lure sailors ashore with booze and promises of warm beds.
Greenpeace is accused of illegally boarding the APL Jade, as the 964-foot vessel "was about to arrive at the place of her destination." It also faces a charge of conspiring to commit that crime.
Greenpeace attorney Jane Moscowitz told the 12-member jury most of the facts of the case were not contested.
"The issue is whether what happened here is a crime," she said. The vagueness of "about to arrive" will also be a factor, she said.
Moscowitz said the boarding of the APL Jade was part of a global campaign to stop the illegal logging of mahogany in Brazil's Amazon, a lucrative trade blamed for the destruction of vast swathes of rain forest. The campaign was so successful that in 2002, signatory nations to the CITES treaty on endangered species agreed to increase the level of protection for mahogany.
"It would have been a story with a happy ending except that we find ourselves here today," Moscowitz said.
Advocacy groups say a conviction of Greenpeace could have a "chilling" effect on free speech and legitimate protests. It would also be a blow to Brazilian efforts to win more backing for its fight against the illegal mahogany trade from the United States, the biggest market for a wood so valuable it boasts fatter profit margins than cocaine.
The trial before U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan is expected to last about a week.
----
Black is for mourning, to say 'we're not conforming,' to war crimes in the Middle East
Laurie King-Irani,
Electronic Intifada,
19 May 2004
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2698.shtml
The deadly operation launched by Ariel Sharon this week in Rafah, the southernmost city of the crowded and occupied Gaza Strip, is picturesquely code-named "Operation Rainbow."
Dressing up a murderous assault on unarmed civilians with an ancient symbol of glittering hope is obscene. One hue never present in any rainbow is black. But that's the shade I'd like to focus on in this essay and call for action.
In the last 36 hours, I have received dozens of e-mail appeals urging people of good conscience to write letters to top officials in Washington and Tel Aviv in an effort to halt the war crimes we are watching hourly on our television screens.
Bitter experience gained from three years working on a war crimes case filed by survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in a Belgian court under the principle of universal jurisdiction, only to be halted in its tracks by Donald Rumsfeld last June, [1] has taught me to expect nothing from the current incumbents of high political office in the US and Israel (all of whom are Likudniks, regardless of their religious affiliations).
Bush, Sharon, and those surrounding them display a brazen disregard for international law as well as an arrogant, sneering certainty that they are above all laws. It is highly unlikely that they or their underlings will respond to letters of protest or complaint from people lacking in wealth and corporate and/or lobbying clout.
As Bush noted with his characteristic smirk upon surveying guests attending an exclusive campaign dinner gathering of the richest people in the USA in July 2000: "This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite. I call you my base."[2]
Given Bush's skewed conceptions about political participation, your letters to the editor, to the US Secretary of State, senators, congresspersons, or the Israeli Knesset just won't cut the mustard in neo-conservative America. Nor will rallies and demonstrations do much except make us feel good about being with like-minded souls for a few hours before returning to the nauseating, repetitive, and indelible images of US-taxpayer funded death, defilement and destruction on our television screens and computer monitors.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Ariel Sharon do not see us as fellow human beings, let alone as citizens or as the public. Rather, they view anyone opposing them with utter contempt. Our views do not matter in the least. US and Israeli leaders are enjoying their impunity, so couldn't we all just keep quiet and not bother them?
Sharon's latest comments, as reported by CBC News, stressed that Operation Rainbow aims to "bring Israel the quiet it has long deserved." [3] Chillingly, he predicts that quiet is coming soon. Perhaps the quiet of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut on 18 September 1982, a stillness marred only by the drone of thousands of flies feasting on the 1000+ corpses? Sharon has massacred before, and it does not appear that anyone in DC officialdom can stop him from doing it again.
So let's not appeal to US and Israeli officials, who are, after all, complicit in, and the key authors of, an increasingly global pattern of grave violations of the Geneva Conventions and UN resolutions. Both countries have structured their jural relationships with the rest of the world through force, intimidation, economic pressures, media manipulation, and diplomatic dealings, all with the aim of ensuring their immunity from prosecution for crimes such as those we have seen in the West Bank and Gaza (and not just this week) as well as in Falluja and Abu Ghraib.
Neither country has signed on to the Rome Treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US is working hard to subvert and erode the ICC's work even before it really begins by actively coercing countries in the developing world to sign non-extradition treaties with the US. Now that we've seen events unfold in Falluja and Abu Ghraib, it is easier to understand exactly why the US has been so insistent upon destroying the ICC, a judicial venue it would have good reason to fear given what is now happening in the Middle East as I type these words.
Sending Bush, Sharon, and their various minions hundreds of individualized form letters a day is not a bad idea: It might alert American and Israeli spinmeisters that their p.r. machines are not working as smoothly as usual. But writing letters to ask that criminals look into crimes is not going to make a dent in the underlying problems and dysfunctions that beset us all, from California to Kirkuk. What we must address is how and why the US manages to enjoy global military, commercial, and media dominance while simultaneously wrecking the emerging architecture of global justice.
What might restrain the Likudniks in Washington, DC and Tel Aviv from doing further damage to International Humanitarian Law and UN resolutions is a campaign of simple yet sustained and concerted action. It would take less time than writing a letter and would require only the adoption and deployment of basic but powerful symbols.
Taking some inspiration from the Israeli anti-occupation group, Women in Black, I suggest that everyone concerned about the disaster unfolding in Israel, Iraq and Palestine begin wearing black arm-bands in solidarity with Iraqis, Palestinians and Israelis, and furthermore, getting as many people as possible to wear these armbands daily as a sign of our refusal to be complicit in crimes, as an index of our anger, and as a symbolic (non-violent) arming of ourselves in the face of an escalating military madness of racist policies that will damage many, many innocent lives in the Middle East and beyond for decades.
Black is the color of mourning; the color that symbolically conveys, in many rites of passage, that one has reached a limit, that one must undergo a transformation, as there is no going back. Black is the end of innocence, the closing of a chapter. Black is the dark at the end of a long tunnel that has not led anywhere. Black is the message that it is time to seek some light and find our way back to the surface to breathe fresh air, and look one another in the face again without fear, shame, anger or hatred.
Black is not only about sorrow, grief or despair. Black is a teacher that warns, guides, nourishes, and births new possibilities. It marks a beginning as well as an ending.
What we do by wearing black is not only to mourn the murders of people in Rafah, the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the senseless deaths of Americans sent into a war for profit, the horrific deaths of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings, but also to bemoan and protest the damage done to International Law while raising an alarm about the serious, but not yet mortal, wounds inflicted upon emerging frameworks of global governance, justice, cooperation, and community.
Black is also the color of oil, the real reason for the nightmare in Iraq. It sits upon us like the mark of Cain. So let's subvert it and use it to protest the political economy that drives the abuses we see hourly on television.
In Israel, the phrase "the black flag is flying" refers to the fact that war crimes are occuring and that soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have the duty not to follow orders given under the black flag of criminal intent or negligence.
Black is traditionally the color of Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers), where urban life began with the advent of agriculture and writing. Iraq has the potential for being a great center of civilization, fruitfulness, learning, invention, and artistic and scientific achievements. The rich, black soil of Iraq, and the people of Iraq, are that country's true and lasting wealth. Both have been misused and abused by Saddam and now the "coalition." Iraq's soil is meant to be sown, not used as a mass grave or dusted with depleted uranium.
I can only speak for myself, but black is the color of my mood and outlook each time I see the hourly news or photographic updates to this website.
If thousands of people in cities large and small throughout the world started wearing black armbands, that small symbolic gesture might encourage more people to talk about what is happening, and better yet, to think seriously and speak honestly about what is being done in our names in Iraq and in Israel/Palestine. Black is not a symbol of a nation. Rather, it stands for mourning, rage, and the need for transcendence, transformation, and the righting of a lot of wrongs. Black is a symbol of a humanity long over-shadowed and obscured by greed, hate, fear, and arrogance. It's a sign that we are saying "No more!" We have reached the edge and we must find a new path.
This suggested action is not about being pro-Palestinian or pro-Iraqi, anti-US or anti- Israel. It is about being pro-sanity, pro-humanity, pro-international humanitarian law. In addition to harming and destroying individual lives today, the actions undertaken by the US and Israel threaten all our lives in the future to the extent that they undermine frameworks of international governance and mechanisms of justice.
International Humanitarian Law is your law. Know it. Use it. Hold abusers to it.[5]
Notes: [1] See http://indictsharon.net for more details.
[2] Quoted in Matthew Rothschild's November 2003 interview with Jim Hightower in The Progressive.
[3] "Israel ignores international outcry; continues sweep through Gaza" CBC News, 18 May 2004.
[4] See China Galland's interesting book, Longing for Darkness (New York: Penguin, 1991) for more about the spiritual and political significance of blackness in a variety of cultural traditions.
[5] For more details on this important body of laws, see: http://www.crimesofwar.org
Dr. Laurie King-Irani, a social anthropologist, is a co-founder of Electronic Intifada and Electronic Iraq. She is currently writing a book on conceptions and practices of jurisdiction, sovereignty, and rights as expressed in local discourses about global justice and internatonal humanitarian law. An American citizen, King-Irani lives and works in British Columbia, Canada.
----
Berg father backs anti-war stance
BBC
Wednesday, 19 May, 2004, 04
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3727293.stm
Mr Berg blames the US administration for his son's death The father of Nick Berg - the US civilian beheaded in Iraq - has sent a message of support to the Stop the War Coalition.
Michael Berg contacted the coalition to offer his backing after it sent him a letter of sympathy.
His strongly-worded message will be read out at an anti-war demonstration in London on Saturday.
Mr Berg said that his son had suffered the consequences of policies of the Bush administration.
My hero
Mr Berg said: "When I eulogized my son, Nick, I said that he was my teacher and my hero.
"He was the kindest, gentlest human being I know or have ever known."
Last year hundreds of thousands marched against the war
His son's headless corpse was found on 9 May in Baghdad and days later a video of his decapitation appeared on an al-Qaeda related website.
The hooded men who carried out the killing claimed they were avenging the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
The Stop the War Coalition will release Mr Berg's full statement at a press conference on Wednesday.
One of the march's organisers Chris Nineham told the BBC: "He [Mr Berg] feels that what needs to come out of the horrific death of his son is that a message has to be sent to Bush and Blair to say that the barbarity of war has to stop.
"That's his response to the terrible events that have happened to his son.
He continued: "I think the fact that someone has responded so thoughtfully to the death of their son is a message to the people of America and elsewhere to say that we understand that violence breeds violence.
"That violence was originally perpetrated by the American government, the British government and by the military and the only way to end the cycle of violence is for the US and British troops to come out immediately."
The Stop The War Coalition with the Muslim Association of Britain and CND have called for the emergency demonstration this Saturday to demand an end to torture in Iraq and the withdrawal of troops from the country.
A total of 200 anti-war protesters protested outside a Republican fundraising dinner in central London on Tuesday night attended by former US president George Bush senior.
Glasgow Kelvin MP Mr George Galloway was among the Stop the War coalition demonstrators.
Saturday's march will be the latest in a series of protests by the coalition against the Iraq conflict.
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