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NUCLEAR
Plan Launched to Reclaim Nuclear Fuel Intensified
Energy Department Plans a Push to Retrieve Nuclear Materials
U.S., Russia Work with U.N. on Global Nuke Threat
Vietnam's nuclear ambitions gather steam
Construction to begin on China-made nuclear reactors this year
DOE gives update on USEC plant
The US uses depleted uranium weapons in Iraq
Pakistan mired in another nuclear scandal
UN focusing on Iraqi nuclear scientist to lead Iraq after June 30: report
Scientist Jailed by Hussein Is Favored for Premier's Post
Israel Arrests British Reporter in Vanunu Nuclear Case
Japan won't give North Korea food aid if it test-launches missiles
Brazil Says China Atomic Deal Would Be Peaceful
U.S., Russia to sign nuclear fuel agreement
Nuclear jet crash 'could kill millions'
U.S. Seeks to Rid World of 'Dirty Bombs'
Terror Threats Put Los Alamos Lab Under Magnifying Glass
Nuke Panel Objects to N.M.'s Petition on Uranium Plant
Visiting The Trinity Site
Westchester to Examine Ways of Shutting Indian Point Plant
W'chester mulls nuke takeover
Bacteria found living in toxic residue
MILITARY
Drug causing GIs permanent brain damage
Sudanese Factions Close to Peace Deal
A Former Superpower's Hazardous Legacy
Group Agrees to Tighten Missile Controls
UK Parliament Limits Access After Security Scare
CACI Contracts Blocked
Defense Dept. Delays Action on Boeing Jets Till November
Bioterror bonanza
Pentagon defers decision on Boeing tanker lease deal
Key Najaf Shrine Damaged in Fighting
'Large Number' of Rebels Slain
UNRWA: 45 homes razed in Rafah during Operation Rainbow
Belgium would not veto Nato Iraq force
India to junk 70 MiG-21 'flying coffins'
General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs
U.S. using some Iraqis as bargaining chips
4 Soldiers in Iraq May Face Discipline
Chalabi 'boasted of Iranian spy link'
U.N. Closes In on Choice To Lead Iraq
US asks private sector to ease bullet shortage
Military Families Mourn Daughters
Judge Sees Little Evidence to Support Anthrax Vaccine
Green Card Recruits Get a Raw Deal
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judicial Discipline to Be Examined
Federal Court Upholds Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law
U.S. Warns Of Al Qaeda Threat This Summer
Kerry Seeks More Homeland Security Funds
Intelligence Indicates Al Qaeda Planning Attack, Ashcroft Says
Public's Help Is Sought to Prevent Terrorist Strikes
Changes in Color Alert in Past 2 Years
Why Ashcroft Must Go
Mall security tightened for event
Group Says Chinese Saw Detainees
Russia's Putin Criticizes Human Rights Groups
Who Would Try Civilians of U.S.? No One in Iraq
As Police Extend Use of DNA, a Smudge Could Trap a Thief
Congress Disputes Bush Pledge
Iraqis: Why Demolish Prison?
Occupation made world less safe, pro-war institute says
POLITICS
Prison Investigator's Army Experience Questioned
Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey
9/11 Panel May Not Reach Unanimity on Final Report
Transcript: Ashcroft, Mueller news conference
Generals at odds over abuse at prison
US paper apologises for false Iraq reports
The Times and Iraq
Poking holes in the official story of 9/11
U.S. war policy 'grave error'
Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts
Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice to Resign
ENERGY
NZ doesn't need nuclear power, says scientist
Kerry pushes plan for energy independence
Manley nuclear report `flawed'
Turkey, Israel Discuss Undersea Energy 'Corridor'
ACTIVISTS
Tom Clancy new book criticises Iraq war
David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Seven, dies at 88
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Plan Launched to Reclaim Nuclear Fuel Intensified
U.S. Effort Would Thwart Terrorism, Rogue States, Abraham Says
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55710-2004May25.html
The Bush administration, citing the danger of nuclear terrorism, will announce intensified efforts to retrieve and secure tons of highly enriched uranium scattered among research reactors and repositories around the world.
Decades after the United States and Russia began supplying nuclear fuel abroad, the plan is to spend more money and sharpen the focus of both governments to repatriate it -- "to fill this enormous gap," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said yesterday by telephone from Vienna, where he is to announce the $450 million initiative in a speech today.
Accelerating and concentrating existing efforts, Abraham said, the Bush administration will target the "most dangerous, least secure" nuclear materials first. In seeking to convert research reactors in the United States and abroad to less dangerous fuel, the most vulnerable ones will take priority.
Abraham's announcement, months in the making, comes after criticism from outside analysts and the Energy Department's inspector general that the administration has been moving too slowly. Auditors said in February that large amounts of highly enriched uranium produced in the United States "were out of U.S. control."
Just this week, a pair of Harvard University researchers said less fissile material was secured in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years before. The makings of an atomic bomb exist in hundreds of buildings in more than 40 countries, the report said.
Abraham, in Vienna to meet with Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, intends to acknowledge in his remarks that more must be done.
"We would be fooling ourselves -- and endangering our citizens -- to think that these past efforts are enough," an advance text of his speech says. It describes "the 21st century's greatest conflict" as a battle between "the civilized nations of the earth and the terrorists and terrorist states that would use devastating technologies to destroy them."
The Energy Department intends to remove the uranium retrieval programs from its oft-criticized Environmental Management Program and appoint a coordinator. Nuclear specialists have long said the federal government's nonproliferation programs are too diffused.
Little of the new money projected for the program will be spent soon, a senior Energy Department official said. In the coming 18 months, about $20 million will be added to existing programs, an amount likely to reach $60 million in peak years.
"We will find whatever funds are necessary to get this accelerated," the official said.
Matthew Bunn, co-author of the Harvard report, reacted positively to the administration's plan.
"What's new is pulling these things together, an explicit focus on eliminating the gaps," said Bunn. "If the Abraham initiative is followed through rapidly and flexibly, we have a real chance to get the dangerous nuclear material out of the world's most dangerous sites in a few years."
Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. government delivered bomb-grade uranium to dozens of countries under the Atoms for Peace program. The idea was to help countries develop peaceful nuclear programs, whether for electrical power or scientific research.
Most of the fuel was to be returned to the United States, either in its most potent form or as spent fuel. Although some has been recovered, many tons of U.S. and Russian fuel remain in distant places.
Under Abraham's plan, all fresh Russian-produced highly enriched uranium would be repatriated by Dec. 31, 2005. Spent fuel would be returned by 2010. U.S.-produced spent fuel in research reactors would be repatriated within a decade, and U.S. authorities will work to convert U.S. and Russian civilian research reactors to safer fuel.
--------
Energy Department Plans a Push to Retrieve Nuclear Materials
May 26, 2004
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD and JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26bomb.html
In an effort to keep the raw materials for nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists, the Energy Department will undertake a $450 million campaign to retrieve nuclear materials that the United States and the Soviet Union originally sent around the world for research purposes, the energy secretary will announce on Wednesday in Vienna.
The department has been trying for years, with limited success, to recover unused uranium fuel at research reactors. An audit, announced in February, found that the department was likely to recover only about half of the 5,200 kilograms of uranium it was seeking and that no effort had been made to recover an additional 12,300 kilograms. Depending on the skill of the designers and builders, it takes as little as 5 kilograms to make a bomb the size of the one that destroyed Hiroshima, experts say.
The energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, plans to announce Wednesday in a speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency that the effort will be accelerated and will expand to include used Soviet-era fuel from research reactors, as well as unused fuel, from research reactors that the United States has long been seeking to collect. The used fuel typically contains large amounts of unused uranium of the type suitable for bombs, which can be extracted and purified with techniques that are 60 years old and widely known.
In addition, Mr. Abraham will report that the United States has drafted a global list of material that could be used to make bombs, ranked by risk factors, including the volume of material, the political stability of the area where it is located and the way it is guarded. In the past, American officials have looked at the materials by type or by region, but not on an integrated basis. Officials say the list is near completion.
In a telephone interview on Monday, Mr. Abraham said, "We've had these programs on the books, but the programs haven't been formalized and there hasn't been a specific budget commitment to it."
The American fuel was sent overseas under an Atoms for Peace program, starting in the 1960's and was lent or given to countries that promised not to develop nuclear weapons. The Soviets sent fuel to areas that became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union and to other former Eastern Bloc countries.
In remarks prepared for delivery in Vienna, Mr. Abraham said that as part of the new campaign, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, all unused Russian-origin fuel would be repatriated by the end of next year. Used fuel would follow by 2010. A copy of the remarks was made available to The New York Times by the Energy Department.
Fuel that originated in this country would also be returned on an accelerated basis. When the Energy Department began seeking return of the material, in the mid-1990's, it anticipated finishing the job by 2006, but officials are now hoping for 2010.
The fuel in question is highly enriched uranium. Weapon design using highly enriched uranium is so simple that the first such bomb, used by the United States at Hiroshima in August 1945, was not even tested beforehand. Modern plants use centrifuges to enrich uranium, but a country or terrorist group that acquired enough highly enriched uranium would have a major head start on a bomb, experts say. Much of the material would also be suitable for use in a ''dirty bomb," a conventional explosive spiked with radioactive material. The effects of the radiation from such a bomb would be limited and unlikely to cause acute illness, except perhaps of the bomber himself. But such radiation could contaminate valuable real estate and could require expensive cleanup or abandonment for decades.
Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and author of a new book on nuclear terrorism, said Mr. Abraham's new initiatives would be "important if the words are matched by deeds." Nonetheless, he added, the scale and speed of the effort are still woefully inadequate. "There is still a serious imbalance between the magnitude of the nuclear threat he describes and the remedies proposed," he said.
Some of the fuel is in Western European countries, and those countries will pay the expenses to send it back to this country, energy officials said. Other fuel is spread around the world, including Iran and is not considered recoverable at the moment.
--------
U.S., Russia Work with U.N. on Global Nuke Threat
May 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-arms-usa.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States and Russia are working with the U.N. nuclear watchdog to round up all nuclear material scattered across the globe to keep it out of the hands of rogue states and militant groups seeking atomic weapons.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave details of the initiative in a speech Wednesday to members of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Washington has earmarked more than $450 million for the plan, he said.
``This Global Threat Reduction Initiative ...the threat posed by the entire spectrum of nuclear materials (and) reflects the realities of the 21st century that were so startlingly made clear on a September morning three years ago,'' Abraham said.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the initiative was a key step in reducing the nuclear threat in light of the recent discovery of a global black market that supplied sensitive atomic technology to countries like Libya, North Korea and Iran.
``We live in an increasingly polarized world,'' ElBaradei told reporters. ``If you put these...things together -- a polarized world, the proliferation of (nuclear) technology, the proliferation of terrorism -- you know we will need to adjust, augment, strengthen our defense.''
The initiative includes a plan to repatriate all unused Russian-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel by the end of next year and all spent nuclear fuel by 2010. Spent fuel can be reprocessed to extract plutonium.
Abraham is meeting senior Russian officials Thursday, when they are expected to sign a bilateral deal outlining the terms of the initiative, U.S. officials said.
U.S., RUSSIA ALREADY COOPERATING
Nuclear arms can use either weapons-grade HEU or plutonium. Of the two bombs the United States dropped on Japan in 1945, one had an HEU core and the other was made of plutonium.
``We will take all steps necessary to accelerate and complete the repatriation of all U.S.-origin research reactor spent fuel...within a decade,'' Abraham said. Some U.S. research reactors used bomb-grade HEU.
He also said they would convert civilian research HEU reactors to use low enriched uranium fuel instead -- not just in the United States but across the globe.
``We will target those reactors first where the threats and vulnerabilities are the highest,'' he said.
Washington is already working with Libya, which agreed in December to renounce all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, to convert its research reactor. Abraham said the U.S. and Russian governments had already cooperated on several missions to recover HEU from different countries, including 37 pounds of HEU fuel from Bulgaria, 31 pounds from Romania and 37 pounds from Libya -- all repatriated to Russia.
The initiative will not be limited to weapons-useable materials but also materials that could be used in a so-called dirty bomb -- created when an explosive like dynamite is laced with radioactive material to spread it across a wide area.
Asked why the initiative was limited to Russian and U.S. material and did not include countries like Pakistan that are known proliferators, Abraham said that it was partly because the United States and Russia produced the bulk of it.
-------- asia
Vietnam's nuclear ambitions gather steam
HANOI (AFP)
May 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040526054557.zk68n99m.html
Vietnam's programme to build its first nuclear power plant by 2020 is gathering steam, with officials saying Wednesday that a pre-feasibility study will be submitted to the government this year.
Le Doan Phac, the director of the international affairs department at the Vietnam Nuclear Energy Institute, said the study had determined three possible locations for the plant in the coastal provinces of Phu Yen and Ninh Thuan.
"We cannot give a precise date when we will formally submit the pre-feasibility study. That depends on the government, but we can say that we expect it to happen this year," he said.
The blueprint envisages that the plant, which will have a capacity of either 2,000 or 4,000 megawatts, will be built with international cooperation.
Phac's comments came as government experts and nuclear power companies from France, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India -- the frontrunners hoping to cash in on Vietnam's nuclear ambitions -- began a four-day meeting in Hanoi.
Experts say the communist nation is not capable of developing nuclear technology on its own, even though it profited during the 1980s from information exchanges with the former Soviet Union.
In February, Russia and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding in which Moscow agreed to help Hanoi build its first nuclear power plant, but experts say the door still remains wide open for its competitors.
"It is very early days. It is still a negotiating process," said one foreign energy specialist, who requested anonymity.
Vietnam's Institute of Technology for Radioactive Materials said last year the country had an estimated 230,000 tonnes of uranium and could run a nuclear power station for at least 24 years.
Development of Vietnam's energy infrastructure is one of the most significant challenges facing the power-hungry Southeast Asian nation, where the World Bank forecasts economic growth will hit 7.0 percent this year.
According to government estimates, the country will experience an electricity shortage of eight billion kilowatts by 2015, increasing to a massive 35 billion to 60 billion kilowatts by 2020.
Despite having a vast network of rivers and significant oil, gas and coal reserves, the government is concerned about their finite nature, and believes the future of its energy production depends on diversification.
Observers also believe that Hanoi's desire to pursue the nuclear power option dovetails with its military-security policy.
"Nuclear power is always tied up with national defence, so it is very difficult to say whether a shortage of energy in 2015 requires developing this option in a country with a lot of capacity in hydro-power and coal," the foreign specialist said.
"But if you look around at Vietnam's neighbours, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Japan and China upstairs, it is understandable that they are going to think of nuclear power as a long term option. It is a prudent move."
Sceptics, however, say the nuclear programme will come with an exorbitant price tag and is not essential in a country where average per capita income hovers around a paltry 440 dollars a year.
A spokesman for the World Bank in Vietnam said Wednesday the organization would not be involved in financing the nuclear power project.
"We do not finance nuclear projects and have no intention of financing nuclear power," he said.
Critics of Vietnam's nuclear programme also believe the government has been too conservative in its forecasts of when the country's oil and gas reserves will dry up.
-------- china
Construction to begin on China-made nuclear reactors this year
BEIJING (AFP)
May 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040526033202.xl1izo5c.html
Construction on four 1,000 megawatt Chinese-designed nuclear reactors is set to begin this year as part of a 9.7 billion dollar plan to build eight new nuclear power plants, state press reported Wednesday.
Construction will start at the Qinshan nuclear power facility in eastern Zhejiang province and at the Ling'ao facility in southern Guangdong province some time this year, the China Daily cited Kang Rixin, general manager of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), as saying.
"The four units will be designed and constructed with domestic technology," Kang was quoted as saying.
China's nuclear power industry, although only providing a small percentage of its overall energy, is expected to be one of the world's fastest growing in the coming years.
Five nuclear generators are already operating at the Qinshan facility, including three Chinese-designed reactors and two pressurized heavy water reactors with Canadian design.
Two 984 megawatt French reactors are operating at the Ling'ao facility.
In December, CNNC began taking bids from foreign companies for the other four nuclear power plants, with construction expected to begin in 2005, Kang said earlier.
Foreign companies such as Electricite de France, Westinghouse of the United States and Japan's Mitsubishi are all expected to vie for the contracts.
With nuclear power capacity expected to quadruple over its current level of 36,000 megawatts by the year 2020, the nation will need to build on average at least two 1,000 megawatt reactors a year over the next 16 years.
Nuclear power currently accounts for about 2.3 percent of China's electricity supply, compared to a world average of 16 percent, the paper said.
China currently has nine nuclear power plants in operation, with an additional two 1,000 megawatt Russian-made reactors under construction in eastern Jiangsu provoince.
-------- depleted uranium
DOE gives update on USEC plant
Waste must be moved before building begins
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
By DANIEL PRAZER
Chillicothe Gazette Staff Writer
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20040526/localnews/505956.html
PIKETON -- At a semi-annual meeting conducted by the Department of Energy Tuesday night, the DOE official charged with overseeing operations at the Piketon uranium enrichment plant gave a rundown of the site's status to a relatively sparse crowd.
Bill Murphie, manager of the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office that oversees the Piketon plant and its sister site in Paducah, Ky., said the department is making strides on readying the buildings that will house United States Enrichment Corp.'s next-generation enrichment plant.
"We are going through these facilities and essentially getting the DOE legacy waste out of here," Murphie said.
The buildings slated to house the $1.5 billion American Centrifuge were built for a plan to use similar technology in the 1980s, but those plans were scrapped. USEC said the buildings were a major incentive to place the centrifuge facility in Piketon.
But the buildings are housing DOE waste and must be vacated before any of the new plant can be installed. Beside moving 60 personnel from the buildings, the DOE has moved thousands of containers of waste either off site or to other locations on site, Murphie said.
"USEC needs this space to do its pilot plant," he said.
He also said construction on a waste-conversion facility is on track to begin this July, and the department has been moving containers of waste up from its Oak Ridge, Tenn., facility to Piketon.
An average of 15 cylinders a day are moved up to the Piketon plant by truck, with plans to move 2,900 of them during fiscal year 2004.
The conversion facility will take the depleted uranium compound that is a byproduct of the enrichment process and chemically treat it so the depleted uranium is in a stable state for either reuse or disposal, said Doug Adkisson, Operations and Maintenance Manager of Uranium Disposition Services, the company contracted to build the conversion facility.
The other byproduct produced, hydrofluoric acid, is widely used and will be sold to industry, Adkisson said.
(Prazer can be reached at 772-9364 or via e-mail at dprazer@nncogannett.com)
----
The US uses depleted uranium weapons in Iraq
Radiation level in Baghdad becomes life threatening
05/24/2004
(Pravda)
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/12890_radiation.html
The US Armed Forces increased their use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq six times. This resulted in radioactive contamination of a number of regions in Baghdad.
A well-known organization in the US entitled "International Action Center" reported last week that "in the course of the Iraqi war, the US has increased its use of weapons with depleted uranium from 375 tons, which were used during the operation "Desert Storm" in 1991, to 2 200 tons."
Currently, "Geiger counter indicates that radiation exceeds the norm by 1 000/2 000 times in several spots in the center of Baghdad," reads the organization's report.
According to the International Action Center, half of 697 000 of American veterans of the "Desert Storm" operation and their children have been diagnosed with serious health conditions as a result of being exposed to depleted uranium weapons. However, for Iraq, "consequences will be more drastic", remarks the report. "This is a crime against Iraqi people and the world's population at large," reports RIA "Novosti".
Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Anna Ossipova)
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan mired in another nuclear scandal
By Khalid Hasan
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Pakistan Daily Times
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-5-2004_pg7_1
Washington: The arrest of a South Africa-based Israeli linked to a Pakistani importer in Islamabad continues to mire Pakistan in another nuclear scandal.
Asher Karni was arrested at Denver's international airport as he arrived with his wife and daughter for a New Year's ski vacation. While friends and family say he is nothing more than a hard-working electronics salesman trying to earn a living, US authorities consider him a veteran conduit for nuclear components needed by countries like Pakistan.
Karni who ordered 200 electrical components called triggered spark plugs, worth about $90,000 for an Islamabad company called Pakland Corp. aimed at curbing nuclear proliferation. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years. According to a detailed report in Los Angeles Times Monday, some US officials believe the ultimate destination of the electrical components would have been the Pakistan government, "which is also suspected of complicity in Abdul Qadeer Khan's network." The plugs also have medical uses, which is what Humayun Khan says they were for.
Court documents filed in Washington say Humayun Khan has links to Pakistan's military and a militant Islamic political group. Pakistani officials have told the newspapers that the government is not involved in any effort to buy US products prohibited for export to their country. The newspaper claims to have "confirmed" that Humayun Khan's family import-export business, Pakland Corp., was a purchasing agent for Pakistan's nuclear programme as far back as 1975. At the time, Pakland was negotiating at least one deal for suspected nuclear weapons material with Alfred Hempel, a German industrialist, former Nazi and central figure in the global nuclear bazaar. Humayun Khan, a US official said, appears to have been involved in illegal deals going back at least several years.
US authorities launched their investigation in July 2004, after an anonymous South African tipster said Karni had been using front companies, straw buyers and misleading shipping documents to sell restricted US products to Pakistan and India. The tipster said Karni was in the process of buying as many as 400 of the switches for Humayun Khan. US agents monitored the deal with updates from the tipster, including Karni's e-mail correspondence and shipping information for the switches. The affidavit and other court documents lay out the alleged criminal conspiracy to evade US export control laws, including e-mails between Karni and Khan. Documents listing the use to which the switches were to be put were required to be filed by Karni, who refused to do so. He then received an e-mail from Humayun Khan that said, "Dear Asher, I know it is difficult but thats (sic) why we came to know each other. Please help to re-negotiate this from any other source, we can give you an end user information as it is genuinely medical requirement."
Karni placed the order with another company which submitted documents (apparently sent in by Humayun Khan) that said the 200 switches were needed for a hospital in Soweto, South Africa. Normally such hospital orders number five or six switches only, not 200. US authorities decided to track the order and asked the new supplier to send 66 disabled switches to Soweto.
The original tipster told authorities that Karni might list a lithography company at Khan's address as the end user, not Khan's firm, Pakland PME, and later provided Federal Express tracking numbers showing a circuitous route through Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Karni did just as the tipster predicted, and agents tracked the package at every step.
Karni received the packet, re-labelled it "electrical parts" and sent it Dubai and Islamabad where in late October 2004, someone identifying himself as an employee of the AJKMC Lithography Aid Society signed for the spark gaps. "Authorities suspect the letters stand for All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, a political party that controls the Pakistani-ruled part of the disputed Kashmir region and allegedly has terrorist affiliations," reports Los Angeles Times. Karni's office in South Africa was raided on 11 December. A month later, in one of the many mysteries of the case, he came to the US, where he was arrested.
Court papers filed here say Karni often sent airfreight to Pakistan and that he either completed or discussed other suspicious deals. In one, Karni bought for Khan a type of sophisticated oscilloscope often used in nuclear weapons and military programmes. In another, he exchanged e-mail with a man identified as an Indian contact trying to buy several kinds of high-tech material for two Indian rocket factories. A prosecutor has argued that "Karni has exported goods that are capable of detonating nuclear weapons to a person he knows has ties to the Pakistani military." Karni insists that he did not know the spark gaps could be used as detonators in nuclear weapons. Rabbi Herzel Kranz who is counseling Karni, has said, "Why would a religious Jew send nuclear weapons parts to a country that hates Israel as much as Pakistan?" Karni served 15 years in the Israeli army and became a major. After retirement he moved to South Africa.
According to Los Angeles Times, "Privately, senior US officials with direct knowledge of the case said a critical question is where the spark gaps were headed, particularly because Humayun Khan - Karni's alleged collaborator - apparently is a supplier to the Pakistani military.
In e-mail exchanges, Humayun Khan had no comment on a February 1975 letter obtained by the (Los Angeles) Times, in which a man named M Akram Khan of Pakland Corp in Karachi tells Switzerland-based firm Adero Chemie that it must act quickly to beat out a competing Australian firm for a large shipment of material used to run nuclear reactors that make plutonium. But he confirmed that M. Akram Khan was his late father and that he spent 11 years working with him at the family business, Pakland Corp, before starting Pakland PME in 1994. Khan did not respond to questions about his father's apparent role as a purchasing agent for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission or whether he took over any of those business relationships upon his father's death. But he insisted that he had done nothing wrong, and said someone else used his e-mail address to send incriminating e-mails to Karni.
-------- iraq
UN focusing on Iraqi nuclear scientist to lead Iraq after June 30: report
WASHINGTON (AFP)
May 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040526044012.s5y65vbk.html
A Shiite nuclear scientist who was jailed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is the United Nations' leading candidate for prime minister in the caretaker government that will emerge after June 30, The Washington Post said Wednesday quoting Iraqi and US officials.
Hussain Shahristani, 62, has spent his years in exile focusing on humanitarian aid projects and lacks any political affiliation, an asset that could allow him to serve as a bridge between Iraq's various factions, Iraqi officials told the daily.
Shahristani has met several times this month with UN envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi whose interest in the nuclear scientist was piqued by an op-ed piece Shahristani wrote last month for The Wall Street Journal criticizing the occupation authorities for not preparing Iraq for elections, Iraqis familiar with Brahimi's mission said.
US officials said negotiations for the 30-member caretaker government were still ongoing, but that Shahristani has emerged as by far the most attractive candidate for prime minister.
"The game has not played out yet, but Shahristani is the candidate to beat," a senior US State Department official said. An Iraqi who has long known Shahristani called him "a captain of men," despite his limited political experience.
Brahimi and US presidential envoy to Iraq Robert Blackwell are still trying to work out the "complicated geometry" of dividing power among Iraq's ethnic and religious factions, a senior US official in Baghdad told the daily.
Interviewed by The Washington Post, Shahristani said he would accept the post of prime minister reluctantly if it was offered him.
"If they consider my participation essential, I'll try to convince them otherwise," said Shahristani, "But if they're not convinced and they ask me to take a role ... I cannot refuse. I must serve my people."
"I've been actively working to help the Iraqi people to free themselves from Saddam's tyranny, but I have always concentrated on serving the people and providing them with their basic needs rather than party politics," he said.
He described himself as an adviser to Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the influential cleric who several times has caused coalition authorities to review their plans for Iraq.
Shahristani said Sistani has played a "very, very constructive" role in Iraq over the past year.
After receiving a doctorate in nuclear chemistry at Canada's University of Toronto, Shahristani served as chief scientific adviser to Iraq's atomic energy commission until 1979, when Hussein became president.
For refusing to turn his attention from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons, he was jailed for 10 years at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, from where he escaped in 1991.
Shahristani spend his initial exile with his wife and three children in Iran where he worked with Iraqi refugees. Later he traveled to Britain where he was a visiting university professor.
Shahristani said the premiership would be an "extremely difficult job." The caretaker government, he said, would have to focus on security issues and preparing for national elections in early 2005.
"We've been hearing about holding elections for some time now, but we have yet to see any real preparation on the ground," he told The Washington Post.
----
Scientist Jailed by Hussein Is Favored for Premier's Post
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
May 26, 2004
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26DIPL.html
ASHINGTON, May 25 - An Iraqi Shiite nuclear scientist who broke with Saddam Hussein over the country's nuclear weapons program has emerged as a leading candidate to become the country's first prime minister when sovereignty is restored at the end of June, American and Iraqi officials said Tuesday.
The officials said Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani, a science adviser to the Iraqi government who spent years in Abu Ghraib prison for defying Mr. Hussein and objecting to the weapons program, was the kind of nonpolitical figure being sought by both the United Nations and the Bush administration.
The selection of Dr. Shahristani, if it becomes final, could also break a long and bitter impasse among Iraq's various ethnic and religious factions over who will be governing Iraq from June 30 to the time of Iraq's first elections, planned for early next year.
Administration officials say that until a caretaker government is formed, there can be no final negotiations on a United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at conferring legitimacy on the Iraqi government and on a multinational force led by American commanders.
In a separate development on Tuesday, a difference of perspectives emerged between the United States and Britain over exactly how much power the new Iraqi government would have over its own security forces and over the multinational forces.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said Tuesday that Iraqi leaders would have an effective veto, not only over their own participation in military operations, but also over American operations aimed at insurgencies in places like Falluja, a center of resistance activity. In saying so, Mr. Blair went further in emphasizing Iraq's authority over military affairs than any American official had.
"If there's a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has got to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," he said at a news conference in London. "That's what the transfer of sovereignty means."
But in Washington on Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declined to say there would be any veto by the Iraqis, emphasizing instead that there would be consultations before any military action.
"Obviously we would take into account whatever they might say at a political or military level," Mr. Powell told reporters at the State Department. "And to make sure that that happens, we will be creating coordinating bodies, political coordinating bodies and military-to-military coordinating bodies so that there is transparency with respect to what we are doing."
Still, American and British officials insisted that there was not a material difference in the two positions. Iraqi objections would in most cases block a major military action by the United States, the officials said, but the United States under some circumstances - like pursuing a known terrorist - would override Iraqi objections.
"Instead of imagining vetoes or hypothetical conflicts," a British official said, "we should be looking at what the Iraqi defense minister is saying, which is that the decisions will be taken through consultation and partnership."
The search for a prime minister and other top aides in the caretaker government has been led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a United Nations special envoy, and Robert D. Blackwill, President Bush's envoy in Iraq.
A senior administration official said from Baghdad that no final decision had been made on the top jobs in the government but that Mr. Blackwill and Mr. Brahimi were closing in on their choices.
"We're down to a handful of names for each of the positions, and in some cases a smaller number than that," the official said.
Other people close to the process said Dr. Shahristani had recently emerged as a compromise choice for prime minister among various groups, including the dominant Shiites and rival factions among the Kurds, Sunnis and others.
"Shahristani is a really good choice," said an Iraqi familiar with the selection process. "He was head of Iraq's nuclear program when Saddam gathered them all in a room and told them they were going to build a bomb. In that meeting, Shahristani said no, and he spent 10 years in Abu Ghraib."
He escaped into exile in London at the time of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, and from there led a relief group that assisted Iraqi refugees.
Another advantage of selecting Dr. Shahristani, according to various officials, is that he is considered a devout but moderate Shiite and is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected Shiite cleric in Iraq.
Mr. Brahimi and Mr. Blackwill are said to have been trying to make sure that the job of prime minister, the most important post in the new caretaker government, is filled by a Shiite.
For the largely ceremonial post of president, Bush administration officials have said the United States favors Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister of Iraq. Mr. Pachachi is a Sunni who has little popular following but has won respect for his work in the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council.
There will be two vice presidents, also in largely ceremonial posts, and a cabinet of up to 26 members that is expected to include both nonpolitical leaders and also representatives of various constituent groups.
The uncertainty and difficulties over setting up a caretaker government - with only five weeks to go before self-rule is established - has created confusion at the Security Council and even among some Iraqi leaders, who charge that the United States has not committed itself to full sovereignty at all.
The confusion over the precise nature of Iraqi control over Iraq's military and over the actions of foreign forces after June 30 has also pervaded the debate at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States and Britain submitted a draft resolution on the issue on Monday.
French, German, Russian and Chinese envoys are all demanding that Iraqi sovereignty be more explicitly laid out than what was outlined in the resolution, according to United Nations diplomats.
A European diplomat said the American-British draft needed to spell out the issues of authority over security and also Iraqi authority over oil revenues, finances and the running of ministries.
Also needing to be clarified, European and United Nations diplomats said, is the extent to which American military officers or contractors will be immune from prosecution by Iraqi courts.
A senior diplomat from a country on the Security Council complained recently that the United States needed to provide consistent signals about Iraqi sovereignty. As an example, he said Mr. Powell's recent statement that the United States would pull its forces out if asked after June 30 was at odds with Mr. Bush's statement that the United States would persevere and not allow itself to be driven from Iraq.
"It's a complete contradiction," the diplomat said.
Patrick E. Tyler contributed reporting from London for this article, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.
-------- israel
Israel Arrests British Reporter in Vanunu Nuclear Case
May 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-arrest.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police arrested on Wednesday a British journalist who in 1986 exposed the Jewish state's top nuclear secrets in an interview with whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.
Witnesses said plainclothes policemen escorted Peter Hounam, who had been preparing a new documentary about Vanunu, to his Jerusalem hotel. They searched his room and bundled him off in a car.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office, which oversees Israel's security services, confirmed the journalist had been arrested. A government gag order prevented release of further details in the case, she said.
Donatella Rovera, a researcher for the human rights group Amnesty International, told Reuters: ``He was being escorted by five plainclothes security men, when he managed to break away and rush to my table.''
According to the Web site of the leading Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper, Hounam was being questioned on suspicion of committing ``security offences.''
``He was very agitated,'' said Rovera. ``He said he was being arrested and to let people know.''
Vanunu said the arrest was part of ``the continued war by the Shabak (Shin Bet internal security service) against me and my supporters and those who want to raise Israeli nuclear secrets.''
In 1986, Hounam secured an exclusive interview with Vanunu, a former technician at the Israeli atomic reactor in Dimona. His story in Britain's Sunday Times led independent analysts to conclude Israel had stockpiled as many as 400 nuclear weapons.
Israel abducted Vanunu and jailed him for 18 years. Hounam came to Israel to greet Vanunu when he went free on April 21 and has since spent time with him in a Jerusalem church despite Shin Bet restrictions on the whistleblower's contacts with the media.
Hounam reported on Vanunu's release for the Sunday Times and was making a documentary on him for the BBC. ``We are aware that Peter Hounam has been arrested, we are very concerned at this development,'' a BBC spokeswoman said.
Britain's Foreign Office said consular staff in Israel were looking into the case.
Keen to ward off regional foes but avoid an arms race, Israel maintains a ``strategic ambiguity'' around its assumed nuclear arsenal. Some officials wanted Vanunu gagged after his release, saying he had more secrets to spill. He denied it.
-------- japan
Japan won't give North Korea food aid if it test-launches missiles
Japan Times,
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=9&id=299916
TOKYO - A senior Foreign Ministry official indicated Wednesday that if North Korea test-launches missiles, Japan will not give it the 250,000 tons of food aid Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged to provide last week.
"If test launches are conducted, it would be a violation of the Japan-North Korea Pyongyang Declaration, and the situation would change," Mitoji Yabunaka, director general of the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, said during a session of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. (Kyodo News)
-------- latinamerica
Brazil Says China Atomic Deal Would Be Peaceful
May 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-brazil-china-nuclear.html
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has expressed interest in purchasing enriched and unprocessed uranium from Brazil, but the Brazilian government does not yet have the technology or the authority to make such a deal, a Brazilian official said on Wednesday.
Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos, who is in charge of Brazil's atomic power program and is visiting China with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was trying to clarify earlier statements that indicated Brazil would consider selling China unprocessed uranium.
Campos told reporters in Shanghai that Brazil will not have the technology to enrich uranium until 2008 and that Congress would have to amend Brazilian law before it could sell unprocessed uranium to a foreign country.
A statement handed out to reporters in Shanghai said Brazil would study the possibility of cooperating with China on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, such as for medical and agricultural purposes. A final decision on any cooperation will be made in August after Brazilian officials meet again with their Chinese counterparts, the statement said.
Brazil is fighting U.S. pressure to allow greater inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The United States and the IAEA have been pressing countries to open up their nuclear programs after Iran was discovered to be covering up potential arms-related atomic research.
Although Brazil is constitutionally barred from owning nuclear weapons, it has a small atomic power program and is home to the world's fourth-largest reserve of uranium.
Late Tuesday, a ministry spokeswoman said the sale of uranium to China would allow Brazil to finance its nuclear power program, which has been criticized for being underfunded. It needs $1.8 billion to finish its third nuclear energy plant.
China is one of five recognized nuclear powers, along with the United States, Russia, France and Britain. Brazil and China are both signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Brazil and the IAEA have been talking since December about ways to inspect Brazil's uncompleted nuclear facility without jeopardizing commercial secrets, Brazilian Ambassador to the United States Roberto Abdenur said earlier this month.
-------- russia
U.S., Russia to sign nuclear fuel agreement
By MARK MCDONALD
Tue, May. 25, 2004
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/world/8756866.htm
MOSCOW - The United States and Russia will sign an agreement Thursday that should finally lock down some of the world's most dangerous and poorly guarded nuclear fuel.
Atomic scientists have long warned that supplies of highly enriched uranium at research and university reactors around the world are particularly vulnerable to theft by terrorists. The new U.S.-Russia program would retrieve the uranium from 20 reactors in 17 countries and bring it back to Russia for storage.
"This fuel is of great interest to terrorists, so the program is quite significant," said Daniil Kobyakov, a nonproliferation expert at the PIR Center, an independent policy research organization in Moscow.
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham is expected to sign the accord in Moscow on Thursday with Alexander Rumantsyev, the head of Russia's nuclear agency. It will be formally known as the Russian Research Reactor Fuel Return.
Research-reactor fuel is especially attractive to terrorists because it can be used to make simple nuclear weapons - about 50 pounds of enriched uranium for one device. Smaller amounts could be used in "dirty bombs" - conventional bombs containing nuclear material that would spread radiation when they explode.
The research-reactor fuel also is easily transported and often can be handled without elaborate shielding precautions.
But the biggest worry is that it's usually lightly guarded.
"Academic and research reactors at universities are simply not capable of providing a defense against a terrorist assault," said Edwin Lyman, senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The great concern is a paramilitary-type assault on one of these facilities and the material is forcibly removed."
Lyman said a U.S. government study found that thieves could carry off the uranium in a storage pool in about an hour.
The fuel coming back to Russia is expected to be stored at Dmitrovgrad, where it will be cooled and eventually "downblended," in essence, diluted.
Russian officials say there's no storage room left at the country's only fuel-reprocessing plant, the trouble-plagued Mayak facility. Mayak is swamped with fuel taken from Russia's fleet of rusting nuclear submarines and icebreakers.
Scientists and antinuclear activists are optimistic about the new fuel-return program, but they're also concerned that Russia is taking on large new imports of highly dangerous uranium. They point to Russia's poor record in storing and safeguarding the atomic material it already has.
"Bringing all this back to Russia, yes, it's a little paradoxical, given all the warnings about proliferation in Russia," said Lyman.
There have been numerous security breaches at sensitive nuclear facilities, including one in which radioactive material disappeared.
Two years ago, for example, a Greenpeace activist, a Russian lawmaker and a camera crew made their way into a "high security" area where thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel were stored. They spent several hours in the facility, located in Krasnoyarsk. They walked past any number of guards and sentry posts, shot their film and left without incident.
"Our protection system against terrorist attacks must be modernized," said Nikolai Shingarev, chief spokesman for Minatom, the Russian nuclear agency. "We know this. We pay great attention to it."
Shingarev acknowledged "discrepancies" in inventory-taking at nuclear plants and "very small thefts" of radioactive material.
"There was one building operator who was caching away `extra' fuel in case there was a shortfall in his inventory at the end of the month," said a nuclear-security expert in Russia who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Until only recently, he said, most Russian nuclear facilities were keeping hand-written inventories in large account books. He called the system "old-fashioned" and "haphazard."
The official said, "There would be guys in smocks and caps opening up unmarked containers, saying, `What's in here?' Sometimes we'd find pretty dangerous stuff that was clearly not supposed to be where it was."
The U.S. Department of Energy is spending some $40 million to help the Russians improve security at nuclear installations.
Many of the so-called "rapid upgrades" are Home Depot-style measures: Replacing wooden doors with steel ones, putting iron bars on vulnerable windows and installing refrigerator-size concrete blocks to block access to nuclear storage casks.
Other measures are more Radio Shack style: closed-circuit TVs, electronic key-cards, motion sensors, walkie-talkies.
Russian officials also asked for field-sobriety kits to test their Atomic Guard troopers.
Nuclear experts believe successful implementation of the U.S.-Russia program will need some $80 million in funding by Congress over the next two years.
The program covers fuel that the Soviet and Russian governments originally supplied to foreign atomic facilities. In some cases, those fuel shipments began as early as the 1950s.
The United States also exported nuclear reactors and highly enriched uranium at the same time, starting with President Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. More than a dozen plants using that uranium are still operating in the United States and elsewhere, but these fuel supplies aren't covered under the new program with Russia.
Reactors in Uzbekistan, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania and Poland are thought to be among the highest priority targets for the upcoming "clean-out."
Lyman said there are substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
"Many bombs worth," he said.
The other countries covered by the fuel-return program are Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic, North Korea, Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan Latvia, Libya, Vietnam and Yugoslavia.
Facilities returning their highly enriched fuel to Russia must agree to convert their reactors to operate on low enriched uranium, which is considered less of a proliferation threat.
The new U.S.-Russia program got something of a test run on Aug. 22, 2002, when military forces from both countries raided a research reactor outside Belgrade, the capital of then Yugoslavia.
The 17-hour operation, which cost an estimated $5 million, reportedly netted 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough for two nuclear bombs.
Two other collections were made last year - 31 pounds of highly enriched uranium from Romania in September and another 37 pounds from Bulgaria in December. Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency also participated.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear jet crash 'could kill millions'
26 May 04
Rob Edwards
New Scientist Print Edition
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995036
Fears that the UK's nuclear plants are vulnerable to a 9/11-style attack or accident are growing. Evidence is emerging that the no-fly zones around nuclear plants are regularly breached by both military and civilian aircraft. And a report for the UK parliament leaked to New Scientist says that such an attack might kill millions.
Since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC, the area of the ban has been doubled to cover a radius of two nautical miles (3.7 kilometres). Planes also have to stay above a certain height, which varies for different sites.
But these restrictions have been flouted on numerous occasions. Over the past five years, the operators of 19 nuclear sites around Britain have lodged more than 100 complaints about aircraft flying too close. The sites include reactors and stores of radioactive waste or nuclear bombs.
Alleged breaches of no-fly zones around UK nuclear sites
Declassified reports from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) reveal that there were 56 alleged breaches of the no-fly zones by military aircraft between 2000 and 2003.
Four of the complaints came from the MoD's own nuclear weapons sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, and at Faslane near Glasgow. Most of the other complaints were made by the government agencies and private companies that run the UK's civil nuclear programme.
The incidents include one on 24 April 2002, when a jet flew so close to the Torness reactors in East Lothian that it set off three intruder alarms on the perimeter fence. And on 10 June 2003 three military jets were seen rehearsing a flypast for the queen's birthday near the Sizewell reactors in Suffolk.
Hot air balloon
The MoD's internal investigations have confirmed only five breaches of the no-fly zones: three at Berleley in Gloucestershire, one at Torness and one at Dungeness in Kent. "We can only confirm that a breach has occurred when we have proof," an MoD spokesman says.
There have been 71 complaints of civilian aircraft breaching the no-fly zones since the beginning of 1999. According to the Civil Aviation Authority, there was only enough evidence to launch formal investigations in 12 cases, including three at Aldermaston, two at Burghfield and two at Sellafield in Cumbria.
Four investigations are ongoing, and there have been two successful prosecutions: one for a hot air balloon at Aldermaston in 2001 and the other for a powered hang-glider at Heysham nuclear station in Lancashire in 2003.
The breaches will do little to reassure the public that nuclear sites are adequately protected from a terrorist attack or an accidental aircraft crash. In 2002 the UK House of Commons Defence Committee requested a report on the risks of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities, and the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology is due to publish its long-awaited reply in the next few weeks.
New Scientist has seen a copy of the report and can reveal that it says that a large plane crashing into a reactor could release as much radioactivity as the Chernobyl accident in 1986, while a crash into waste tanks at Sellafield in Cumbria could cause at worst, "several million fatalities".
Confidential information
The report acknowledges that the risks are difficult to assess because so much information - including operators' estimates of the health impacts of radiation releases - is kept secret.
But it concludes that it would be possible for terrorists to cause a radioactive release - and that the UK's current emergency arrangements may not be sufficient to cope.
"It is totally unacceptable that the information we need to judge the risks is kept confidential, and that we have to take so much on trust," says Llew Smith, a Welsh MP who has been investigating the risks of nuclear attacks by terrorists.
But the British Nuclear Group, which operates the Sellafield site, has dismissed the report's suggestion that flying a plane into the waste tanks might kill millions, saying the idea is implausible.
Smith says this attitude is dangerously misleading: "The consequences of deliberately crashing an aircraft into a nuclear plant would be horrific."
----
U.S. Seeks to Rid World of 'Dirty Bombs'
By SUSANNA LOOF
Associated Press Writer
May 26, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIRTY_BOMBS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced a $450 million plan Wednesday to rid the world of the "dirty bomb" threat by keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands.
Abraham said the Global Threat Reduction Initiative would remove and secure high-risk nuclear materials that pose a menace to the international community.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, concerns have grown that terrorists might be trying to acquire material for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a device that uses conventional explosives to spread low-level radioactive material over several city blocks.
Abraham said the objective was to collect, secure and dispose of dangerous radioactive materials from around the world.
"Where 100 years ago authorities had to worry about the anarchist placing a bomb in the downtown square, now we must worry about the terrorist who places that bomb in the square, but packed with radiological material," Abraham told an International Atomic Energy Agency conference on nuclear safety.
Abraham said the new global program would reduce the proliferation threat by cutting off access to materials and equipment by "whatever the most appropriate circumstance may be, as quickly and expeditiously as possible."
By handling problems that require attention anywhere in the world, he said, officials will ensure that nuclear and radiological materials and equipment "will not fall into the hands of those with evil intentions."
A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to spread radiation over several city blocks. It has no atomic chain reaction and requires no highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Both materials are normally kept under tight security, so they are difficult to obtain.
Instead, the radioactive component is of lower-grade isotopes, such as those used in medicine or research. If a dirty bomb were to be detonated, the radiation release probably would be small.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei described Abraham's plan as "a major initiative to adjust the nonproliferation regime" by strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
"This is clearly a key in our fight to control proliferation ... to protect ourselves from nuclear terrorists," ElBaradei said. "We need to re-examine our rules of the game. We need to adjust our defenses ... The first line of defense is having adequate protection of nuclear material."
On Tuesday, the United States provided Greek police and border officials with radiation detection equipment to help guard the Aug. 13-29 Athens Olympics against a nuclear or "dirty" bomb.
Abraham said his first priority is to bring back to the United States some 330 tons of Russian-origin, highly enriched uranium by the end of 2005.
More than 220 tons have been eliminated so far. All Russian spent fuel would be recovered by 2010.
"It has become clear that an even more comprehensive and urgently focused effort is needed to respond to emerging and evolving threats," Abraham said. "Moreover, we are prepared to spend the resources necessary to guarantee success."
"But we will need more funds, and heightened international cooperation, to finish the job," he said.
The IAEA conference was examining how to better secure nuclear and radiological materials at atomic research reactors and other facilities worldwide.
The Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog agency estimates as many as 110 countries worldwide do not have adequate controls over radioactive devices that, if enough of them were obtained, could be used to build an explosive device that would spread radioactive material.
On the Net:
IAEA, http://www.iaea.org
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Terror Threats Put Los Alamos Lab Under Magnifying Glass
Lab Stays At Heightened Security At All Times
May 26, 2004
New Mexico Channel
http://www.thenewmexicochannel.com/news/3351056/detail.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- The nation's top lawmen on Wednesday warned that Al Qaeda-related terrorists may try to attack in the United States in the next few months.
Authorities released the names and photos of seven suspected terrorists linked to al-Qaida and asked for the public's help in tracking them down.
Possible targets this summer include the dedication this weekend of the World War II memorial, in Washington, D.C; next month's economic summit in Georgia; the Democratic convention in Boston in July; and the Republican convention in New York in late August, and in early September.
New Mexico is home to a number of important government installations, including the only place in the country that builds nuclear triggers.
Los Alamos National Lab takes its cues from the Department of Homeland Security.
You don't see a lot of security at Los Alamos national lab.
That's the way they want it.
The lab stays at a heightened, but not frantic, security level unless they're told otherwise.
Right now, the lab is in security condition level 3, and they have been at that level since 9/11.
There have been a few bounces up to a tighter level 2.
Level 1, which could mean closing the lab and the roads around it, won't be touched unless there's a specific, credible threat to the lab. None have been received so far.
Los Alamos is the only place in the country where plutonium is turned into a nuclear trigger.
The lab may be a somewhat unlikely target for a terrorist attack, but the nuclear material they handle is something terrorists would very muchlike to get their hands on.
Security at Los Alamos is handled by a private company that contracts with the Department of Energy.
----
Nuke Panel Objects to N.M.'s Petition on Uranium Plant
The Associated Press
May 26, 2004
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/apeunice05-26-04.htm
HOBBS - The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the New Mexico Environment Department is trying to raise new evidence in a petition to intervene in hearings for a planned uranium enrichment plant near Eunice.
The staff, in a document Monday to the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, contends the state agency's reply "improperly seeks admission of new evidence and contentions and, thus, should not be considered by the board in ruling on intervention."
The reply "fails to focus at all on issues raised in the staff or LES answers" and instead tries "to introduce entirely new information and expert opinion under the guise of a reply," the document said.
Environment Department spokesman Jon Goldstein said the recommendation does not mean the state will stop trying to pursue questions over the proposed $1.2 billion Louisiana Energy Services plant.
"We continue to believe the points we have raised are valid ones and we will continue to push them," he said.
The department's petition to intervene contended LES would be able to store uranium byproducts throughout the plant's 30-year life despite that being unacceptable to the state and contrary to representations the LES made. The petition also contends LES's proposed storage plan lacks detail and does not demonstrate that licensing the plant would not hurt public health and safety.
Earlier this month, Gov. Bill Richardson asked the NRC to allow the state to fully participate in all hearings on the application. He said the state in particular "wants to ensure that the depleted uranium byproduct generated by the facility is safely disposed of."
Uranium processing generates a type of waste that cannot be dumped anywhere in the country. Such waste requires processing to convert it before it can be shipped to a low-level nuclear waste dump, but no U.S. facility can do that.
The state wants to ensure that waste would be moved out of New Mexico regularly to prevent any possible creation of a legacy stockpile.
LES, which wants to build the plant to make fuel for nuclear reactors, has asked federal regulators not to let the state and two public interest groups raise certain types of questions.
However, Marshall Cohen, vice president of communications and government relations for LES, said Wednesday LES supports letting New Mexico raise issues about waste disposal because they pertain to health and safety.
"While we have some differences with the state's concerns as reflect in their filings, we remain quite confident and convinced that a thorough discussion of the issue will lead to complete resolution of all relevant issues," he said.
The company on Wednesday also reaffirmed its support for the Environment Department being able to raise issues issues related to the costs of decommissioning the plant and a radiation protection program.
LES said, however, it is concerned the Environment Department is raising concerns in its reply that disregard the approach established by the NRC in February. The company did not support the agency raising questions about a new issue about the proposed plant's emergency plan.
Cohen said LES's plans to work with companies toward a private deconversion facility are proceeding well.
LES is discussing the option with Cogema, which does deconversion in Europe, and with two other firms, he said. He identified one of them as ConverDyne, and said it possesses the necessary technology.
The Environment Department, the state attorney general's office and a coalition of two Washington, D.C.-based public interest groups, the Nuclear Information & Resource Service and Public Citizen, have been granted standing to intervene in the case. That gives them the right to raise issues, ask questions and cross-examine witnesses.
Under the licensing process, the NRC prepares an environmental impact statement and safety report on the facility, then holds hearings.
LES is a partnership of major nuclear energy companies, including Urenco, Westinghouse and U.S. companies - Duke Power, Entergy and Exelon.
----
Visiting The Trinity Site
May 26, 2004
WHNT (New Mexico)
http://www.whnt19.com/global/story.asp?s=1898580&ClientType=Printable
Huntsville - At the northern end of White Sands Missile Range, there's nothing that really indicates what happened in 1945. The desert looks the same, and the wind blows just as hard. There's nothing that shouts out the fact that the first atomic bomb was exploded here on July 16th, 1945. The area is called the Trinity Site.
"Oh, this is the beginning. This is the first time a core was assembled with all the components and ready to go," says White Sands' spokesman Jim Eckles. He's standing outside the McDonald farm house, where scientists assembled the plutonium core of the first atom bomb. The old house is two miles from the bomb site, and it did survive the blast.
The explosion was the end product of a long process that included putting the bomb into position atop a 100-foot tower. Scientists worked under a tent at the top of the tower to assemble the bomb, and then the countdown began.
The explosion with the power of 19-thousand tons of TNT, came just before dawn. The desert floor underneath the tower was depressed about six feet into a shallow crater, and the sand was melted into green glass, called Trinitite. The tower was, of course, destroyed.
"In a millionth of a second, you've got this nuclear explosion taking place, generating great deals of energy, and the steel tower on which the bomb is placed is vaporized like that, disappears, turned to gas, turned to gas," says Jim Eckles.
Old photos appear to show visitors at the blast site almost immediately, but it was weeks before the radioactivity had subsided enough to allow anyone to approach. These days it's safe.
"It's slightly radioactive. It's a little higher than backround radiation for this part of New Mexico, and in numbers you get about half a millirem of exposure. [To] put that in perspective, flying across the country in a jet will give you 3 to 4 millirems of exposure," says Eckles.
The Trinity Site is marked by a simple monument that sits at ground zero. The monument and the blast site are surrounded by fences and danger signs. It is open twice a year for visitors, and it's then that this lonely spot in the desert is filled with people who know they're at a very special place: a place where the world changed.
For more information on the Trinity Site, log on to www.wsmr.army.mil
-------- new york
Westchester to Examine Ways of Shutting Indian Point Plant
May 26, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/nyregion/26nuke.html
WHITE PLAINS, May 25 - Aiming to create a new weapon in the fight against the Indian Point nuclear power plant, Westchester County will spend $385,000 studying how to shut down the controversial plant, the county executive, Andrew Spano, said on Tuesday.
"This is by far the most comprehensive study of a nuclear power plant and the effect of closing it," Mr. Spano said. "We want to determine the best way to shut the plant down."
Mr. Spano said the study would address, among other things, whether and how Entergy, which owns Indian Point, could be encouraged to voluntarily replace the reactors; what it would cost to take over Indian Point, either by purchase or condemnation, if Entergy refused to act voluntarily; what it would cost to replace the lost energy; what the effect would be on the tax base of municipalities and school districts; and what the effect would be on energy rates for Westchester residents and businesses.
An Entergy spokesman, James Steets, said any plan for a county buyout of the nuclear facility "defied common sense."
----
W'chester mulls nuke takeover
By JIM FITZGERALD
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 26, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/196880p-170056c.html
Westchester County is spending $385,000 to determine whether the county could take over the Indian Point nuclear plants, shut them down and replace them with another energy source.
Among the issues to be tackled in a five-month study by a consultant is what such a takeover would cost and how Indian Point's 2,000 megawatts of energy - enough for 2 million homes - could be made up, County Executive Andrew Spano said yesterday.
The current owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, called the study a waste of money, saying it would not sell the plants, would not convert them and would fight any attempt to condemn them.
Spano suggested 18 months ago that it might take more than $3 billion for the county to take over the plants and replace them with gas-fired generators.
He said some of the cost could be recovered in cheaper electricity and residents might be willing to pay the rest to be rid of their fears of a catastrophe at the nuclear station in Buchanan. "We would all feel safer if Indian Point were closed," Spano said. "But there are many, many questions - economic, technological, legal and other - that need to be answered."
Indian Point security has been a major political issue in Westchester since the 2001 terrorist attack on New York City and a campaign to close it won wide support.
The federal government ruled last summer that evacuation plans were adequate.
Spano said the consultant, Levitan & Associates, of Boston, had been asked to consider the following questions, among others:
# Can Entergy be persuaded to replace the nuclear plants itself?
# If not, what would it cost Westchester to buy or condemn the plants and decommission them?
# How, and at what cost, could the lost energy be replaced?
# How would a takeover affect local taxes, energy rates and current Entergy employees?
Larry Gottlieb, an Entergy spokesman, said the company was not interested in any change and predicted the study would come to the conclusion that no change is called for. "We do one thing well, and that's run nuclear plants," he said.
-------- washington
Bacteria found living in toxic residue
By SHANNON DININNY
The Associated Press
5/26/2004,
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-1/1085589263189700.xml
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-27/s_24297.asp
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Scientists have discovered bacteria swarming in the toxic sediment beneath underground tanks that have leaked radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation, home to some of the most highly contaminated soil in the world.
The discovery eventually could help researchers better understand how microorganisms can survive severe contaminants and how to use the bacteria to help clean up toxic environments.
The results of a study of the bacteria were to be presented Wednesday at the American Society of Microbiology's annual meeting in New Orleans.
"It's exciting," said Fred Brockman, staff scientist and group leader for the project at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, an Energy Department research center near the Hanford site in south-central Washington. "One of the most important things to realize is this is a type of environment that hasn't been studied with regard to bacteria.
"I believe it's the most radioactive soil ever studied with regards to bacteria in the world," Brockman said.
The team of scientists has identified more than 100 different species of bacteria in a mixture of sand, silt and clay extracted from beneath several underground Hanford tanks, which were built in 1953 to hold highly radioactive waste produced from the recovery of plutonium from irradiated nuclear reactor fuel rods.
About 53 million gallons of radioactive liquid, sludge and other material are stored in the 177 underground tanks. Some of the tanks, which are less than 10 miles from the Columbia River, have leaked into the groundwater, exposing the sediment for decades to very high radioactivity.
Scientists cultured bacteria from the sediment and analyzed their DNA to try to identify them.
"The proteins we found were quite dissimilar to what's already in the international databases," Brockman said. "It's telling us that these organisms just haven't been studied much before."
The findings also could be important to further study into using organisms to clean contaminated sites.
"The key is that some of them have survived, and if we study them further, we may be able to understand their particular properties or the capabilities of the organism," Brockman said.
Hanford was an important site for the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. For 40 years, it processed plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.
The bacteria research was conducted as part of the Hanford Science and Technology Program, aimed at understanding basic science critical for cleanup applications.
On the Net:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: www.pnl.gov
-------- MILITARY
Drug causing GIs permanent brain damage
By Mark Benjamin and Dan Olmsted
United Press International
5/26/2004
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040526-105156-8460r
WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed by the military with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety, a U.S. senator said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, said the drug, called mefloquine, has "serious risks" that have not been adequately tracked by the Pentagon, the Peace Corps and other government agencies that distribute it.
"I ask that you work with the Food and Drug Administration to reassess the safety of mefloquine," Feinstein wrote Thompson in a letter dated May 24.
Feinstein told Thompson she is concerned that "six service members have been diagnosed with permanent brainstem and vestibular damage from being given this drug despite the fact that alternative drugs might have been chosen to prevent infection."
The FDA last year warned that the drug, also called Lariam, is linked to reports of suicide, though a connection has not been established. It also said some psychiatric and neurological side effects have been reported to last long after taking it. The Pentagon this year announced a new safety study of the drug, which has been used by some 20 million people worldwide, and the Department of Veterans Affairs said it will look at possible long-term effects on veterans.
According to people familiar with the situation, the six service members were diagnosed in recent weeks by doctors at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Its Spatial Orientation Lab, a Department of Defense facility, specializes in balance disorders.
One service member who received a diagnosis is former Navy Reserve Cmdr. William Manofsky, who became severely ill after taking mefloquine in Iraq and Kuwait while deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another soldier with a mefloquine diagnosis is a Green Beret who served in Afghanistan.
UPI reviewed a copy of Manofsky's medical report from the San Diego lab, which includes the notation, "Lariam induced," with the word Lariam underlined.
Earlier this month, Manofsky filed suit against Lariam's manufacturer, Swiss drug giant Hoffmann-La Roche, for alleged failure to warn of the drug's risks and marketing a product it knows is unsafe.
Asked for comment about the suit, Roche spokesman Terence Hurley told UPI: "We don't comment on pending litigation. Roche believes that the labeling that accompanies Lariam, and which has been approved by the FDA, is adequate. Information about the use of Lariam and neuropsychiatric events has appeared in the product's label since it was approved by the FDA in 1989.
"Roche takes issues of safety very seriously and works with regulatory authorities on an ongoing basis to ensure recommendations on product use take into account current scientific and medical evidence."
Manofsky said he became mentally and physically ill after taking the drug, at one point taking his gun apart because he was afraid he was going to kill himself. A year after he stopped taking the drug, he still suffers from severe balance problems, trembling and memory loss.
The diagnoses appear to put the Pentagon, and particularly the Army, in an unusual position: Military health officials continue to insist the drug is safe and to prescribe it widely. Army Surgeon General James Peake told a House subcommittee in February that "we don't think it is as big a problem as has been made out."
Peake also dismissed any association between the drug and a string of murder-suicides at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002 by U.S. soldiers who took Lariam while assigned to units in Afghanistan.
"There was absolutely no statistical correlation between Lariam use and those suicides," Peake said.
But the Army announced it will study possible Lariam side effects, including suicide, as a result of the controversy. The study could take up to two years, according to William Winkerwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
In March another Special Forces soldier committed suicide after taking Lariam in Iraq and returning home to Monument, Colo. William Howell's wife believes Lariam triggered his bizarre behavior, in which he stuck a gun in her face and threatened to kill her before shooting himself. She accused the Army of not looking into whether the drug had played a role -- the same charge made by friends of the soldiers involved in the Fort Bragg incidents.
Howell's death in Colorado brought the number of suicides among Special Forces soldiers during the war on terrorism to five. At least four of the five took Lariam on deployments just prior to committing suicide, according to the Army.
(Writers' e-mail addresses: mbenjamin@upi.com, dolmsted@upi.com.)
-------- africa
Sudanese Factions Close to Peace Deal
Details of Cease-Fire Still to Be Negotiated
By Chris Tomlinson
Associated Press
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56133-2004May26.html
NAIVASHA, Kenya, May 25 -- Moving to end a 21-year civil war, Sudan's government and rebels agreed Tuesday on issues that had stalled a final peace deal, officials said.
The parties still have to agree on the details of a comprehensive cease-fire before the war, which has led to the deaths of more than 2 million people, could be declared over. It could then take months to determine whether the accord would translate to peace on the ground.
The agreement is not expected to have a direct impact on a separate rebellion in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
Negotiators plan to sign three protocols on Wednesday that would address the outstanding issues, officials in this Kenyan town said.
Samson Kwaje, a spokesman for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, described the agreements as "very, very significant."
Government and rebel negotiators late Tuesday were still finalizing details of the protocols, which cover power-sharing and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan, Kwaje said. Sudanese government officials were not immediately available for comment.
In Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, the official Sudan Media Center said negotiators had agreed to allow sharia, or Islamic law, to prevail in Khartoum, provided there were guarantees for citizens of Christian and animist faiths.
The latest peace process intended to end the conflict in southern Sudan began in 2002, and the Sudanese government and the rebels have already agreed on how to share the wealth in Africa's largest country and what to do with their armed forces during a six-year transition period.
But the talks stalled as the parties wrangled over how to share power in a transitional government, whether the capital, Khartoum, would be governed under Islamic law and how areas in central Sudan would be administered during a transition period.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was pleased with the progress at the talks, saying the two sides were "very close to an agreement."
More than 2 million people have perished, most of them by war-induced famine, in Africa's longest-running war since the rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north in 1983.
-------- arms
A Former Superpower's Hazardous Legacy
Experts Cite Risks of Aging and Unsecured Arms Caches in Ex-Soviet Republics
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 26, 2004;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55585-2004May25?language=printer
KUTAISI, Georgia -- Just beyond the rusted wire fence with gaping holes and the teenage guards wearing slippers, dozens of napalm bombs lay in the tall grass.
Nearby were canisters of land mines stacked in the open air, rotting crates of ammunition for antiaircraft batteries, ancient guided missiles and piles upon piles of various types of bombs. Stacked in a nearby warehouse were thousands of launchers for shoulder-fired rockets.
Once a bristling outpost of a global superpower, the former Red Army base near here has deteriorated into a weedy munitions junkyard, one of hundreds of aging, relatively unprotected stockpiles scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. While the United States has focused on securing potential weapons of mass destruction in this part of the world, some security experts increasingly say conventional arsenals may be dangerously vulnerable to theft as well.
Millions of tons of armaments were left behind in depots like the one in Kutaisi when the Russian military largely withdrew from the 14 former Soviet republics that became independent from Moscow more than a decade ago. Some of these bases have since served as one-stop shopping centers for black-market arms traders who have little trouble sneaking in or bribing guards to let them pass.
"The situation in my opinion is extremely bad," said Yura Krikheli, deputy director of the Gamma Center, a Georgian government institute charged with securing arms caches. "Georgia lies in a very dangerous location. If we consider what countries we border, then anything can happen. There's a danger of terrorists coming and people stealing things and taking them to conflict zones."
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a regional grouping of 55 countries, has cited "huge risks" associated with the weapons stockpiles. Foreign ministers from the member countries last December approved a plan to secure and destroy many of those weapons to stop "illicit diversion and uncontrolled spread especially to terrorist and criminal groups."
The corroding bombs and ammunition also pose a growing risk to the environment and to the communities near the stockpiles. An explosion at an old Soviet arms depot in Ukraine this month, possibly caused by a cigarette, touched off about two weeks of secondary blasts and fires that were extinguished only last week. Five people were killed and 10,000 were evacuated; more than 2,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.
In 2001, a series of depots containing artillery shells left over from the Soviet war in Afghanistan exploded in Kazakhstan, prompting the evacuation of 1,000 soldiers and residents from a six-mile danger zone.
The problem exists in Russia as well. In the eastern port city of Vladivostok, two officers were killed and five soldiers were injured last August when a munitions facility exploded. It was the fourth major fire at Pacific Fleet arsenals since the demise of the Soviet Union, despite politicians' demands that ammunition warehouses be moved away from residential areas. Similar explosions have occurred in the Samara, Sverdlovsk and Buryatia regions in the last six years.
Here in Georgia, a warehouse at a military base exploded in 1996 and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people for a week, according to military experts, who fear that it could happen again. "If there's an explosion, there'll be a chain reaction of explosions," said Imanual Yakov an Israeli consultant hired by the Georgians. "There'll be unbelievable damage."
It is the fear of terrorists and guerrillas, though, that has generated a new drive by officials in this mountainous country to address the long-neglected danger.
The Russians still maintain two bases in Georgian-administered territory, but in the 1990s, as part of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly constituted Georgian army was given control of more than 30 Soviet bases, spread across a country smaller than South Carolina. Many contain thousands of tons of unneeded arms, which are guarded by little more than fragile fences.
"It's a legitimate issue because we inherited from the Soviets a huge infrastructure," Defense Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said in an interview. "Posts are spread all over Georgia. They need to be cleared of mines." Georgian officials said they had received virtually no help from the Russians with these or other crucial tasks.
A recent tour of four bases in different parts of the country provided a glimpse of the exposure. An arsenal in the capital, Tbilisi, was surrounded by barbed wire that had been pulled apart at points so intruders could easily come and go. At a base outside Tbilisi, the fencing was so ineffective that cows, pigs, horses and mangy dogs wandered in and out unimpeded.
The base near Kutaisi has no lights to illuminate its 3 1/2-mile perimeter at night because it has no electricity from midnight to 7 a.m. But that's better than another base in central Georgia that has no electricity at all.
"It's very difficult for the soldiers to defend this place," said Col. Tomas Gagua as he showed visitors around the Tbilisi base. "We need lights, we need signalization."
Those able to get in would find a smorgasbord of weaponry. Probably most useful to terrorists or guerrillas would be the SA-7 Strela shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles or the similar Igla missiles. In addition, S-5 57mm and S-8 80mm missiles, with a range of three to five miles and normally fired from warplanes, can be modified into shoulder-fired weapons, military officers said. Similar missiles were launched from donkey carts at hotels and the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad last year.
There are also thousands of land mines, burlap bags filled with raw explosives, crates of ammunition, mortars and Alazan missiles. "Everything that lies here should be worried about," said Capt. Zaza Khvedelidze, deputy commander at one base.
In many cases, there are no inventories, so if anything is taken it might not be missed. It is unclear how much has been pilfered over the years, but some officers said they suspected Georgian arms have wound up in the hands of paramilitary forces in the separatist regions of Ajaria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya.
"Everything's possible. Nothing's impossible," said Maj. Paatu Enukidze, chief of staff at the Tbilisi base. Soldiers earn just $50 a month and sometimes have to wear civilian clothes because no uniforms are available, so they are susceptible to payoffs. "For $1,000 to $1,500," said Enukidze, "you can buy anything."
At the base near Kutaisi, army officials reported thwarting two attempts to steal rocket parts and gunpowder in the last year, one of them by local police officers. Maj. Guram Chinaladze, the base commander, expressed confidence no one had gotten away with any weapons. But he added, "All the weapons kept here are really dangerous, and we're really trying to secure them."
At the request of the Georgian government, the OSCE last year began a program to recycle and destroy stockpiles of munitions. So far, officials reported that they have dismantled 13,000 rounds of artillery and antiaircraft ammunition and by next month expect to have destroyed nearly 500 air-dropped bombs, 47 ground-to-air missiles and another 2,000 antiaircraft shells.
But the OSCE estimated that the Georgians still have more than 1 million antiaircraft shells, among other ordnance. Officials are seeking funds from OSCE member states to continue the disposal program until next year.
The Georgians are also working with Imanual Yakov's Israeli-Spanish firm to improve security at their bases and destroy as many of the arms caches as possible. But in an impoverished country, funds remain short. Georgia's national security adviser, Ivane Merabishvili, last month sent Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a letter seeking $6.5 million.
"They don't have the money," said Lenny Ben-David, a former Israeli diplomat lobbying in Washington for the Georgians' request. "If a power like the United States would come in, it could be taken care of. Otherwise it's going to come back and bite them."
--------
Group Agrees to Tighten Missile Controls
May 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-OSCE-Missile-Controls.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Europe's largest security organization agreed Wednesday to tighten export controls of shoulder-fired missiles to keep the weapons, which can be used to shoot down airplanes, out of terrorists' hands.
Members of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe agreed to report transfers of the weapons at a meeting of the group's Forum for Security Cooperation.
The decision means that all OSCE countries will adopt the principles of the ``Wassenaar Arrangement,'' a 31-country group formed in 1996 that promotes transparency and responsibility in transfers of weapons and materials that could be used as weapons.
Any infringement of those principles would be a criminal offense, the OSCE said in a statement.
-------- britain
UK Parliament Limits Access After Security Scare
May 26, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-britain.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's parliament restricted access to the galleries of its debating chamber Wednesday, a week after Prime Minister Tony Blair was hit by a powder missile in a breach of security at the heart of government.
The restrictions left Blair playing to a depleted audience at this week's session of prime minister's question time, which was spectacularly disrupted last Wednesday when protesters threw condoms filled with purple-dyed flour from the guests' gallery.
One man charged with throwing the missiles, who is from a divorced fathers' rights group, was fined 600 poundson Wednesday and another remanded on bail after pleading not guilty.
Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, said he had suspended the right of parliamentarians to invite guests into those parts of the historic chamber's galleries that are not shielded by a security screen.
``It is in the interests of all those who work in this building that the lessons of last week's incident are learned and acted upon,'' Martin told parliament.
The security screen was erected just weeks ago across the public part of the gallery after British intelligence said attackers could release anthrax or ricin into the chamber.
But it failed to protect Blair because a member of the upper House of Lords had unwittingly signed the protesters in to the privileged gallery areas in front of the screen.
The stunt raised fears that Blair could have been the victim of a chemical or biological attack. Blair's staunch support for Washington's war on terror and the Iraq conflict has raised fears that Islamic militants will target Britain.
ANCIENT TRADITIONS
Martin said police and security services, who were already carrying out a review of parliament before last week's scare, would produce an interim report ``as soon as possible.''
But many parliamentarians are reluctant to meddle with traditions that date back hundreds of years and include the role of a ``Serjeant at Arms'' who wears tights and carries a sword and is responsible for law and order in parliament.
The protesters, from the Fathers-4-Justice group that campaigns for equal rights over access to children for divorced fathers, staged the stunt to highlight their cause.
One of the protestors, Guy Harrison, 36, was fined after admitting using threatening behavior.
The 600-pound penalty was heavier than the 55 pounds recommended by prosecutors and the judge told Harrison he was lucky not to have been charged with a more serious offence. Patrick Davis, 48, pleaded not guilty and was remanded until June 9.
The flour protest was Britain's second security lapse last week after a man tricked his way into Queen Elizabeth's country residence of Windsor Castle by pretending to be a policeman.
-------- business
CACI Contracts Blocked
Current Work in Iraq Can Continue
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55758-2004May25.html
The Interior Department's inspector general is reviewing the contracting procedures that allowed the Army to hire civilian interrogators in Iraq and has blocked the Army from using the contract to place new orders with Arlington-based CACI International Inc., an agency spokesman said yesterday.
It was under this contract that CACI's Steven A. Stefanowicz worked as an interrogator at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. An Army report on abuses at the prison accused Stefanowicz of encouraging soldiers to set conditions for interrogations and says he "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." Stefanowicz's lawyer has said his client was wrongly accused.
CACI's work was performed for the Defense Department, but managed by Interior, sparking questions about whether the government properly supervised the order.
In a news conference yesterday, Interior spokesman Frank Quimby defended the agency's performance, saying its role was not to oversee the work but simply to perform administrative tasks like paying billings and recording contracting modifications. He said the Army is responsible for overseeing the work of CACI's employees and it has not reported any problems to Interior.
"The Department of Interior received no indication . . . that anything was amiss with the contractor's performance," Quimby said. An Army representative told Interior last week that he "is satisfied with CACI's personnel and performance."
Although Interior will not allow the Army to place new orders under the contract, work already underway will continue, Quimby said.
The contract was first awarded to Premier Technology Group Inc., a Fairfax defense contractor, in 1998 by the Army acquisition center at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Ariz. In January 2001, the center was taken over by the Interior Department as part of the Defense Department's effort to reduce and streamline its acquisition operations.
The contract, which is officially called a blanket-purchase agreement and has a $500 million limit, was then reissued by Interior. Blanket-purchase agreements are large, vaguely worded contracts designed to give agencies flexibility and to speed up purchases. Critics say these open-ended contracts allow agencies to skirt public oversight.
A year ago CACI acquired Premier Technology Group. In August, Command Joint Task Force-7, the unit overseeing operations in Iraq, decided it wanted CACI to provide interrogators under the blanket-purchase agreement, and informed Interior of its plan.
Because the blanket-purchase agreement was by that time an Interior contract, an Interior official was required to evaluate the new orders to make sure the work was not "outside the scope" of the contract, said Quimby, and that CACI was charging the government appropriately.
The contract was for technology services, but Interior's contracting officer "was convinced under his own guidelines" that the Army could request CACI's help with interrogations because the order included computer integration and data processing work, Quimby said. Interior thus issued a $19.9 million order for the work.
In December 2003, the contract was used again to hire CACI for counterintelligence support in a deal worth $21.8 million.
Design and oversight of the interrogation project was done by an Army employee in Iraq, who was supposed to bring any problems to the attention of Interior's contracting officer. But Quimby conceded that communication between the two has been "incremental and sporadic."
Charles Tiefer , professor of government contracts at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said: "This is a war situation and I don't know what the Department of Interior is doing out there. "
The purchase of services through an Interior Department contractor "sounds like a formula for having little or no oversight and a real potential for abuse, " Tiefer said.
CACI and Premier Technology performed 81 tasks under the blanket-purchase agreement; 11 of those projects have involved work in Iraq. Twenty-seven of CACI's employees work in Iraq as interrogators.
The Army is not required to issue requests for competitive bids when it wants to hire Premier Technology or CACI under the blanket-purchase agreement, nor is it required to disclose the type of work being done under that contract or the price paid for those services.
--------
Defense Dept. Delays Action on Boeing Jets Till November
May 26, 2004
By LESLIE WAYNE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/business/26boeing.html
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced yesterday that he was postponing until November a decision on a $20 billion contract to lease aerial refueling tankers from the Boeing Company, a move that delays action until after the presidential election.
Mr. Rumsfeld's decision, which was not unexpected, puts the controversial project outside of election-year politics and gives the Pentagon additional time to come up with alternatives to the proposed deal, which critics say is overpriced and unnecessary.
Specifically, Mr. Rumsfeld has ordered an analysis of alternatives to an arrangement in which the Air Force would lease up to 100 Boeing 767 jets for use as refueling tankers. The tankers were to be used as replacements for an Air Force airborne refueling fleet that dates to the Eisenhower administration, a fleet that many say needs modernization.
The study of alternatives, which is to be completed by November, will present Mr. Rumsfeld with options other than the lease proposal. A recent report, also requested by Mr. Rumsfeld, from the Defense Science Board, a quasi-governmental agency, concluded that the tanker fleet problems could be managed with better maintenance and that any new tankers could come from sources other than Boeing.
The Pentagon said Mr. Rumsfeld's decision to delay was based in part on recommendations made in the Defense Science Board report, which was released earlier this month. In addition to questioning the immediate need for modernizing the tanker fleet, the science board recommended that Mr. Rumsfeld call for an analysis of alternatives, the action he took yesterday. Typically, all military projects undergo such an analysis before any contracts are signed, but the Air Force skipped this study for the Boeing deal.
A Boeing spokesman, Doug Kennett, said Boeing thought that the new study of alternatives, as well as a second study ordered yesterday by Mr. Rumsfeld, called a mobility capacity study, was important.
"We respect the secretary's decision to defer his decision until November," Mr. Kennett said.
Mr. Rumsfeld's action comes as Boeing has stepped up a campaign on Capitol Hill to gain support for its tanker proposal, which could keep alive a 767 production line that is threatened by a decline in commercial orders. Just last week, Boeing's chief executive, Harry C. Stonecipher, met with members of Congress to push for the tanker project, and Boeing supporters tried to add protection for the tanker deal to the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2005.
Boeing said yesterday that the delay would not slow the 767 production line and that the fate of the model would not be decided until sometime next spring.
In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Boeing has said it would have to write off as much as $300 million if the tanker project did not go forward.
Mr. Rumsfeld's decision also comes as critics of the proposal, led by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, appeared to be gaining the upper hand. Through hearings and publicity, critics have been successful in stalling the program just as it appeared headed for approval.
The tanker arrangement was unusual in that the Air Force would lease the Boeing jets rather than buy them, which is the more typical way that military equipment is obtained. While the Air Force said the arrangement would save the Pentagon money in the short run, Senator McCain and another critics said it would cost taxpayers billions of dollars more over time.
Keith Ashdown, a military analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group in Washington that has been critical of the lease deal, praised Mr. Rumsfeld's action.
"We hope that the Pentagon's decision to go back to the drawing board will result in their ripping up Boeing's gold-plated contract," Mr. Ashdown said. "This new comprehensive look will do wonders in restoring America's trust in the Department of Defense's fiscal integrity."
The controversy over the tanker deal increased for reasons beyond the deal's financial structure. The proposal was marred by ethical problems when Darleen Druyun, a Boeing executive, pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for negotiating an employment contract with Boeing while she was still a top Air Force official overseeing the tanker negotiations.
The Air Force said it anticipated "a thorough evaluation and swift conclusion" from the two studies that would "allow us to invest in and revitalize this essential military capability."
--------
Bioterror bonanza
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Tom Ramstack
May 26, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040525-092238-1492r.htm
Technology companies showed off their latest wizardry yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center as they sought some of the federal security funds that grew by an additional $5.6 billion last week.
The Security Tech Expo featured many technologies for either remotely identifying potential terrorists or responding to the damage they do.
In its first year as a federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security focused on purchasing off-the-shelf security technology. This year, the department's Office of Science and Technology is using its $913 million budget more creatively.
"A significant part of its budget is dedicated to developing next-generation technologies," said Valerie Smith, Homeland Security spokeswoman.
In addition, Congress last week approved Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion program to stockpile vaccines and other medicines to protect Americans from biological and chemical weapons.
On Monday, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced $24 million in grants for hospitals in the District, Maryland and Virginia to prepare for bioterrorism or other attacks that could produce mass casualties.
The technologies at the Security Tech Expo included a "regenerative filter" that could be used to clean the air of biological, chemical or nuclear toxins. It is regenerative because it heats and vaporizes toxins trapped by filters instead of merely holding them in place.
The developers, the British company Dominick Hunter Inc., envision using it at military or government sites most likely to be attacked by invisible but deadly toxic weapons.
"It's the only system that cleans itself," said Micheal Davis, Dominick Hunter's vice president of protective systems. "You don't have to have somebody handle it."
The system eliminates the need for protective suits and the decontamination required for traditional carbon filters.
At a nearby booth, Alexandria-based Sentel Corp. demonstrated a "Remote Data Relay" system that can monitor as many as 400 remote sensors, including the kind that detect biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
It also sends alarms to human monitors when "toxicity" is detected.
Sentel officials say the system could monitor sensors over a wide area, such as throughout cities or at military installations.
"You don't need to be an engineer to use this," said David P. Christovich, Sentel's manager of business development. "If you can hook up a computer, you can use it."
Metro uses a chemical and biological sensor to protect Washington area transit riders from bioterrorism.
Several government agencies sent representatives to the conference.
Among them was Darin Goodwiler, deputy regional director of the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, which provides security for government buildings.
He was particularly interested in "thermal imaging cameras" displayed at the booths.
"You can see things in low light and no light," Mr. Goodwiler said.
If a suspicious person is hiding in a darkened area, "You can see them just from the heat they are giving off," he said.
The expo's sponsors, ADT Security Systems Inc., said they were pleased with the quality of the technology displayed, but slightly disappointed by the turnout.
About 650 people are attending the two-day conference, which continues today. Last year, about 1,000 attended, ADT officials said.
"There's a lot of Homeland Security shows going on around town," said Paul J. Brisgone, an ADT vice president. "I think people are a little bit showed out."
ADT, an Alexandria-based company that holds several government security contracts, is one of the competitors for the new federal funds.
"It used to be you'd have maybe five or six companies bidding on a project," Mr. Brisgone said. "Now you have 30 or 40."
--------
Pentagon defers decision on Boeing tanker lease deal
WASHINGTON (AFP)
May 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525231828.gu5tpbwk.html
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has deferred a decision on whether to go ahead with a 23 billion dollar deal to lease and buy 100 aerial refueling aircraft from Boeing until further studies are completed in November, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Rumsfeld acted after a Defense Science Board study concluded that there was "no material or financial reason" to begin a program to replace the air force's KC-135 tankers before an analysis of alternatives and a study of air mobility capabilities are completed, a senior official said.
"He's going to have both of those studies accelerated," he said. They are to be completed by November, a second official said.
Rumsfeld suspended the deal in November and ordered an inspector general review following revelations that a top Boeing official had offered a job to the air force official negotiating the controversial contract.
Championed by the air force as a way to begin replacing its ageing KC-135 fleet more quickly, the contract was fiercely opposed by Senator John McCain as a sweetheart deal for Boeing.
A task force of the Defense Science Board, a top-level advisory panel, "concluded corrosion problems with the KC-135 can be managed, and the operations and maintenance cost growth may not be as large as previously estimated," a Pentagon official said.
"The DSB concluded a decision would be better informed by having the Air Force analysis of alternatives, as well as a PA and E (Program Analysis and Evaluation) study on (air) mobility," the senior defense official said.
"We respect the secretary's decision to defer his decision until November," Boeing spokesman Doug Kennett said in a statement.
"We believe the analysis of alternatives and mobility capability study are important. We firmly believe that the 767 tanker is the only solution that fulfills all 26 of the air force's stated requirements," he said.
The task force found that while the air force needed to begin recapitalizing its tanker fleet in the near term, it did not necessarily have to be done with new aircraft.
It suggested converting mothballed DC-10s into air refueling tankers.
Or, it said, the air force could work with major airframe manufacturers to develop new tanker options with more modern airframes than the 20 year old Boeing 767 design.
That would open the door to competition by Airbus, the European aerospace giant, which was locked out earlier when the air force turned to Boeing as a single source for tanker planes.
The air force has a total active inventory of 539 tanker planes, 480 of them the older KC-135 and 59 KC-10, which have nearly two and a half times the capacity of a KC-135.
"If you are willing to tolerate manageable growth in KC-135 O and S (Operations and Service) costs, you can defer major near-term recapitalization investments," the Defense Science Board concluded in a set of briefing slides.
"But such a decision also pushes the block obsolescence problem to the right," it added.
"Corrosion is manageable," it said.
However, it said "some" recapitalization should begin in the near term, possibly fiscal year 2007.
"If compelled to do something now, there are several options -- 767 lease/buy, re-engine the KC-135Es, convert retired commercial aircraft, encourage commercial sources for CONUS (continental United States) tanking," it said.
In March, the Pentagon's inspector general concluded that the air force used "an inappropriate procurement strategy" in negotiating the deal.
It advised the Defense Department "not to proceed with the tanker program until all issues are resolved," a defense official said at the time.
Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, however, also concluded that there was no compelling reason not go through with the deal despite the disclosure of a possible conflict of interest.
Boeing fired its chief financial officer Michael Sears and Darlene Druyun, a former deputy assistant air force secretary for acquisitions who joined the aerospace giant in January, 2003, after learning she was offered the job while negotiating the tanker deal.
Boeing chairman and chief executive officer, Phil Condit, also stepped down.
-------- iraq
Key Najaf Shrine Damaged in Fighting
U.S. Denies Firing on Imam Ali Mosque During Push Into Center of Holy City
By Saad Sarhan and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55657-2004May25?language=printer
NAJAF, Iraq, May 25 -- As American troops took their fight with Shiite Muslim rebels to the center of the insurgent stronghold of Najaf on Tuesday, heavy projectiles damaged the facade of the Imam Ali shrine, among the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, a strike that could inflame anger against the United States.
U.S. military officers denied their forces caused the damage to the shrine, where blasts chipped a door frame that leads to the shrine's inner sanctum and put a hole in a nearby wall. In Baghdad, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said rebels were the likely culprits, hoping "to provoke outrage so they could blame it on American forces."
In Najaf, a spokesman for the rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr blamed U.S. forces and appealed to Muslims to attack them. "Is it logical that a Muslim, Arab or Iraqi man can surrender to the infidel occupier?" said Qais Khazali, the spokesman. There were no reports of violence in other Shiite towns or mass reaction by the population of Najaf itself.
The question of who damaged the mosque has political as well as emotional significance. Several Shiite groups that oppose Sadr and either cooperate with or tacitly accept U.S. authority in Iraq would come under pressure to distance themselves from the Americans if U.S. forces were found to have caused the damage. Losing that support could cripple U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq.
To date, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief Shiite religious authority in Iraq, has avoided criticizing U.S. military moves against Sadr. But a word of opposition from Sistani, Iraqis say, would set off an explosion of anti-American sentiment among Iraq's majority Shiite population.
On Tuesday, his office issued a statement that denied reports he had blamed damage to the shrine on Sadr. "We don't have any information about which side targeted the holy shrine," the statement said.
The U.S. strike into the city center was part of an increasingly aggressive campaign to corner Sadr. For the past two days, infantrymen with the Army's 1st Armored Division riding Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles have been penetrating deeper and deeper into Najaf, one of two adjacent cities where Sadr's forces dominate the streets.
Sadr has defied U.S. demands to surrender and disband his militia, the Mahdi Army. The Americans have said they want him to stand trial in Iraqi courts for his alleged role in the April 2003 killing of moderate cleric Abdel Majid Khoie. Sadr's arrest would take off the street a violent opponent to U.S. plans to transfer limited authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30.
During the past several weeks, U.S. troops have quelled Sadr-inspired uprisings in the towns of Kut and Diwaniya, while British forces have tamped down unrest in Basra and Amarah. U.S. forces have clashed inconclusively off and on for two weeks with Sadr's forces in the sprawling Baghdad slum of Sadr City, named after the cleric's late father.
Over the weekend, the Mahdi Army abandoned positions in Karbala, another Shiite holy city, where they had fought two weeks of tough battles against 1st Armored Division forces. On Tuesday, U.S. troops badly damaged the Mukhaiyam mosque in Karbala, which had been used by militiamen to store arms, according to images broadcast by al-Arabiya, a satellite television network.
The fighting in Najaf on Tuesday raged throughout the morning. At least eight insurgents were killed, three of them a few yards in front of the shrine's outer wall, witnesses said. Others were killed after American troops trapped them in a pair of abandoned police stations. Shooting also erupted at a vast cemetery northeast of the shrine where guerrillas have hidden among the tombstones and fired on U.S. patrols on the city's outskirts.
When combat subsided, a few hundred demonstrators gathered on the mosque grounds, wailed, wept, pounded their heads and shouted "Yes, yes, to Sadr! America is the enemy of God." Blood streaked the large courtyard.
Hussein Husseini, a Sadr representative, told reporters at the mosque that U.S. rockets fired from a plaza a few blocks from the shrine hit the structure and courtyard. A mob cut short his words and cursed and threatened journalists who were present.
"What is the limit?" asked Hamed Asadi, a religion student and Sadr supporter. "Is it when the Americans enter the shrine? I call on all the youths to protect the shrine from the Zionist enemy."
"We pray to God to give Sadr victory," said Qasim Zeini, a young guerrilla who shouldered a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "He is the only one who challenged the occupation."
Insurgent fighters say that in recent days they have been aided by sympathizers from other cities. "We didn't call for anyone to come, but some people wanted to be in Najaf and fight the occupation forces. The resistance is not only in Najaf, but all over Iraq," said Fuad Turfi, a Sadr spokesman.
Farazdaq Mousawi, a Mahdi Army commander, said that most of his militia's arms, including mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, were looted from depots belonging to the ousted government of Saddam Hussein. "We get weapons from people all the time, too," he said. "What the Americans did today will increase resistance against them, and now more people will support us."
All around him, young masked fighters scurried from market stall to market stall and hid under awnings to avoid detection by U.S. air surveillance.
Many Najaf residents have continued to oppose Sadr, whose presence in the city has paralyzed tourism by pilgrims, a mainstay of the city's economy. "The Mahdi Army brought ruin to the city. We pray to God to get rid of them and their leaders," said Hashim Abid Ali, owner of the Huda Hotel.
"We brought this on ourselves. What is happening is controlled by Iran," said Hussein Hasan, a student, echoing a common suspicion that Sadr is a tool of people in the neighboring Islamic republic who want to destabilize Iraq.
Ahmed Jasim, another resident, blamed rebel Sunni Muslims in central Iraq for a continuing flow of arms into the city. "They say they have brought food into the city, but in fact, they brought weapons," he said. "Farms surround Najaf. We don't need any food."
In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Tuesday, injuring five Iraqis and leaving the now-familiar sight of twisted, burning wreckage on a downtown street.
Later in the day, insurgents fired rockets from an apartment building toward a police station on Saadoun Street, one of Baghdad's main thoroughfares. It missed the station, but hit a second structure where two U.S. soldiers were posted, wounding them.
For the second time in a week, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline, key to the export of Iraq's only significant foreign exchange earner. The conduit, which runs to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, was disrupted near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, according to oil executives in Baghdad. A similar explosion damaged a pipeline in the far south that takes crude to the Persian Gulf. In April, Iraq exported about 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Both explosions will slow deliveries this month, U.S. officials said.
Williams reported from Baghdad.
--------
'Large Number' of Rebels Slain; Cleric's Aide Seized, U.S. Says
May 26, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26CND_IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 - American troops killed a "very large number" of rebels during fighting in urban Shiite areas today and captured a lieutenant of the radical cleric who has led a movement resisting occupation forces for more than a month, American officials said.
The battles since early April between militias loyal to the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, and American-led occupation forces have complicated preparations for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, including the formation of a caretaker government.
An Iraqi nuclear scientist, Hussain al-Shahristani, has been identified as the leading candidate for prime minister in the period leading up to January 2005 elections, but Iraqi and American officials said today that there were others under consideration.
Fierce fighting erupted early today in the cemetery area of the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, residents said. Local medics said up to 26 Iraqis were killed and more than 30 were injured. They did not specify if the casualties were rebel or civilian.
The American forces also captured a lieutenant to Mr. Sadr, Said Riyad al-Nouri, Mr. Sadr's brother-in-law.
He was handed over to Iraqi authorities for prosecution in connection with the April 2003 murder of a rival of Mr. Sadr.
In the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad, rebels using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fought with American troops, and an American military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said "a very large number" of rebels were killed in both places.
"We are constantly chipping away at his militia," said General Kimmitt at a news briefing in Baghdad, referring to the fighters who say they are allied behind Mr. Sadr.
"We are continuing to chip away at his militia that is there in Najaf, as we saw from operations that we held last night."
He offered no specific casualty figures, telling reporters later that "less than 100" fighters died. There were no reported deaths among coalition troops in the Najaf and Sadr City fighting.
In other violence today, two Russian technicians were killed and at least five others were wounded when their convoy was hit by rebel gunfire, news services said.
The technicians were employees of the Russian company Interenergoservis, which said today it would evacuate all its remaining staff from Iraq. The firm's workers have been abducted and killed in previous attacks.
Russian engineers have specialized in maintaining Iraq's fragile electrical system.
In Baqubah, militants driving a black Opel attacked the Al-Khalis chief of police with small-arms fire, killing both the chief and his driver, General Kimmitt said.
In southwest Baghdad, a roadside bomb was detonated, killing three Iraqis and wounding nine, the general said. Two suspects were killed in the explosion and one was wounded, he said, adding that two Iraqi police officers were also wounded in the blast.
The developments came a day after the the Shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims, suffered minor damage in clashes between American forces and insurgents loyal to Mr. Sadr in Najaf and in the neighboring city of Kufa.
"We just can't tell you how much we decry the attempts by Moktada's militia, Moktada possibly himself, to violate the sacred holy shrines of the Shia religion for his own personal gain, for his own personal advancement," General Kimmitt said Tuesday.
Aides to Mr. Sadr said on Tuesday that American fire had damaged the shrine. And before the shrine was damaged, an aide to Mr. Sadr, Hosam Mosawi, strongly criticized the deaths in the two cities and raised the concern that the shrines would become targets for American soldiers.
The fighting, both with the Shiite militia and Sunni insurgents linked to the former Iraq government, has shown little sign of abating as the June 30 deadline for the handover of authority to Iraqi authorities looms.
A United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to announce the lineup of the caretaker government next week.
"The report that there is actually a candidate nailed down is incorrect," the Coalition Provisional Authority's senior adviser, Dan Senor, said at a news briefing in Baghdad.
The Iraqi Governing Council president, Sheikh Ghazi Mashal Ajil Yawir, told reporters today that there were several candidates. "The debate is still going on," he said.
Christine Hauser reported from Baghdad for this article and Kirk Semple reported from New York.
-------- israel / palestine
UNRWA: 45 homes razed in Rafah during Operation Rainbow
Haaretz Service and Agencies
By Nir Hasson
May 26, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/431683.html
Israel Defense Forces troops destroyed 45 buildings during its six-day operation in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip - making 575 people homeless - the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said Tuesday. Human rights groups initially estimated that the army had demolished 180 buildings in the Rafah camp, a militant stronghold.
UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the territories, also said that the IDF had destroyed a total of 155 buildings in Rafah over the past month, leaving 1,960 people homeless. It described the period as one of the most destructive in Rafah since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
The IDF said its forces destroyed or badly damaged 56 "structures" in Rafah, including homes, warehouses and gunmen's posts, in the latest raids.
It said the destruction occurred when troops blew up tunnels used by militants to smuggle weapons across the border from Egypt, exchanged fire with gunmen or needed to clear a way around mined roads and boobytraps.
U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer was updated by IDF officials at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on Tuesday on the humanitarian aid provided by Israel to residents of Rafah during Operation Rainbow.
Home Front Commander Major General Yossef Mishlav screened films of army operations in Rafah for Kurtzer. He also provided the American ambassador with information on medical services provided to Rafah residents and on the entry of Palestinian ambulances into areas in which gun battles were taking place.
Soldiers hurt
Two IDF soldiers from the Givati Brigade were lightly wounded Tuesday morning when Palestinian militants fired an anti-tank rocket at their position near the Kfar Darom settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Troops at the scene returned fire. The two wounded soldiers were evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva.
An Israeli man sustained light wounds early Tuesday afternoon when a bomb was thrown at his vehicle near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The man was evacuated to nearby Kiryat Arba for medical attention.
Pullout complete
IDF troops completed their pullout from the southern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Rafah on Monday night, but military officials warned their mission was not fulfilled.
The last of the IDF troops pulled out of the Kishta neighborhood Monday night, where they had been searching for an arms-smuggling tunnel. Earlier in the day, troops left the Tel Sultan and Brazil neighborhoods, lifted the siege north of Rafah and renewed traffic flow to other parts of the Strip.
While withdrawing their forces, military officials warned that their mission was not fulfilled, indicating they may send forces back into the camp soon. Even after the pullout, several tanks and bulldozers lay poised on the edge of the camp.
"The efforts will continue, with no time limit, as long as Israelis are threatened by terrorism," said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz as the pullout was completed. Mofaz admitted Sunday that Israel had still not been able to completely block weapons-smuggling routes in Rafah.
Speaking at a Tel Aviv ceremony for the security industry Monday night, Mofaz also said it was Palestinian terror organizations, not the IDF, that bore responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel Radio reported.
Mofaz said innocent people were hurt because the terrorists chose to operate in a dense population center, according to the report.
Palestinians said Monday night the IDF has shut down the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the Itim news agency reported.
The main focus of the operation, the biggest Israeli sweep in Gaza in years, was to counter Palestinian arms smuggling through tunnels under the Egyptian border. Israel said it discovered three tunnels during the raid, but a senior IDF commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were about 10 tunnels altogether.
IDF Gaza division commander Brigadier General Shmuel Zakai said Monday the army killed 41 terrorists and demolished 56 Palestinian homes during Operation Rainbow in Rafah, which began seven days ago.
Because of severe discrepancies about the numbers of houses that were demolished, the army has started an inquiry. The army was saying over the weekend that only five houses were demolished, but that number climbed to 12 by Sunday - and still was far from the number of houses that Palestinians and journalists visiting the scene said were destroyed or damaged beyond use by tanks and armor moving through the neighborhoods.
In an interview with Ynet on Sunday morning, Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said he knew of 12 houses that had been demolished. By Monday night, Zakai was talking about 56 demolished houses, basing his report on aerial photos and reports by commanders in the field.
"We killed 41 terrorists, we pinpointed and destroyed three [weapons-smuggling] tunnels and another opening that was used for preparing tunnels. We also arrested terror operatives connected to construction of the tunnels," Zakai told reporters. The division commander said some of the homes were demolished by gunfire and others with the use of explosive charges.
Some structures were destroyed when troops passed through them rather than moving over roads mined with explosives. Other buildings destroyed included those belonging to terrorists, including the man responsible for the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters on the Kissufim road in Gaza at the beginning of the month.
Zakai said 12 unarmed Palestinian civilians were killed during the course of Operation Rainbow, including seven killed by a tank shell during a demonstration in the Tel Sultan neighborhood last Wednesday.
He said the investigation into that incident has not yet been completed, but it appears as if the tank commander who fired a shell at the abandoned structure did not see the nearby demonstration.
"We did not use the tank shell in order to disperse the demonstration but rather to create a boom effect," Zakai said. "To the best of my professional judgement, the tank commander's decision was correct."
Regarding the other civilians killed during the operation, Zakai said it has not been determined they were killed by IDF gunfire. He said that in at least one of the incidents, Israeli soldiers spotted terrorists who were shooting at civilians.
Palestinian human rights workers dispute the IDF's estimates, saying that just 12 of those killed in Rafah were known to have been armed.
Zakai rejected claims there is a humanitarian crisis in Rafah.
"One of the considerations we were directed to take was to allow the passage of food and medications, and to allow the repair of water, electricity and sewage infrastructure," he said.
Gaza District Coordinating Office Commander Yoav Mordechai was quoted Monday by Israel Radio as saying the IDF enabled Palestinians to receive food and medical equipment, and has fixed the water and electricity infrastructure in Rafah. He added that Palestinians had dug arms-smuggling tunnels inside mosques and schools and under children's beds in private homes.
The IDF says it has detained 100 Palestinians during the current operation. Of these, it says 10 were taken for questioning.
-------- nato
Belgium would not veto Nato Iraq force
May 26 2004
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=7926
BRUSSELS - Belgium would not try to stop Nato sending troops to Iraq if the alliance decided to take such action but it would not provide any of its own soldiers, the Belgian Foreign Minister has confirmed.
Speaking on Tuesday after meeting in Washington with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Minister Louis Michel stressed that he did not believe it would be a good idea for Nato to get involved in military operations in Iraq.
"Afghanistan should remain Nato's priority. A greater role in Iraq would not be reasonable," he said.
But the Belgian Foreign Minister added that if the alliance as a whole decided it did want to send troops to the Middle Eastern country, "Belgium would not use its veto."
Michel made it clear however that his country would opt out of any Nato operation in Iraq.
The Foreign Minister's comments follow similar remarks made by Belgian Defence Minster Andre Flahaut earlier this week.
Washington wants Nato to play a bigger role in Iraq and a majority of the alliance's 26 members already have some troops on the ground in the country, but in an individual, national capacity as part of the US-led coalition there.
-------- pakistan / india
India to junk 70 MiG-21 'flying coffins'
BANGALORE (AFP)
May 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040526162824.t9losac6.html
The Indian air force said Wednesday it will scrap 70 MiG-21 aircraft next year and in an added step will further shrink its fleet of fighter aircraft, depleted by regular crashes.
Air force chief S. Krishnaswamy told reporters in the southern city of Bangalore that the single-seater Russian-built jets which were being trashed were the oldest variant of its mainstay MiG fleet.
"So there are no more aeroplanes, we are desperate. We need the trainer jets more importantly than a combat aircraft," he said of the previous administration's decision to buy 66 Hawk jet trainers from Britain worth 1.45 billion dollars.
More than 100 Indian airforce pilots have died in the past decade in crashes of MiG-21s, which have been nicknamed "flying coffins" because of their terrible safety record.
In the latest crash in February four people were killed and 15 others were injured when a MiG-21 ploughed into a village and set ablaze several houses in the western state of Gujarat.
A MiG-27 went off radar last week in eastern India, prompting calls by pilots to install aircraft-locating safety devices on the remaining units.
Krishnaswamy said the state-owned aircraft maker, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, was in the process of upgrading India's MiG-27 interceptor jets with new electronics systems.
"We have given approximately 40 MiG-27 aircraft for upgrades and about 50 to 60 (British-designed) Jaguar aircraft and another 50 to 60 aircraft would follow," he said.
-------- prisoners of war
General Is Said To Have Urged Use of Dogs
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55703-2004May25.html
A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.
According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.
"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.
"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, according to a transcript provided to The Washington Post.
Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.
But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.
"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.
Pappas's statements nonetheless provide the fullest public account to date of how he viewed the interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller's impact on operations there. Pappas said, among other things, that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar aggressive measures followed Sanchez's policy, but were often approved by Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, or by Pappas himself.
The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S. actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba's March 9 report and by pictures taken by military personnel that became public late last month. The pictures show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering, naked, against a wall.
Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib.
Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees.
"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at a prisoner's head and ordering him to talk," said James Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions."
Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of coercion against protected persons, and Common Article Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment," Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."
But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva Convention," according to the transcript.
Pappas also said he did not have "a program" to inform his civilian employees, including a translator and an interrogator, of what the Geneva Conventions stated, and said he was unaware if anyone else did. He said he did not believe using force to coerce, intimidate or cause fear violated the conventions.
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the prison guards at Abu Ghraib's cellblocks 1A and 1B until Nov. 19, when Pappas assumed control, said in an interview that Navy, Army and Air Force dog teams were used there for security purposes. But she said military intelligence officers "were responsible for assigning those dogs and where they would go."
Using dogs to intimidate or attack detainees was very much against regulations, Karpinski said. "You cannot use the dogs in that fashion, to attack or be aggressive with a detainee. . . . Why were there guys so willing to take these orders? And who was giving the orders? The military intelligence people were in charge of them."
Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."
In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller to go because he had done a good job organizing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and wanted Miller to help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.
Some senators, however, have noted that the Bush administration considers Guantanamo detainees exempt from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and wondered if Miller brought the same aggressive interrogation ideas with him to Iraq, where the conventions apply.
When asked at a May 19 Senate hearing if he and his colleagues had "briefed" military officers in Iraq about specific Guantanamo interrogation techniques that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions, Miller said no.
He said he brought "our SOPs [standard operating procedures] that we had developed for humane detention, interrogation, and intelligence fusion" to Iraq for use as a "starting point." He added that it was up to the officers in Iraq to decide which were applicable and what modifications to make.
But Pappas said the result of Miller's visit was that "the interrogators and analysts developed a set of rules to guide interrogations" and assigned specific military police soldiers to help interrogators -- an approach Miller had honed in Guantanamo.
After calling the use of dogs Miller's idea, Pappas explained that "in the execution of interrogation, and the interrogation business in general, we are trying to get info from these people. We have to act in an environment not to permanently damage them, or psychologically abuse them, but we have to assert control and get detainees into a position where they're willing to talk to us."
Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one dog handler and telling him "they could be used in interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.
That memo included the use of dogs among techniques that did not require special approval. The policy was changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez's approval on a case-by-case basis for certain techniques, including having "military working dogs" present during interrogations.
That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to during the interview as its "fine print" -- that detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no formal system in place to do that -- no formal procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted. Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the dogs be muzzled. "It's not very intimidating if they are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned down.
In the interview transcript, Taguba's disdain for using dogs is clear. He asked Pappas if he knew that after a prison riot on Nov. 24, 2003, five dogs were "called in to either intimidate or cause fear or stress" on a detainee. Pappas said no, and acknowledged under questioning that such an action was inappropriate.
Taguba also asked if he believed the use of dogs is consistent with the Army's field manual. Pappas replied that he could not recall, but reiterated that Miller instigated the idea. The Army field manual bars the "exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind."
At least four photographs obtained by The Washington Post -- each apparently taken in late October or November -- show fearful prisoners near unmuzzled dogs.
One MP charged with abuses, Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, recalled for Army investigators an episode "when two dogs were brought into [cellblock] 1A to scare an inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough, and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . . The prisoner was cornered and the dog bit his leg. A couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg."
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.
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U.S. using some Iraqis as bargaining chips
Iraqi woman says U.S. imprisoned her husband - and said he'd go free when her father surrenders
By Mohamad Bazzi
Middle East Correspondent
May 26, 2004
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woabus263819545may26,0,4004730.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.
Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"My husband is a hostage," said Moayad, 35, an architect who carries a small portrait of Ibrahim in her purse. "He didn't commit any crime."
Dozens detained
In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.
"It's clearly an abuse of the powers of arrest, to arrest one person and say that you're going to hold him until he gives information about somebody else, especially a close relative," said John Quigley, an international law professor at Ohio State University. "Arrests are supposed to be based on suspicion that the person has committed some offense."
U.S. officials deny that there is a systematic practice of detaining relatives to pressure Iraqi fugitives into surrendering. "The coalition does not take hostages," said a senior military official who asked not to be named. "Relatives who might have information about wanted persons are sometimes detained for questioning, and then they are released. There is no policy of holding people as bargaining chips."
But Iraqi human rights groups say they have documented dozens of cases similar to Moayad's, in which family members who are not accused of any crimes have been detained for weeks or even months and told that they would be released only when a wanted relative surrenders to U.S. forces.
"We have many cases of Americans going to a house looking for someone, and when they can't find him, they take another family member in his place," said Bassem al-Rubaie, director of the Council of Legal Defense Care, a group of Iraqi lawyers that has been campaigning for prisoner rights. "This has been going on since the early days of the American occupation."
Arrested 'by mistake'
In a recent report, the International Committee of the Red Cross quoted military intelligence officers as saying that between "70 and 90 percent" of the nearly 8,000 Iraqis detained by occupation forces had been arrested "by mistake." In some cases, the report found, U.S. troops held people for several months after they had been cleared of wrongdoing.
Human rights groups first criticized the United States for detaining the relatives of wanted Iraqis in November, when U.S. forces arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of Hussein's longtime deputies. After Hussein was captured last year, al-Douri became the most wanted man in Iraq, and Washington put a $10 million bounty on his head.
Al-Douri's wife and daughter are still in U.S. custody, although rights monitors say they have not been charged with any crime. "Taking hostages is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions - in other words, a war crime," Manhattan-based Human Rights Watch wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in January.
The senior U.S. military official declined to discuss the detention of al-Douri's relatives, saying it is a "special case with very unusual circumstances." In the past, U.S. officials had likened the detentions to those of a material witness who is held for questioning.
A form of 'moral coercion'
But rights monitors say there is no basis under international law for holding family members as material witnesses. "That explanation is dubious at best," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International USA.
Detaining a fugitive's relatives is a form of "moral coercion" forbidden under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, according to Quigley. The convention, which guarantees the rights of civilians under military occupation, also prohibits punishing someone for an offense that he has not personally committed.
In the 1970s and '80s, Washington frequently criticized the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries for making arbitrary arrests and for using relatives to exert pressure on fugitives and political prisoners. In its latest report on human rights conditions around the world, the State Department singled out Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Syria for using such tactics.
By adopting similar methods in Iraq, experts say, Washington risks losing a moral high ground. "It makes it difficult for the U.S. to criticize other countries," Quigley said, "when it undertakes detentions of this sort that so clearly exceed what is permitted by law."
One family's nightmare
International law leaves little recourse for civilians under occupation to challenge wrongful detentions, something Moayad has become painfully aware of.
Her plight began on Jan. 30 at 2:30 a.m., when two U.S. Humvees pulled up to the door of her family's house as an Apache helicopter circled overhead. The soldiers asked for her father, Abdullah, 66, an American-educated geologist. Moayad insists that she does not know what U.S. forces wanted from her father.
Moayad told the soldiers that her father had gone to neighboring Jordan for prostate cancer surgery, and she showed them his medical records. They arrested the only other man in the house: Moayad's husband.
"My husband told them several times, 'I'm not a troublemaker, I just want to live in peace with my family,'" said Moayad, who was born in Austin, Texas, where her father was working. She lived in the United States until she was 5 years old.
Moayad has been married to Ibrahim, 45, for eight years. They have three children, ages 2 to 7. Like many Iraqis, they live with their extended family.
On Feb. 17, Moayad said, a group of soldiers delivered a handwritten letter from Ibrahim. It said he was being transferred from a U.S. base in Baghdad to Abu Ghraib prison "until the arrival of my father-in-law."
"Please tell him that I will be released when he arrives here, since I am not the wanted person..." Ibrahim wrote. "Please urge my father-in-law to surrender himself of his own free will. That will make things much easier for him. They will not mistreat someone who surrenders of his own free will. They only want to ask him some questions."
Since getting the letter, Moayad has made the 40-mile roundtrip journey from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib 18 times. On most visits, she has stood outside the gates with others waiting in vain for news about their relatives. One soldier who felt sorry for her looked up Ibrahim's name in the computer system and told her he was marked as a detainee with "intel value."
Reminders of Hussein
Moayad, whose patchwork English is the legacy of her Texas childhood, doesn't know what "intelligence value" means and how it might affect her husband. But the Red Cross report documented a pattern of abuses - including humiliation, hooding and threats of execution - against Iraqi prisoners deemed to have an intelligence value.
"The American soldiers kept on telling me, 'Bring your father, and you will get your husband back,'" said Moayad, her soft voice trailing off. "How can they say that he's not a hostage?"
On May 15, her 18th visit to Abu Ghraib, Moayad finally got to see her husband. Ibrahim told her he was being well treated, but he said that military officials had forced him to write the letter pleading for his father-in-law to surrender.
The tactic, Moayad said, reminded her of Hussein's regime. "The Americans promised us that they would bring democracy and freedom. They talked about the prisoners in Saddam's time, and we expected them to do something better," she said. "But now they're doing the same thing, or even worse."
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4 Soldiers in Iraq May Face Discipline
Associated Press
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56061-2004May25.html
DENVER, May 25 -- Several U.S. soldiers face possible discipline for forcing two Iraqi detainees to jump off a bridge into the Tigris River earlier this year, a military spokesman said Tuesday.
There have been questions about whether one of the Iraqis died, but Fort Carson, Colo., spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Budzyna said no one was killed.
The soldiers, based at Fort Carson, were part of a 3rd Brigade Combat Team led by Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, a star quarterback at West Point in the mid-1980s, Budzyna said. Sassaman did not return a phone call.
Budzyna said that members of another Fort Carson unit, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, are being questioned about the deaths of two Iraqi prisoners: Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57, who was captured by the regiment in October, and Abdul Jaleel, 46.
The military has said Mowhoush died during interrogation Nov. 26 from asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression. The CIA said one of its agents may have been involved and referred the case to the Justice Department.
Jaleel died Jan. 9 at a post near Al Asad, Iraq, of blunt force injuries and asphyxia, the Army said.
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Chalabi 'boasted of Iranian spy link'
Iraqi accused by CIA made claim in 1997, says former inspector
The Guardian
by Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday May 26, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1224916,00.html
Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader accused by the CIA of passing US secrets to Tehran, claimed to have close links with Iranian intelligence seven years ago, according to a former UN weapons inspector.
Scott Ritter, who before the war insisted that Saddam Hussein did not have significant weapons stocks, made the claim to Andrew Cockburn, a Washington-based journalist and the author of a biography of the ousted Iraqi dictator.
"When I met [Mr Chalabi] in December 1997 he said he had tremendous connections with Iranian intelligence," Mr Ritter said, according to an article by Mr Cockburn published today in the Guardian. "He said that some of his best intelligence came from the Iranians and offered to set up a meeting for me with the head of Iranian intelligence."
Mr Chalabi has repeatedly denied passing secrets to the Iranians and has denounced the allegations made by US intelligence officials as a CIA "smear".
He also denied providing false information about weapons of mass destruction to the US.
He said he only put the CIA in touch with three defectors, who were believed to have had critical information. The FBI and US intelligence agencies are re-examining information provided by or channelled through Mr Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, to determine whether the decision to go to war in Iraq was influenced by Iran.
Mr Ritter told the Guardian he stood by his allegation. He said he never made the trip to Iran because the CIA refused permission.
Meanwhile, both Democratic and Republican senators have called for an investigation into the alleged links between Mr Chalabi and Iranian intelligence.
US intelligence officials have said they have hard evidence that Mr Chalabi passed US secrets to Tehran, and that his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, was an Iranian agent. Mr Habib is being sought by Iraqi police, and according to one American press report is now in Tehran.
"This is a very, very serious charge," Senator Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican from Nebraska, told CNN. "There is no way the Senate intelligence committee is not going to be in this."
The Pentagon defends the INC's intelligence input. An official said yesterday: "We should point out that the INC has provided valuable intelligence that has saved coalition lives and has provided great quantities of documents from Saddam's regime that are of great value."
Mr Chalabi has offered to travel to Washington to deny the allegations and make his case directly to Congress.
Richard Perle, a former adviser to the Pentagon, and one of the INC's most outspoken backers in the capital, said he did not believe the CIA's allegations against Mr Chalabi.
"I believe they have been hostile to Ahmad Chalabi for a long time and are not to be trusted on this and I think they are seeking to transfer responsibility for their own intelligence failures to others," Mr Perle told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday.
According to US intelligence sources, the FBI has opened an investigation into the leak of secret information to the INC from within the administration.
A Pentagon official said yesterday he was not aware of any investigation.
Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East desk at the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), said the agency was re-examining prewar intelligence provided by the INC in the light of the CIA's findings of a link with Iranian intelligence.
"The people investigating this aren't sure yet, but the investigation is under way, and the DIA are looking through its documents and realising they've been had," Mr Lang said.
"If it turns out to be true, it was certainly a genius operation. [The Iranians] created an anti-Saddam opposition to get rid of him, and they got us to pay for it."
A Pentagon official confirmed that a "reassessment process" was under way, but refused to give details.
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U.N. Closes In on Choice To Lead Iraq
U.S. Differs With France, Britain on Power Sharing
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55243-2004May25?language=printer
The United Nations is closing in on a slate for the new Iraqi government, with a Shiite nuclear scientist who spent years in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison emerging as the leading candidate for prime minister, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Robert D. Blackwill, the U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq, are still working out the "complicated geometry" of dividing power among Iraq's disparate ethnic and religious factions, a senior administration official in Baghdad said yesterday. But Brahimi has met several times this month with Hussain Shahristani, who said in an interview yesterday that if asked, he would reluctantly accept the post of prime minister in Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein government.
"If they consider my participation essential, I'll try to convince them otherwise," said Shahristani, who was educated in London and Toronto. "But if they're not convinced and they ask me to take a role . . . I cannot refuse. I must serve my people."
U.S. officials say that although negotiations have not been concluded for the 30 jobs -- prime minister, the ceremonial positions of president and two vice presidents, and 26 cabinet ministries -- Shahristani has emerged as by far the most attractive of a few candidates to lead the caretaker government after June 30.
"The game has not played out yet, but Shahristani is the candidate to beat," a senior State Department official said. An Iraqi who has long known Shahristani called him "a captain of men," even though he has limited political experience.
Despite the first indication of headway in forming a new government, the United States still faces potentially serious differences with allies and members of the U.N. Security Council critical to passage of a new resolution endorsing President Bush's five-point plan for Iraq. The most divisive issue is proving to be the power of foreign forces that remain after the occupation ends June 30. The current draft stipulates that the U.S.-led force will have "authority to take all necessary measures" to ensure security and stability in Iraq.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the most stalwart U.S. ally in Iraq, said yesterday that the interim Iraqi government should have veto power over foreign military operations. "If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," Blair told a news conference. "The transfer of sovereignty has to be real and genuine."
But in Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said U.S. troops will do what American commanders deem necessary. "If it comes down to the United States' armed forces protecting themselves or in some way accomplishing their mission in a way that might not be in total consonance with what the Iraqi interim government might want to do at a particular moment in time, U.S. forces remain under U.S. command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves," Powell told reporters.
Powell dismissed suggestions of fallout between the allies over a new Iraqi government, noting that coordinating committees will be set up to deal with Iraqi "desires, wishes and feelings" and the kind of issues that the United States has faced with troop deployments in countries in Europe and Asia over the past half-century.
In a telephone call yesterday from President Jacques Chirac to Bush, France called for changes in the draft U.N. resolution to ensure that Iraq's new government inherits genuine sovereignty and "real change," according to a statement by Chirac's office. France, which led opposition to the war against Hussein, also wants the caretaker Iraqi leadership to be involved in approving military operations -- and for the government scheduled to be elected early next year to be able to determine whether foreign forces remain in Iraq.
The White House played down the differences. "I had a great conversation with President Chirac," Bush told reporters. "We share the same goal: a free and stable and peaceful Iraq."
But the issue is almost certain to remain contentious. Shahristani said decisions about the use of military force should be made by a sovereign Iraqi government, not solely by U.S. commanders.
"I really think it's the Iraqis who will know best how they should deal with the situation," he said in an interview. "The decision should be made by the Iraqis -- of course, after consultations with the coalition."
Shahristani said he supports the continued presence of international troops in Iraq to help the country's fledgling security forces deal with insurgents and terrorists. "We will have to discuss how that [international] force will operate in conjunction with Iraqi forces on the ground," he said.
Shahristani said leading the interim government would be an "extremely difficult job." The caretaker administration, he said, will need to focus primarily on addressing security issues and preparing for national elections in early 2005. "We've been hearing about holding elections for some time now, but we have yet to see any real preparation on the ground," he said.
The interest by U.N. and U.S. envoys in the 62-year-old nuclear scientist reflects their goal of crafting a government with broad legitimacy both at home and with the international community and reaching beyond the 25 men and women appointed to the Governing Council last year, who have failed to win widespread support among Iraqis.
Shahristani, who has a doctorate in nuclear chemistry from the University of Toronto, served as chief scientific adviser to Iraq's atomic energy commission until 1979, when Hussein became president. When he refused to shift from nuclear energy to nuclear weaponry, he was jailed. For most of a decade, he was in Abu Ghraib prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He escaped in 1991 and fled with his wife and three children to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and, eventually, Iran, where he worked with Iraqi refugees. He later moved to Britain, where he was a visiting university professor.
But unlike other exiles, Shahristani was not active in opposition parties, choosing instead to focus on humanitarian aid projects. He does, however, have a critical connection: He is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite cleric, whose support is essential for the viability of an interim government.
Shahristani, who has described himself as an adviser to Sistani, said he has met with the ayatollah several times since the fall of Hussein's government. Shahristani said Sistani has played a "very, very constructive" role in Iraq over the past year. Iraqi officials familiar with Brahimi's mission said Shahristani's lack of political affiliation could be an asset, allowing him to serve as a bridge between various factions.
Shahristani crossed into Iraq two days before Hussein fell to deliver aid to the city of Karbala. Since then, he has divided his time between Karbala and the southern port of Basra, working on humanitarian projects in both places.
"I've been actively working to help the Iraqi people to free themselves from Saddam's tyranny, but I have always concentrated on serving the people and providing them with their basic needs rather than party politics," he said.
Iraqi officials familiar with Brahimi's mission said it was an op-ed piece Shahristani wrote for the April 29 Wall Street Journal that piqued Brahimi's attention. Headlined "Election Fever," the piece criticized the U.S. occupation authority for failing to prepare for elections sooner and for promulgating an interim constitution that was drawn up behind closed doors. He called for the government taking power on June 30 to have limited powers aimed at preparing the country for elections -- a position advocated by Sistani.
Brahimi is now expected to announce the full interim government lineup Tuesday, said the senior administration official in Baghdad. The U.N. and U.S. envoys are still trying to negotiate a compromise with Kurdish leaders, who are demanding that they be given the presidency or premiership.
A senior Kurdish politician, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Kurds had been offered two of the four most powerful ministries in exchange for accepting one of the two vice presidential posts, but Kurdish leaders have not decided whether they will accept the proposal. "We're still negotiating," the politician said. "We have not made a decision."
Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad. Staff writer Colum Lynch contributed to this report from the United Nations.
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US asks private sector to ease bullet shortage
By Christopher Bowe in New York
May 26 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1084907850631&p=1012571727085
Even in the age of unmanned aerial vehicles, satellite-guided bombs and night-vision goggles, the US army cannot fight a war without its most basic necessity: bullets.
And with more troops in Iraq, more intense combat than expected and the need for almost every soldier from frontline infantryman to rearguard logistician to be prepared for an ambush, the army suddenly finds itself in a bullet crunch.
According to a requisition last week by the Army Field Support Command, the service will need 300m to 500m more bullets a year for at least five years, or more than 1.5m a year for combat and training. And because the single army-owned, small-calibre ammunition factory in Lake City, Missouri, can produce only 1.2m bullets annually, the army is suddenly scrambling to get private defence contractors to help fill the gap.
The bullet problem has its roots in a Pentagon effort to restock its depleted war materiel reserve. But it has been exacerbated by the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where rearguard and supply units have been thinly-stretched throughout the countryside, occasionally without active duty combat soldiers to protect them.
The army's formal solicitation acknowledges that its current m anufacturing abilities have been all but exhausted. "Increasing military contingencies have created a situation where the capability to produce small calibre ammunition through conventional methods has been fully exercised," it said.
Specifically, the army is looking for 300m more bullets annually, potentially rising to 500m a year.
Alliant Techsystems, which runs the army-owned factory in Lake City, is in talks with the military about remedying the bullet production shortage, insisting it could expand output by 200m to 300m a year.
General Dynamics, the US defence contractor which submitted its proposed solution on Tuesday, said it had pulled together several small bullet suppliers - including Winchester, a unit of Olin Corporation; Israel Military Industries; and Canada's SNC Technologies - to meet the army's gap.
"We're using so much ammunition in Iraq there isn't enough capacity around," said Eric Hugel, a defence industry analyst at Sephens Inc. "They have to go internationally."
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Military Families Mourn Daughters
20 Female Service Members Have Been Killed in Iraq
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55704-2004May25?language=printer
EL PASO -- When Sgt. Isela Rubalcava's body arrived at the airport from Iraq, her mother wailed like a child. "I don't want to see her like this," Maria Isela Rubalcava cried out in Spanish, a priest at the scene said. "Why, Isela, why? Get up, get up! Let's go home."
By the time a funeral Mass was celebrated last week at St. Patrick's Church in nearby Canutillo, the Rev. Manny Marrufo said, Maria Rubalcava had accepted the reality that her daughter was gone, dead of shrapnel wounds she suffered when a mortar round exploded during an attack in Mosul on May 8. It was three days before her 26th birthday.
Rubalcava was one of 20 female U.S. service members to die so far in Operation Iraqi Freedom -- the highest number of U.S. military women to die in a combat operation since World War II, military historians said. The dead include Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 23, who was killed in an ambush in the first days of the invasion, and Pfc. Leslie D. Jackson, 18, of Richmond, who was killed Thursday when her vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. Others died in helicopter crashes, or vehicle accidents, or when guns accidentally went off, or while trying to defuse bombs.
In addition, 162 women have been wounded in Iraq, 99 of them too badly to return to duty, according to the Defense Department. And two of the most prominent faces of the war belong to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was taken prisoner and then rescued early in the war, and Pfc. Lynndie England, who recently turned up in photographs documenting the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
For decades, Defense Department regulations kept military women away from direct action, out of fear that the American public would echo the cries of Maria Isela Rubalcava -- "I don't want to see her like this" -- when it came to women dying in combat. But when those rules changed in the mid-1990s, few people complained. And now, with more women serving in what the military calls "at-risk" jobs in Iraq, and more of them becoming casualties, the public has largely remained silent. Women who monitor gender roles in the military are divided over what this means.
Supporters of equality between men and women in the ranks say it reflects a great leap forward for a society striving for equal rights. "There's a shift in the feeling about women," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Wilma L. Vaught, president of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation. "People think she's doing her own thing."
"There's been a rethinking by parents," Vaught said. "They ask themselves, 'Do I value my daughter's life more than my son's life?' As a parent, I don't know how to answer that question."
As far as Phyllis Schlafly is concerned, the answer is simple. "I think it's uncivilized," said Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum. She called gender equality in the military a giant step backward.
"I think it's social experimentation, and I don't think it's going to help us win the war," she said. "They want to masculize the women and feminize the men, so that we're a gender-neutral society."
If women continue to die, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a think tank based in Livonia, Mich., the debate will almost certainly be sharpened.
"What we're seeing now with the use of women in the military is unprecedented, but here we are," Donnelly said. She said one of her concerns is that single mothers are being killed. Piestewa, for example, left behind two children.
"We are asking these policies to be reassessed," Donnelly said.
Women's current place in the military may be traced to legal changes beginning in 1948, when Congress passed the Armed Forces Integration Act, which gave women regular and reserve status in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. At the same time, the law limited women's presence in those branches to 2 percent of the forces and stipulated that women could not serve on ships and aircraft that engaged in combat.
Twenty years later, the ceiling was lifted on the number of women who could serve, but the other restrictions remained. It was not until 1992 that the United States repealed the laws that kept women out of combat aircraft. Two years later, then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin led a repeal of the Defense Department risk rule. The definition of direct ground combat changed, and new rules allowed women to serve in all units except those directly involved in fighting, such as armor, infantry, Ranger and field artillery battalions.
In 1991, women made up only 11 percent of the military, but now they account for 15 percent, according to the Defense Department. One of seven U.S. troops in Iraq is a woman. Women there have served on Patriot missile batteries, on military police patrols and in other support roles that place them dangerously close to the enemy. In Iraq, moreover, the dangers have been compounded by the guerrilla nature of the postwar insurgency.
Parents of women who have died there speak of their daughters -- and other military women -- with pride. "Personally, I think some of them are better than men," said Lisa Frye, mother of Nicole Frye, an Army reservist from Wisconsin who was killed in February at age 19 after a mortar round struck her convoy. "She was really good with a rifle, an expert marksman. Her fiance wasn't that good. He's in the National Guard."
Nicole's death "ripped my heart right out of my body," Frye said, but in the same breath she added: "We were really proud of her and what she accomplished, really proud, and we still are."
Frye's sentiment was echoed by John Witmer, whose daughter Michelle was shot to death atop a Humvee while laying down ground fire to protect her unit, the 32nd Military Police Company. She was 20.
John Witmer said Michelle and his other two daughters, Rachel and Charity, Michelle's twin, knew exactly what they were getting into when they volunteered with the Army National Guard in New Berlin, Wis.
"They were clear . . . that they were going to be in that situation," Witmer said. "Out of respect for my daughters, they knew what their job was going to be, and they did the job well."
Not every woman is doing a great job, Schlafly said. She said the photograph of England holding a leash attached to the neck of an Iraqi prisoner appalled her. "This later picture is a feminist fantasy," she said. "That's how feminists think about men."
Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project, said the photographs have nothing to do with gender. They show only that women are capable of making the same mistakes as men.
"We are seeing women POWs, women with their legs blown off, women who are heroes," Manning said. "And we're also seeing the dark side of it. . . . The pictures themselves are horrific. You think, 'Oh, my God, how is this going to be translated?' "
The fact that England is a woman helped inflame the Arab world, where the sight of men being humiliated by women is anathema, Donnelly said.
Sgt. Susan Sonnheim, who was wounded when a bomb detonated in Baghdad and threw her 10 feet into the air, said women are as prepared as men to take their place in the ranks. "We did the same training as men," said Sonnheim, 45, of Franklin, Wis., who served with Michelle Witmer in the 32nd Military Police Company before she was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District. "If you can't pull your weight, you wouldn't be there. I had a heavy backpack. A heavy ammo belt. It weighed more than me. But I did it."
"I'm sure they're saying that because women never really encountered combat, and now that they are, it's hard for them to fathom," Sonnheim said. "But they're fighting, and they're dying."
Supporters and opponents of placing women in "at-risk" jobs agree on at least one thing: Women do have a place in a volunteer military. Whenever American men have marched to war, women followed, according to a thumbnail history compiled by the Defense Department.
Margaret Corbin took charge of a cannon after her husband fell in the Revolutionary War. Two years later, in 1778, Deborah Samson disguised herself as a man, enlisted in the Continental Army, and was twice wounded in combat. Both women were awarded military pensions.
Women fought in the War of 1812, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. At least 36,000 women served in World War I, and 400,000 took part in World War II. In the Pacific Theater, 458 women died and 80 nurses were prisoners of war.
Spec. Tyanna Avery-Felder had been afraid to go to Iraq, but she toughed it out, said her father, Ray Avery. She seemed safe behind the front lines, working as a cook and a helper in the mess hall. But her convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device on April 7, the Army said, and she died at 22.
"I couldn't really believe it," Avery said. "She was nine days from coming home."
Sometimes, he said in a breaking voice, "I feel that females shouldn't be in that situation, shouldn't be in combat. They're capable. People who haven't been put in this situation don't know how really painful it is to lose someone, whether it's a son or daughter."
Lori Witmer, mother of Michelle, said she believes that losing a daughter is harder than losing a son, but that she would never have intervened in Michelle's decision to serve.
Isela Rubalcava was the only daughter in her family. As her body arrived at El Paso International Airport last week, Marrufo led the family in prayers. "She is the first woman from El Paso that had died in combat," Marrufo said. "I think she's unique in that sense."
Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
---------
Judge Sees Little Evidence to Support Anthrax Vaccine
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55581-2004May25.html
A federal judge said yesterday he had significant doubts about whether the federal government has enough scientific evidence to show that the anthrax vaccine required for military personnel is either safe or effective.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who will decide in coming weeks whether to halt the Defense Department's mandatory anthrax inoculations, also criticized the government's review of the vaccine as "one of the most jumbled, confusing" processes he had ever seen.
Sullivan made his remarks in a hearing on a lawsuit filed in March 2003 by six anonymous members of the U.S. military who said the vaccine posed health risks that had not been sufficiently studied.
More than 1 million U.S. troops have been given the anthrax vaccine since the program became mandatory in 1998, many of them in preparation for duty in Iraq. Hundreds have refused the vaccine out of concern for their safety amid complaints of harmful side effects and medical reports linking the vaccine to a few deaths.
At yesterday's hearing, Sullivan questioned why the Food and Drug Administration did not formally issue a ruling that the vaccine was safe and effective against inhalation anthrax until late December 2003. That move came 18 years after the vaccine was first proposed to the FDA for use against inhalation anthrax, but just a week after Sullivan had temporarily halted the military inoculation program.
On Dec. 22, Sullivan agreed with the military personnel who filed suit, determining that the FDA had never formally approved the drug for use against inhalation anthrax, but had approved it for anthrax contracted through the skin. He temporarily halted the program, ruling that defense officials could not require troops to "serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs" pending a final decision in the case.
Yesterday, John J. Michels, a lawyer for the six, charged that the FDA issued the ruling to protect the Defense Department's vaccination program, and said he wished he could read the e-mail messages between the two agencies during that time.
Brian D. Boyle, principal deputy associate attorney general, told Sullivan that the FDA decision was based on science. He said human studies that looked at a mix of anthrax cases -- most of them contracted through the skin, along with a few inhalation cases -- showed the vaccine was effective more than 90 percent of the time. Boyle said animal studies showed the vaccine worked on animals, though they did not prove the human immune system would react the same way.
Sullivan, however, said results of the human study might be skewed because it considered all the cases together. He suggested it would have been logical to examine separately the vaccine's effectiveness in the limited number of inhalation cases.
"Wouldn't it be more safe?" Sullivan asked. "The stakes couldn't be higher here." Sullivan said it appeared that neither the animal studies nor the human study were conclusive for humans.
Mark Zaid, an attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the military personnel, said yesterday that members of the U.S. military should have a choice about taking the vaccine until the FDA has performed conclusive studies. A more extensive human study will not be completed until 2007.
--------
Green Card Recruits Get a Raw Deal
(Inter Press Service)
by Katherine Stapp
May 26, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/stapp.php?articleid=2663
The U.S. government says Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is nothing more than a deserter who disobeyed direct orders to return to his army unit in Iraq.
Mejia does not deny that he refused to go back. He says he witnessed abuse and mistreatment of prisoners at a detention camp outside the Baghdad airport, including mock executions and sleep deprivation tactics like banging sledgehammers on the walls of cells.
His claims took on added credibility in light of the ongoing revelations of abuse, including torture, at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq, as well as at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, which houses hundreds of detainees captured during the U.S. "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan.
"It was not speculative that he felt forced to participate in war crimes," said Todd Ensign, one of Mejia's attorneys. "He was there for five months, seeing these things first-hand. He had a duty under international law not to return to the Gulf."
But in a twist, Mejia, a Costa Rican citizen, also argues that under an 1851 treaty between his homeland and the United States, he cannot be forced to perform compulsory military service beyond eight years.
And as one of the 40,000 foreign nationals in the U.S. military, his case has drawn attention to a U.S. government program that offers the lure of citizenship in exchange for military service.
"Poor people are always desperate," said Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano Studies at California State University at Northridge. "That is why they sell their body parts, or have them taken from them. As the war proceeds, there will be more recruitment from minority and poor white areas. Opportunity in the U.S. is limited, making the service an alternative for the poor."
These efforts do not end at the border. News accounts describe military recruiters traveling to poor border towns in Mexico and indigenous communities in Canada to entice people with U.S. green cards (permanent resident status) to join the army.
And under the Hispanic Access Initiative, recruiters are encouraged to target colleges and high schools with predominantly Latino students - many of whom may be illegal. They can even obtain access to students' addresses and phone numbers, and are free to contact them at home unless parents object.
Mejia was in his ninth year when he came home to Miami Beach on a 14-day leave and decided that he could not in good conscience continue to serve in Iraq.
However, the soldier's arguments failed to sway the military jury that on May 21 found the 28-year-old guilty of desertion and sentenced him to a year in the stockade, demotion in rank to private, and docking of his pay.
"After eight years, foreign nationals cannot serve unless they're in the citizenship process," Ensign told IPS. "Camilo says his commanders tried to pressure him into applying for citizenship, which made him wonder what was going on."
"He was really being held illegally, and this is another prong in his defense," he said. "We're considering filing in federal court, and the Costa Rican government may get involved."
Mejia is the first soldier to turn himself in to military authorities after refusing to serve in Iraq, but he may not be the last. So far, an estimated 600 U.S. soldiers have gone absent without leave (AWOL) rather than be sent overseas.
Critics say that once in the service, non-citizens have little hope of advancement, since they cannot be made officers or achieve any position requiring a security clearance.
"Non-citizens are more unlikely to be in the Air Force, Navy and support services, more unlikely to have a good education, so they'll be on the front lines. The military knows that their parents don't vote, so no complaints. It is very cynical," Acuna added.
Still, some 13,000 recruits had applied for expedited citizenship as of February, according to government figures.
Some of the very first casualties of Operation Iraqi Freedom were immigrants seeking citizenship. José Antonio Gutiérrez, a Guatemalan who crossed illegally into the United States at the age of 11 and later joined the Marines, was the second soldier killed in the war.
José Angel Garibay emigrated from Mexico to California as a young child, and hoped to be a career soldier. His quest for full legal status ended in March 2003, when he died during heavy fighting in Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Both men were granted posthumous citizenship. But a bill that would provide citizenship benefits to spouses, parents and children of enlistees killed overseas has been languishing in Congress since last year.
The Census Bureau estimates that eight to nine million illegal aliens live in the United States, though other sources say the number is much higher. About 33 million legal residents (12 percent of the U.S. population) are foreign-born.
Exchanging citizenship for military service is not new; during the Persian Gulf War, the Vietnam War and other conflicts, some 100,000 non-citizens became eligible for accelerated U.S. citizenship.
In July 2002, President George W. Bush shortened the three-year waiting time for qualified non-citizens on active duty in the "war on terrorism," allowing them to apply immediately upon enlisting.
But as U.S. casualties pile up, more immigrants may think twice about the price of legal status.
Mejia continues to speak publicly against what he views as an "oil-driven" conflict.
"When you look at the war, and you look at the reasons that took us to war, and you don't find that any of the things that we were told that we're going to war for turned out to be true; when you don't find there are weapons of mass destruction, and when you don't find that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and you see that you're not helping the people and the people don't want you there," he added on a recent television news show.
"To me, there's no military contract and no military duty that's going to justify being a part of that war."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judicial Discipline to Be Examined
Rehnquist Names Panel in Response to Ethics Controversies
By Mike Allen and Brian Faler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55779-2004May25.html
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has named a high-level panel to investigate the federal courts' handling of judicial misconduct, court officials said yesterday.
Rehnquist named the committee with a statement that acknowledged criticism by Congress of judicial handling of ethics issues. Justice Stephen G. Breyer will chair the six-member panel, according to a statement published this week in the newsletter of the federal courts. The committee will hold its first meeting next month in Washington.
"There has been some recent criticism from Congress about the way in which the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 is being implemented, and I decided that the best way to see if there are any real problems is to have a committee look into it," Rehnquist said in the statement.
David Sellers, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said the panel was created in response to comments by House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who told the U.S. Judicial Conference on March 16 that Congress "will begin assessing whether the disciplinary authority delegated to the judiciary has been responsibly exercised and ought to continue."
Sensenbrenner complained at the conference, which Rehnquist attended, that another judge had "whitewashed" a complaint the Wisconsin Republican had filed against Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, based in Chicago.
Separately, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia became the butt of editorial cartoons and late-night talk show hosts after he accepted a flight on Air Force Two and went hunting with Vice President Cheney in Louisiana in January, three weeks after the high court agreed to hear a challenge to the secrecy maintained by a White House energy policy task force that the vice president headed.
Scalia said in a 21-page memo published in April that he had done nothing wrong and would not recuse, or disqualify, himself from the case. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," he wrote.
Several legal scholars said Rehnquist's panel has the potential to increase the accountability of the most secretive branch of government. The creation of the panel was first reported by the Associated Press.
The act of Congress cited by Rehnquist defines judicial misconduct and articulates the standards for judges to use when deciding whether to recuse themselves from a case in which they, a spouse or a child might have, or be seen as having, an interest. That can include a financial interest or membership on a board involved in the case. The act applies to lower federal courts and does not mention the Supreme Court.
Ronald D. Rotunda, an authority on judicial ethics at George Mason University, said judges "need brighter lines, and the prestige of the court is hurt when people are able to attack judges, citing statutes that have very open-ended and vague meanings."
"The federal courts need to show they are concerned about these incidents and are not above the law," he said. "Right now, you have fuzzy and formless rules that invite third parties to accuse the justices of unethical conduct, and encourage litigation and second-guessing of decisions."
In addition to Breyer, the other five members are: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond; Judge Pasco M. Bowman II, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, based in St. Louis; Judge D. Brock Hornby, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine; Judge Sarah Evans Barker, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana; and Sally M. Rider, the chief justice's administrative assistant.
Rehnquist's statement gave little information about the committee's mission, which is "to evaluate how the federal judicial system is dealing with judicial misbehavior and disability."
The announcement said the last comprehensive look into the judicial discipline system was performed by the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal, which issued a report in 1993. The committee, which will have help from the staff of the federal courts, is to report to Rehnquist.
Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig, Helen Dewar and Jerry Markon contributed to this report.
--------
Federal Court Upholds Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law
May 26, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/national/26CND-SUIC.html?hp
A federal appeals court today rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block the only law in the nation authorizing doctors to help their patients commit suicide.
The decision, by a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, upheld Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.
The majority used unusually pointed and personal language to rebuke Attorney General John Ashcroft for overstepping his authority.
"The Attorney General's unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers," Judge Richard Tallman wrote for the majority, "interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide and far exceeds the scope of his authority under federal law."
The Oregon law, the product of a 1994 voter initiative, allows adults with incurable diseases who are likely to die in six months to obtain lethal drugs from their doctors. The doctors may prescribe but not administer the drugs, and they are granted immunity from liability. About 30 people a year have used the law to end their lives since the law became effective in 1997. That represents about one in every thousand deaths in Oregon.
In 1997, Mr. Ashcroft, then a United States Senator, asked Attorney General Janet Reno to declare that assisted suicide involving doctors violated federal law. She declined, saying that individual states should be allowed to regulate their own doctors. When Mr. Ashcroft became attorney general in 2001, he reversed Ms. Reno's position and issued a directive saying that doctors who prescribe lethal drugs to patients could face prosecution.
A doctor, a pharmacist, several terminally ill patients and the state of Oregon challenged that directive in 2001. Judge Robert Jones, of the federal district court in Oregon, sided with the plaintiffs in 2002.
In its ruling today, the appeals court said that upholding Mr. Ashcroft's directive would have a high human toll.
"Doctors will be afraid to write prescriptions sufficient to painlessly hasten death," Judge Tallman wrote. "Pharmacists will fear filling their prescriptions. Patients will be consigned to continued suffering and, according to the declarations of record, may die slow and agonizing deaths."
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon's attorney general, Hardy Myers, said the ruling was "a slam-dunk victory for the state of Oregon."
"Decisions regarding medical practice are decisions for the state and the state alone to make," he said. "Attorney General Ashcroft simply abused his authority in this matter."
Judge J. Clifford Wallace, in a dissenting opinion, said the attorney general had the necessary authority to issue his directive.
-------- homeland security
U.S. Warns Of Al Qaeda Threat This Summer
Agents in Country Said To Be Planning Attack
By Susan Schmidt and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55705-2004May25.html
Federal officials have information suggesting that al Qaeda has people in the United States preparing to mount a large-scale terrorist attack this summer, sources familiar with the information said yesterday.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III intend to hold a joint news conference this afternoon to discuss the threat and to ask Americans to watch for several suspected al Qaeda operatives who may be in the country, officials said.
The concerns are driven by intelligence deemed credible that was obtained about a month ago indicating an attack may be planned between now and Labor Day.
That information dovetails with other intelligence "chatter" suggesting that al Qaeda operatives are pleased with the change in government resulting from the March 11 terrorist bombings in Spain and may want to affect elections in the United States and other countries.
"They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process," said one federal official with access to counterterrorism intelligence.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials are trying to strengthen security at the presidential nominating conventions this summer in Boston and New York. They are also concerned about the possible targeting of other prominent events, starting with the World War II Memorial ceremony Saturday in the District, the Group of Eight summit June 8-10 in Sea Island, Ga., and the Summer Olympic Games in August in Athens.
Federal officials have been discussing raising the national threat level between now and Jan. 21, the day after the presidential inauguration, although Homeland Security Department officials said yesterday that no such announcement is scheduled.
The Justice Department and the FBI plan to ask for the public's help today in locating several suspected terrorist sympathizers, including some whose names have not been made public before.
The bureau probably plans another public push to find Aafia Siddiqui, 32, a Pakistani woman who has a doctorate in neurological science and has studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University in the Boston area, as well as in Houston.
The FBI also could seek help locating a man Siddiqui has been linked to, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah. He is a suspected al Qaeda member who spent time in Florida, and his name has come up in interrogations of captured al Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
In April, an FBI bulletin to law enforcement agencies warned of possible truck bombs. A source familiar with the government's threat discussions said yesterday that truck bombs are a primary concern.
"I'm more worried than I was at Christmastime," said one senior U.S. intelligence official, comparing the "election threat" to the canceling of specific airline flights around the holidays. He said the U.S. government is convinced there are as yet unidentified al Qaeda operatives residing in the United States, waiting for the word to launch plots.
"They are here, and there are indications they are preparing" attacks, said the official, whom government policy bars from being named.
Another FBI bulletin, issued last week, urged law enforcement officials to be on the alert for possible suicide bombers. Officials were urged to take note of people dressed in bulky jackets in warm weather, clothing smelling of chemicals or trailing electrical wires, and they warned that potential bombers may be dressed in uniform or even disguised as pregnant women.
Within the past three weeks, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have received briefings from the CIA and the FBI on what the CIA counterterrorism center has termed the "election threat." The members have asked the agencies for more specific, follow-up briefings, including an assessment of al Qaeda's presence in the United States, congressional sources said.
One counterterrorism official said al Qaeda still aims to carry off an attack that would kill large numbers of people, and is aiming at modes of transportation such as airlines and ships. Anything less than a spectacular attack, such as a suicide bombing, would appear weak to al Qaeda's financiers, according to the counterterrorism official.
President Bush has said two-thirds of al Qaeda's pre-Sept. 11, 2001, leadership has been killed or captured. But CIA Director George J. Tenet has said many established terrorist groups that previously did not work together are making a concerted effort to undermine the United States.
----
Kerry Seeks More Homeland Security Funds
Wednesday May 26, 2004
By NEDRA PICKLER,
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4136201,00.html
SEATTLE (AP) - John Kerry said Wednesday that President Bush has not done enough to thwart a potential terrorist attack while the Democratic presidential candidate's backers suggested the administration's latest terror warning might be politically motivated.
As Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference in Washington to warn of intelligence showing the al-Qaida terrorist network is planning another attack in the United States in coming months, the head of police and firefighters unions that support Kerry questioned the timing of the announcement in a conference call organized by Kerry's campaign.
International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger said it is suspicious that the administration reportedly knew about the new threat for more than a month but only chose to publicize now because Bush's approval ratings have been sinking.
``I find the reports in this press conference to be politically convenient at best,'' said Schaitberger.
Kerry, speaking at Seattle's Pier 62, said the country deserves a president ``who doesn't make homeland security a photo opportunity and the rhetoric of a campaign. We deserve a president who makes America safer.''
Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, said: ``President Bush has increased funding for homeland security by record levels, and John Kerry's claims to the contrary are completely false.''
Kerry said the federal government should be giving more resources to mayors, firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians to prevent and respond to an attack.
``We deserve a president who puts America's taxpayers dollars where the need is, not just where the ideology wants it to go,'' he said.
``Now, I'm not going to stand in front of you as a potential president and say to you that you can protect every single place and harden every single target in the country,'' Kerry told a cheering but soaked crowd that waited two hours in the rain after having their umbrellas confiscated for security. ``All Americans know better than that.
``What we can do is protect against catastrophe. What we can do is protect those places that are most logical places for the largest potential damage and danger. And that's the responsibility of a president,'' Kerry said.
Bush's handling of the war on terrorism is widely considered his political strength in the election year, although the increasing violence in Iraq has cut into his advantage.
International Brotherhood of Police Officers President David Holway criticized the administration for ``sitting on this information'' instead of sharing it immediately with police.
``The timing on this is very suspect,'' Holway said. ``We want to make sure that when this information does come out, it comes out in a timely manner.''
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
----
Intelligence Indicates Al Qaeda Planning Attack, Ashcroft Says
May 26, 2004
By MARIA NEWMAN and KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/national/26CND-TERR.html?hp
Saying that law enforcement authorities have "credible intelligence from multiple sources" that Al Qaeda "intends to attempt an attack on the United States in the next few months," Attorney General John Ashcroft today issued a call for the public's help in stopping terrorists.
Mr. Ashcroft, appearing with Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I., said the terrorist plans may be nearly complete, but acknowledged that officials do not have intelligence on where or when any attacks could occur.
Their news conference came a few hours after Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security, said there were no plans yet to raise the nation's terror alert level from yellow, the midpoint in the scale.
"There is absolutely nothing specific enough" that warrants a change in the alert level, Mr. Ridge said on NBC's "Today."
In the news conference, Mr. Ashcroft said terrorist attacks could target various high-profile events in the next few months, including a summit of the eight industrial powers in Georgia next month, the Republican and Democratic party conventions in July and August, the presidential election on November 2 and the presidential inauguration in January.
"This disturbing intelligence indicates Al Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard," Mr. Ashcroft said, adding that such plans could be 90 percent complete. But, he added later in the news conference, "we are not aware of the details of this plan."
Mr. Ashcroft also said he wanted the public's help in finding seven people he said were associated with Al Qaeda who have been listed as wanted on the F.B.I.'s Web site for some time. The six men and one woman "all present a clear and present danger to America. All should be considered armed and dangerous," Mr. Ashcroft said.
They include Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a Saudi native who once lived in Florida, and Aafia Siddiqui, a woman from Pakistan who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The attorney general said recent intelligence indicates that Al Qaeda operatives might be traveling with families to attract less attention, and are seeking recruits `who can portray themselves as European."
He portrayed the "ideal Al Qaeda operative" an individual in his or her late 20's or early 30's.
Mr. Ashcroft said the Justice Department and other top law enforcement officials chose to disclose the intelligence information at this point, even though it is unspecific, "so the American people can help us reduce the risk."
The nation's terror alert level remains at yellow, the midpoint of a five-level scale. Mr. Ashcroft said he chose to make this call to alert the public even though he might be opening himself to criticism that he was scaring Americans without a specific threat.
"I just don't think my job is to worry about what skeptics say, but to help the United States remain safe," he said. He also said he would prefer to be criticized for "a plan that led us to safety rather than a plan that led us to risk."
Mr. Ridge has warned since April of potential threats in the United States over the summer.
"I can confirm that we have seen for the past several weeks a continuous stream of reporting that talks about the possibility of attacks on the United States," Mr. Ridge said on "Today." But he said the flow of information was "not unlike what we've seen for the past several years."
"There's not a consensus within the administration that we need to raise the threat level," Mr. Ridge said this morning. "We don't need to raise the threat level to increase our security."
The terror report from the Justice Department also comes at a time when President Bush, who has highlighted the terrorist threat in his re-election campaign, appears to be losing ground to Sen. John Kerry, his likely opponent in November.
The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan earlier said there was nothing political in the Justice Department's report on terror today.
"The president believes it's very important to share information appropriately," The Associated Press quoted McClellan as saying earlier. "We do that in a number of ways when it comes to looking at the threats we face here in the homeland."
At his news conference, Mr. Ashcroft said that he and Mr. Ridge were not necessarily disagreeing on the current terror level. "I believe we're all on the same page," he said. He was asked whether intelligence officials had new and more specific information about the seven, to cause him to reissue the grim warning he gave today.
"We believe that the public, like all of us, needs a reminder," he said. "It is to reinvigorate and revitalize our contact with all our sources of information, to query those sources to generate additional intelligence that would provide us the kind of information upon which we could take further action to defend."
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of the New York Police Department said in a statement Tuesday night that his department had received no intelligence reports to indicate a specific threat or potential attack.
The Los Angeles police held a news conference on Tuesday to reassure the public. "We would be foolhardy to ignore those statements, but I think it would be irresponsible to panic," said John Miller, head of the department's counterterrorism bureau.
On Thursday, Mr. Kerry, presumed Democratic presidential nominee, will begin an 11-day focus on foreign policy and national security with a speech in Seattle, his campaign said today. "Terrorists will never shut down our democracy," the senator said today in Seattle at a campaign stop.
--------
Public's Help Is Sought to Prevent Terrorist Strikes
May 26, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26terror.html
WASHINGTON, May 25 - Attorney General John Ashcroft and Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. plan to begin a campaign of public vigilance on Wednesday, warning that terrorists still hope to strike inside the United States, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday evening.
The officials said that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller planned to hold a news conference at F.B.I. headquarters to discuss a well-known pattern of intelligence indicating that the United States remained the highest priority target for Al Qaeda and affiliated extremist networks.
Contradicting news reports Tuesday saying that new information pointed to a specific threat, the officials said Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller had no new intelligence to suggest that an attack was being planned or that preparations were under way.Instead, the officials said they would issue a new call for public awareness and ask again for the public's help in apprehending suspected terrorists who have long been sought by the F.B.I. and whose names are on the bureau's Web site.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has warned since April of potential threats in the United States over the summer. His department has no plans to raise the color-coded terror alert level, which is now set at yellow for an "elevated" risk of attack, officials said Tuesday.
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of the New York City police said in a statement Tuesday night that his department had received no intelligence reports to indicate a specific threat or potential attack.
The Los Angeles police held a news conference Tuesday to reassure the public. "We would be foolhardy to ignore those statements, but I think it would be irresponsible to panic," said John Miller, head of the department's counterterrorism bureau.
--------
Changes in Color Alert in Past 2 Years
May 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat-Colors.html
Changes in the color-coded national threat level since the system was announced on March 12, 2002. U.S. officials said Wednesday that intelligence indicated al-Qaida was planning an attack, but the threat level was not changed:
--Sept. 10, 2002: yellow (``elevated'' threat level) raised to orange (``high'' level), based on intelligence from a high al-Qaida operative concerning possible attacks ahead of the first anniversary of Sept. 11. Returned to yellow Sept. 24; no known incidents.
--Feb. 7, 2003: yellow to orange, based on the possibility of attacks during Muslim holy days associated with the hajj pilgrimage to the religion's holiest city, Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Returned to yellow Feb. 27; no known incidents.
--March 17, 2003: yellow to orange, based on reports that ``sleeper cells'' of terrorists in the United States might have been considering attacks on nuclear power plants as the U.S. went to war footing for the invasion of Iraq. Returned to yellow April 16; no known incidents.
May 20, 2003: yellow to orange, based on the possibility of terror attacks associated with al-Qaida bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco that killed 75 people including eight Americans. Returned to yellow May 30, 2003; no known incidents.
Dec. 21, 2003: yellow to orange, based on a high level of communications intercepts that might foreshadow terror attacks. Returned to yellow Jan. 9, 2004; no known incidents.
--------
Why Ashcroft Must Go What happened to Brandon Mayfield could happen to anybody
Antiwar.com
by Justin Raimondo
May 26, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2667
The first time they allowed Brandon Mayfield any visitors, he reached out toward the heavy glass partition and spoke into the telephone, trying to reassure his wife and mother:
"Even after the FBI had searched his house, carried away belongings and confiscated credit cards and checkbooks - without charging him with a crime - Mayfield told his family that he had faith in the system.
"'He said he believes in this system. He said it is the best system in the world,' AvNell Mayfield, 63, recalled. 'He knows he will be exonerated. He said no matter what transpires, just be patient, reassure the children and don't let the waiting get to you. He said, `This will all turn out alright.'"
And so it did - but not until John Ashcroft's Justice Department had done everything to keep him jailed, defenseless, and smeared as a "terrorist" in the eyes of the world.
Two weeks after the March 11 Madrid terrorist bombings, the FBI started watching the 37-year-old lawyer and Muslim convert 24/7. The ostensible reason was that a computer search matching up fingerprints found at the scene of the bombing matched his - along with 15 others. The FBI narrowed it down to three, and honed in on Mayfield because of his religion, his associations, and his political views. This is what one FBI official later described as "an absolutely incontrovertible match."
Using the power granted them by the "PATRIOT" Act, FBI agents broke into his house and conducted a search in his absence, rifling through his kids' Spanish homework, and leaving the doors double-bolted - which immediately alerted the Mayfield family that someone had been on the premises. Mayfield called 911 when it happened a second time, and he found a man's footprint on the rug. They couldn't pick up the phone without hearing an odd clicking. When the FBI finally swooped down on the Mayfields' home in a quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon, they burst in the door, trashed the place, and trundled him off in handcuffs without a word. He was jailed for weeks without charges: Ashcroft's goons told the media he was being held as a "material witness" to the Madrid bombings.
By mid-April, the Spanish authorities were saying there was no trace of Mayfield's presence in their country, and also disagreed with the FBI's contention that the prints found on a detonator bag matched Mayfield's. The Americans had seen only a computer-generated copy, not the original image of the prints. But the case against Mayfield didn't rest entirely on somewhat dubious physical evidence, as this news report details:
"The FBI pointed to Mayfield's attendance at a local mosque, his advertising legal services in a publication owned by a man suspected to have links to terrorism, and a telephone call his wife placed to a branch of an Islamic charity with suspected terrorist ties. They also noted that Mayfield represented a man in a child custody case who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help al-Qaida and the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan."
Another news report cites a U.S. official as saying:
"If that print had matched with some little old lady in Peoria, that would be one thing. But what are the odds it would be somebody with this background?"
Or, as Kent Mayfield, Brandon's brother, put it:
"I think the reason they are holding him is because he is of the Muslim faith and because he is not super happy with the Bush administration. So if that's a crime, well you can burn half of us."
More than half of us, if the polls are any indication.
The attorney general of the United States has been on a witch-hunt since 9/11, and what I want to know is how many others are being held, without charges, without the possibility of defending themselves, and without anyone either knowing or caring? How many swept up in the anti-Muslim anti-Arab pogrom launched by Ashcroft in the wake of 9/11 - on the basis of similarly weighty "evidence" - are being held even now?
Using the excuse of "fighting terrorism," Ashcroft and his apologists have sought to shut down the Constitution, demolish the Bill of Rights, and set up what can only be described as a police state. Although they already had the legal tools - and more than enough clues - to track down Mohammed Atta and his friends and put them out of business, Ashcroft's gang seized the opportunity presented by the worst terrorist attack in American history to breach the walls of constitutional government and ram the "PATRIOT" Act through a disoriented and totally intimidated Congress.
As our color-coded alert system cascaded from yellow to orange, it became politically important that the Bush administration be seen as trying to fight domestic terrorism as energetically as they were prepared to go after Saddam Hussein. Any expression of support for Arab groups of any kind became immediately suspect: all you had to do was send a check to a cause deemed "terrorist" by the feds, and you were to be treated as an "enemy combatant."
We are all enemy combatants in Ashcroft's war on the Constitution - except for the tiny minority of militant neocons, who play the indispensable role of volunteer stool pigeons and rationalizers of the police state mentality.
Writing in Frontpagemag.com, neocon David Horowitz's hate-site, Stephen Schwartz sought to score a few propaganda points to further his totalitarian agenda. Declaiming that the Mayfield arrest was just another episode in the fight against our "internal enemies," Schwartz gleefully crowed that this signaled "a deepening and dangerous crisis for American society and its relationship to Muslims who live within the borders of the U.S." Aside from having volunteered to represent Thomas Battle, one of the Portland Seven, in an unrelated child custody case, writes Schwartz:
"Mayfield's biography includes other troubling items. As a law student at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kan., he helped organize a branch of the Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), which was set up by agents of Saudi Arabia's official Islamic clerical establishment to propagate the extremist doctrines of Wahhabism."
There were other aspects of Mayfield's religious and political beliefs that super-sleuth Schwartz found "troubling": he went to a mosque supposedly favored by the Portland Seven. The mosque's website (www.bilalmasjid.com) is what really got Schwartz the would-be police spy going: It "includes a set of links supporting" what Schwartz considers "Islamist radical advocacy and organizations."
In the world Schwartz and Ashcroft would have us live in, the wrong links - computer links - can put you in jail. Not only that, but, in their Bizarro World universe, the more normal you are, the more suspect you are, as Schwartz argues in his piece:
"Innocuous, obscure Americans like [Mayfield] are precisely the sort of people extremist conspirators would seek to involve in their activities. Mayfield and his family say he never visited Spain or Morocco, the centers of the Madrid bombing conspiracy, but it is in the nature of a global conspiracy to be, well, global, and to call on participants far from the places in which actions are carried out."
So you'd best watch out, all you innocuous, obscure Americans - because the sinister Schwartz and his FBI buddies are watching you.
Now we must all answer to Schwartz, and to Ashcroft: for our computer links, our beliefs, our very normality - all of which can be used as "evidence" of our alleged subversion. The other day they locked up someone for building a website for a group that was deemed "terrorist." All this is being done in the name of "preemptively" attacking an alleged "imminent" threat - and where have we heard that one before?
Writing in Frontpagemag.com, one Steven Vincent averred:
"The Bush Administration must be praying they got this one right. As revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib continue to cast doubts on the Defense Department's conduct of the war in Iraq, the case of Brandon Mayfield - the Oregon lawyer jailed for supposedly aiding the Madrid bombers - is sharpening debate on the Justice Department's pursuit of the War on Terror. Should FBI allegations against Mayfield prove less than credible, critics will find further support for their contentions that the White House is engaged in an anti-Muslim witch-hunt. Conversely, should Mayfield prove culpable in the 3-11 massacre, suspicions that anti-Western Muslims are hatching plots from inside America will gain increasing strength - as could support for John Ashcroft and his enforcement of the PATRIOT Act. The stakes are that high."
Well, then, since Mayfield has been released, and the FBI has apologized, one assumes Frontpagemag.com will now run an editorial admitting that the critics of the PATRIOT Act were right. Oh, yeah, and Vincent, Schwartz, and the horrific David Horowtiz will no doubt follow the FBI's example and say sorry for casting aspersions on an innocent man - right?
Don't hold your breath. Vincent's article, while detailing the skepticism of the Spaniards in regard to some very flimsy evidence - and acknowledging that the FBI had rushed to judgement - went on to say it's no wonder he was targeted and jailed because, after all,
"He also fits the profile of a domestic terrorist through his status as a Muslim convert and former member of the U.S. armed forces. "
Vincent goes on to detail the activities of a number of individuals who have nothing whatsoever to do with Mayfield, even invoking the name of Tim McVeigh, who, we are informed, "reportedly returned from Gulf War I a vehement Arabist"!
This argument-by-amalgam is the favored methodology of the neocons, who habitually use it to smear their enemies. If you attack the neocons, as, say, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski did in exposing the key role played by the Office of Special Plans in lying us into war, you must be a member of the LaRouche cult, as Michael Rubin averred in National Review Online recently. If you really hit the War Party where it hurts, like General Anthony Zinni did recently in "60 Minutes" interview, naming the neocons as having put the mess in Mesopotamia, you're an "anti-Semite," as Joel Mowbray, and, more recently, the Jerusalem Post have charged. If you puncture the puffed-up pretensions of the porcine Schwartz, as I have on several occasions, you're a "fascist" and in league with "terrorists."
The new totalitarians speak the language of "democracy," liberality, and modernity: they pose as the champions of Western civilization against an encroaching barbarism, and claim that their goal is to "liberate" the earth, starting with the Middle East. It's a bald-faced lie. The neoconservative agenda is topped, as always, by the glory and utter necessity of perpetual war: that is their number one principle. But they cannot hope to prevail if they are faced with the prospect of rising criticism on the home front: that is the "lesson" they learned from Vietnam. The war, they maintain to this day, was winnable: we were defeated by the antiwar movement, they claim, by Jane Fonda and not Ho Chi Minh. This time, however, the neocons are determined that the pattern won't be repeated - and they are seeking to grasp the legal "tools" to nip it in the bud. They can spy on us, they can leak whatever information they discern, and they can do it all in the dark, "legally" - insofar as the concept of legality applies to such a system.
Neocon godfather Irving Kristol long ago formulated an argument in favor of government censorship, and I expect this to be dusted off and recycled any day now. The entire neocon movement is motivated by the police agent mentality, exemplified by such groups as Daniel Pipes's "Campus Watch," which compiles lists of insufficiently pro-Israel academics, and Horowitz's own soon-to-be-unveiled website, followthenetwork.org - which doesn't seem to be up and running quite yet in spite of all the multi-millions poured into his coffers by neocon-controlled "philanthropies."
Luckily for us these would-be world-conquering commissars are totally incompetent. The Justice Department has had a string of embarrassing "mistakes," including the wrongful prosecution of Captain James Yee, yet another Muslim convert in the military, recently exonerated of all charges of "espionage," and the persecution and pursuit of Steven Hatfill, named as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case, who has been smeared but never charged. Now we have the Mayfield case, another instance in which Ashcroft's Raiders came on like the Gestapo but wound up looking more like the Keystone Kops.
This is not to trivialize the threat represented by the attorney general and his amen corner, but it seems to me that, through sheer fumbling, this Justice Department has called the credibility of its leadership into serious question. The President is dismissing General Ricardo Sanchez, and voices (not all of them Democrats by any means) are raised calling for Rumsfeld's head, as well as Wolfowitz's and Feith's, on account of the Pentagon's series of blunders in occupied Iraq. Yet Ashcroft has presided over a string of similarly disastrous decisions, including deciding to lock up Mayfield before much real evidence had been accumulated. As the International Herald Tribune reported at the time of his arrest:
"The authorities arrested a Portland lawyer in connection with the Madrid rail bombings before they had a clear idea about the strength of their case and they cut short a planned covert surveillance of him because of concerns that information was leaking out to the news media, according to law enforcement officials."
The entire argument of the War Party, whether in foreign or domestic policy, is that preemptive action based on sketchy intelligence is a necessary part of the post-9/11 new world reality. Sure, we couldn't know that Saddam had WMD or links to Al Qaeda, they aver, but we couldn't afford to wait for reasonable certainty - "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," as Condoleezza Rice put it on national television. So what if we're dragged into an endless, draining conflict in Iraq, and, perhaps, elsewhere in the Middle East. Don't worry: you'll get used to it!
The same principle applies to domestic law enforcement: we can't afford to wait for proof, the rules of evidence must be relaxed, and the old constraints on government power no longer apply. So what if innocents like Mayfield - and who knows how many others - are trampled underfoot? You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs: isn't that what the Marxists used to say in defense of the Soviet gulags?
Don't worry - you'll get used to it.
The feds were worried that the media had leaked their suspicions to Mayfield, and that he would flee before they could get their hands on him:
"So surveillance that was just beginning was abruptly halted and he was arrested before investigators had fully examined his telephone records, before they knew if Mayfield had ever traveled to Spain or elsewhere overseas and before they knew if he had ever met with anyone suspected in the bombing. His relatives said he had not been out of the United States for 10 years."
Vicious, and stupid - that's the best one can say about John Ashcroft and his crew of Justice Department Torquemadas. And the same goes for the neocons, who hailed the Mayfield arrest as the coming of the New Neocon Order, and richly deserve the fall that is coming....
--------
Mall security tightened for event
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jerry Seper
May 26, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040525-100343-5921r.htm
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and specialists will patrol the Mall, monitor radar and provide air security during the Memorial Day dedication this weekend of the National World War II Memorial, federal officials said yesterday.
"We expect a lot of people, not a lot of protesters, but we are prepared to do whatever is necessary to assist in protecting the event and the nation," said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia, who leads Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE agents will assist U.S. Park Police and Metropolitan Police in securing the area around the Mall this weekend.
During a press briefing yesterday, Mr. Garcia and Wendell C. Shingler, director of Federal Protective Services (FPS), an ICE agency, said ICE's Office of Air and Marine Operations will work with other law-enforcement agencies during the weekend to secure the "critical, restricted airspace" over the Mall.
They said ICE radar-detection specialists at the National Capital Region Coordination Center - as they do 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the D.C. area - will work with ICE air crews flying Black Hawk helicopters and Cessna Citation interceptor jets out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to secure the airspace over the dedication ceremonies and the adjoining area.
Mr. Shingler also said that FPS agents will assist Park Police officers by providing uniformed officers for crowd control and explosives-detecting dogs and their handlers.
"We are the first law-enforcement agency with the cutting-edge advantage of having officers trained in both law enforcement and the handling of hazardous materials," Mr. Shingler said. "That gives us the ability to not only be the first responders in the maintenance of any potential crime scene, but the ability to identify and handle potential weapons of mass destruction or other hazardous materials."
Mr. Garcia and Mr. Shingler said that although no hazardous-material threat had been reported, ICE agents could respond immediately to such a possibility.
More than 120,000 visitors - including former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton - are expected to attend the formal dedication Saturday of the National World War II Memorial, a $175 million monument to honor members of the World War II generation. Sitting about 6 feet below street level, the memorial includes a waterfall and is surrounded by 56 pillars that represent wartime U.S. states, territories and the District.
The National Park Service has said that it expects about 200,000 visitors on each day of the three-day holiday weekend.
Numerous streets will be closed around the Mall area and Metro schedules will be altered.
-------- human rights
Group Says Chinese Saw Detainees
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
John Mintz
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56018-2004May25.html
The Amnesty International human rights group alleged yesterday that a Chinese government delegation visited the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2002 and participated in interrogations in which Chinese detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation, forced sitting for many hours and intimidation.
Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for the group, said Amnesty based the claim on multiple sources of information but declined to identify them. In a statement released yesterday, Amnesty said it deemed "credible" the sources' allegation that the Chinese delegation took part in the mistreatment of some of the 22 Chinese-origin ethnic Uighur detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.
U.S. military officials have denied allegations of physical mistreatment leveled by some released detainees from Britain, but say some "credible" allegations "are being investigated." In the past, U.S. officials have confirmed that foreign intelligence officers visited the Guantanamo Bay jail to help question their countrymen, but few allegations have emerged that any helped direct abusive interrogations.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a military spokeswoman, declined to comment yesterday on Amnesty's allegations.
U.S. officials have said some or all of the Chinese detainees likely will be released soon. But human rights groups have expressed concern that members of the mainly Muslim Uighur community could be harassed or tortured if returned to China from Guantanamo Bay.
--------
Russia's Putin Criticizes Human Rights Groups
May 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-putin.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday denounced human rights groups critical of his record and accused some of serving the interests of dubious organizations.
He made no specific mention of any single group in his annual state of the nation address, in which he devoted 15 minutes to the importance of democracy.
``For some of these organizations the priority has become a different goal -- in particular receiving funds from influential foreign and domestic foundations -- and for others serving dubious groups and commercial interests,'' he said.
He said the groups in question often failed to speak up about actual abuses.
``There is nothing surprising about this -- they cannot bite the hand that feeds them,'' he told 800 parliamentarians, ministers and public figures in the Kremlin.
Rights groups were quick to criticize the president's comments, with some branding them reminiscent of the Soviet-era KGB security service.
``Equating the receiving of official grants by human rights...organizations with serving 'questionable interests' comes across as the style of thinking that was characteristic of the KGB,'' said prominent rights activist Lev Ponomaryov.
In a statement, Ponomaryov said strong criticism by rights activists of Putin had prompted the president to speak out.
Rights groups have accused Putin's administration in the past year of stifling media freedom, in particular limiting access to state-run television for his defeated rivals in March's presidential election.
They say Putin has made Russia increasingly undemocratic and criticize the jailing of former boss of oil major YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as unfair and selective. He is awaiting a trial on fraud and tax evasion charges. Putin says it is up to the courts to determine whether Khodorkovsky or other magnates who acquired property in chaotic 1990s privatizations broke the law.
Rights groups have also criticized Putin's actions in Chechnya. They say pro-Kremlin forces are involved in torture, abuse and other atrocities in the region.
Arch foes of Putin, like Khodorkovsky and exiled media tycoon Boris Berezovsky have funded human rights organizations in the past.
Rights activist and Soviet-era dissident Valeria Novodvorskaya said the fact groups had to rely on funding from businesses and organizations highlighted the Russian government's lack of interest in human rights.
``If a country doesn't need rights defenders, if it doesn't put even a penny into human rights, then inevitably those who support these defenders will be the international organizations that see some sense in human rights protection,'' she told Ekho Moskvy radio.
-------- justice
THE LAW
Who Would Try Civilians of U.S.? No One in Iraq
May 26, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26PROS.html
Though civilian translators and interrogators may have participated in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, prosecuting them will present challenges, legal experts say, because such civilians working for the military are subject to neither Iraqi nor military justice.
On the basis of a referral from the Pentagon, the Justice Department opened an investigation on Friday into the conduct of one civilian contractor in Iraq, who has not been identified.
"We remain committed to taking all appropriate action within our jurisdiction regarding allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners," Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement.
Prosecuting civilian contractors in United States courts would be "fascinating and enormously complicated," said Deborah N. Pearlstein, director of the U.S. law and security program of Human Rights First.
It is clear, on the other hand, that neither Iraqi courts nor American courts-martial are available.
In June 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, granted broad immunity to civilian contractors and their employees. They were, he wrote, generally not subject to criminal and civil actions in the Iraqi legal system, including arrest and detention.
That immunity is limited to their official acts under their contracts, and it is unclear whether any abuses alleged can be said to have been such acts. But even unofficial conduct by contractors in Iraq cannot be prosecuted there, Mr. Bremer's order said, without his written permission.
Similarly, under a series of Supreme Court decisions, civilians cannot be court-martialed in the absence of a formal declaration of war. There was no such declaration in the Iraq war.
In theory, the president could establish new military commissions to try civilians charged with offenses in Iraq, said 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. The commissions announced by President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks do not, however, have jurisdiction over American citizens.
That leaves prosecution in United States courts. There, prosecutors might turn to two relatively narrow laws, or a broader one, to pursue their cases.
A 1994 law makes torture committed by Americans outside the United States a crime. The law defines torture as the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.
But some human rights groups suspect that the administration may be reluctant to use the law, because its officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have resisted calling the abuse at Abu Ghraib torture.
"If they don't want to use the word `torture,' " Ms. Pearlstein said, "prosecutions under the torture act aren't likely."
A 1996 law concerning war crimes allows prosecutions for violations of some provisions of the Geneva Conventions, including those prohibiting torture, "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment."
Bush administration lawyers cited potential prosecutions under the law as a reason not to give detainees at Guantánamo Bay the protections of the Geneva Conventions. But the administration has said that the conventions apply to detainees in Iraq.
Both the torture law and the war-crimes law provide for long prison sentences, and capital punishment is available in cases involving the victim's death.
The broader law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, allows people "employed by or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States" to be prosecuted in United States courts for federal crimes punishable by more than a year's imprisonment. People who are citizens or residents of the host nations are not covered, but Americans and other foreign nationals are.
The law has apparently been invoked only once, in a case involving charges that the wife of an Air Force staff sergeant murdered him in Turkey last year. The case will soon be tried in federal court in Los Angeles.
The law was passed to fill a legal gap that had existed since the 1950's, when Supreme Court decisions limited the military's ability to prosecute civilians in courts-martial during peacetime.
In 2000, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York, citing that gap, reluctantly overturned the conviction of an American civilian who had sexually abused a child in Germany. In an unusual move, the judges sent their decision to two Congressional committees. That helped encourage enactment of the law that year.
The law requires the Pentagon, in consultation with the State and Justice Departments, to establish regulations on how to carry it out. Though it was enacted four years ago, the regulations are still under consideration.
In any event, there are gaps and uncertainties in the law.
For one thing, it applies only to contractors employed by the Defense Department. Contractors hired by other agencies, like the C.I.A., are not covered.
It is also unclear precisely where in the United States such prosecutions could be brought. Legal scholars have suggested that three places might be available: the area of the defendant's last known residence, the place where the defendant is first brought from abroad and the District of Columbia.
In addition to such criminal charges, the companies that provided the translators and interrogators may be subject to civil suits for money, under a 1789 law that allows federal courts to hear "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations." Torture is such a violation, legal experts say.
The Supreme Court is considering a case concerning the scope of that law, which has been used to hold American companies accountable for abusive actions abroad.
But, in an echo of the defenses offered by several members of the military police who have been ordered to face courts-martial for actions in Iraq, companies may be able to offer a "government contractor defense," in an effort to show they were operating under specific instructions from the government.
-------- police
As Police Extend Use of DNA, a Smudge Could Trap a Thief
May 26, 2004
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/nyregion/26DNA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
If New Yorkers whose homes are burglarized despair of ever seeing justice - much less their stereos and jewelry - they have good reason. Less than 20 percent of property crimes in the city are ever solved. That is partly because evidence and witnesses are hard to come by, and partly because the bulk of the manpower and money is devoted to catching violent criminals. DNA testing, for example, is routinely done only in homicides, rapes and the most serious assaults.
But in an attempt to reverse that statistic, the chief medical examiner's office plans to open a new lab to test hundreds of DNA samples a day from nearly every crime scene, including burglarized homes and stolen cars. Because many property crimes do not yield blood, semen or saliva, the lab will use DNA samples previously considered too minuscule to collect, like skin cells left in a smudged fingerprint or a ski mask, and match them against databases of convicted felons, suspects and DNA profiles from crime scenes and rape kits.
The prospect delights both the police and prosecutors, offering for the first time a powerful tool to catch criminals so elusive that many New Yorkers do not even bother to report burglaries. And if, as many criminologists believe, perpetrators tend to progress from nonviolent to violent crimes, the tests could contribute significantly to public safety.
"It extends to a whole universe of crimes that other technology can't touch," said Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner. "And we know there are crossover criminals, that burglars become rapists. The impact has a big ripple effect."
With the high-sensitivity lab, as it is called, forensic scientists will be able to get a profile from a mere 6 cells' worth of genetic material, instead of the approximately 150 cells needed for conventional DNA testing. That is even smaller than most samples used in Britain, which pioneered the use of this technology in criminal casework in 1999 and typically uses 30 to 50 cells.
There are as yet no national standards for tests on such small samples, called low copy number DNA analysis, and their admissibility in court has not been widely tested. But using DNA to solve property crimes is an idea that is catching on: conventional samples of DNA taken from burglaries in Miami, for example, have yielded a high number of matches in the database, officials said.
While the technology is not new, the new lab's scope is unprecedented in this country; if all goes according to plan, the New York lab will use robots to test 800 DNA samples a day.
"It's a first for North America; it's a first outside of England," said Ray Wickenheiser, the author of an early paper on the use of DNA from what forensic scientists call "handled objects" to solve a murder for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and now director of the Acadiana Crime Lab in Louisiana. "By setting this up in North America, in a much stiffer legal climate, it's very proactive."
But others caution that the method is vulnerable to contamination or mistaken conclusions. "You get spurious results," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "You have to interpret everything very carefully."
He continued, "Low copy number has been looked at very carefully by the F.B.I., and I think that in general their attitude is, this is not ready for prime time." A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. crime lab in Quantico, Va., declined to comment on the method, other than to say that the agency is considering ways to enhance the sensitivity of current DNA methods.
The city's forensic scientists counter that they have done extensive work to validate their techniques. They have broken into one another's apartments and stolen the boss's car, scraped skin cells from clothing with a razor blade, spent long hours in the lab and presented their research for peer review at conferences, where it earns high marks from experts like Joseph E. Warren, a forensic biologist at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, and Mr. Wickenheiser, a senior auditor for one of the two groups in the country that accredit forensic labs.
In part, the scientists' confidence has grown out of the World Trade Center attack. Although the new lab was in the planning stages before Sept. 11, the labor of identifying 8,553 remains from that disaster has honed the staff's ability to handle a high volume of tiny, degraded or contaminated DNA samples. "The World Trade Center drove a lot of this," said Robert Shaler, director of the forensic biology department of the medical examiner's office.
Some of the high-sensitivity lab equipment is already in place, in temporary rented quarters at Bellevue Hospital Center, where scientists say low copy analysis will be under way by the end of the year. Ultimately, the high-sensitivity lab will be housed in a new, $267 million forensic biology building near Bellevue scheduled to be finished in November 2006. At full capacity, it will cost an estimated $4.4 million a year to operate, said Thomas Brondolo, deputy commissioner of the chief medical examiner's office.
In a $185,000 pilot program financed by the National Institute of Justice, the Police Department has already begun to collect samples from a small number of break-ins, albeit only from conventional sources like saliva left on a cigarette butt. The first set of results is expected in a few weeks. In a similar program, the Miami-Dade Police Department has gotten hits on more than 50 percent of its DNA submissions from burglaries, said Willard Stuver, supervisor of the DNA testing program there.
Dr. Shaler said he expects only 10 to 20 percent of the low copy samples in New York to yield usable genetic profiles. "This is not highly efficient testing," he said. "It's all dependent on things like whether the subject washed their hands."
Yet, Dr. Shaler said, even such a small percentage could significantly reduce property crimes because thieves are so often recurrent offenders. And, he said, if DNA evidence induces more suspects to plead guilty, the lab will reduce trial costs.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said: "It's the type of thing you find the money for if it works. It would be tremendously cost-effective. It's really tough to make a burglary arrest."
Experts disagree as to the admissibility of low copy analysis as courtroom evidence. Mechthild Prinz, an assistant director in charge of the new lab, said that because the samples will be destroyed in testing, there will be no way to allow defense lawyers to conduct their own tests. Then there is secondary transfer: for example, a thief robs a house after shaking hands with a friend and leaves the friend's DNA signature at the scene.
Those considerations, some experts said, are likely to affect the weight jurors give to the test results more than their admissibility. Lisa Friel, chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit of the Manhattan district attorney's office, said the tests can be used, among other things, to exclude the innocent, and can also help solve violent crimes, such as a rape where the suspect wears a condom. She said the fact that a sample is used up in testing does not disqualify the results in court.
"If it's a choice between that or people who saw somebody fleeing, I'd rather have DNA evidence," Ms. Friel said.
DNA collected from handled objects has already been used to help solve crimes in New York, she said, giving the example of a suspect identified by DNA taken from the bridge of his glasses, which he had left at the scene. The suspect, John Ramos, pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted rape last week and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Low copy analysis presents significant challenges, beginning with the crime scene itself. Investigators must try to swab areas that only the suspect would have touched, like a discarded tool or a jewelry box. In some cases, victims will be asked to provide "elimination samples" of their own DNA. "Let's face it," said Mark Dale, the director of the Police Department's crime lab,, "this is invisible evidence."
Because of the sample's small size, preventing contamination is a high priority. The high-sensitivity lab is a series of rooms connected by antiseptic glass cabinets or evidence pass-throughs. Test tubes will be irradiated to destroy stray chromosomes (sterilization guards against only bacteria). Legal releases are being drawn up so that DNA elimination samples can be taken from the housecleaning staff.
The DNA will be amplified, or copied, in cycles, just as it is in conventional testing. While conventional testing generally calls for 28 cycles, low copy testing will require at least 32 cycles, Dr. Prinz said. With each cycle, the DNA can lose fidelity, just like a photocopy of a photocopy, a major reason that low copy is considered less reliable.
If the lab succeeds, it is likely to go a long way toward setting new evidence standards for the country.
"Ultimately, the proof is going to be in the product," said Mr. Wickenheiser. "When they show what they can do, and people look at it and say, `Gosh, we ought to be doing that.' "
-------- prisons / prisoners
Congress Disputes Bush Pledge
Funding Cut Conflicts With Vow to Raze Abu Ghraib Prison
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55622-2004May25.html
President Bush grabbed headlines with his pledge to tear down Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, but Monday night's promise left the White House scrambling on Tuesday to persuade Congress to endorse something it specifically rejected last year.
Last fall, Bush requested $400 million to build two maximum-security prisons in Iraq, but Congress reduced the request to $100 million, about the cost of one medium-security facility in the United States. In April, the U.S.-led occupation authority informed Congress it would build a single 4,400-bed prison near Nasiriyah, south of Baghdad.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said U.S. taxpayers will finance a second prison to replace Abu Ghraib. She said there is sufficient flexibility within the $18.4 billion in Iraq reconstruction aid approved in October to build the prison.
But Tim Rieser, a Democratic aide on the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, which is monitoring the reconstruction, said Bush would have to consult Congress on such a large transfer of money. "For all intents and purposes, the money is not there," Rieser said. It is clear that Bush's dramatic promise to raze Abu Ghraib will take quite some time to fulfill. The prison -- notorious for torture and killing during Saddam Hussein's reign and a still-growing prisoner abuse scandal under U.S. control -- will not be torn down until its replacement is ready, Bush said. And aides in Congress and the occupation authority said construction of a bare-bones facility would take 18 months to two years.
If the White House intends the new prison to be "a showcase for progressive Western penal thinking," it may take longer to build health, athletic and rehabilitation facilities along with the cellblocks, a House Republican aide said.
The prison in Nasiriyah is already behind schedule, occupation documents indicate. In January, occupation authorities said they would direct $33 million to the project. By April, nothing had been spent. The occupation authority cited only one accomplishment in its latest report to Congress: approval of "the initial scope of work for the new prison."
The report said the Defense Department expects to break ground on the prison in June, but occupation officials said yesterday in Baghdad that they had no indication that would happen.
That slow pace has some advantages. Of the $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds that Congress approved in October, a little more than $4 billion has been obligated to specific projects, David Nash, a retired admiral managing the spending of U.S. tax dollars, said at a Pentagon briefing Monday. That leaves plenty of unspent money available for a second prison.
But unless the White House breaks its pledge not to ask for more reconstruction money, the additional prison construction funds will have to come from other projects -- a potential public relations problem. Members of Congress have already questioned the administration's shift of $213 million from drinking water and democracy-building projects to administrative expenses and U.S. Embassy operations. A shift of $100 million or more for prison construction would likely need congressional approval.
The pledge was not greeted with universal applause. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurd on the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council, told an Australian newspaper that he wanted the prison to be turned into a museum, preserving the memories of the crimes that took place there.
Interim interior minister Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy and the human rights group Amnesty International also objected to its demolition. "While I can understand the wish to abolish Abu Ghraib, to remove the memory and the stain on the reputation of those who perpetrated the criminal acts against its prisoners, I personally don't think a building itself has a meaning, positive or negative," Sumaidy told the Australian newspaper.
Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett said the demolition could interfere with war crimes and human rights prosecutions. "We believe it's ultimately up to the Iraqis to decide the fate of the prison," he said.
--------
Iraqis: Why Demolish Prison?
Some Support Idea of Turning Abu Ghraib Into a Museum
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55584-2004May25.html
BAGHDAD, May 25 -- Ghassan Abbas rolled his mustard-yellow prayer beads through his fingers as he sat Tuesday afternoon on a cushioned stool outside his tobacco shop in the eastern part of the capital and asked a practical question of President Bush, who in a televised speech Monday night proposed demolishing the Abu Ghraib prison.
Why get rid of a perfectly good prison?
"Abu Ghraib is the biggest one and can keep many detainees," Abbas said, shaking his head. "How can they demolish it?"
The 280-acre prison compound 20 miles west of Baghdad was notorious under former president Saddam Hussein and is now at the center of an embarrassing scandal for the U.S. military after a number of its soldiers were captured in photographs and on video beating and humiliating detainees there. But for some Iraqis, the prison is just a prison, not the symbol of death and torture and disgraceful conduct that Bush declared it to be in a speech from the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania on Monday night.
There has been no groundswell of support here for razing the facility. In fact, earlier this month, the Iraqi Governing Council discussed the possibility of turning part or all of it into a museum.
Interior Minister Sameer Shaker Sumaidaie, who is in charge of police and security in Iraq, said the building is not the problem.
"I can understand the rush to abolish Abu Ghraib," Sumaidaie said on Monday, but added, "I personally don't think the building itself has a meaning positive or negative."
Sumaidaie said the stain of Abu Ghraib would be erased simply by making it more open and making the people who run it more accountable.
Rajaa Habib Khuzai, a member of the Governing Council, said demolishing the prison "will not change the impressions of the Iraqis about what happened at the jail.
"The coming generation should see what the Iraqi people suffered," she said. "The best thing is to make half of it a museum and remain the other half as a prison because the prison is so big and there is not need to demolish it and build a new one."
Nasir Chaderchi, another Governing Council member, also said the prison should remain as a symbol of what the Iraqi prisoners suffered.
Sentiment on a busy commercial street in the Karada district of the capital was mixed.
Kadhim Ali Jasim, a 29-year-old security guard at the Babylon Hotel, said he did not support demolishing the prison.
"I am with changing the staff and the rules of the prison and respect the Iraq man even if he was a criminal," he said, stopping for a moment to talk after buying a pack of cigarettes from Abbas's tobacco shop. He added, "I don't think they can change the staff and prison's rules until we have a government."
Down the street, Wisam Majeed, 26, a trader, said he was in favor of tearing down the prison. "It is good to demolish it so the people can forget about Abu Ghraib prison and try to start all over again."
Isam Khalil, 32, an electronics equipment retailer, said that as long as the prison remains standing it "symbolizes scandals."
"The Americans defamed our country's reputation, and they destroyed us," he said.
But Muhammad Hussein Abdul Rahim, 45, who owns an appliance shop on the same street, said Abu Ghraib was the best prison the world. "It is comfortable," he said. "It is built on a very big space and far from the city."
"They can change the staff," he said.
Seven U.S. soldiers with the 372nd Military Police Company have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One soldier, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, was sentenced to a year in prison last week for his role in taking a photograph of detainees and not stopping the abuse.
More than 3,000 detainees remain at Abu Ghraib, where the U.S. military held more than 7,000 prisoners at one point in the same cells where Hussein kept his enemies. He often ordered mass executions to quell prison unrest.
As part of an effort to reduce the prison population, the U.S. military's top spokesman said on Tuesday that 580 to 600 prisoners would be released on Friday. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt also said the military would release more prisoners June 4.
In his speech Monday night, Bush said the United States would fund the building of a new prison after the June 30 deadline for handing over limited governing authority to the Iraqis and then, "with the approval of the Iraqi government," knock down Abu Ghraib. But he offered no time frame and did not say where the money would come from.
Special correspondents Huda Ahmed and Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
Occupation made world less safe, pro-war institute says
Independent
By Kim Sengupta
26 May 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524939
The US and British occupation of Iraq has accelerated recruitment to the ranks of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and made the world a less safe place, according to a leading London-based think-tank.
The assessment, by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), states that the occupation has become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for al-Qa'ida, which now has more than 18,000 militants ready to strike Western targets.
It claims that although half of al-Qa'ida's 30 senior leaders and up to 2,000 rank-and-file members have been killed or captured, a rump leadership is still intact and over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large, with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq. About 1,000 al-Qa'ida supporters are believed to be active in Iraq.
The IISS report, published yesterday, says that the Iraq invasion"galvanised" al-Qa'ida while weakening the campaign against terrorism. At the same time it has split the Western alliance, leaving the US and Britain isolated.
The report amounts to a sustained condemnation of US and British tactics, especially during the post-war period. Beginning with the decision of Paul Bremer, the US head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), to dissolve the Iraqi army - leaving a security vacuum - it criticises the occupation tactics of American troops who stayed in large fortified bases and only emerged in heavily armed patrols.
The report adds that later swoops, which led to mass arrests, and aggressive house searches "perversely inspired insurgent violence".
But the report does not spare British commanders. It points out that, brutal as he was, Saddam Hussein never tried to disarm the Iraqi population. The killing of six British soldiers in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June last year was preceded by a British raid to search houses for weapons. At the same time, however, Kurdish militants were allowed to keep their weapons.
The report points out that such is the level of turmoil in Iraq that the US and Britain will need 500,000 troops in the country, a huge increase from the 145,000 the Allies have at present, to stabilise the country.
Jonathan Stevenson, the editor of the survey, said: "Invading Iraq damaged the war on terror, there is no doubt about that. It has strengthened rather than weakened al-Qa'ida."
The report also highlights the shortcomings of US policy after the toppling of Saddam. It says: "The lawlessness and looting that greeted the liberation of Baghdad on 9 April 2003 was replaced by widespread criminality, violence and instability. A year later, US troops and newly constituted Iraqi forces faced an insurgency that had become a solid obstacle to rebuilding the country and moving it towards democracy and stability."
Unable to cope with the situation, the US is now acquiescing to the formation of new private militias similar to the one patrolling Fallujah, says the IISS.
The CPA, says the report, has little knowledge of the area it is meant to control. And Iraqi exiles brought back to the country by the Americans to become the new political elite "are very unpopular ... they have not managed to penetrate Iraqi society, mobilise support or engender allegiance".
The IISS has strong establishment links, with former US and British government officials among its members. The Foreign Office contributed £100,000 towards the setting up of its headquarters in central London, and Baroness Thatcher and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, then secretary general of Nato, attended the opening.
The IISS dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, published on 9 September 2002, was edited by Gary Samore, formerly of the US State Department, and presented by Dr John Chipman, a former Nato fellow. It was immediately seized on by Bush and Blair administrations as providing "proof" that Saddam was just months away from launching a chemical and biological, or even a nuclear attack. Large parts of the IISS document were subsequently recycled in the now notorious Downing Street dossier, published with a foreword by the Prime Minister, the following week.
However, unlike No 10, the IISS admits that it made mistakes in its dossier about the extent of the Iraqi threat, and has commissioned an independent assessment by Rolf Ekeus, a former head of United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq.
Dr Samore and Dr Chipman pointed out yesterday that its dossier had caveats about Iraq's supposed WMD arsenal, while the Government insisted on removing such caveats from intelligence assessments - leading to "sexing up" accusations.
Dr Chipman said of the behaviour of American forces: "The US is realising the awful truth that the first law of peacekeeping is the same as the first law of forensics: 'Every contact leaves a trace.' Unfortunately, too many bad traces have been left recently, and many good ones will be needed to recover its reputation, prestige and effective power."
Dr Samore said: "Whether or not the Iraq war is seen as a success in the long term would depend on the successful transfer of power to an Iraqi administration in a stable situation. That does not look very hopeful at the moment and this, of course, is related to how this war and its aftermath has been dealt with by the coalition."
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Prison Investigator's Army Experience Questioned
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55663-2004May25.html
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, who is leading the Army's investigation into the role of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq, is an insurance company executive who has been on active duty for five years.
Fay, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, was still listed as a managing director of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies in its 2003 annual report. He was selected March 31 to head the sensitive investigation into intelligence practices and procedures in Iraq, and began work on April 23, said Lawrence T. DiRita, the Defense Department assistant secretary for public affairs.
Pentagon officials, lawmakers and others are looking to Fay to help answer a central question in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: whether the military intelligence soldiers responsible for interrogating detainees directed or encouraged military police officers to commit the abuse captured in photographs that have roiled the Arab world and damaged U.S. credibility. Fay's probe into military intelligence follows the widely reported Army investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba that focused primarily on the role of military police.
Two Pentagon officials and one public affairs officer in Iraq said yesterday they could not say who chose Fay to run the inquiry, but one Army official said the orders "were cut by" Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commanding general in Iraq.
At Chubb, Fay was executive vice president for claims and operations worldwide when he was activated in 1999. Originally commissioned through the Reserve Officers Training Corp Program in 1970, he served four years on active duty as a counterintelligence officer.
Fay worked for Chubb but had a series of Army reserve posts, primarily in the New York area, from 1974 until 1999, when he was activated and assigned as deputy commanding general of the Army Intelligence and Security Command.
Once activated, as a colonel, he was quickly promoted, first to brigadier general in 2000 and last year to major general. In October, he became deputy chief of staff for intelligence at the Pentagon.
Fay has continued to make political contributions since he started active duty in 1999, some through the Chubb Corporation Political Action Committee (Chubbpac), according to public records. In 2000, he gave $500 to the campaign of Bob Franks, a New Jersey Republican running for the Senate; $1,000 to the New Jersey Republican State Committee; and $1,000 to Chubbpac. In 2001 he gave $2,500 to Chubbpac and in 2002 another $2,500, but made no similar donations in 2003, according to election records. In the years before he went on active duty, Fay gave smaller contributions to Chubbpac. In 1997, he contributed $1,500 to the New Jersey Republican Party. In 1990, he gave $1,000 to New Jersey Democrat Bill Bradley's Senate campaign.
Defense Department regulations permit political contributions by military personnel but it is unusual for them to go through a corporate political action committee.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday he was unaware of Fay's background as a reservist and his political contributions. "These are very hard facts and have to be considered," Warner said. He added that "we don't have reason to question whether he will do other than an honorable job."
Warner also said he expects Fay's review of the role of military intelligence to include policies and decisions made not just in Iraq but also at the Pentagon. Fay, Warner said, should look "into the intelligence chain of command, not only in Centcom [the military command covering Iraq], but also back here in Washington."
A Pentagon public affairs officer yesterday said Fay was "on the road and not taking any questions about his investigation."
Richard Kohn, professor of military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said yesterday that Fay's limited experience as a reservist "does not inspire confidence in the investigation." He said the choice "is troubling. It raises the most basic question as to who chose him and why and what his tasking is."
At hearings before Warner's Senate committee on May 11, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone said that Fay had conducted interviews in Iraq and was going to Germany "to see people who have since rotated from Iraq to Germany. And then will come back here to meet others."
Cambone, in answer to a question, said he expected that Fay would include the military intelligence activities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in his inquiry. "If General Fay didn't realize that was the subject of his investigation, sir, he is now painfully aware of it," he said.
Cambone could be one of those interviewed by Fay since he told Warner's committee that in August 2003 he encouraged Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then head of Guantanamo, to go to Iraq to determine how to get a better intelligence through interrogation of detainees. Among other things, Miller advised that military police help intelligence officers by setting conditions for interrogations.
It was after Miller's visit to Abu Ghraib and some of his suggestions were implemented that many of the questionable activities took place.
--------
INVESTIGATION
Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey
May 26, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL, STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 25 - An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.
The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."
Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring.
The document, dated May 5, is a synopsis prepared by the Criminal Investigation Command at the request of Army officials grappling with intense scrutiny prompted by the circulation the preceding week of photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. It lists the status of investigations into three dozen cases, including the continuing investigation into the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib.
In one of the oldest cases, involving the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2002, enlisted personnel from an active-duty military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., and an Army Reserve military-police unit from Ohio are believed to have been "involved at various times in assaulting and mistreating the detainee."
The Army summary is consistent with recent public statements by senior military officials, who have said the Army is actively investigating nine suspected homicides of prisoners held by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2002.
But the details paint a broad picture of misconduct, and show that in many cases among the 37 prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army did not conduct autopsies and says it cannot determine the causes of the deaths.
In his speech on Monday night, President Bush portrayed the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in narrow terms. He described incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which were the first and most serious to come to light, as involving actions "by a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values."
According to the Army summary, the deaths that are now being investigated most vigorously by Army officials may be those from Afghanistan in December 2002, where two prisoners died in one week at what was known as the Bagram Collection Point, where interrogations were overseen by a platoon from Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg.
The document says the investigation into the two deaths "is continuing with recent re-interviews," both of military intelligence personnel from Fort Bragg and of Army Reserve military police officers from Ohio and surrounding states, who were serving as guards at the facility. It was not clear from the document exactly which Army Reserve unit was being investigated.
On March 4, 2003, The New York Times reported on the two deaths, noting that the cause given on one of the death certificates was "homicide," a result of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." It was signed by an Army pathologist.
Both deaths were ruled homicides within days, but military spokesmen in Afghanistan initially portrayed at least one as being the result of natural causes. Personnel from the unit in charge of interrogations at the facility, led by Capt. Carolyn Wood, were later assigned to Iraq, and to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib.
Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, said in an e-mail message on Monday that no one from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion had yet been disciplined in connection with any deaths or other misconduct in Iraq. He declined to say if anyone from the unit was the subject of an ongoing investigation.
The document also categorizes as a sexual assault a case of abuse at Abu Ghraib last fall that involved three soldiers from that unit, who were later fined and demoted but whose names the Army has refused to provide.
As part of the incident, the document says, the three soldiers "entered the female wing of the prison and took a female detainee to a vacant cell."
"While one allegedly stood as look-out and one held the detainee's hand, the third soldier allegedly kissed the detainee," the report said. It says that the female detainee was reportedly threatened with being left with a naked male detainee, but that "investigation failed to either prove or disprove the indecent-assault allegations."
The May 5 document said the three soldiers from the 519th were demoted: two to privates first class and one to specialist. One was fined $750, the other two $500 each.
In what appeared to be a serious case of abuse over a prolonged period of time, unidentified enlisted members of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, part of the California National Guard, were accused of abusing Iraqi detainees at a center in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The unit, based in San Francisco, operated under the command of the Third Infantry Division, the armored force that led the Army assault on Baghdad last April and continued to patrol the city and the surrounding region into the summer.
According to the Army summary, members of the 223rd "struck and pulled the hair of detainees" during interrogations over a period that lasted 10 weeks. The summary said they "forced into asphyxiations numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information."
The accusations were based on the statement of a soldier. No other details of the abuse - not the number of suspected soldiers nor the progress of the investigation - were disclosed.
A spokeswoman for the California National Guard in Sacramento, Maj. Denise Varner, said she could not discuss any investigation.
Another incident, whose general outlines had been previously known, involved the death in custody of a senior Iraqi officer, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who died last November at a detention center run by the Third Armored Cavalry, of Fort Carson, Colo. Soldiers acknowledged to investigators that interviews with the general on Nov. 24 and 25 involved "physical assaults."
In fact, investigators determined that General Mowhoush died after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. That finding was first reported in The Denver Post.
According to Army officials and documents, at least 12 prisoners have died of natural or undetermined causes, including nine in Abu Ghraib. In six of those cases, the military conducted no autopsy to confirm the presumed cause of death. As a result, the investigations into their deaths were closed by Army investigators.
In another case, an autopsy found that a detainee, Muhammad Najem Abed, died of cardiac arrest complicated by diabetes, without noting, as the investigation summary does, that he died after "a self-motivated hunger strike."
In two cases, involving the deaths of prisoners at Abu Ghraib on Jan. 16 and Feb. 19, investigations continue even though the causes are believed to be natural. In the Feb. 19 case, Muhammad Saad Abdullah was found dead with "acute inflammation of the abdomen." An autopsy classified the death as natural, apparently caused by "peritonitis secondary to perforating gastric ulcer."
Army officials have been reluctant to discuss the type of detail that the document describes, even when investigations into the cases are closed. The Army has refused to make public the synopses of Army criminal investigations into the deaths or assaults of Iraqi or Afghan prisoners while in custody.
At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, a senior military official and a senior Pentagon medical official said the Army was investigating the deaths of 37 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, an increase from at least 25 deaths that a senior Army general described on May 4.
Army officials have given rough breakdowns of those deaths, including those ruled natural deaths, homicides and ongoing investigations. But Army officials have been stingy with details. Of the two homicide cases the Army has closed, for instance, officials have given only spare details about a soldier who shot and killed an Iraqi detainee who was throwing rocks at the guards. The soldier was demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Army.
When asked Friday about details of pending investigations that military medical examiners had characterized as homicides, and that had been described in news accounts, a senior official would only confirm, "That's an ongoing investigation."
The official described the dates, locations and number of deaths involved in four cases ruled justifiable homicide, all in Iraq, including three at Abu Ghraib. But the official did not give details about the individual cases.
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9/11 Panel May Not Reach Unanimity on Final Report
May 26, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26panel.html
WASHINGTON, May 25 - Members of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks have warned in recent days that the panel may fail to produce a unanimous final report this summer, with disagreements most likely over the panel's recommendations for a restructuring of the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other counterterrorism agencies.
The threat of a split, with the possibility of separate majority and minority reports, is likely to be welcome news at the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies that have been harshly criticized by the panel at its public hearings and that are almost certain to be targets of its final report.
In interviews this week, members of the bipartisan commission said they would strive to agree on a unanimous report before their congressionally mandated deadline of July 26. The commission is scheduled to meet privately throughout June to debate the policy recommendations that will be the centerpiece of the document.
The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, has repeatedly called for a unanimous report, warning that anything less could undermine the commission's ability to persuade the White House and Congress to follow through on its recommendations.
But others on the 10-member commission said in the interviews that as the work of writing the final report began in earnest, they realized that a unanimous report might be impossible because so many of the proposed recommendations were so contentious.
Their comments appeared designed to dampen speculation, especially among groups of family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, that the commission of five Republicans and five Democrats would coalesce around a single set of recommendations for an overhaul of the nation's law-enforcement intelligence and intelligence agencies.
Panel members have said they will consider several proposals that are likely to be strongly resisted in Congress and by the Bush administration, including stripping the F.B.I. of responsibility for domestic counterterrorism investigations, shifting the responsibility to a new domestic intelligence agency modeled on MI-5 in Britain and creating a national intelligence director with budgetary authority over the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies.
"Unanimity is a nice goal, but it isn't going to be a necessary goal," said Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the commission who is a former senator from Washington State.
"From a personal point of view, I am not certain that we will be unanimous on all of the recommendations," Mr. Gorton said. "Just take the issue of the way we organize intelligence. Reasonable people can differ on that. I know I've seen some recommendations, some tentative ones, with which I don't agree.''
Mr. Gorton said the commission's staff had recently presented members of the panel with a list of possible recommendations for the panel's final report.
While refusing to describe the recommendations or say which he might support, Mr. Gorton said that if there was a split on the commission in the final report it would not necessarily be on partisan lines.
"Certainly, the tentative debates have no split on partisan lines by any stretch of the imagination," he said.
The commission has prided itself on what it has insisted are nonpartisan policy deliberations behind closed doors.
The panel's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana and the former chairman of the House International Relations Committee, predicted that the commission would "achieve very large consensus on the report and the recommendations, but I hesitate to say unanimity."
"We're going to be dealing with some very controversial recommendations," Mr. Hamilton said. "My goal would be unanimity. But we recognize that may not be possible."
Another Democrat on the panel, Bob Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska who is now president of the New School University in New York, agreed that it would be "exceptionally difficult" to produce a unanimous report.
Mr. Kerrey said that in some disputed areas, like restructuring the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies, the commission might decide against a single recommendation and instead present the White House and Congress with options that reflect differences among the commissioners.
"It may be us saying, 'Look, here are the two most serious options that we looked at, and here are the reasons that eight of us feel one way and two of us feel differently,' " he said. "I don't think that's a failure."
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is expected to produce a final report that will be hundreds of pages long and will document a long series of blunders by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and other agencies responsible for the nation's counterterrorism effort.
While there may be dispute over the panel's final recommendations, several members said they were hopeful that the commission could agree unanimously on the part of the report that will detail the history of the nation's counterterrorism programs and the law enforcement and intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks.
They said that part of the report would be built on a framework provided by 14 interim staff reports that the commission has released at public hearings over the last five months and that have been mostly praised by members of the commission.
Additional staff reports are expected to be made public next month at the panel's final hearings.
Mr. Kerrey said unanimous agreement on the wording of the narrative part of the report would be an important accomplishment and could pressure the White House and Congress to act on the panel's recommendations, even if the recommendations themselves did not have unanimous support.
"If we get a narrative that's unanimous, it creates the right sense of urgency for Congress to act," he said.
----
Transcript: Ashcroft, Mueller news conference
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/05/26/terror.threat.transcript/
Intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda intends to attack the United States in the coming months, according to U.S. officials. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller made the announcement Wednesday afternoon. The following is a full transcript from their press conference:
U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT: Good afternoon. Today, Director Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Comey and I want to announce developments in the war on terror.
First, credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda plans to attempt an attack on the United States in the next few months.
This disturbing intelligence indicates al Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard.
Beyond this intelligence, al Qaeda's own public statements suggest that it's almost ready to attack the United States. Just after New Year's, al Qaeda announced openly that preparations for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete.
After the March 1st attack in Madrid, Spain, an Al Qaeda spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete.
The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.
Several upcoming events over the next few months may suggest especially attractive targets for such an al Qaeda attack. These events include the G-8 summit, hosted by the United States in Georgia; the Democratic Party convention in Boston this summer; or the Republican Party convention in New York City. A vigilant public
Second, in addition to making this announcement on the war on terror, we are seeking help from the American people. We ask our fellow citizens to be on the lookout for individuals, and in specific, for each of these seven individuals that are associated with al Qaeda.
They all are sought in connection with the possible terrorist threats in the United States, they all pose a clear and present danger to America, they all should be considered armed and dangerous. And if anyone has any information about any one of them, please report it immediately to law enforcement.
Adnan Shukrijumah, for example, could be a future facilitator of terrorist attacks for al Qaeda. He speaks English well. He lived in the United States for years and has tried to get back into the United States using various passports.
We know that he has been involved in terrorist planning with senior al Qaeda leaders overseas and has scouted sites across America that might be vulnerable to terrorist attack.
We also ask for public assistance as we conduct interviews nationwide to gather intelligence to disrupt potential threats.
Now, a similar FBI-led interview program that was launched prior to the Iraq war developed valuable intelligence that protected American lives.
In addition, we ask citizens to be aware of their surroundings. Public awareness may cause terrorists to change their plans or targets, or cause terrorists to disrupt or delay their plans. If you see suspicious activity, report it to your local police department sheriff's office or to the FBI. Changing face of terror
Third, let me say that the face of al Qaeda may be changing. It is possible al Qaeda will attempt to infiltrate young Middle Eastern extremists into America, as they did before September 11. Al Qaeda is a resilient and adaptable organization, known for altering tactics in the face of new security measures.
Intelligence sources suggest that ideal al Qaeda operatives may now be in their late 20s or early 30s and may travel with a family to lower their profile.
Our intelligence confirms al Qaeda is seeking recruits who can portray themselves as Europeans. Al Qaeda also attracts Muslim extremists among many nationalities and ethnicities, including North Africans and South Asians, as well as recruiting young Muslim converts of any nationality inside target countries.
Fourth, the FBI has established a 2004 threat task force to focus on this developing threat over this summer and fall period.
The task force will coordinate our intelligence, analysis and field operations.
Analysts at FBI headquarters and in every field office are reviewing previously collected intelligence to re-analyze it and determine what additional information we need to collect in order to be best positioned to disrupt attacks.
We have asked the 84 joint terrorism task forces, that is our partners with state and local law enforcement, to collect specific information, to develop additional intelligence sources and to report that information to the 2004 threat task force for further analysis.
Director Mueller and I review personally the threat intelligence daily and it is shared throughout the government.
When intelligence is properly collected and shared, government agencies can then act to prevent terrorist acts to protect the American people.
Specific intelligence is the foundation for effective counterterrorism strategies such as hardening targets, intercepting terrorist communications, disrupting cells, elevating threat levels and alerting state and local law enforcement. 'A tough business'
May I be clear on this: We seek unprecedented levels of cooperation with state and local law enforcement in collecting intelligence to enable America's entire terror-fighting apparatus to act decisively to disrupt any al Qaeda presence in the United States.
And we will appropriately share unprecedented access to precisely what our intelligence needs and findings are.
It is imperative that all law enforcement and intelligence agencies be enlisted to assist in identifying Al Qaeda operatives and activities; activities such as surveillance of buildings, bridges, tunnels, ports of entry, et cetera.
For 32 months now, we have not had a major terrorist attack on American soil. We are winning the war on terror, but we should never forget that it is a war.
Fighting terrorists is a tough business. I have faith that Americans will continue to be equal to the task. Thank you.
FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER: Good afternoon, everyone. This summer and fall, our nation will celebrate a number of events that serve as powerful symbols of our free and democratic society.
As the attorney general has pointed out, they include the 4th of July celebrations, the Democratic and Republican conventions, and the November presidential election amongst others.
Unfortunately, we currently do not know what form the threat may take.
And that is why it is so important that we locate the seven individuals shown to my right. Though we do not have any reason at this time to believe that they are working in concert, we will not take any chances.
And in light of the March terrorist bombings in Madrid, we must be prepared for any plans to launch attacks in the next several months.
Now, let me take a moment if I could to review why we are interested in each of these individuals. American-born suspect
Abderraouf Jdey appears in a martyrdom video that was seized in Afghanistan. His tape and the tape of four others is the last will and testament of five possible jihad martyrs.
He was reportedly selected to get flight training in preparation for a second attack in the United States. He is a Canadian citizen born in Tunisia.
Adnan Shukrijumah, as has been mentioned by the attorney general, is a trained operative who poses an operational threat to the United States.
As was pointed out, he's English-speaking, spent 15 years in the United States, left the United States when he was led to believe that we were interested in his activities. He was born in Saudi Arabia and carries a Guyanese passport.
Adam Gadahn is a U.S. citizen who converted to Islam, is associated with Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan, and he attended the training camps in Afghanistan. He is known to have performed translations for al Qaeda as part of the services he has provided to al Qaeda.
Aafia Siddiqui is an al Qaeda operative and facilitator, she attended colleges in the Boston area, and is believed to have left Boston in January of 2003.
Amer El-Maati, an Al Qaeda member and a licensed pilot is believed to have discussed hijacking a plane in Canada and flying it into a building into the United States. He is a Canadian citizen of Egyptian and Syrian origin.
The last two individuals are Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. These individuals were participants in the 1998 East Africa bombings. These individuals were indicted in the Southern District of New York and have been fugitives since.
They are known to have participated in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and have the wherewithal, the skill, the ability, to undertake attacks both against American interests overseas as well as in the United States.
These are the seven individuals whom we are seeking. Each of these seven individuals is known to have a desire and the ability to undertake planning, facilitation and attack against the United States whether it be within the United States itself or overseas.
Now, in reissuing these "be on the lookouts for" -- also known as BOLOs in trade -- we want to emphasize the need for vigilance against our terrorist enemies, particularly Al Qaeda. Working together
The FBI and the entire intelligence community continues to seek information as to the whereabouts and activities of these seven individuals in connection to possible terrorist threats or attacks in the United States or against American interests overseas.
Now, we in the FBI have established a task force. We are operating around the clock to increase our collection of human intelligence, to identify any gaps in our knowledge and to develop new information sources.
We also need the support of the American people.
First, we ask for your cooperation as we launch a nationwide series of interviews to gather information and intelligence on these potential threats and on these individuals.
And second, we need the public, both in the United States and -- I'll emphasize -- overseas to be on the lookout for these seven individuals. We want to know whether you've seen them in your communities, or that someone might be hiding them. If you have any idea where they might be, we need you to come forward, whether it be here or oversees.
And finally, we ask you to simply be aware of your surroundings. Remain vigilant. Take note of any suspicious activities. And if you do observe anything suspicious, please contact your local police or your local FBI office.
I want to thank you for your continued support, and rest assured that there are thousands of FBI agents, Homeland Security agents, other law enforcement and intelligence officials who will be working day and night over the coming months to ensure America's continued safety. Thank you.
QUESTION: Gentlemen, for either of you. What is it about these seven? There are clearly other people that are on your seeking information list or on your most wanted terror list.
Is there intelligence that indicates they might be involved in any pending attacks, or is it more analysis of who'd be the most likely? And is there any information you have that any of them are in the U.S.?
ASHCROFT: Well, we know some of them to be very adept at the variety of things that are necessary for the achievement of an attack in the United States. Some of them are very familiar with the United States. Obviously, several of them by having lived here, been educated here, speak English well, understand the country well. Those are very important things.
Other of the individuals would have other core competencies, so to speak, that they would bring to an operation.
QUESTION: You mentioned that two of them hold Canadian passports. Is there any reason to think that, like the Ressam cell, that this effort is being originated in Canada?
ASHCROFT: We do not have specific information about the origin of a specific terrorist plan. We do believe that Al Qaeda plans to attack the United States, and that is a result of intelligence that is corroborated on a variety of levels. But we are not aware of details of a plan.
QUESTION: You've been looking for these folks for some time. What makes you think that re-issuing these alerts will make a difference; and why the timing, today, in particular?
ASHCROFT: Well, we believe that the public, like all of us, needs a reminder.
Secondly, we have gone out, as the director indicated, to every FBI office. And we're going to law enforcement authorities across America at every level of law enforcement to ask them to renew their efforts.
As I indicated in my remarks, it is to re-invigorate and revitalize our contact with all our sources of information, to query those sources to generate additional intelligence that would provide us the kind of information upon which we could take further action to defend. QUESTION: I notice that Secretary Ridge is not up there with you. I'm wondering if (inaudible) are all on the same page, but there's some sort of disagreement about how to interpret this recent intelligence?
ASHCROFT: I believe we're all on the same page. We work together.
The director and I met with Secretary Ridge this morning, as we do every morning, regarding the threats. When I indicated that the director and I share intelligence reports daily, we do, and then after we share them with each other, we go and share them with Tom Ridge.
We believe that the kind of work that we are undertaking and the kind of effort that we are reinforcing and accelerating here today is the kind of effort that we hope will provide the kind of information that would be of assistance to not only our own agencies, but to Homeland Security as well.
QUESTION: You mentioned there will be a number of people interviewed in the coming months. You mentioned it will be similar to the lead-up to the Iraq war. As I recall, there have been several thousands of people interviewed for that.
Can you describe any further who's going to be interviewed and what type of information you will be seeking from them?
ASHCROFT: I can describe what I've already described, and that is that we will be going back to sources that we have across the country and we will be re-evaluating and asking them to update any information they have.
There will be other interviews that are conducted. I'm not sure exactly how those populations should be defined, at least at this moment. Do you?
MUELLER: The interviews we will be doing will be driven by intelligence. As to particular persons who we interview, information that we have that makes it worthy for these individuals to be interviewed.
What we're seeking for is often intelligence information, information about persons that may have moved into the community recently, persons who seem to be in a community without any roots, persons that could be either facilitators or those who are willing to undertake an attack.
MUELLER: If you look back at September 11th, the movement of the hijackers through our various communities -- what we're asking for is a higher level of vigilance, so that we look at persons in our communities, and when we do so, if there are suspicious activities, that is brought to the attention of either state and local law enforcement or the local FBI office.
QUESTION: Is this threat information causing you to go to specific cities and ask them to heighten their procedures? And also, are you taking other additional extraordinary measures surrounding the G-8 or the World War II Memorial ceremonies or other events that are taking place beyond what had already been planned?
ASHCROFT: Well, this is intelligence that is developing intelligence. It continues to be a subject of our interest. I think it's fair to say that this is intelligence that has come in over time. So this isn't a one shot or other thing. And as we have intelligence, we adjust our behavior.
I want to address the first aspect of your question, though. You asked about specific cities. And I think it's fair to say that we do not have intelligence that leads us to specific location in regard to this threat which we see this summer and fall.
QUESTION: General, can you give us more of a portrait of Adam Gadahn? How was -- when did he convert to Islam, by who, where did he grow up in the U.S....
ASHCROFT: I cannot. But it may be that the director wants to provide more information.
MUELLER: The West Coast, grew up on the West Coast, converted to Islam fairly -- in his youth. And that's about as far as I can go right now. We can provide you additional information.
QUESTION: When was the last time he was seen in the United States?
MUELLER: I'd have to check on that. That was several years ago, I believe.
QUESTION: Do you seek criminal charges against him given that he's apparently gone to al Qaeda training camps?
MUELLER: We would evaluate the evidence to determine whether or not charges are appropriate.
QUESTION: Would it not make sense for people in Boston and New York to get out of those cities during the conventions?
ASHCROFT: We certainly don't come to that conclusion.
QUESTION: General Ashcroft, with all of these events this summer, I'm wondering if you are planning any series of periodic announcements such as this? And how do you balance the need to discuss a serious threat with the inevitable criticisms that you're scaring people unnecessarily and that you're covering your own bases for purely defensive purposes?
ASHCROFT: Well, we don't have a specific plan. We plan to make announcements whenever they would be in the national interest to make announcements.
And one of the reasons we make announcements is that the American people can help us reduce the risk by participating in an aggressive approach to disruption.
Over and over again in the intelligence which I read on a daily basis, I find it said that activities in law enforcement and by an alert population disrupt and prevent and cause the discontinuance of terrorism.
These are statements that are part of the intelligence we receive, and it indicates to me that the activities, both of the American people and of the American law enforcement community, can be very valuable in saving American lives by virtue of disrupting terrorism.
So we do not have a specific schedule. We don't have any next planned announcement at any time, scheduled or unscheduled, except to say that whenever -- if it's later this afternoon or if it's later this month or next month or later in the summer, whenever it becomes in the national interest for us to make an announcement, we would make such an announcement.
QUESTION: But there are inevitably skeptics who say you're overdoing it or you're scaring people or you're just protecting your behind, or what have you. Do you worry about those?
ASHCROFT: No.
QUESTION: You can't overdo it, in other words.
ASHCROFT: Well, no. I just don't think my job is to worry about what skeptics say.
My job is to do everything I can to protect the American people and to help the American people protect themselves.
In a country as substantial, as large and as free as the United States is, it takes the coordinated effort of law enforcement officials with their feet on the street, 670,000 state and local law enforcement officials, and an alert American population and everything we do, I think, to preserve that liberty and that freedom by being alert.
And so, my job is to do that. My job isn't to worry about whether someone will be second guessing. I'd far prefer that they second guess a plan which led us to safety than a plan which somehow provided us with risk.
QUESTION: If there's credible intelligence suggesting the United States is going to be attacked between now -- there is a plan to attack the United States between now and the election, why not raise the threat level?
ASHCROFT: We believe that the kind of activities that are engendered in this task force kind of information which is developed.
And the Homeland Security Council, led by Secretary Ridge, would make such a decision, and for me to try to speak for them at this time would be inappropriate. Thank you very much.
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Generals at odds over abuse at prison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
May 26, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040526-120928-8194r.htm
An Army investigation and congressional hearings have spotlighted a series of conflicting statements about Iraqi prisoner abuse between the top brass and the general who once ran Abu Ghraib prison and who was stripped this week of her brigade command.
Some military advocates say Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski received light punishment because she is one of the Army's few female generals. Recommended for a reprimand, she instead received a minor letter of admonishment.
At first, she kept her command of the 800th Military Police Brigade. But as pressure mounted from Congress to punish higher-ups - not just enlisted MPs at the prison - the Army this week temporarily reassigned her to a reserve unit at Fort Jackson, S.C.
The differences pitting Gen. Karpinski against superiors go to the heart of why the infamous prison near Baghdad was dysfunctional and why it became the venue for continued physical and psychological abuse of Iraqi detainees by military police.
Gen. Karpinski, a reservist who lives in Hilton Head, S.C., and works as a business consultant, says the scandal stemmed from a lack of manpower at Abu Ghraib and no clear direction from the military command in Baghdad led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. She denies knowledge of any abusive behavior before the scandal broke.
But Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who completed the first of several ongoing administrative investigations, lays some blame squarely at the feet of Gen. Karpinski. His report says she did not act on recommendations from a series of fault-finding inquiries before the ill treatment began in October.
"Had the findings and recommendations contained within their own investigations been analyzed and actually implemented by Brig. Gen. Karpinski, many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses and cases of abuse may have been prevented," Gen. Taguba wrote.
Some pro-military persons have seized on the Abu Ghraib scandal as an example of a "politically correct" military that does not want to punish a female general.
"I think they've been handling her with kid gloves," said Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. "The fact that she is a woman general who portrayed herself as a victim may have had something to do with it."
On her suspension, Mrs. Donnelly said, "Frankly, I wonder why it has taken so long. She was there before, during and after the worst of the abuse. I'm not convinced at all by her argument she did not know."
William S. Lind, who directs the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, writes in a column this week that, "The apparent breakdown in discipline among the MPs at Abu Ghraib may relate to the presence of women, and especially to the fact that the commander was a woman. ... The climate of 'political correctness' (or, to give it its true name, cultural Marxism) that has infested and overwhelmed the American armed forces makes it almost impossible to discipline a woman - and risky for a man to attempt to do so."
Whatever the reason, one theme is clear: Abu Ghraib was a disaster waiting to happen. Rules on uniforms were not enforced; soldiers wrote poems and other sayings on their helmets; saluting of officers was not enforced. Records on inmates and escapes were spotty. Regulations were not posted; no MP had been trained adequately in detainee operations.
"I have never seen a more dysfunctional command relationship in the history of me looking at the military like that jail," Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, told Gen. Sanchez at a Senate hearing last week.
"Sir," the three-star general responded, "It was dysfunctional before the 19th of November."
His reference to that date was a message to his critics, including Gen. Karpinski. She has blamed problems on the turnover of prison command from her 800th Brigade on that date to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Some MPs accused of misconduct contend they acted on orders from 205th officers. But most abuses occurred in October and early November prior to the 19th, according to Gen. Taguba.
The exchange was just one example of disputes of fact between the one-star general and more senior officers:
•At the same hearing, Gen. Sanchez was asked about Gen. Karpinski's statements that she objected to the 205th taking over the jail. "Senator," Gen. Sanchez replied, "General Karpinski never talked to me about interference. ... There was never a time where General Karpinski surfaced to me any objections to that tactical control order."
•Gen. Karpinski has quoted Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller as saying he came to Iraq to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. It was a reference to Gen. Miller's tenure as the top jailer at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists from the Afghanistan war are being held.
Said Gen. Miller, "Senator, I did not tell General Karpinski I was going to 'Gitmo-ize' Abu Ghraib. I don't believe I have ever used that term ever."
c Gen. Karpinski told Gen. Taguba that she paid regular visits to various detention centers. But the Taguba report states, "The detailed calendar provided by her aide-de-camp does not support her contention. Moreover, numerous witnesses stated that they rarely saw Brig. Gen. Karpinski."
c Asked by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to respond to Gen. Karpinski's assertion she was excluded from certain sections of Abu Ghraib where the abuse occurred, Gen. Taguba answered, "I disagree with that."
Gen. Karpinski could not be reached for comment this week. But in a previous interview, and in a written rebuttal to Gen. Taguba dated April 1, she vigorously defended her tenure as Iraq prison warden.
"The brigade suffered with diminishing personnel strength, without the benefit of a personnel replacement system," she wrote. "We were successful in all missions, despite numerous challenges and while operating in a combat zone, because the brigade was determined and committed to do so."
As to Gen. Taguba's comment that she was "extremely emotional" during her testimony to him, Gen. Karpinski wrote, "The comments describing my emotional demeanor during a portion of my interview are misconstrued. Any implication of soldiers or the unit failing will elicit a strong emotional response from a caring and compassionate commander. The emotion was intense passion for my soldiers.
"Throughout my tenure in command I escorted hundreds of VIPs and media representatives through the numerous facilities the 800th Military Police Brigade secured. I consistently received rave reviews from all in attendance."
Gen. Karpinski, who took control of the penal system in Iraq on June 30, 2003, is now back home in South Carolina. She has waged a spirited media campaign on cable TV news channels to defend her record and to warn she will not be scapegoat.
The Army granted her permission to talk as long as she does not appear in uniform and does not disparage the Army.
Gen. Taguba recommended she be reprimanded and stripped of her command - a career-ending move. Gen. Sanchez apparently overruled him, sticking by an admonishment issued in January.
Gen. Sanchez said at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that some of those already punished could face additional penalties. Gen. Karpinski's lawyer, Neal A. Puckett, said he does not think the statement applies to his client, who had no knowledge of the abuse until a soldier blew the whistle in January.
A Pentagon official said Gen. Karpinski is not the subject of any criminal investigation but is "still vulnerable to further administrative charges."
-------- propaganda wars
US paper apologises for false Iraq reports
Reports of WMD programmes had little basis in fact
Wednesday 26 May 2004
AFP / Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/91E58D84-F119-491F-B1B4-1EE8BAAF22CD.htm
The New York Times has admitted that information it published about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction programme was not supported.
In a letter from its editors entitled The Times and Iraq the paper printed on Wednesday that its coverage had not been "rigorous".
"In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged."
"Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge."
The Times cited five stories - including several page one articles - written between 2001 and 2003 that had accounts of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq.
None of the stories have never been independently verified, some were even discredited by its own reporters or reporters at another news organisation.
But when in-house journalists wrote stories that refuted the original reporting, the corrections were buried, the Times said.
Scape goat
Sources for the stories depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, the Times said.
"Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge"
editorial letter, New York Times
Ahmad Chalabi, once a favored Iraqi exile of the Bush administration whose headquarters in Baghdad were raided last week by Iraqi police, was cited as a named source who introduced Times reporters to several exiles.
"Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq," the Times added.
"Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted."
The New York Times is the US' third largest circulation newspaper behind USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
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The Times and Iraq
May 26, 2004
FROM THE EDITORS,
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?ei=1&en=43bf14bb08d111e9&ex=1086545976&pagewanted=print&position=
Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.
In doing so - reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation - we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge.
The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations - in particular, this one.
Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.
On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.
On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector - his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri - to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.
On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.
On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda - two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" - who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence - had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.
A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.
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Poking holes in the official story of 9/11
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS,
May 26, 2004
Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1085523609228&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907624636
Citizens can choose to buy the official line on the events of Sept. 11, 2001 - or they can ask questions about holes in that story as big as the crater at Ground Zero.
This week, at the unlikeliest of locations, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in west-end Toronto, the International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11 picks up where it left off in San Francisco in March.
Here, international authors, filmmakers, academics, military and intelligence experts as well as, yes, probably the occasional conspiracy theorist, are mixing it up with ordinary people who can't accept that all the systems simply failed on one terrible and tragic morning.
They're gathering to focus attention on why, still, nearly three years after two planes tore through the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, the White House still hasn't produced a plausible explanation for why so much went so wrong all at once.
"To ask questions and to ask them fearlessly," says Citizens' Inquiry director Barrie Zwicker. "This is the heart of this."
Indeed, a majority of Canadians doubt the line out of Washington. A poll conducted for the non-profit inquiry (http://www.911inquiry.org) this month shows that 63 per cent of us believe the U.S. government had "prior knowledge of the plans for the events of September 11th, and failed to take appropriate action to stop them."
Perhaps that's a testament to our media, which were not at Ground Zero, not personally affected by events and not waving the flag.
Whatever the explanation, Zwicker, a media critic for more than 30 years, says the U.S. press abdicated its responsibility to probe what happened and has been "complicit" in advancing the official explanation.
"If the corporate media had looked at this from the beginning, we would be living in a different world now," he insists. "(U.S. President) George W. Bush would have been impeached by now."
Inquiry's unasked questions include: Why were fighter jets not scrambled in time to stop the planes from smashing into the buildings? Why did the U.S. chain of command - including the commander-in-chief Bush - not act when the hijackings were in progress? Why were so many warnings missed? And why did it take the Kean Commission - Washington's official 9/11 inquiry - so long to get going, and only after the bereaved families noisily lobbied for more than a year?
Among the questioners coming to Toronto are University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky (War and Globalization, The Truth Behind September 11), French political activist and best-selling author Thierry Meyssan (9/11: The Big Lie), former fighter pilot turned security expert Dr. Robert Bowman of Florida, the Center for Cooperative Research's Paul Thompson, who compiled a comprehensive 9/11 timeline (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org), and Ellen Mariani, a 9/11 widow who is suing the government instead of taking a multi-million-dollar payout.
True, some of the participants have some unusual theories. For example, Meyssan, despite eyewitness accounts, has suggested that it was in fact a missile that hit the Pentagon. But at yesterday's opening session at least, not a tin-foil hat was in site among the mostly middle-aged crowd of 100. In fact, they looked like the kind of people you might see slinging hash for the homeless at a soup kitchen.
That despite sneers yesterday from warbloggers and their acolytes. They claim that those who challenge the idea that some suicidal Arabs armed with box cutters managed to outsmart the greatest technomilitary power history has ever known are "conspirazoids," "left-wing loonies" or "fanatical Muslims."
All of which works great for Bush and company. That's because, by lumping 9/11 skeptics with whackos who pick up alien voices with their tooth fillings, the mainstream media can marginalize any and all questioners as "conspiracy theorists."
"The official story is a conspiracy theory: Osama bin Laden and his co-conspirators did it," Zwicker emphasizes. "It's a brilliant narrative, but upon examination of the evidence, it crumbles into dust, just like the dust of the World Trade Towers."
-------- us politics
U.S. war policy 'grave error'
Ex-Rumsfeld aide admits occupation of Iraq a failure
Britain, U.S. at odds over interim government's role
SANDRO CONTENTA EUROPEAN BUREAU
May 26, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1085523609417&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
LONDON, England-One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as "a grave error." Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure.
"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs of ending, Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy "was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately.
"We didn't have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately," he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30.
This public criticism of U.S. policy from one of the leading advocates of the war - and a firm political ally of U.S. President George W. Bush - indicates just how much Bush's political fortunes are being damaged by post-war chaos.
With polls indicating 64 per cent of Americans believe Bush has no clear plan for Iraq, the U.S. president is embarking on a series of weekly speeches to pitch his proposal to hand over sovereignty to an appointed interim Iraqi government on June 30. But that plan, contained in a United Nations Security Council resolution drafted by the United States and Britain, has led to confusion about who will have ultimate control over U.S.-led coalition forces.
The resolution leaves over-all military control in the hands of the United States, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted yesterday that such power would be transferred to the interim Iraqi government.
The interim government, Blair added, will even have the power to order foreign troops to leave the country - a power not mentioned in the resolution.
"After the 30th of June there will be the full transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi government. Therefore, the people who will decide whether the troops stay or not will be the Iraqi government," Blair told reportersat his monthly press conference.
The Iraqi interim government, Blair added, would have the power to veto military actions, such as the one U.S. soldiers launched recently against militants in the Iraqi city of Falluja.
"If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," he said. "And the final political control remains with the Iraqi government. Now that's what the transfer of sovereignty means."
Blair's description of the U.S.'s Falluja operation as a "political decision" - suggesting it was not a matter of military or security necessity - was also veiled criticism of an action that killed an estimated 600 Iraqis, and has been strongly denounced in a British foreign ministry memo as "heavy handed."
Blair made clear that the Iraqi interim government's power over coalition troops would be limited, insisting that British troops will not carry out orders they disagree with.
Still, his comments seemed at odds with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who insisted yesterday U.S. forces "will remain under U.S. command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."
Iraq's interim defence minister, Ali Allawi, told reporters in London he thought coalition forces would be gone within months.
"In terms of the timeline for the presence of multinational forces to help us establish security and stability, I think it would be a question of months rather than years," he said.
Blair's comments on the powers of the Iraqi interim government provided the kind of detail that France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, noted is missing from the resolution tabled on Monday.
The resolution says the "unified command" of the multinational force in Iraq remains under U.S. control. It also authorizes coalition forces to "take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq."
Blair added that Britain's 7,500 soldiers in Iraq would leave once Iraqi security forces were able to ensure the country's stability.
"We stay until we get the job done, but obviously, the sooner the better we are able to get Iraqi security forces in charge of their own security, then the easier it is for us to leave," he said.
France, Russia, Spain and China signalled they wanted changes to the draft U.N. resolution.
French President Jacques Chirac called Bush to say Iraqis must see the sovereignty they get June 30 as "real," and Russia said it needed to see the composition of the interim government. But several Security Council members said they expected the resolution to be adopted with only minor changes.
"I do not expect any fight," said Ambassador Abdallah Baali of Algeria, the only Arab member of the council. "All of us are in a constructive mood. We want the transition to succeed."
Bush has made Iraq the central plank in his so-called war on terror. But a report from a leading think-tank yesterday suggests the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only accelerated recruitment for Al Qaeda.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates the extremist network now has 18,000 radical militants in its ranks and cells in more than 60 countries.
"Al Qaeda must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe - potentially involving weapons of mass destruction," institute director John Chipman told a news conference to launch the think-tank's annual survey of world affairs.
WITH FILES FROM STAR WIRE SERVICES
----
Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts
Carolyn Lochhead, clochhead@sfchronicle.com
San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/26/MNGFR6RT7I1.DTL
Washington -- Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.
In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.
"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."
Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.
Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.
Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy."
Some of Bush's supporters concede the administration has committed blunders over the past year. Many suggest a sharp change in course -- such as adding thousands of troops, or moving up elections or forcefully quashing insurgents -- which they contend Bush did not promise Monday.
"It was important for Bush to remind the American public of the cost of failure," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and another neoconservative war supporter. "Basically, Bush was letting us see the forest through the trees."
However, he said, "the devil's in the details, and with the stakes so high, we can't ignore the details."
Yet while criticizing the administration for failures of execution, few neoconservatives have abandoned their belief that the war was a good idea or that it is intimately linked, as Bush insisted Monday, with fighting terrorism.
Joining the neoconservatives in support of the basic war effort are Democratic hawks such as Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.
"Iraq is clearly waiting to see if we will help develop a more open society or whether we will tire, declare a Pyrrhic victory and leave," Lantos said, urging persistence and greater international involvement.
"Nobody is admitting defeat, and if anything they are taking an even harder line," said Charles Pena, head of defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposed the invasion and urges a speedy withdrawal.
Some contend that neoconservatives resemble the communists they once ridiculed, blaming the failures of communist ideology on the Kremlin's execution.
"It's an argument that shows that they didn't understand the problem to begin with, that you just cannot use military force to dictate outcomes everywhere in the world," Pena said. "It's based on this presumption that somehow we have to turn Iraq into a democracy, that that will somehow make us safe, which presumes Iraq was a threat to begin with."
War supporters have been emphasizing the bright spots in the occupation, such as the relative calm in some parts of the country.
Many compare the current situation in Iraq with the darkest moments of World War II, when rampant despair clouded victories that lay ahead.
Neoconservatives warn, however, that the administration seems headed on a dangerous course. Pletka charges the administration with "subcontracting" the political process to the United Nations. Many are particularly worried by the decision to enlist a former Republican Guard general to pacify Fallujah, site of a bloody Sunni insurgency last month. Handing over security to factional militias is a recipe not for elections but for civil war, they contend. They urge instead a crackdown by U.S. forces.
"The truth is it wouldn't take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."
But their critics say the hawks' predictions have nearly all gone awry. The weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war were never found, and the war's cost, rather than being self-funded from Iraq's oil revenues, has reached $170 billion with no end in sight.
Neoconservatives widely predicted an easy occupation followed by an immediate peace, followed by "a flourishing democracy which would cause a domino effect across the region creating democracies elsewhere," said Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then the very first foreign policy position taken by this new democratic Iraq, run by their exile friends, would be to recognize Israel, and that would somehow end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bunnies would dance in the streets, and we would find life on Mars."
Singer said the plan was "incredibly ambitious to the point of absurdity, and of course reality stepped in, and that's where we are now."
Neoconservatives contend they predicted no such thing.
"I'm on the record as saying the occupation would require several hundred thousand troops and the process would take five to 10 years," said Schmitt. "So you didn't get the cakewalk stuff from us. That said, the administration made it harder on itself because, frankly, they planned a military campaign that was quite efficient at getting rid of the government but didn't plan on getting rid of the regime, and the result allowed a lot of Baathist Republican Guard and other insurgents to get their feet under them and create the insurgency we face today.
"I'm willing to say policy was still correct, but I'm not willing to take the blame for people's inability to carry it out in an effective fashion."
----
Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice to Resign
May 26, 2004
New York Times
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26CND-GORE.html?hp
In a scathing attack on what he termed the White House's failed policies in Iraq, Al Gore called today for the resignation of six members of the Bush administration. "We cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team," he said.
President Bush, Mr. Gore said, has brought the United States humiliation in the eyes of the world, not the "humility" he had promised. In the process, Mr. Bush "has built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon," the former vice president said.
Two days after Mr. Bush sought to reassure Americans, Iraqis and other nations that his policies are bringing self-rule to Iraq, Mr. Gore delivered the first of what could be a one-two Democratic rebuttal. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is scheduled to deliver an address on terrorism, the military and Iraq at 10 a.m. Pacific time Thursday in Seattle.
Mr. Gore, who was edged out in the 2000 presidential election against Mr. Bush, took the occasion in his address today at New York University to praise Mr. Kerry.
"Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom," Mr. Gore said, "and take office on January 20 of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reins of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe."
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr. Gore also spoke of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, which he said was not the work "of a few bad apples," as the nation had been assured by Mr. Bush. The incidents, he said, had caused damage not only to America's strategic interests but "also to America's spirit."
The first official that Mr. Gore demanded should step down was Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense," Mr. Gore declared.
The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, should also quit immediately for badly mishandling the coordination of national security policy, Mr. Gore said.
Others on his list were George J. Tenet, the director of national intelligence, and Mr. Rumsfeld's deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, and his intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone.
The Bush national security team is "endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home," Mr. Gore insisted.
"They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point."
Using words like betrayal, arrogance and abhorrent throughout his address, Mr. Gore said the abuses of the Iraqi prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, and that the fears of the country after 9/11 had been "exploited and fanned" by the president.
From the moment Mr. Bush took over at the White House he sought to destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided the United States since the end of World War II, Mr. Gore said. This meant that America could ignore international law and take military action against any nation, "even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat," he said, an obvious reference to Iraq.
On Abu Ghraib, he said, "The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply.
"The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration."
President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world for the abuse, Mr. Gore said, but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.
"He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders."
He added: "Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
NZ doesn't need nuclear power, says scientist
26 May 2004
NZ STUFF
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2920009a7693,00.html
Celebrated environmentalist and scientist James Lovelock shocked fellow greens this week by supporting nuclear energy, but says New Zealand does not need it.
"You've got all the renewables in the world. You're singularly fortunate," he told National Radio today.
New Zealand had "a lot of wind" with a small enough population and enough space for wind turbines.
"You've got geothermal, I should imagine, in enormous quantities," Professor Lovelock said.
"I would have thought that New Zealand could be the first place in the world, after Iceland that is, to get all of its energy from renewables."
Prof Lovelock is the author of the Gaia hypothesis - the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the actions of living things themselves - and was one of the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect.
He fears global warming is advancing so swiftly that to prevent it overwhelming civilisation, a massive expansion of nuclear power is needed.
----
Kerry pushes plan for energy independence
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
By Thomas Ferraro,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-26/s_24248.asp
PORTLAND, Oregon - Democratic White House candidate John Kerry promoted his plans for U.S. energy independence Tuesday as he sought to cash in on President Bush's slumping approval ratings.
A day after Bush delivered a national address to try to reassure Americans about his policies in war-torn Iraq, Kerry went to a bus depot in Portland, Oregon, and focused on a major domestic concern: the soaring price of gasoline.
"When gas hits $2 a gallon, we just don't pay for it at the pump," said the senator from Massachusetts. "We pay for it in our towns and our schools and our grocery stores."
Kerry blamed rising gasoline prices largely on uncertainty in the Middle East, a major source of U.S. fuel, and accused Bush of inaction.
"What we need is a president of the United States who understands and has a vision for how our country is going to be stronger and safer and more secure - and that means being energy independent," Kerry told a gathering of about 150 people, including teachers, firefighters and other union workers.
Kerry said as president he would invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and establish "a realistic fuel economy standard," coupled with tax incentives for consumers to buy and manufacturers to build more efficient vehicles. "We can do better," he said.
"John Kerry's campaign attacks on gas prices ignore the reality of Kerry's long record of supporting higher gas prices and blocking the president's comprehensive energy plan," said Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.
With worries about war, gas prices, and jobs dominating the headlines, Bush's poll numbers have dropped below 50 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Surveys show Kerry running about even with or slightly ahead of Bush in the race for the White House.
Kerry to Discuss Iraq
Kerry, who backed the congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use force in Iraq, issued a statement Monday after Bush's address, saying the president needed to turn words into actions in Iraq and reach out more to U.S. allies for help.
Kerry planned to discuss Iraq and national security in a speech in Seattle on Thursday, aides said. "It will be big," one aide promised, without providing details.
At Tuesday's event in Portland, Kerry was asked by the mother of a soldier how to respond to those who say it is unpatriotic to criticize Bush's Iraq policies.
"I learned this lesson a long time ago," said Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who opposed that conflict. "What I fought for and what every young American is fighting for in Iraq ... is freedom," Kerry said. "Democracy is the right to stand up in your own country and ask questions."
Asked by a student if he believed the military draft would be resumed, Kerry said to sustained applause and cheers, "If you elect me president ... I will give us a foreign policy that absolutely makes it unnecessary to have a draft." He added, "What's happened right now ... is George Bush is running a kind of clandestine draft. Because he has turned the National Guard and the Reserves into almost active duty."
Kerry arrived in Portland from Washington on his new campaign plane, which he called his "Freedom Bird," the name he said was given to aircraft that carried troops home from Vietnam more than a generation ago.
Bush launched a new ad on Tuesday attacking Kerry in 18 battleground states, accusing him of changing his position on the Patriot Act that expands law enforcement powers. The ad says that under pressure from "fellow liberals,"
Kerry is "playing politics with national security" by favoring repeal of the act. Kerry has not called for the act's repeal but has urged changes when it comes up for renewal next year.
-------- energy
Manley nuclear report `flawed'
Group argues for gas-fired generators
Analysis challenges economic rationale
JOHN SPEARS BUSINESS REPORTER,
Toronto Star
May 26, 2004.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1085523608755&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851
Building efficient natural gas-fired electricity generators makes more economic sense than refurbishing another reactor at the Pickering A nuclear generating station, says the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
The alliance released an analysis today challenging the position put forward by a special provincial advisory panel headed by former finance minister John Manley.
In a report released in March, the Manley panel recommended proceeding with the restart of a second nuclear reactor at the Pickering A nuclear station. The four-reactor station was mothballed in 1997, and one reactor was restarted last fall.
The Manley panel estimates it will likely cost $500 million to restart a second reactor. It says the nuclear plant will produce electricity at a cost of 2 cents to 3 cents a kilowatt hour less than a natural-gas plant.
But Jack Gibbons, chair of the clean air alliance, said Manley used "deeply flawed" assumptions when comparing the economics of nuclear and natural gas generators.
Among them:
The Manley panel assumes that the reactor will operate at an average capacity of 85 per cent. The alliance says 69 per cent is more realistic;
The panel assumes the reactor will start on time and on budget. The alliance argues that nuclear projects in Ontario have a long history of delays and cost overruns, and the project is likely to be 40 per cent over budget.
The alliance says the cost of capital for the project will be 50 per cent higher than the Manley report estimated;
The alliance says the Manley panel overestimated the cost of producing electricity from natural gas.
Gibbons said the alliance plugged its own assumptions into the spreadsheet used by the Manley panel and concluded that natural gas is a better bet.
An efficient natural gas plant can produce power at 5.89 cents a kilowatt hour, while a refurbished Pickering A unit will produce power at a cost of 10.7 cents a kilowatt hour, he said.
"The assumptions we've used are based on Ontario Power Generation's historical experience," Gibbons said.
----
Turkey, Israel Discuss Undersea Energy 'Corridor'
Story by Gill Tudor
REUTERS TURKEY:
May 26, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25254/story.htm
ANKARA - Turkey and Israel, already working on a plan to ship water to the Jewish state, are looking at building an undersea corridor to pipe in oil, gas and power, ministers of the two countries said on Tuesday.
Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky said the strategic allies would start a pre-feasibility study to consider channeling electricity, natural gas, crude oil and refined oil products under the Mediterranean from Turkey.
"Israel is an island of energy," Paritzky told a small group of journalists in Ankara, noting that the country was connected to no international oil or gas pipelines or power grids.
"The reason for having a corridor is that the cost of building each and every element decreases tremendously," he added.
Turkey is a net oil importer, producing only small quantities, but it is a key crossroads for the transport of oil and gas from Russia, the Caspian region and the Middle East.
Turkey, a secular Muslim state, has close ties with Israel although relations have become strained recently over Israel's assassination of radical Palestinian leaders and a massive raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
The two countries agreed in March to Israel's purchase of 50 million cubic meters of water each year for 20 years, making it the first country to buy water from Turkey.
"VERY EXPENSIVE"
Paritzky, in Ankara for the signing of a separate power plant deal with a Turkish company, said the initial study should be completed within two months. If that was favorable, a further feasibility study would look at details such as the location, depth and capacity of the corridor.
"If we come to the conclusion it is feasible and economically worthwhile we will progress it further," he said. "We will try to do it from the private market -- a BOT (build-operate-transfer) project or something else. The company that will build it will charge transportation."
He said it was too early to say how much it might cost.
"It's a very, very expensive project, a very big one," he said, adding that he did not rule out extending it to third countries.
Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said the two countries would act in line with the feasibility studies.
"This work will be an instrument for stability and peace in the region," he told reporters earlier on Tuesday.
Guler, who gave no further details of the project, was speaking at the signing of a $400 million deal under which Turkish power company Zorlu Enerji will build three power stations in Israel.
Paritzky said the studies would also consider the possibility of piping water through the energy corridor, but this was unlikely to make economic sense.
Critics have said even shipping water from Turkey is too expensive and that some of Israel's water needs will be met with the opening of desalination plants within the next two years.
But Israeli officials have said spending more on water from Turkey is worthwhile to strengthen ties with its Muslim ally.
(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun)
-------- ACTIVISTS
Tom Clancy new book criticises Iraq war
May 26, 2004
AP / Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/25/1085461759852.html
A celebrated author with many admirers in the military has criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq, citing it as proof that "good men make mistakes".
Tom Clancy also said he almost "came to blows" with a leading war supporter, former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle.
The hawkish master of such million-selling thrillers as Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October has added his own name to critics of the Iraq war, and not only through his own comments.
His latest book, Battle Ready, is a collaboration with another war critic, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni.
Battle Ready looks at Zinni's long military career, dating back to the Vietnam War, and includes harsh remarks by Zinni about the current conflict.
In an interview today with The Associated Press, Clancy and Zinni sat side by side in a hotel conference room in Manhattan, mutual admirers who said they agreed on most issues, despite "one or two" spirited "discussions" during the book's planning.
Zinni has openly attacked the war, but Clancy reluctantly acknowledged his own concerns. He declined repeatedly to comment on the war, before saying that it lacked a "casus belli," or suitable provocation.
"It troubles me greatly to say that, because I've met President (George W) Bush," Clancy said. "He's a good guy. ... I think he's well-grounded, both morally and philosophically. But good men make mistakes."
Battle Ready was published in the United States today with a first printing of 438,700. It is the fourth in Clancy's "Commanders" series, in which military leaders reflect on their careers and discuss military strategy.
"In the movies, military leaders are all drunken Nazis," said Clancy, who has worked on books about retired General Chuck Horner, who led US Central Command Air Forces during the Gulf War, and retired General Carl Stiner, whose missions included the capture of Panama leader Manuel Noriega.
"In fact, these are very bright people who regard the soldiers and Marines under them as their own kids. I thought the people needed to know about that. These are good guys, and smart guys."
Zinni served as commander in chief of the US Central Command from 1997 to 2000 and as a special Middle East envoy from 2001-2003.
But even as an envoy, Zinni spoke out against invading Iraq, regarding it as disastrous for Middle East peace and a distraction from the war against terrorism. Today, he said getting rid of Saddam Hussein was not worth the price.
"He's a bad guy. He's a terrible guy and he should go," Zinni said.
"But I don't think it's worth 800 troops dead, 4500 wounded - some of them terribly - $US200 billion ($286.8 billion) of our treasury and counting, and our reputation and our image in the world, particularly in that region, shattered."
In discussing the Iraq war, both Clancy and Zinni singled out the Department of Defence for criticism.
Clancy recalled a prewar encounter in Washington during which he "almost came to blows" with Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser at the time and a longtime advocate of the invasion.
----
David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Seven, dies at 88
DAVID GRAM,
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/05/26/obituary1339EDT0574.DTL
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Peace activist David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Seven arrested and tried for their part in the violent anti-war protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, has died at 88.
Dellinger died Tuesday, said Peggy Rocque, administrator of Heaton Woods, the Montpelier retirement home where the activist had been living.
Dellinger was a pacifist who devoted much of his life to protesting. A member of the Old Left whose first arrest came in the 1930s during a union-organizing protest at Yale, he was a generation older than his Yippie co-defendants in the Chicago Seven case.
"Mainly I think he'll be remembered as a pacifist who meant business," said Tom Hayden, a fellow '60s radical and member of the Chicago Seven who went on to become a California legislator. "His pacifism was very forceful. He didn't mind interjecting himself between armed federal marshals and someone they were pushing around."
At the Chicago Seven trial in 1969 and 1970, Dellinger and four co-defendants -- Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Rennie Davis -- were convicted of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 convention. Those convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court, which cited errors by U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman.
When Hoffman invited Dellinger to address the court during sentencing, he continued to speak after the judge ordered him to stop.
"You want us to be like good Germans, supporting the evils of our decade, and then when we refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to the concentration camps while you and this court suppress freedom and the truth," Dellinger told the judge. "And the fact is, I am not prepared to do that."
Greg Guma, editor of the political magazine Toward Freedom, called Dellinger "one of the major figures in terms of peace and social justice of the last half century."
Born in Wakefield, Mass., in 1915, Dellinger studied economics at Yale, spent a year at Oxford University in England and studied for the ministry at Union Theological Seminary. He wrote several books, the most recent, "From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter," published in 1993.
Dellinger fought for unions in the 1930s despite being called a communist, and walked with civil right leaders in the South in the 1950s and '60s, despite the risk of violence.
A conscientious objector during World War II, Dellinger spoke out against the practice of putting black soldiers in the back of trains ahead of defeated Germans. During a three-year prison term -- one of several stints behind bars -- Dellinger refused to sit in the all-white dining area.
Just three years ago, at age 85, Dellinger got up at 2:45 a.m. at his home in Montpelier and hitched a ride to demonstrations in Quebec City against the creation of a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere.
"Three percent of the richest people in the world control more wealth than 49 undeveloped countries," he said. The trade agreement "is going to extend that kind of system."
Dellinger contended capitalism led to imperialism and violence.
"The evils in the society today are greater than they were in 1968," he said in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press. "I enjoy life this way, I enjoy life being in solidarity with the people who are fighting for a better world."
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