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NUCLEAR
Bush designates Morocco 'major non-NATO ally'
Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and the War Crimes Left Behind
India, US agree to boost cooperation in defence
Pakistan test-fires second ballistic missile within week
Musharraf ready for mutual reduction of nuclear arsenal with India
Spent N-fuel returns to Japanese plant
Nuclear reprocessing plant resumes storage
Korea nixes US idea of military cooperation
U.S. seeks help tracking shoulder-fired missiles
Pakistan's forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link
Bush orders reduction in U.S. nuclear arsenal
U.S. to Make Deep Cuts in Stockpile of A-Arms
Bush's Nuclear 'Football' in Vatican Hallowed Halls
Nukes: Fewer Missiles, More Muscle
Senate eases tank-cleanup rules for radioactive waste
U.S. Senate approves change in defense nuclear cleanup requirements
EPA Rejects Radioactive Waste Removal Plan
US Senate Backs Energy Deptartment on Nuclear Waste
Senate agrees to pave over nuclear dump
Nuclear Waste Plan Survives in Senate
Senate Backs Redefinition of Atom Waste
MILITARY
Traditions, Terrorism Threaten Afghan Vote
Afghan Denies Power-Sharing Deal
Peacekeepers Take Control of Congo Town
Crisis in Sudan
Minister ordered killing frenzy, court told
Bosnia downsizes its armed forces by one third
Prime U.S. Contractors Wary About Iraq Transition
Chalabi Pal Gets Iraq Contract
Ahead of D-Day anniversary, France prepares for terror attack risk
France cancels major anti-terror attack exercise
New Plan Would Let Iraq Order Troops Out
UN resolution falls short on sovereignty, Iraq declares
Influential Cleric Backs New Iraqi Government
Interim Government Seeks 'Full Authority'
Iraq's New Prime Minister Defends Presence of U.S. Troops
Turkish PM: Israel treating Palestinians as they were treated
Turkey mum on US plans to station warplanes at Turkish base
Istanbul under tight security ahead of NATO summit
Cassini nears Saturn rendezvous
Chief wants FBI to have a domestic spy division
Tenet leaves CIA's reputation in tatters
Tenet Resigns as C.I.A. Director; 3 Harsh Reports on Agency Due
Tenet Resigns as CIA Director
Analysis For Personal Reasons, Or Is He the Fall Guy?
Second top official to quit CIA
Coded Cable In 1995 Used Chalabi's Name
U.N. Troops, Protesters Clash in Congo
Inside the Ring
Kerry Says He Would Add 40,000 to Army
DynCorp Took Part In Chalabi Raid
Soldiers and Their Families Have Mixed Feelings
A Pentagon Plan Would Cut Back G.I.'s in Germany
U.N. Says Abu Ghraib Abuse Could Constitute War Crime
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court throws out $959 million Iraq award
Agency faulted for visa overstays
Intelligence Unit for FBI Is Proposed
F.B.I. Wants New Division on Terrorism
Methods Used on 2 at Guantanamo
POLITICS
White House Initiatives Are Rejected
Bush 'Willing to Cooperate' With Leak Probe
Report Blames Agencies Over Prewar Intelligence
Abu Ghraib Inquiry Is Said to Focus on Head
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
Soros likens Iraqi prisoner abuse to 9/11
Nader condemns major parties
The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring
More Changes Are Needed, Democrats Say
ENERGY
The Age of Renewables Has Arrived
Car owners are turning to vegetable oil as cleaner, cheaper fuel
A pledge to promote renewable energy
OTHER
Health Council's Chief Criticizes Administration
ACTIVISTS
Cheney speech to draw protesters
Police Make 16 Tiananmen Square Arrests
Remembering Tiananmen
Tiananmen Memory Haunts Demonstrators
500,000 protest Bush's visit to Rome
Thousands Protest in Rome Against Bush Visit and Iraq War
Thousands March Against Bush's Rome Visit
After 75 Years, Barnard Makes Activist an Alumna
'Take Back America' Aims at Left
Hong Kong Vigil Remembers Tiananmen Square Killings
Cheney speech to draw protesters
Protest song is back - with a vengeance
Families to press Pentagon on MP unit's deployment
Israel attacks BBC's Vanunu interview
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Bush designates Morocco 'major non-NATO ally'
US President's move is in recognition of close US-Morocco relationship, Rabat's support in global war on terror
2004-06-04
Middle East Online
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=10172
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush on Thursday designated Morocco a "major non-NATO ally," a move that will boost security cooperation between the two allies, the White House said.
"The president took this step in recognition of the close US-Morocco relationship, our appreciation for Morocco's steadfast support in the global war on terror, and for King Mohammed's role as a visionary leader in the Arab world," said national security council spokesman Fred Jones.
The decision means Morocco is joining an exclusive club of countries that enjoy a privileged security relationship with the United States. Its members, which include Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand, are granted significant benefits in the area of foreign aid and defense cooperation.
Major non-NATO allies are eligible for priority delivery of defense material and the purchase, for instance, of depleted uranium anti-tank rounds.
They can stockpile US military hardware, participate in defense research and development programs, and benefit from a US government loan guarantee program, which backs up loans issued by private banks to finance arms exports.
However, the designation does not afford them the same mutual defense guarantees enjoyed by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
----
Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and the War Crimes Left Behind
by Heather Wokusch,
June 4, 2004
Baltimore Chronicle
http://baltimorechronicle.com/060404WarCrimes.shtml
It's understandable that the US is seeking another one-year exemption on its war crimes exemption for peace-keepers. It's not just because of Abu Ghraib. It's because the US has been dropping depleted uranium weaponry on Iraq that will remain radioactive for an estimated 4.5 billion years. According to the Geneva Conventions, that's a war crime.
Given repercussions over Abu Ghraib, it isn't surprising that Washington recently asked the UN Security Council for another one-year extension on its war crimes exemption for peace-keepers. The prison abuse scandal is just the iceberg's tip of Geneva Convention violations by the United States, and closer inspection could send Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., not to mention Bill Clinton, straight to the courtroom docks.
Back in the heady days of 1991's Persian Gulf War, Commander in Chief Bush, Sr. was widely praised for the invasion's rapid end, but the true battle had only begun for many on the ground: the United States had dumped 375 tons of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry on Iraq during the war, despite foreknowledge its radioactivity would make food and water in the bombed regions unsafe for consumption on an indefinite basis (DU is estimated by scientists to remain radioactive for 4.5 billion years). And, according to the Geneva Conventions, that's a war crime.
DU is a highly radioactive nuclear waste product valued by the US military for its ability to penetrate tank armor, but it's also a remorseless enemy. A region's food chain is devastated by the trails of carcinogenic dust left in a DU bomb's wake, and of course, humans inhale and absorb the dust as well; even nine years after the war, veterans afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome ailments still had DU traces in their urine.
Depleted uranium is also suspected in dramatically elevated levels of birth defects and cancer cases among those in bombed areas, as well as in a wide litany of Gulf War veterans' health complaints.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, US and British forces deployed an estimated 1,100-2,200 tons of depleted uranium weaponry, with untold future health implications for both Iraqis and coalition service members. The US dropped 375 tons of DU on Iraq during the Gulf War, and 11 tons more in the Balkans.
But the use of DU weaponry wasn't Bush Sr.'s only transgression in Iraq. US forces also bombed electrical grids that powered 1,410 water-treatment plants for Iraq's 22 million people, even though the Geneva Conventions clearly state that destroying or rendering useless items essential to the survival of civilian populations is illegal under international law and a war crime. An excerpt from "Strategic Attack," a 1998 US Air Force document, explains: "The electrical attacks proved extremely effective... The loss of electricity shut down the capital's water treatment plants and led to a public health crisis from raw sewage dumped in the Tigris River."
A second US Defense Intelligence Agency document, 1991's "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," predicted how sanctions would then be used to prevent Iraq from getting the equipment and chemicals necessary for water purification, which would result in "a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population" leading to "increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease."
That's where Bill Clinton came in. Far from heeding the dangers of radioactive weaponry, he contributed to the estimated 11 tons of DU weaponry used by NATO forces in the 1999 Balkan conflict. Clinton also strongly supported the devastating sanctions against Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Notoriously, in 1996 when his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the estimated over half a million Iraqi children who were thought to have died as a result of the sanctions, her response was "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
Fast forward to 2001, when Bush Jr. used DU weaponry in the invasion of Afghanistan. Cities subjected to allied bombing were later reported to have uranium concentrations at 400% to 2000% above normal, with birth defects sharply on the rise. Then, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, US and British forces deployed an estimated 1,100-2,200 tons of depleted uranium weaponry, with untold future health implications for both Iraqis and coalition service members.
It's worth considering the future of warfare Bush-style, as can be gleaned by his administration's funding of weaponry. Despite the Cold War's end, the Bush administration is spending 12 times more on developing nuclear weapons than on securing or reducing existing stockpiles or on non-proliferation efforts.
The administration has also repealed the ban on low-yield nuclear weapons, dismissed international non-proliferation agreements, and pushed development of the so-called "bunker buster," which in fact is a nuclear weapon. It is safe to say the Bush administration won't be backing off nuclear or radioactive weaponry anytime soon.
In testimony on the Abu Ghraib crisis, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "It is the photographs that give one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don't do it." So if our leaders really can't grasp pain and suffering without Polaroids, then bring out the cameras. Bring out pictures of populations devastated by WMD such as radioactive weaponry, tainted water supplies and the starvation wrought by sanctions. Splash those images across the media along with photos from Abu Ghraib.
Because if as a nation we can bring ourselves to face the horrors inside one prison far away, then the scope can be widened to consider other war crimes. And when that happens, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. will have some explaining to do.
Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer and can be contacted via her web site: heatherwokusch.com.
-------- india / pakistan
India, US agree to boost cooperation in defence
Friday June 04, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2004-daily/04-06-2004/main/main5.htm
NEW DELHI: India and the United States on Thursday said they had agreed to strengthen cooperation in defence and the global war on terror, following talks between a top US defence official and the Indian government.
The talks between Douglas Feith, US Undersecretary for Defence Policy, and Indian officials focussed on strengthening cooperation and the security situation in South Asia and Iraq, a statement, issued a day after the meeting concluded, said.
In the talks which started on Tuesday, the two sides noted there was a growing area of convergence, including in "security issues with special emphasis on terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and security of sea-lanes," the statement added.
Feith made a presentation on key areas such as missile defence and updates on security situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. The missile presentation was made with Washington renewing its offer to New Delhi to move ahead in cooperation in the joint development of the missile shield. The sixth meeting of the Indo-US Defence Policy Group noted that ground had been laid for strengthening the military-to-military cooperation. "We have renewed the offer as well as placed moves to substantially increase the content of joint military-to-military exercises in the meeting," Feith told newsmen here.
According to the official statement, the US delegation had also briefed India on its global peace operations and US Global Posture Review by giving updates on situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Indian side, said the statement, made presentations on the country's current involvement in the UN peacekeeping operations, security and reconstruction in Afghanistan and the current state of Indo-Pak relations.
----
Pakistan test-fires second ballistic missile within week
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604091624.z7oapl07.html
Pakistan Friday conducted its second test of a nuclear-capable missile since India's new government took power a fortnight ago, but President Pervez Musharraf insisted it was meant to silence domestic critics rather than send signals abroad.
The ballistic missile Hatf V, which can can carry nuclear warheads deep inside Indian territory with its range of 1,500 kilometers (930 miles), was successfully test fired early Friday, the military said. It did not reveal the location or exact time of the test.
General Musharraf, who witnessed the test firing, said it was, "not intended to send any political signals outside the country but was necessary for the validation of technical parameters," according to the statement.
"However he did want some of the traditional domestic cynics to take note that under his stewardship, the nuclear program had gone from strength to strength and had been consolidated to a point where its forward direction was clearly defined and irreversible."
The Hatf V is part of a series of Ghauri missiles, which are believed to be based on North Korea's Nodong missile. They were developed by Pakistan's premier nuclear facility Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), which was founded and named after the disgraced architect of Pakistan's atomic bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Domestic critics had expressed fears that the government may be forced by international pressure to scale back its nuclear arsenal after Khan confessed publicy in February to selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
His revelations opened up what has been described as the world's worst ever nuclear proliferation scandal.
The intermediate Hatf V was also tested on May 29, just a week after New Delhi's new government was sworn in. The test triggered accusations from India's new Congress-led government that Pakistan was provoking a nuclear arms race.
Pakistan's military however suggested there were more tests to come, saying the latest test was "part of a series of tests planned for the Ghauri missile system."
"These tests dispel the impression being spread by the opposition that the strategic assets are at risk of "roll-back" as a result of investigations against Dr Khan," a senior government official told AFP.
But some analysts read a clear message to India in the past week's two tests.
"It is a general signal to India that we have the capability and we will continue to develop it," defence writer and analyst, retired army officer Ikram Sehgal, told AFP.
India and other neighbours had been notified of the test beforehand, the military statement said.
Pakistan and the new Indian government have vowed to carry forward a 14-month old peace process initiated by India's outgoing prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. They are scheduled to hold their first talks later in June.
Experts will meet in New Delhi on June 19-20 for talks on nuclear confidence building measures. Foreign secretaries will then meet on June 27-28, also in New Delhi, to discuss the Kashmir dispute and security issues.
Nuclear experts estimate Pakistan, which went public as a nuclear power when it conducted nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to tests by India the same month, has an arsenal of 30 to 60 nuclear warheads.
Islamabad says its nuclear program is deterrent-based.
India this week floated the idea of a tripartite discussions between Islamabad, New Delhi and Beijing to evolve a common nuclear docrine. Pakistan has said it would examine the proposal.
----
Musharraf ready for mutual reduction of nuclear arsenal with India
DUBAI (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604152337.72ckzgtb.html
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in remarks aired Friday as Pakistan conducted a test of a nuclear-capable missile, said he was prepared to reduce his nuclear arsenal if India did the same.
"We don't have any worldwide military ambitions. We maintain a force for deterrence ... If there is a discussion or a deliberation (with India) on mutual reduction, we have been saying let's make South Asia a nuclear-free zone," he told Al-Arabiya news channel.
"If mutually there is an agreement of reduction of nuclear assets, Pakistan would be willing," Musharraf said.
The ballistic missile Hatf V, which can can carry nuclear warheads deep inside Indian territory with its range of 1,500 kilometers (930 miles), was successfully test-fired early Friday, the Pakistani military said.
It was the second test of a nuclear-capable missile since India's new government took power a fortnight ago.
Pakistan and the new Indian government have vowed to carry forward a 14-month old peace process initiated by India's outgoing premier, Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Experts will meet in New Delhi on June 19-20 for talks on nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs). Foreign secretaries will then meet on June 27-28, also in New Delhi, to discuss the Kashmir dispute and security issues.
Commenting on the idea floated by India this week of a tripartite discussion among Islamabad, New Delhi and Beijing to evolve a common nuclear doctrine, Musharraf said these were "very serious issues" which require a lot of analysis and deliberation.
"When we are talking of nuclear CBMs between India and Pakistan, that itself is a difficult job. Now getting China involved, it involves many nuances which one has to consider," he told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya.
Musharraf said that while Indian-Israeli military cooperation was a matter of concern, he did not see Israel as a threat to Pakistan.
"Israel is very far away from us geographically, and under the present circumstances we don't see a threat emanating from Israel," he said.
"We do show concerns when Israel collaborates with India ... But if you are talking of (an) immediate threat coming from Israel, no, that is not in the immediate context," the Pakistani leader added.
-------- japan
Spent N-fuel returns to Japanese plant
By David Pilling
June 4 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944510531
Tokyo - The first shipments of spent nuclear fuel began arriving at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in northern Japan after a suspension of 19 months, marking another step in the gradual return to normal of Japan's nuclear industry.
Delivery of spent uranium was suspended in November 2002 after welding defects caused leaks of radioactive water at the plant in Aomori prefecture.
Public confidence in Japan's nuclear industry has been damaged by a series of scandals, the latest of which led to the closure of 17 nuclear plants belonging to Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) last year.
Rokkasho, being built by a consortium of power companies called Japan Nuclear Fuel, is due to begin full-fledged operations in mid-2006. It will begin trial operations using depleted uranium this month.
----
Nuclear reprocessing plant resumes storage of radioactive nuclear waste from Japan's reactors
Friday, June 04, 2004
By Kenji Hall,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-04/s_24532.asp
TOKYO - A closely watched nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northern Japan received a shipment of high-level radioactive waste Thursday, triggering protests a year-and-a-half after it was closed for safety failures.
A shipment of drums containing 46 tons (50 short tons) of used fuel - mostly radioactive uranium and plutonium - was delivered under heavy guard from a Japanese power plant to Rokkasho, said local government official Kazumitsu Terashita.
Aside from immediate safety concerns, the unique reprocessing program has received intense attention around the world because it produces plutonium that critics say could be diverted and used to make nuclear weapons.
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. temporarily closed the plant, which lies about 580 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Tokyo, and halted shipments of waste in November 2002, after a radioactive water leak and other problems.
But the plant, which is designed to store radioactive waste and recycle spent nuclear fuel, was allowed to resume operations after passing safety checks, Terashita said.
The plant will handle 529 tons (582 short tons) of used fuel through March 2005, according to Japan Nuclear Fuel's Web site. The company, a consortium of utilities, refused to confirm Thursday's delivery.
Dozens of residents and antinuclear protesters staged demonstrations near the plant and hundreds of people were expected to turn out for more demonstrations in the afternoon, said activist Osamu Imamura.
Residents and environmentalists worry about radioactive leaks and possible training accidents from nearby Misawa U.S. Air Base.
"We don't want dangerous radioactive wastes to be brought here for storage. The government should end its nuclear fuel reprocessing plans," Imamura said.
Nuclear power is at the center of Tokyo's plans to make this resource-poor island nation more energy independent. Government plans call for producing more electricity at nuclear plants instead of coal- or oil-fired plants, which rely on imported resources. Japan's 52 active nuclear power plants already supply nearly 35 percent of the country's energy.
But the industry has been plagued by safety problems and reactor shutdowns in recent years. The country's worst nuclear accident at a reprocessing plant outside Tokyo in 1999 killed two workers and exposed hundreds of people to radioactivity. That has fanned public worries about nuclear energy and put pressure on the government to review its policy. Tokyo wants to build 11 more reactors, boosting nuclear power to 40.7 percent of the country's energy supply by 2010.
The 2.1 trillion yen (US$19 billion) Rokkasho plant began operating in the early 1990s as a vital fuel storage site and is expected to hold fuel and waste for up to 50 years. Since opening, it has taken in 779 tons (857 short tons) of spent fuel, more than one-quarter of its capacity, said Japan Nuclear Fuel spokesman Masanori Hirao.
The company plans to begin tests enriching uranium later this month and start reprocessing highly radioactive plutonium for reactors in 2006, said Hirao.
The reprocessed fuel could be used in reactors that burn a mixture of uranium and plutonium, or more advanced fast-breeder reactors, which use plutonium fuel instead of uranium and produce more plutonium that can be used as fuel. Japan's only other reactor using plutonium fuel has been closed since a 1995 accident.
But some scientists say volcanoes and frequent earthquakes make Rokkasho a dangerous place for storage and that reprocessing plutonium is costly and riskier than technology currently in use.
-------- korea
Korea nixes US idea of military cooperation
By David Scofield,
Jun 4, 2004
Asia Times
http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FF04Dg04.html
Talk of the complete withdrawal of United States forces from Korea has circulated for years, satisfying the prayers and the anger of many and inspiring anxiety and fear in others. There is a plan to withdraw all US forces from Seoul to bases elsewhere in Korea, but that hasn't happened yet. And some US forces are being withdrawn from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and redeployed to Iraq. Still, that's a far cry from full exit.
Meantime, there's a new US plan afoot - or maybe just a trial balloon - US-South Korean military cooperation in the region - humanitarian and peacekeeping, meaning quelling trouble. Seoul gave Washington an emphatic "no" last week when a general floated his vision of the alliance. The US backed off, but South Korea was apoplectic and called the very notion "burdensome". The alliance isn't so cozy any more; both sides have different objectives and South Korea wants to be treated as an equal. It's time for both to acknowledge their irreconcilable differences and move toward an amicable divorce before resentment and mistrust make the inevitable split more difficult, and potentially more dangerous than it need be.
For years, South Korea has had a love-hate relationship with Washington and as recent poll data indicate, Korean views of the US are muddled and confused. A recent online survey shows that almost 50 percent of college students feel the US is the greatest impedimnt to unification, but 72 percent of these same respondents feel the US is necessary for South Korea's security. (The US maintains about 37,000 soldiers and an equal number of dependents and others linked to the military; some are being redeployed to Iraq and all troops will be moved from the major base in Seoul in a few years.)
Rumors and speculation of a complete withdrawal of US Forces in South Korea (USFK) gained currency throughout the politically supported anti-American and anti-military demonstrations in the fall of 2002, then the election of President Roh Moo-hyun, and Seoul's subsequent implementation of North Korean rapprochement policies that might best be described as "Sunshine Plus". Roh has adopted a careful but distinctly pro-Korean policy and weighs US concerns and requests against the central issue: what's best for South Korea. This causes some disquiet in Washington.
Now, under the aegis of the US Global Defense Posture Review - a pan US forces review and realignment program - a total of 12,000 USFK personnel will be re-deployed away from Korea in the not too distant future, and the rumor mill is deafening.
In mid-May, South Korean media reported that 5,700 US infantry troops originally destined for Korea were reassigned to Iraq last December. This report was followed almost immediately by USFK confirmation that 3,600 USFK infantry soldiers will be leaving their positions along the DMZ for Iraq soon, by mid-summer. Whether they return to Korea or become part of the 12,000 member re-deployment outside South Korea is uncertain.
Shangri-La Dialogue
Redeployment talks are scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the 9th session of the Future of the Alliance Policy Initiative talks, or FOTA, scheduled for June 7, next Monday in Seoul. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged that he will be having similar talks with South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil at an annual Asia-Pacific security meeting, called the Shangri-La Dialogue, scheduled to begin Friday, in Singapore.
Throughout, the United States has made it clear that it will not "abandon" South Korea, and have committed to investing an additional US$11 billion in theater defense platforms in and around Korea over the next three years.
But this will be an investment in technology, not in human resources. The days of US soldiers patrolling "Freedom's Frontier", as the border between North and South Korea is called, are probably over.
In South Korea, news of the redeployment elicits emotions ranging from elation to despair. There is no question that the defense umbrella the US has placed over and around South Korea since the Korean War ended in a cease fire 50 years ago has allowed the nation to redirect to development the resources that would normally have gone to national defense. South and North Korea are still technically in a state of war, but tangible US investments in the nation's defense allowed South Korea to direct resources into the creation of large, state-financed business empires and fund the development of political, social and economic infrastructures necessary for Korea to develop at an unprecedented pace.
The commitment of US troops has provided a "trip-wire" (a term as anachronistic for the USFK as "North Korea as a potential belligerent" has become for South Koreans) defense for Seoul, allowing South Korea to do what is virtually unthinkable for a country in a technical state of conflict to do: grow from a gross national product (GDP) roughly equivalent to that of Equatorial Guinea to become the world's 12th largest economy. All while technically in a state of war, a no-war-no-peace ceasefire.
The US has became a role model for South Korea in spheres that extend well beyond defense. Today, any national accomplishment is invariably compared with a US scale of achievement. America has become simultaneously envied, despised and mimicked. A post-secondary education from the US, for example, has become a pre-requisite for tenure at almost all of Korea's universities. Self-styled anti-American student activists can often be found applying for student visas to the country they love to revile.
Roh seeks more 'equal' relationship with US
President Roh has declared his desire for a more "equal" relationship with the United States - there can be no mistaking the inequality that presently exists. The ability to defend national territory, either independently or through a regional security framework, is a critical component of national self-determination. Allowing another nation to provide both territorial security and the perception of domestic stability makes an "equal" relationship highly unlikely. The role of protector inevitably encourages a patron-client relationship, not an alliance of equals.
Last week, USFK 8th Army commander, Lieutenant-General Charles C Campbell, described his vision of what the USFK-Republic of Korea alliance could become. He spoke of the two nations working together in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in the region, a relationship that would require the two nations to work closely and in concert to check and react to volatile situations throughout the region.
South Korea's reaction was apoplectic. The Korean Ministry of Defense immediately issued a statement declaring that any such future cooperative role of the two nation's forces would be "burdensome" to South Korea. While South Korea has benefited enormously from the USFK presence here, the South Koreans are not, it seems, about to run around the neighborhood hand in hand with their American "friends". Nor, perhaps, should they.
The USFK has since qualified Campbell's comments as hypothetical, and not part of any new strategy. But Campbell opened the door, perhaps deliberately, for South Korea to look beyond its borders and its most immediate domestic concerns and think, if not globally, at least regionally.
South Korea's strong, visceral reaction to the notion of working with its "ally" in areas beyond the Korean peninsula underscores the divergent beliefs and incompatible visions these two allies hold. The alliance, or at least what's left of it, has few options: it either develops in a less paternalistic and more balanced fashion with a mandate that goes beyond the confines of the peninsula (the Campbell approach); or it weakens, eventually atrophies and becomes a liability particularly for the United States that will find it increasingly difficult to project policy, and when appropriate, force, from the confines of South Korea, the current alliance.
Korea-US joint reaction conflicts with Seoul strategy
The possibility of US-South Korea joint response to regional trouble spots is inconsistent with domestic economic agendas and contemporary threat assessments held by Seoul. Greater regional issues such as the China's rising influence both in the region and in South Korea have little resonance among the South Korean people. Campbell's impromptu expressions of future cooperation may well have been designed to test what most Korean observers have long known to be true: Korea's issue is North Korea, not the region.
All of Korea's relationships, both within the region and beyond, are increasingly weighed and judged based on two often inter-related criteria: domestic economic growth and strategies of peninsular rapprochement. South Korea is developing its own foreign policies based on its vision, perception and agenda. Many Korean observers and ordinary citizens say it's time the United States showed some of the same focused rationality.
When challenged, political agents within South Korea and the US quote the past, often predicating the alliance on historical fact rather than a shared vision of the future. Lieutenant-General Campbell has given his view of the future, a future that is obviously incongruent with South Korea's vision. The defense alliance is based and predicated on the two nations viewing the northern state, Pyongyang, in a like way and thus being able to formulate like policy. South Korea's new perception makes the continuation of joint policy and joint defense unworkable.
Campbell's words were a Hail Mary with zero seconds on the clock. It was unlikely the "offer" of an expanded role for the Republic of Korea-USFK would be taken up by the South Koreans, but the offer, if indirect, was nonetheless made. The United States can now move forward with the regional redeployments as a component of global force restructuring plans in the knowledge that every alliance option has been explored, while South Korea, for its part, should move forward with its Pyongyang rapprochement policies consistent with its view of the peninsula and the region.
David Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently conducting post-graduate research at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
-------- missile defense
U.S. seeks help tracking shoulder-fired missiles
Report faults Pentagon on accountability of Stinger exports
MSNBC staff and news service reports
June 04, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5137264/
WASHINGTON - The United States will seek international help in tracking shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles that have increasingly fallen into terrorist hands and now represent a significant threat to commercial aircraft, a Department of Homeland Security official said Thursday.
The push to enlist foreign governments in a global effort to better secure and account for a worldwide inventory of the missiles, estimated to be between 500,000 to 750,000, comes on the same day that the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report saying that the Pentagon is doing a poor job tracking the U.S. version of the shoulder-launched missile, called the "Stinger," which it sells to a variety of foreign governments. The GAO report says the Pentagon's shoddy accounting and tracking system makes it difficult to keep the weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
The new security challenges in Iraq have added to the global stockpile of MANPADS available on the black and gray markets, the GAO said.
"According to intelligence sources, thousands of MANPADS may have been provided to Iraqi security forces or were stolen during hostilities in Iraq immediately following the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003," notes the report.
The control and accountability of shoulder-launched missiles "should be a very aggressive subject of discussion with our international partners," Asa Hutchinson, DHS undersecretary for border and transportation security, said Thursday while speaking at a Reuters Air and Defense Summit in Washington. "They have to be engaged in accounting for that and tracking the movement of those," Hutchinson said.
Reason for such high concern: Some 30 countries make the light but lethal weapons and about 1 percent of the worldwide total, or 7,500, are beyond any kind of formal government control, the GAO report said.
"The proliferation of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) has been of growing concern to the United States and other governments," said the GAO said.
Terrorists are attracted to the weapons as a way to bring down commercial airliners because the weapons are deadly, portable, easy to use, easy to hide and cost from less than $1,000 each to $100,000.
Last year, the State Department estimated that more than 40 aircraft had been struck over the years by MANPADS, causing at least 24 crashes and more than 600 deaths worldwide.
But it was the first attack outside a conflict area - an unsuccessful attempt on an Israeli charter jet taking off from Mombasa, Kenya in 2002 - that raised the government's concern about the risk posed by the missiles.
U.S. studying MANPAD defense
Hutchinson said no decisions had been made on whether the government might ultimately require U.S. airlines to carry countermeasures that might be developed. Such defenses could involve installing antennas to detect any incoming missile - a prelude to triggering infrared decoys to foil the heat-seeking weapon.
Earlier this year DHS announced it was funding a program to study the feasibility of retrofitting the U.S. commercial airline fleet with missile countermeasures. But critics have said such a move would be prohibitively expensive.
"I think there's an awareness you can't overburden an industry with costs," Hutchinson said. "So who pays for it would be an issue down the road."
"There is no way [the airline industry] could afford that," said Francis Tusa, editor of Defense Analysis, a London-based newsletter. Tusa estimates it could cost $10 billion for U.S. airlines to equip the 6,000 or so planes they have flying.
The technology development efforts under way were important even if future defenses were deployed only selectively, Hutchinson said. "It might be such that you cannot do it in a comprehensive fashion but it might be on higher-risk routes," he said. "It might be in the areas of more vulnerable airports." Much hinged on what the countermeasures turned out to be and their costs, he said. "Historically, the biggest threat from MANPADS and the use of them has been overseas, and I believe that that remains," he said.
Pentagon keeps paper records on sales
Countries that buy Stinger missiles must allow the Defense Department to inspect them. But, the GAO report says the Pentagon's Stinger records are "neither complete nor reliable. As a result, [the Department of Defense] cannot account for each Stinger sold abroad."
The Pentagon has no master database that maintains sales and shipping records of Stinger missiles, the report said. In addition, most of the records that do exist are merely paper copies, a significant portion of which have been misfiled or destroyed.
The DoD "lacks reliable control records" because there is simply no requirement to keep such sales records, the GAO notes. "Without complete and accurate Stinger shipping records [military officials] have no reliable control records against which to compare Stinger inventories," the report says.
But the Pentagon has heard this before. In September 1994, the GAO said that the Pentagon's oversight and record-keeping of the weapons was poor. Investigators recommended changes then.
In the report released Thursday, the GAO said that the defense secretary should standardize requirements for keeping Stinger records, create an electronic database to consolidate records of the systems and establish standard procedures for inspecting them.
The Pentagon, in response to the report, said it has a "high level of confidence" that the missiles sold to other nations do not pose a terrorist threat because many different organizations review each proposed transfer. The Pentagon also said that official procedures for counting and inspecting the missiles would be in place at year's end.
In 2003, the State Department reached agreements with other countries to better control the weapons, but such agreements are voluntary and nonbinding, the report said. In that same year the DoD ordered reinstated a 1982 policy requiring its inspectors to conduct annual inventory checks of 100 percent of the Stinger missiles sold overseas. That 1982 policy-the year the U.S. first started selling Stingers abroad-was reduced to only five percent in 1998. The Pentagon said at the time that the 100 percent requirement duplicated the 100 percent inspections conducted by the recipient countries, which were done twice a year.
The GAO recommended that the secretary of state work with other countries to figure out ways to monitor how well they are reducing the supply of the weapons and assess whether such efforts dry up the flow to illicit arms markets.
The State Department agreed with the report's recommendations and said that it is working with other countries.
The department has also worked with foreign governments to destroy more than 8,155 excess shoulder-fired missiles and tighten security where they are stored. By March, commitments from nine countries - including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Liberia, Nicaragua and Serbia to destroy nearly 10,000 excess missiles, the report said.
MSNBC.com's Brock N. Meeks contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
Pakistan's forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link
By Kaushik Kapisthalam,
Jun 4, 2004
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF04Df05.html
Novelists Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, authors of such bestsellers as City of Joy and Is Paris burning?, have just written a new novel titled Is New York Burning? whose plot involves al-Qaeda members, with help from a Pakistan army major, successfully smuggling a Pakistani nuclear device into New York and then using it to try to blackmail the United States into stopping support for Israel.
The Pakistani jihadi group that plays a big part in the plot is called Lashkar-e-Tibi. Even fiction writers have now started connecting the dots linking Pakistan's nuclear establishment, its home-grown jihad groups and the possibility of an al-Qaeda nuclear attack overseas. But US authorities seem curiously blase about this threat and still appear to be content with the old shibboleths about the "inviolability" of Pakistan's nuclear program.
The ones who met Osama bin Laden In late 2001, US officials investigating the activities of Osama bin Laden discovered that the al-Qaeda head had contacted some Pakistani nuclear experts for assistance in making a small nuclear device. US officials sought two veteran Pakistani nuclear scientists in particular, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, for interrogation. The two admitted working in Afghanistan in recent years, but said they had only been providing "charitable assistance" to Afghans.
Mahmood was no low-level scientist. He was one of Pakistan's foremost experts in the secret effort to produce plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1999 he publicly said that Pakistan should help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He also made some public statements in support of the Taliban movement. After more interrogation, both Mahmood and Majid admitted that they had met with bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri during their visits to Afghanistan and held long "theoretical" discussions on nuclear weapons.
Then the trail went cold. After months in Pakistani custody, both Mahmood and Majid were quietly released. Fearing that Mahmood's charity organization, Ummah Tameer e-Nau, could be a front for al-Qaeda, the US government placed the entity in its terrorist list and designated Mahmood himself "a global terrorist". Pakistan's government never put the two scientists on trial, and they are free men today.
The ones who got away
In December 2001, the New York Times reported that while US authorities were investigating Mahmood and Majid, they found some links between al-Qaeda and two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar. Both Asad and Mukhtar had long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear-weapons-related installations. However, before US investigators could reach them, Pakistan sent the two scientists to Myanmar on an unspecified "research project".
The New York Times also quoted Pakistani officials as saying that President General Pervez Musharraf personally telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary asylum for the two nuclear specialists. In January 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that Asad and Mukhtar were possibly aiding Myanmar's efforts to build a 10-megawatt nuclear "research reactor". Asad and Mukhtar are still in Myanmar, well away from US reach.
The Lashkar-Nuke link
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a terrorist group based in Muridke, Pakistan. Although founded by the chief promoter of the Afghan jihad and bin Laden mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, LeT claims ousting India from Kashmir as its main goal. But experts say LeT shared training camps with al-Qaeda and that many al-Qaeda-linked Afghan-Arabs have been found fighting for LeT in Indian-administered Kashmir. The LeT fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.
An Australian named David Hicks, who was picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and who is now in Guantanomo prison in Cuba, was trained by LeT. LeT has also provided training for jihadis from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Chechnya. In December 2001, the US banned LeT after it was implicated in a terrorist attack on India's parliament. Pakistan subsequently banned LeT in January 2002, but allowed it to operate under a new name - Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Prior to being banned, LeT used to hold massive annual conclaves in Pakistan, preaching jihad against India, Israel and the United States. Today, it is widely believed that LeT is operating as a global al-Qaeda "franchisee", even though it is still active in Indian Kashmir.
In a sensational claim, French journalist and author Bernard Henri-Levy stated that Pakistan's disgraced "father" of the nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, was in fact a member of LeT. What is definite is that Khan did attend the last openly held LeT moot, in April 2001, as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan on the dais was none other than Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the plutonium expert who met bin Laden. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, bin Laden himself was known to address LeT annual meets over the phone for many years, even when he was hiding in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Despite being banned, the Pakistani media have frequently reported that LeT has openly collected funds under its new name. Pakistani authorities have allowed LeT's leader or "emir", Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, to barnstorm Pakistan, calling for jihad against the United States, in particular. In the recent past, Saeed has stated in his public meetings and rallies that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should be used to benefit all Islamic nations and that Pakistan must share its nukes with such nations as Iran and Saudi Arabia. More alarming, in a 2002 statement Saeed released to the LeT website, he claimed that people loyal to his organization "control two nuclear missiles". He is claimed to have said that the two missiles with warheads would be used against "enemies of Islam".
In 2002, top al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida was arrested from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Pakistani officials did not, however, arrest LeT leader Hameedullah Khan Niazi, who had housed Zubaida. In late 2003, the brother of Indonesian terrorist Hambali and many of his Indonesian and Malaysian associates were also arrested from a LeT-owned seminary in Karachi.
In what is now known in the United States as the "Virginia Jihad" conspiracy, nine terrorist suspects were recently arrested from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The men were later convicted on terrorism-related charges. As per the indictment, all were members of LeT and trained in LeT camps in Pakistan.
Last October, a French-born terrorist named Willie Brigitte was arrested in connection with his actions in Australia. Brigitte admitted to be a member of LeT. Australian police later arrested a Pakistani architect - Faheem Lodhi, who was also a member of LeT, and was supposedly Brigitte's co-conspirator in a plot to conduct a major terrorist attack in Australia. Reports indicate that Lodhi's and Brigitte's target was supposedly the electrical grid. Other targets considered included the Lucas Heights nuclear research center outside Sydney and various military facilities and natural-gas pipelines. It is also known that both Lodhi and Brigitte received funds and took orders from a mid-to-high-level LeT member in Pakistan named Sheikh Sajid. More alarming, Brigitte told interrogators that he had personally seen a Chechen chemical-weapons expert named Abu Salah experiment with chemical weapons in an LeT camp in Pakistan.
Why the Pakistan threat is real
Despite all the ominous-sounding facts mentioned above, some readers might wonder whether the Pakistan nuclear-terrorism threat is a credible one. Indeed, some analysts do feel that the idea of Pakistan's nuclear warheads falling into the hands of terrorist groups such as LeT is an exaggeration. After all, it is widely believed that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are under the secure safekeeping of the nation's army, the only institution in Pakistan that is supposedly free of al-Qaeda influence. But is that really so?
Just recently, Musharraf revealed that some "junior" Pakistani army and air force officers had colluded with al-Qaeda terrorists in the two attempts on his life last December. The Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times revealed that the "junior officers" referred to by Musharraf may include an army captain, three majors, a lieutenant-colonel and a colonel. This is extremely significant. While many retired Pakistani generals and intelligence chiefs have openly associated with groups such as al-Qaeda, their actions have been glossed over because they weren't in active service. But when we know that serving Pakistani military officers have been conducting joint operations with al-Qaeda, the possibility of a Pakistani nuclear device falling into the hands of al-Qaeda appears more credible.
Even if al-Qaeda never gets hold of a Pakistani nuclear warhead, thanks to US technical safeguards, the possibility of it building a Pakistani-designed radiation dispersal device or a "dirty bomb" looks plausible. A recent analysis by US nuclear experts David Albright and Holly Higgins found strong evidence that Pakistani nuclear scientists Sultan Mahmood and Abdul Majid "provided significant assistance to al-Qaeda's efforts to make radiation dispersal devices". Therein lies the most overlooked Pakistani threat - the knowledge in the heads of nuclear experts sympathetic to the jihad movement, and jihadi groups with weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions such as LeT operating secure facilities and training camps in Pakistan with only the most minimal of restraints.
Assuming that the US might be secretly monitoring Pakistani nuclear fuel and weapons sites, such actions would not be enough to prevent, for instance, radioactive materials stolen from the former Soviet Union by Chechen LeT members and delivered to Pakistan, packaged into a dirty bomb designed by a Pakistani nuclear scientist (or an improvised nuclear device based on a Pakistani warhead design) in an LeT compound and delivered by a Pakistani-trained Western citizen taking orders from a handler in Karachi or Lahore.
For those who are skeptical of such a scenario it is worthwhile to recall that there have been reports of every one of its individual elements over the past three years, including the smuggling of radioactive and fissile material in to the region. This March, Tajik authorities arrested a man with a small quantity of plutonium that he allegedly planned to sell in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan remains the single most important country of focus in preventing an attack using a dirty bomb or even an improvised nuclear device.
Even before September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda had been interested in launching suicide attacks on nuclear reactors, turning them in effect into huge dirty bombs. For instance, in a 2002 interview with alJazeera reporter Yosri Fouda at a secret location in Karachi, September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh claimed that the September 11 attacks were originally going to target nuclear reactors, but they "decided against it for fear it would go out of control". Scientists and engineers from Pakistan's nuclear program could provide essential advice that could make the difference between success and failure. For instance, Sultan Mahmood, who played an important role in the construction of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear reactor, could have given specific tips to terrorists on how to breach nuclear reactors.
Unlearning the lessons of September 11 This summer is slated to be a period of high tension for the West, the United States in particular, with multiple threats of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, according to US officials. As horrific as the September 11 attacks on the US were, many terrorism experts have been warning that the next al-Qaeda attacks could be much worse. Even as the US struggles to deal with the aftermath of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, where the threat from weapons of mass destruction was highly ambiguous, it appears that US policymakers are unresponsive to a more alarming threat from Pakistan.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance journalist based in the United States.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush orders reduction in U.S. nuclear arsenal
U.S. nukes taking biggest nose dive in a decade
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
June 4, 2004
Oakland Tribune
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2192168,00.html
The Bush administration has ordered the nation's nuclear arsenal cut nearly in half over the next eight years.
President Bush signed a classified report last month that would scrap more than 4,600 H-bombs and warheads, leaving about 6,000 weapons, according to estimates by nongovernmental experts.
The nation's top nuclear-weap-ons executive announced the cuts Thursday, but offered scant details and little of the fanfare that might be expected of the largest U.S. nuclear arms reductions in more than a decade.
In number, if not explosive power, the U.S. arsenal will drop to levels unseen since the late 1950s.
"This is in fact an historic effort," National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks told reporters by phone. Brooks suggested the cuts were a sign that "the Cold War's over. We don't have
an adversary with a huge (nuclear arms) stockpile ready and capable of launching a large-scale nuclear attack."
The Bush arms cuts are momentous by percentage but less ambitious than those ordered by his father. In real terms, potential U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China and North Korea will see virtually no change in the U.S. nuclear forces actively deployed against them.
Hundreds of nuclear warheads will remain targeted over the North Pole at Russian missile silos. All but two types of warhead types already planned for retirement will remain in the field. Weapons scientists at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia labs will study expanding the arsenal's capabilities and explosive yields, but Brooks said no new or heavily modified weapons figure in the revised stockpile.
Under the Moscow Treaty signed two years ago, fielded strategic bombs and warheads will stabilize at about 2,200 by 2012, and estimates by arms researchers at the Natural Resources Defense Council place the "nonstrategic" arsenal of lower-yield weapons at about 1,000.
The weapons to be eliminated already are in storage, primarily in a top-security underground bunker at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., and a similar facility at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas.
For some, weapons officials will discontinue replacement of "limited-life components" such as reservoirs of tritium and neutron generators. Others will be scheduled for dismantlement at the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas.
"It could and should have been done a decade ago. These warheads were redundant in December 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated," said NRDC senior nuclear weapons analyst Christopher Paine.
How many weapons of specific bomb and warheads types will go inactive or be destroyed remains classified, especially for the roughly two-thirds of the arsenal that is not fielded.
"I'm trying to be precise and candid at the same time without giving you the numbers," Brooks said. "We have a long, robust tradition of not talking about numbers in the stockpile."
The administration did not inform Russian counterparts on the cuts and made no plans to allow verification of the dismantled weapons. Lifting that secrecy, Paine said, would reassure China and Russia about the size of the U.S. arsenal and ease pressure on them to maintain high weapons reserves.
"What is the possible security interest that's being protected? The secrecy is just a bad habit that they're unable to shake," he said.
President George H.W. Bush eliminated entire classes of H-bombs, particularly the land-based tactical nuclear weapons of the U.S. Army and Marines; several types of nuclear torpedoes and bombs; and all nuclear weapons on Navy surface ships.
President Clinton expanded some of the cuts, with the two presidents together sending the arsenal plummeting from about 22,000 weapons in 1989 to about 10,000 for most of the 1990s.
President George W. Bush's orders ratified plans made in the Clinton administration to retire an old ICBM warhead, the W62 now being removed from early Minuteman missiles, and the advanced cruise-missile warhead, the W84.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore lab designed both and will continue modest efforts to maintain them -- by studying their plutonium cores and high-explosive detonators -- until their retirement within the next five years.
Stan Norris and Hans Kristensen, arms researchers who maintain the NRDC's definitive 25-year database on U.S. and foreign nuclear stockpiles, estimated that the largest cuts in retained weapons will be in W80 cruise missile warheads (down by 1,000), the W76 Trident sub-launched warhead (down by 1,500), the B61 strategic bomb (down by 600) and the W78 warhead on later Minuteman land-based missiles (down by 500.)
But they estimate the Bush plan retains hundreds more of all of those weapons, plus all of the Peacekeeper warheads, the highest yield sub-launched warheads and the highest yield U.S. bomb -- Livermore's B83 -- rated at 1.2 megatons or almost 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
"Essentially, they're cutting in half what they had in reserve, which is a good half step toward what they should be doing," said Hans Kristensen, an NRDC arms-research consultant. "They're still going to end up here with a Cold War arsenal, just smaller ... We're still tying our numbers (to) what the Russians and the Chinese do."
The cuts will not mean a "peace dividend." Brooks' agency will save money by not extending the life of the eliminated weapons, but will spend that money on building a plutonium bomb-core factory, on shortening the time to prepare for a nuclear test if the president orders one and on studies of new and modified nuclear weapons for new missions.
Congress insisted on the stockpile report before approving new administration spending on a factory to take over the job of making plutonium bomb cores from Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by the University of California. The cuts suggest the factory could be smaller than projected but still needed eventually, Brooks said.
"For some people, I think it will make it easier for us to go ahead, but I'm not convinced this will resolve all of the issues," he said.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .
----
U.S. to Make Deep Cuts in Stockpile of A-Arms
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 4, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04weapons.html
WASHINGTON, June 3 - The United States will reduce its stockpile of nuclear weapons by nearly half over the next eight years, the Energy Department said Thursday.
The Bush administration made the decision last month and informed Congress on Tuesday in a classified report.
Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department, said in a conference call with reporters that the reductions would leave the nation with "the smallest nuclear-weapons stockpile we've had in several decades." He called the decision historic.
Mr. Brooks would not discuss specific numbers for the cuts. "The numbers I'm prepared to use are 'almost in half' and 'smallest in several decades,' " he said.
The decision by the administration followed an announcement by President Bush in November 2001 that the nation would reduce the number of "operationally deployed" strategic warheads by about two-thirds by 2012, leaving 1,700 to 2,200 warheads.
But that announcement did not commit the United States to reduce the total number of weapons in its inventory, only the number of strategic weapons that were ready to use immediately.
The new decision includes additional categories of weapons, including short-range weapons that are not considered strategic, weapons held in reserve and weapons in places like nuclear submarines that are in overhaul and "logistical spares," which are used to swap with weapons being recalled for overhaul.
When Mr. Bush promised in 2001 to cut the number of actively deployed strategic weapons to no more than 2,200, the United States had 6,100, according to Tom Cochran, an expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group that specializes in nuclear weapons, among other environmental issues. The United States had 10,000 nuclear weapons in all categories, and the announcement made Thursday will cut that to 6,100, Mr. Cochran said, suggesting that the overall reduction would be somewhat less than Mr. Brooks's figure.
Some of the weapons to be removed from the active category will be dismantled, and some will go into the reserve category, meaning that they could be returned to readiness quickly; some of the weapons now in the reserve will be decommissioned, Mr. Cochran said.
In practice, the weapons to be retired will join a long queue at an Energy Department plant in Amarillo, Tex., called Pantex, which is now busy with "life extension" of existing weapons, Mr. Brooks said. He said that President George Bush, who left office in 1993, decided to retire the nation's stock of nuclear artillery shells, "and we just finished dismantling the last one last year."
Mr. Brooks said in a letter to members of Congress that making the stockpile smaller would require more work on the remaining weapons. "We must continue the administration's efforts to restore the nuclear weapons infrastructure," he said in an unclassified cover letter to the memo describing the schedule for reducing arms from now to 2012.
In the conference call, Mr. Brooks said that the decision to reduce the stockpile meant that a new bomb plant that the administration wants to build, the Modern Pit Facility, could be smaller than it might have otherwise been, but that it would still be needed. Pits are the hearts of plutonium weapons, and the Energy Department lost most of its capacity to make pits when it closed the Rocky Flats, Colo., plant, near Denver, in the 1990's, because of environmental and production problems.
The plutonium in the pits in existing weapons is breaking down over time, Mr. Brooks said, and at some point the department will have to melt down and recast the pits. One reason for that the memo was issued Tuesday was to convince members of Congress that a new pit plant is needed, he said.
"We've not yet been able to convince some of our Congressional colleagues that the Modern Pit Facility is unrelated to any notion of future weapons development or future weapons growth," Mr. Brooks said.
In fact, the administration has shown intermittent interest in a new class of small nuclear weapons, an idea bitterly opposed by some members of Congress.
Mr. Brooks said the reduction was the largest in history in percentage terms.
Mr. Cochran, at the Natural Resources Defense Council, agreed that the reduction was significant. But he said: "These cuts are over eight years. That's two presidential administrations. This is not a fast-paced reduction."
----
Bush's Nuclear 'Football' in Vatican Hallowed Halls
Fri Jun 4,, 2004,
By Philip Pullella
(Reuters)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=17&u=/nm/pope_bush_football_dc
VATICAN CITY - While George W. Bush and Pope John Paul talked peace in the Vatican on Friday, a military aide held a bulky black attache case containing the codes the U.S. president would need in order to launch a nuclear war.
It is known as "the football." It has been all over the world and on Friday it entered the hallowed halls of the Vatican.
It was never very far from the president. While he and the pope were speaking alone in the pontiff's private study, it was in the next room.
And when Bush and the pope delivered speeches and Bush awarded the pope the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it rested on the shiny marble floor between the firm legs of Major Paul Montanus of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Sometimes a leather strap links "the football" from the military aide's wrist to the handle of the soft leather case.
But there was no strap visible on Friday. Apparently Montanus felt safe enough in the Vatican, under the frescoes of Renaissance masters.
In 1987, when former President Ronald Reagan visited the Vatican and the Soviet Union still existed, the Army major carrying "the football" didn't let it out of his grasp -- not even for a second.
That man approached the pope ramrod straight and shook hands with the pontiff with his right hand while holding "the football" with his left.
Asked on Friday why the leather strap was not being used, Montanus told Reuters with a sly smile: "We have various ways of keeping track of it."
The football has been to some strange places.
In 1991 when Bush's father was president, he allowed the military aide who was carrying the football to receive communion at the altar while clutching the football at the Episcopalian Christ Church in St Simons Island, Georgia.
When Bush senior visited Britain's Queen Elizabeth in 1991 the man with the football was there in a courtyard of Buckingham Palace wearing a tuxedo.
But apparently even the football needs some down time.
Newsweek magazine reported in 1991 that Bush senior accidentally left the football behind after attending a Los Angeles tennis match.
The Navy commander who had been holding the bag gathered several Secret Service agents and sped off after the president. They were reunited 15 minutes later, Newsweek said.
----
Nukes: Fewer Missiles, More Muscle
June 4, 2004
NEW YORK, CBS/AP
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/04/tech/main621121.shtml
"We recognize that maintaining the nation's nuclear deterrence with a much smaller stockpile means that we must continue Administration efforts to restore the nuclear weapons infrastructure." NNSA administrator Linton Brooks
Bush Administration strategy to counter weapons of mass destruction threat in all its dimensions, including their use and further proliferation.
(CBS/AP) The United States is cutting its back-up supply of nuclear weapons while bolstering its ability to build new and better bombs if necessary, the Energy Department said Thursday.
"By 2012, the United States' nuclear stockpile will be the smallest it has been in several decades," National Nuclear Security Administration administrator Linton Brooks said in a letter to Congress presenting a classified report on the nation's nuclear arsenal.
The changes to the nuclear stockpile follows President Bush's commitment in 2001 to cut the number of nuclear missiles deployed around the world to 1,700 to 2,200, a reduction of two-thirds. The stockpile is the backup supply for operational missiles.
"The president's decision to reduce the number of operationally deployed weapons has laid the groundwork for a major reduction in the size of the total nuclear stockpile," Brooks wrote. His unclassified letter did not specify the size of the stockpile or the proposed reduction.
According to The New York Times, Brooks told a conference call with reporters the move would cut the stockpile "almost in half." A weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Tom Cochran, told The Times that the total nuclear arsenal would drop from 10,000 weapons to 6,100 after the reductions announced Thursday.
Even as it has looked to cut the active nuclear arsenal, the Bush administration has also signaled it is interested in developing the capability to build newer, more advanced weapons.
Brook's letter indicated the reduced stockpile would not derail those efforts; in fact, it might speed them.
"We recognize that maintaining the nation's nuclear deterrence with a much smaller stockpile means that we must continue Administration efforts to restore the nuclear weapons infrastructure," he wrote.
According to Brooks, those efforts include planning a new facility for making the plutonium pits in nuclear weapons, improving training for weapons scientists and "enhanced test readiness.
The U.S. conducted its last nuclear test in 1992. While the White House opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - which the U.S. has signed but not ratified - the administration says it has no plans to conduct a test.
Last summer, nuclear officials from several agencies met for a meeting that included discussion of the question: "What is the uncertainty in confidence and potential risk threshold for a test recommendation-what would demand a test?"
The administration has also pushed for research on low-yield nuclear weapons and a bunker-busting nuke called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
A 2002 Nuclear Posture Review identified Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea as countries where "contingencies" could arise for which U.S. "nuclear strike capabilities" must be prepared, according to a leaked version.
# The Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from Cold War-era bomb making. The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert. Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater.
# Federal environmental regulators have rejected a government plan to begin removing highly radioactive waste from a former uranium-processing plant in Ohio. Nevada has threatened a lawsuit to block the Energy Department from shipping the waste from the former Fernald plant to the department's desert disposal site 65 miles north of Las Vegas. The Environmental Protection Agency told the Energy Department on Tuesday that it should not start removing the powdery waste from a concrete silo later this month and then hold it at Fernald until it could be shipped.
# Pakistan successfully test-fired a medium-range, nuclear-capable missile Friday for the second time in a week, but officials said the test was not intended as a message to neighboring India's new government.
# Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Friday that there was no need to let international investigators interrogate the alleged chief financial officer of a nuclear trafficking network arrested recently in Malaysia.
Malaysian officials already have ruled out allowing U.S. officials to question Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, saying they don't want any "foreign intervention" in the case.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Senate eases tank-cleanup rules for radioactive waste
By Seattle Times staff and news services
Friday, June 04, 2004
Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001947259_nukewaste04.html
WASHINGTON - The Senate yesterday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in South Carolina, a move that could set a precedent for a cleanup of waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington.
The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify some of the radioactive sludge in 51 South Carolina tanks, so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert.
Energy Department officials have argued that some residual sludges could be safely contained in the tanks rather than processed and sent to Nevada.
But Senate critics, led by Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., have said the tank containment - involving grouting the sludge in place - could increase the risks of radioactive wastes contaminating groundwater in the centuries ahead.
"I think the grout process hasn't been proven, and I think they are looking for a shortcut," Cantwell said.
Yesterday, Cantwell offered an amendment to strip the provision from a defense authorization bill, but the measure narrowly failed. But Cantwell said she still was hopeful the provision could be defeated in a possible second Senate vote or stripped out of final legislation in a joint House-Senate conference committee.
While the new cleanup plan has been backed by South Carolina state officials, it has split that state's Senate delegation.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who put the provision into the defense bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken by 23 years and save $16 billion. He rejected claims the waste would harm the environment.
Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., said the sludge accounts for more than half the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings.
The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste. Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume.
While supporters of the measure insisted it would apply only to waste at the Savannah River site, opponents said the change in nuclear-waste policy would create a "clear precedent" that could force other states - mainly Washington and Idaho, where there also are defense waste tanks - to accept less-safe cleanup plans.
Cantwell, who led the push to kill the measure, accused the administration of trying to "sneak" the change in cleanup requirements through Congress by tacking it onto a defense measure in closed-door proceedings without hearings.
And Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., accused the White House of trying "to blackmail my state to accept a lower cleanup standard."
Graham's provision was put into the $447 billion defense bill during consideration by the Armed Services Committee without hearings. The House panel refused to include the changes in its version of the defense bill and, instead, called on the National Academy of Sciences to examine the Energy Department cleanup proposal.
The tanks of nuclear waste are left over from decades of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A 1982 law requires that all waste from such reprocessing must be buried at a central repository planned for Nevada.
The largest amount of wastes is in Hanford, where the 177 tanks, some of which are leaking, store 53 million gallons.
The tanks, grouped in farms, contain a mix of liquids, salts cakes and slurries. A $5.78 billion waste treatment plant under construction at Hanford is supposed to mix the wastes with glass and put it into stainless-steel canisters that could be stored in Nevada.
The Energy Department argues that the residual sludge should be considered low-level waste and should not have to be removed. Instead, the department wants to cover the sludge with cement-like grout, saying that would be protective for hundreds of years.
Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said yesterday the proposed treatment is a "scientifically sound." He maintained it was "fully protective" of the environment.
Last year, a federal judge, acting on a lawsuit by environmentalists, ruled that such an approach violates the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. To get around the ruling, the department wants to get the law changed.
And environmentalists yesterday blasted the Senate action.
Times staff reporter Hal Bernton contributed to this report: 206-464-2581; hbernton@seattletimes.com
----
U.S. Senate approves change in defense nuclear cleanup requirements
Friday, June 04, 2004
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-04/s_24527.asp
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from Cold War-era bomb making.
Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater.
An attempt to block the change failed by the narrowest of margins. Senators voted 48-48 on an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, that would have stripped the provision from a defense authorization bill.
The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert.
While the plan has been approved by South Carolina officials, it brought sharp criticism from officials in Washington and Idaho who feared the change would put intense pressure on them to agree to a similar cleanup plan at nuclear sites in their states. The proposal also left South Carolina's two senators sharply divided.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had put the provision into the defense bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken, South Carolina, by 23 years and save $16 billion. He rejected claims the waste would harm the environment.
Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-South Carolina, said the sludge accounts for more than half of the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings.
The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste. Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume.
While supporters of the measure insisted it would apply only to waste at the Savannah River site, opponents said the change in nuclear waste policy would create a "clear precedent" that could force other states - mainly Washington and Idaho where there also are defense waste tanks - to accept less safe cleanup plans.
Cantwell, who led the push to kill the measure, accused the administration of trying to "sneak" the change in cleanup requirements through Congress by tacking it onto a defense measure in closed-door proceedings without hearings.
In an interview, Cantwell said she hasn't given up on getting the provision defeated. "I don't think the issue is over.... It's too significant of an issue," she said. "We have more amendments." Since the House bill doesn't contain a similar measure, the issue is also likely to come up in final negotiations by a conference.
Graham's provision was put into the $447 billion defense bill during consideration by the Armed Services Committee without hearings. The House panel refused to include the changes in its version of the defense bill and, instead, called on the National Academy of Sciences to examine the Energy Department cleanup proposal.
The White House is trying "to blackmail my state to accept a lower cleanup standard," declared Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington.
The tanks of nuclear waste are left over from decades of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A 1982 law requires that all waste from such reprocessing must be buried at a central repository planned for Nevada.
But the Energy Department argues that the residual sludge should be considered low-level waste and should not have to be removed. Instead, the department wants to cover the sludge with cementlike grout, saying that would be protective for hundreds of years.
Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said Thursday the proposed treatment of the sludge is a "scientifically sound plan to empty, clean, stabilize, and dispose of nuclear waste" in the tanks. He maintained it was "fully protective" of the environment.
Last year a federal judge, acting on a lawsuit by environmentalists, ruled that such an approach violates the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. To get around the ruling, the department wants to get the law changed.
There are 177 tanks with 53 million gallons of waste at the Hanford nuclear site near Richland, Washington, and 900,000 gallons in tanks at the (Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Environmentalists blasted the Senate action.
It's "a cruel trick that allows the Bush administration to leave a legacy of radioactive pollution that could endanger drinking water for millions of Americans," said Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the lawsuit that successfully challenged the Energy Department plan.
Robert Pregulman, executive director of the Public Interest Research Group in Washington state, said the legislation marks another attempt by the Energy Department "to weasel out of its obligation to properly clean up the radioactive mess it created at Hanford and other sites around the country."
-------- ohio
EPA Rejects Radioactive Waste Removal Plan
Friday June 4, 2004
By JOHN NOLAN
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4165848,00.html http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=1916386
CINCINNATI (AP) - Federal environmental regulators have rejected a government plan to begin removing highly radioactive waste from a former uranium-processing plant in Ohio.
Nevada has threatened a lawsuit to block the Energy Department from shipping the waste from the former Fernald plant to the department's desert disposal site 65 miles north of Las Vegas.
The Environmental Protection Agency told the Energy Department on Tuesday that it should not start removing the powdery waste from a concrete silo later this month and then hold it at Fernald until it could be shipped.
Keeping the waste at Fernald after it is out of the silo would violate a cleanup agreement the Energy Department reached years ago with federal and state environmental regulators, the EPA said.
Bill Taylor, the Energy Department's director of the $4 billion-plus cleanup, said Thursday that any lengthy delays could jeopardize the project's planned completion in 2006.
The Energy Department will continue talks with all parties in hopes of working out the differences, Taylor said.
Federal and state environmental regulators say the cleanup agreement requires continuous shipments of waste to Nevada as it is removed from silos. The Energy Department wants to ship the wastes in hundreds of trucks between now and 2006 for permanent disposal at its Nevada Test Site, where the government once tested nuclear weapons.
The department has been moving low-level radioactive wastes from Fernald to Nevada for years. But state officials say the higher-level waste will need a more secure disposal site with lined pits.
From the early 1950s until 1989, the Fernald plant processed and purified uranium metal for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Fernald ended production in 1989 to begin the cleanup.
The site is located about 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati,
On the Net:
Fernald project: http://www.fernald.gov
Nevada attorney general: http://www.ag.state.nv.us
-------- south carolina
US Senate Backs Energy Deptartment on Nuclear Waste
Story by Vicki Allen
REUTERS USA:
June 4, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25390/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate on Thursday narrowly backed a Bush administration plan to ease cleanup standards to allow some radioactive sludge from Cold-War era bomb production to stay in tanks at a South Carolina site, which critics say will harm cleanup efforts at other sites.
On a 48-48 tie, the Senate upheld the measure that was tucked into a huge $422 billion defense authorization bill by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Graham said the Energy Department's plan allowing the residual sludge to remain in tanks sealed with a special concrete grout would contain the pollution and save $16 billion in cleanup costs and 23 years of effort at the Savannah River weapons site.
But Sen. Maria Cantwell said the measure would set a precedent that would force her state of Washington, which houses the huge Hanford Nuclear Reservation, to consent to a lower cleanup standard instead of making the Energy Department abide by a 1982 law to remove the waste and bury it in a proposed nuclear repository in Nevada.
"The question is what are we going to do to hold DOE's feet to the fire to make sure that they get this waste cleaned up," Cantwell, a Democrat, said.
South Carolina's other senator, Democrat Ernest Hollings, also opposed the Energy Department's plan.
But Graham said "the quicker the clean-up the better ... it means less seepage throughout the ground, less pollution."
He said "some residual waste, less than two inches deep, will remain in the tank and be mixed with concrete and grout."
The dispute among lawmakers from Washington, Idaho and South Carolina, where much of the waste is stashed, had stalled progress on the huge defense bill for days. The Senate was expected to complete the bill next week.
The House of Representatives did not have a similar measure in the defense bill it passed last month, so it will be an issue when differences in the bills are worked out.
Some environmental groups decried the Senate's nuclear waste vote, saying it set an alarming precedent for cleaning deadly toxins that are leaking into ground water.
"We're shocked that Sen. Graham and some of his colleagues would sell their states down the river so the Department of Energy can avoid cleaning up millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in corroding tanks next to drinking water supplies," said Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said the vote would "ensure that we engage in cleanup activities that are fully protective of the environment and workers' safety."
-------- us nuc waste
Senate agrees to pave over nuclear dump
Plan to entomb waste defeated; other states may have to settle
Friday, June 4, 2004
(AP)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/06/04/nuclearsludge.ap/
WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from Cold War-era bomb making.
Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater.
An attempt to block the change failed by the narrowest of margins. Senators voted 48-48 on an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would have stripped the provision from a defense authorization bill.
The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert.
While the plan has been approved by South Carolina officials, it brought sharp criticism from officials in Washington and Idaho who feared the change would put intense pressure on them to agree to a similar cleanup plan at nuclear sites in their states.
The proposal also left South Carolina's two senators sharply divided.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had put the provision into the defense bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken, South Carolina, by 23 years and save $16 billion. He rejected claims the waste would harm the environment.
Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., said the sludge accounts for more than half of the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings.
The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste. Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume.
While supporters of the measure insisted it would apply only to waste at the Savannah River site, opponents said the change in nuclear waste policy would create a "clear precedent" that could force other states -- mainly Washington and Idaho where there also are defense waste tanks -- to accept less safe cleanup plans.
Cantwell, who led the push to kill the measure, accused the administration of trying to "sneak" the change in cleanup requirements through Congress by tacking it onto a defense measure in closed-door proceedings without hearings.
In an interview, Cantwell said she hasn't given up on getting the provision defeated. "I don't think the issue is over. ... It's too significant of an issue," she said. "We have more amendments." Since the House bill doesn't contain a similar measure, the issue is also likely to come up in final negotiations by a conference.
Graham's provision was put into the $447 billion defense bill during consideration by the Armed Services Committee without hearings. The House panel refused to include the changes in its version of the defense bill and, instead, called on the National Academy of Sciences to examine the Energy Department cleanup proposal.
The White House is trying "to blackmail my state to accept a lower cleanup standard," declared Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The tanks of nuclear waste are left over from decades of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A 1982 law requires that all waste from such reprocessing must be buried at a central repository planned for Nevada.
But the Energy Department argues that the residual sludge should be considered low-level waste and should not have to be removed. Instead, the department wants to cover the sludge with cement-like grout, saying that would be protective for hundreds of years.
Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow said Thursday the proposed treatment of the sludge is a "scientifically sound plan to empty, clean, stabilize and dispose of nuclear waste" in the tanks. He maintained it was "fully protective" of the environment.
Last year a federal judge, acting on a lawsuit by environmentalists, ruled that such an approach violates the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. To get around the ruling, the department wants to get the law changed.
There are 177 tanks with 53 million gallons of waste at the Hanford nuclear site near Richland, Wash., and 900,000 gallons in tanks at the INEEL facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Environmentalists blasted the Senate action.
It's "a cruel trick that allows the Bush administration to leave a legacy of radioactive pollution that could endanger drinking water for millions of Americans," said Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed the lawsuit that successfully challenged the Energy Department plan.
Robert Pregulman, executive director of the Public Interest Research Group in Washington state, said the legislation marks another attempt by the Energy Department "to weasel out of its obligation to properly clean up the radioactive mess it created at Hanford and other sites around the country."
--------
Nuclear Waste Plan Survives in Senate
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A11
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14282-2004Jun3.html
The Senate yesterday narrowly blocked a challenge to an Energy Department plan to leave some radioactive waste from Cold War bombmaking operations buried in the ground at nuclear weapons sites.
By a 48 to 48 tie vote that closely followed party lines, the Senate rejected an amendment to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill that would have prevented South Carolina from moving ahead with such a cleanup plan at the Savannah River weapons site.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) warned that the Energy Department is trying to set a precedent that would undo a long-standing environmental policy that requires high-level wastes to be removed from sites and stored at a federal depository in Nevada.
"This is the latest crescendo of an administration that is trying to rewrite environmental law," Cantwell said. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in her state was once the main factory for making weapons-grade plutonium. It now stores about two-thirds of the country's high-level radioactive waste.
A federal court in Idaho last year ruled against an Energy Department effort to leave some of the material in huge tanks. Environmental organizations contend that entombing what remains of these wastes in concrete and sand, as proposed by the Energy Department, is inadequate.
--------
Senate Backs Redefinition of Atom Waste
June 4, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04nuke.html
WASHINGTON, June 3 - The Senate voted Thursday to give the Energy Department the authority to reclassify nuclear waste so it could be left in aging tanks, some of them already leaking, rather than be pumped out for disposal elsewhere.
The vote would reverse a decision last July by a federal district court judge in Idaho who had ruled, in a suit brought by environmentalists and backed by several states, that the high-level radioactive material must be buried deep beneath the ground.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, had inserted language drafted by the Energy Department into a military authorization bill that would let the department reclassify wastes so they could be kept in the storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in his state.
But Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, where the largest volume of nuclear waste is stored, proposed an amendment that would have deleted the Graham language from the bill. She argued that it would set a precedent for her state and Idaho, where there are similar wastes. Some of the tanks in Washington are leaking, while those in Idaho and South Carolina are not.
Adding the amendment to a military bill in wartime, and doing so at a closed committee session, amounted to "a sneaky process behind closed doors," she said. The idea should have gone through the energy committee and should have been considered in open hearings, she argued.
"I don't think anybody can seriously stand on the floor and say the change in the definition of hazardous nuclear waste is the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee," she said in debate. "It is not."
Mr. Graham argued that his amendment would give state regulators the final say on what constituted adequate clean-up and that South Carolina was ready to proceed with that determination before the Savannah River tanks could leak.
On a 48-to-48 vote Thursday, the Senate rejected Ms. Cantwell's amendment. After the vote, Ms. Cantwell, who had held up action on the bill for a week over the issue, said that the Senate would probably take the question up again. The provision's future in the House of Representatives is uncertain.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Traditions, Terrorism Threaten Afghan Vote
Women Are Intimidated, Election Workers Attacked
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13914-2004Jun3?language=printer
KHOST, Afghanistan -- At a village mosque, a leaflet printed in neat Pashto script was found last week, instructing "all good Muslim citizens" to stay away from government buildings, foreign troops and official funerals. If anyone disobeyed, the pamphlet warned, "your bodies will join theirs."
At a university compound, a group of armed and masked men recently broke into the home of a teacher active in promoting women's voting rights, threatening to kill her if she resumed her activities. She is now guarded by soldiers at home and en route to work.
"Elections are new and unfamiliar here. People are uneducated, so others can deceive them and make them do destructive things," said Sahira Zadran, 40, the teacher. "We have two problems: culture and terrorism. Culture may take time to change, but it can't kill you. Terrorists can kill you."
As Afghanistan prepares to hold its first elections in September, a flurry of attacks by armed Islamic groups on aid workers, election preparation teams and foreign troops have raised concerns that anti-democratic forces will sabotage the vote, stymie Afghanistan's economic progress and undermine its relations with the West.
On Wednesday, three Europeans and two Afghans working for the French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders were ambushed and assassinated in the western province of Badghis. Doctors Without Borders suspended its operations in the country on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Spokesmen for the Taliban movement claimed it had carried out the killings, the deadliest attack on foreign aid workers since the Taliban's radical Islamic rulers were ousted in late 2001.
In other violence during the past weeks, four U.S. Special Forces troops were killed in a firefight in Zabol province; a senior Afghan security official was killed by a bomb in his office; two Afghan election workers were wounded by a remote-control bomb in Nangahar province; and two British election workers were ambushed and killed in Nurestan province.
U.N. officials have repeatedly cited the lack of security as the major obstacle to holding successful elections. Despite plans to deploy 10,000 newly trained soldiers and 20,000 police officers across the country, possibly augmented by hundreds of NATO troops, officials are increasingly concerned that they will not be able to protect voters from intimidation, abuse and attacks.
In Khost, officials have an important advantage in clearing the way for elections: The region's ethnic Pashtun tribes are unusually unified and supportive of the democratic process. With army and police forces stretched thinly across the mountainous eastern province, tribal militias are guarding isolated voter registration sites.
But other factors are working against a successful, violence-free election. One is geography: Khost shares a 100-mile border with Pakistan's tribal areas, which Islamic fighters use as a haven. The other is culture: Khost is an especially conservative region, where women are never seen in public and some men oppose allowing them to vote.
"The people are enthusiastic, but our enemies are not asleep," said Pir Syed Shah, a religious leader who heads the provincial election office in the city of Khost. "Our opponents don't want development and democracy, especially for women, but they cannot stop this process."
Quoting an Afghan proverb, he said: "The sound of their lightning is much worse than the strength of their rain."
Khost is a province in mid-storm -- an isolated, deeply traditional area that has undergone a rapid but superficial transformation. Until 2001, it was a stronghold of the Taliban and home to several of the movement's senior commanders. Even today residents regularly visit a cemetery for Arabs and other foreign allies of the Taliban who were killed by U.S. bombs. Hundreds of scarves have been strung over the tombs by Muslims seeking blessings from these people, who are viewed as Islamic martyrs.
Yet Khost city, the provincial capital, is also home to a year-old university full of progressive students and professors who have brought new ideas from Kabul or from their lives as exiles abroad. Provincial officials, named by the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, are more in tune with its reformist agenda than cities in other border regions where regional militia leaders defy central authority.
Many Muslim clerics in Khost initially opposed the elections, especially the participation of women as voters or candidates. But last month, the governor called a meeting of Muslim scholars and clergy at the university. After lengthy discussions they agreed to issue a religious edict supporting the elections.
Since voter registration began one month ago, 18 sites have opened and 32,000 people have obtained voter cards, joining more than 3 million Afghans who have registered nationwide. But as the process gathers steam, both internal and external opposition has become bolder, while the anti-foreign, anti-election message from Islamic extremist groups has found some popular resonance.
This week, U.N. election monitoring teams were confined to their urban compound after U.N. officials received letters threatening to kill or kidnap U.N. workers in Khost. Leaflets found in mosques, meanwhile, warned residents not to go near foreign troops or facilities, threatening hundreds of Afghans who work with the United Nations and other agencies.
"The process has been very disheartening," said one frustrated worker. "We need to be talking with people, but we cannot get out to the new sites for proper supervision. You can't force people to register, and you do not get good results when you conduct an election in an atmosphere of insecurity."
Even within families, the tensions between old and new ways of thinking can lead to confrontation. Sharif Zadran, who teaches history at Khost University and is married to Sahira, said he was proud of his wife's efforts to promote voting among women but had come under considerable pressure from his relatives to stop her high-profile activism.
"Tradition is a very hard thing to fight, and I have stepped on tradition by allowing my wife to work in public," said Zadran, a Khost native who returned here to teach last year after spending years in Pakistan and the Afghan capital, Kabul. "Now we have people breaking into our house at night, and even my cousins are speaking against me."
As the voter registration program reaches farther into the hills and hollows of Khost, the tugs of tradition and change are being played out in complex and sometimes creative ways. Community leaders realize that more voters will mean more economic and political benefits, but they must also ensure that women do not bring shame on their communities when they take part.
In the mountain district of Musakhel, dozens of robed and turbaned village men flocked Monday morning to have pictures taken and plastic ID cards made the day after a new voter registration site was set up at a tiny gas station.
Across the road and up a dirt path, the women of the village gathered in a farmhouse, affixing thumbprints to their voter cards. The photo squares were left blank. An 18-year-old woman, one of the few literate females in the area, copied down their names and approximate ages. Then a male election official carried the cards 50 yards to the gas station to be registered.
"We all want the chance to choose our leaders. The tribe is with us, and the tribe will defend us if we are attacked," said Sayed Kamal, a village elder and election team leader. "We want our women to vote, too, so we made this special arrangement. If they cross that main road and some strange driver sees them, people would talk."
In districts nearer the Pakistan border, officials trying to organize elections face more menacing obstacles. Small groups of fighters sneak across the hills from Pakistan, launch ambushes or rocket attacks and slip away in the night. Usually no one is killed, but a sense of insecurity persists.
At a police station in the Ghor Buz district Tuesday, officials pointed to a window shattered by a rocket fired from a nearby ditch two nights before. But a crowd of community elders gathered outside seemed undaunted by such attacks as they discussed plans to promote and protect voter registration.
"These people come from Pakistan like thieves in the night. They want to keep Afghanistan from getting ahead," said Hakim Mahmad, 55. "But we have been waiting years for elections. We will not let anyone pressure us -- not Taliban, not al Qaeda, not warlords, nobody. We want our children to use pens instead of weapons, and only elections can bring that."
--------
Afghan Denies Power-Sharing Deal
Karzai Promises Not to Form Political Coalition With Former Militia Leaders
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13733-2004Jun3.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 3 -- President Hamid Karzai on Thursday strongly defended his recent meetings with former Islamic militia leaders, saying he had no intention of forming a coalition with them if he is elected president in September.
Karzai also said the security situation in Afghanistan was "quite all right," despite the killing of three European medical workers Wednesday and a series of recent attacks that have left dozens of people dead, including aid workers, election monitors, Afghan police officers and foreign military forces.
In a rare news conference in his heavily guarded palace, Karzai appeared impatient with critics and stung by recent reports in the American news media suggesting that he was corrupt. He said he was "really pained, really hurt" by the reports and vowed, "My honesty will be proven once I leave office."
The Afghan president is preparing to leave Monday on a foreign trip to gather political and economic support before elections planned in three months. He is scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House on June 15.
Karzai was peppered with questions about his recent meetings with former Islamic militia leaders, with whom he has shared an uneasy governing coalition since late 2001. He has reportedly promised them a share in power if they support his candidacy.
But the president denied he had made any deals with the leaders, including former president Barhanuddin Rabbani, saying he had a duty to meet with a variety of Afghans to ensure peaceful elections and national unity.
"These figures are part of the reality of this country. We talk today and we will talk tomorrow," he said. He denied he was forming a new political alliance with the militia leaders, who are mistrusted by many Afghans because of their role in the destructive civil war of the 1990s.
"There is no coalition. There will not be a coalition . . . but negotiating, talking to all Afghans, that is my job," Karzai said. "It's a very legitimate thing. . . . Negotiations will solve more problems than violence."
Karzai said the militia leaders had brought him a proposal that included many areas of agreement, including the need for national unity and disarmament. But he also said he had encouraged some of the regional bosses to take government posts in Kabul.
The president outlined his campaign agenda, saying he sought to increase Afghans' average income to at least $500 a year, achieve disarmament nationwide and build democratic institutions.
Karzai insisted that there were no serious security problems in Afghanistan, only a few incidents that he said were "not an alarming thing."
He cited a foundation report that said most Afghans were more concerned about economic problems than lack of security, and he described Afghanistan as the safest country in the region.
More than 700 people have been killed nationwide in political violence and terrorist attacks since August, causing elections scheduled for this month to be postponed and prompting U.N. officials to question whether the vote could be protected when it does take place.
Karzai said he would consider amending the new election law after rival candidates protested this week against the requirement that they collect and copy 10,000 voter registration cards.
-------- africa
Peacekeepers Take Control of Congo Town
By RODRIQUE NGOWI
Associated Press Writer
June 4, 2004,
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-congo,0,7351897.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
BUKAVU, Congo -- U.N. peacekeepers took control of a strategic eastern Congolese city Friday as renegade soldiers withdrew and President Joseph Kabila attempted to calm the nation after the largest and most violent protests since he took office.
Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda said most of his forces had completed their pullout and U.N. peacekeepers were now controlling Bukavu, a trading center on the border with Rwanda. He said only a few officers and their bodyguards remained, and they would leave Saturday for camps nine miles away.
"This operation has ended," Nkunda said.
U.N. armored trucks and helicopters patrolled Bukavu on Friday afternoon.
"Reinforcements are scheduled to arrive, they will be mobile, and they will increase the number of patrols," U.N. spokesman Sebastien Lapierre said in Bukavu.
U.N. workers returned to Bukavu late Friday, looking to set up a camp to provide aid to residents. The world body reported a major disruption to humanitarian efforts when angry Congolese looted U.N. World Food Program offices across Congo on Thursday to protest the fall of Bukavu.
In Kinshasa, the capital 930 miles to the southwest, Kabila spoke on state television Thursday and Friday to calm the nation after two days of nationwide protests, the largest since 1997.
"We ask for calm from all the Congolese people and ask for their confidence in the army and police," Kabila said Friday.
Thursday's riots against the government and the United Nations revealed the weakness of Kabila's government, even on its home turf. Protesters blamed Congo's army for the loss of Bukavu and Congo's 10,800-strong U.N. force for standing by as it was seized.
"I understand your anger and indignation that you expressed when Bukavu fell," Kabila said Thursday after protesters attacked U.N. offices across the country. "Nevertheless, the solidarity you're expressing cannot at all justify the excesses that took place."
He again insisted that Rwandan forces were in Bukavu, a charge the Rwandan foreign minister and Nkunda have strongly denied, and U.N. peacekeepers say they have no evidence to support.
Wednesday's capture of Bukavu by the former rebel commanders posed the most serious challenge yet to the transitional government formed to end the devastating civil war in Africa's third-largest nation. More than 3.5 million died during the civil war, mostly from disease and famine.
Nkunda and Col. Jules Mutebutsi -- both former rebel commanders who fell out with officers in the new, consolidated army -- said they took military action because the local commander was persecuting the Congolese Tutsi minority in Bukavu.
"I'm not a mutineer because I'm not fighting the government," Nkunda said Friday. "I respected the government order to pull out of the city -- all this indicates that I'm not here to fight the government."
When asked what will happen next, Nkunda said "it depends on the behavior of the president."
Congolese officials denied any persecution.
On Thursday, U.N. troops shot and killed at least two protesters who stormed a U.N. base near Kinshasa. Violent demonstrations resumed for a few hours Friday in the capital, although on a smaller scale.
Milling crowds heaped piles of tires, scraps of wood and tree branches to block streets on the sprawling capital's outskirts. Demonstrators burned tires and hurled stones at passing police cars.
An Associated Press photographer saw Congolese police shoot directly into a crowd that was looting two gas stations. People were seen carrying a bleeding body away, running into a house for shelter.
Police confiscated the photographer's discs.
Associated Press reporters Eddy Isango and Daniel Balint-Kurti in Kinshasa contributed to this report.
----
Crisis in Sudan
Embassy Row
June 04, 2004
By James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
The United States this week announced new humanitarian aid for the victims of ethnic violence in western Sudan, as Human Rights Watch urged nations providing assistance to force the Sudanese government to stop supporting brutal militias accused of deliberately killing civilians.
"This unquestionably is the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world today in terms of the number of people at risk and in terms of their condition," said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Human Rights Watch yesterday estimated that 1 million people have been driven from their homes and villages in the Darfur region and 110,000 have fled to neighboring Chad.
"The root cause of this humanitarian crisis is the Sudanese government's campaign of ethnic cleansing against civilians of three ethnic groups," it said.
Human Rights Watch said civilians of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups have been targeted in the government's campaign against Darfur rebels.
Mr. Natsios said the Bush administration has spent $95 million since February 2003 on relief efforts and will "provide even more resources in the future."
Mr. Natsios noted that 30,000 tons of wheat supplied by the United States is now being transferred from a U.S. ship to trucks destined for the Darfur region.
He warned that three obstacles can still disrupt relief efforts: the government-supported Janjaweed militias, severe rain expected this month and a lack of resources to distribute the aid.
•Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
----
Minister ordered killing frenzy, court told
By Claire Soares in Freetown
04 June 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=527996
The former minister Sam Hinga Norman presided over a "killing frenzy against innocent civilians", whose heads were cut off, spiked on sticks and paraded in dances around villages as a warning, Sierra Leone's war crimes tribunal heard yesterday.
Opening the case against the man who served as deputy defence minister in the final years of thecivil war, the prosecution said Mr Norman had become as ruthless as the rebels he was supposed to stop.
"The just cause of a civil defence force in Sierra Leone, set up to defend a nation, became perverted and was twisted beyond measure," the chief prosecutor, David Crane said.
The 10-year civil war, declared over at the beginning of 2002, pitted Mr Norman's Civil Defence Force (CDF) against the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF). It killed an estimated 75,000 people and left thousands more missing legs, arms, lips, ears and eyes.
Some in Sierra Leone see Mr Norman as a hero who helped put down the rebels and restore democracy. But yesterday the prosecution promised a stream of witnesses to prove that Mr Norman and his right-hand men - Moinina Fofana and Allieu "King" Kondewa - were guilty of eight counts of crimes against humanity.
Boy soldiers made to believe they were immune to bullets. Women were raped and forced into sexual slavery. A man attacked by militiamen trying to save ammunition, who was rolled down a hill after having his neck cut but lived to tell the tale. All would take the stand.
But before any witnesses could be called, Mr Norman sacked his lawyer, forcing the court to adjourn until Tuesday.
Earlier, in the still unfinished courthouse, protected by UN troops, the three judges from Canada, Cameroon and Sierra Leone heard how still-warm corpses had been mutilated under directions from the CDF leadership. "Intestines were removed from the stomach, then roasted and eaten," assistant prosecutor Joseph Kamara said. Prosecutors say the three defendants were responsible for the criminal acts committed by tribal Kamajor warriors lower down the chain.
But Mr Norman's daughter Juliet disagreed. "He was indicted for political reasons. The government of Sierra Leone betrayed him," she said.
-------- balkans
Bosnia downsizes its armed forces by one third
SARAJEVO (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604151257.3hzdkipj.html
Bosnia's two ethnically divided armies have downsized to 12,000 from a total strenght of 19,200, the move required by NATO for the Balkan country's approach to the alliance, Bosnia's Defence Minister Nikola Radovanovic said Friday.
Downsizing of the armies of Bosnia's two highly-independent entities - the Croat-Muslim Federation and the Republika Srpska is part of an ongoing defence reform that also requires the establishment of a central defence and joint command headquarters.
"We have completed the downsizing process. The number of Republika Srpska troops have been cut to 4,000, while the (Mulim-Croat) federation army has been reduced to 8,000 troops," Radovanovic said after joint meeting with arlies' commanders and NATO-led peacekeepers.
Under the reform expected to be completed in the coming weeks, the Republika Srpska army and Muslim-Croat federation army composed of Croat and Muslim components, are to have a common general staff, same uniform and flag, but will remain ethnically distinct.
Despite achievements in the defence reform the NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned Bosnia last week that its chances of being invited to join Partnership for Peace programme (PfP) with the military alliance at its summit in Istanbul later this month depended on full cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal.
Without progress in arresting suspected war criminals by Istambul summit on June 28 "the chances of PfP for Bosnia at Istanbul summit are extremely slim, very close to zero", Scheffer said.
The Bosnian authorities have made no secret of their eagerness to join the NATO programme, seen as a first step towards membership of the alliance.
-------- business
Prime U.S. Contractors Wary About Iraq Transition
Fri Jun 4, 2004
By Sue Pleming
(Reuters)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040604/ts_nm/iraq_contractors_transition_dc_1
LAS VEGAS - Some prime U.S. contractors in Iraq are wary of the U.S. handover on June 30 and say there are still too many unanswered questions, from the status of private security guards to import tariffs.
While their contractual obligations remain with the U.S. government, which funds their work, some big companies doing work in Iraq voiced apprehension over elements of the handover to an interim Iraqi government.
Speaking on the sidelines of an Iraq rebuilding conference that ended late Thursday in Las Vegas, Perini procurement specialist John Chisholm said his main concern was the legal status of staff if there were any problems, and in particular private security workers who protect them.
"For example, what is their (security guards') relationship with the Iraqi police? Do they have to register with anyone? That has not been answered yet," said Chisholm from the Massachusetts-based company. There are also legal questions such as whether a staff member who had an accident and hurt an Iraqi would be tried in an Iraqi court or handed over to U.S. authorities.
"We need to know how the laws of the country apply to us," he said. "We need to be able to plan."
Others questioned how much power the interim government would have and how this would affect contractors' work.
"We need a much better legal framework here," said one contractor.
U.S. government officials are at pains to stress Iraq's new government has said they have no intention of making life difficult for contractors, who are already battling to do their work in a hostile environment.
"In terms of contracts there will be no real impact," said Mark Lumer, a senior U.S. Army procurement official. "There is not going to be any fundamental shift after June 30."
PRIVATE SECURITY
On the issue of private security, British retired Brig. Tony Hunter-Choat, security director for the U.S.-led authority's procurement office in Iraq, said Iraq's Interior Ministry would probably issue weapons permits and register security companies.
James Cartner, vice president of Iraqi operations for construction giant Fluor, which has three projects along with its British partner AMEC Plc worth $1.6 billion, said many issues were still unanswered but he was confident.
"We think common-sense will prevail," said Cartner.
Gary Breslau from California-based construction firm Parsons said as a procurement manager he was nervous over whether a new government would introduce tariffs or import duties, from which contractors are currently exempt.
While he was not aware of any such plans, he pointed out this was often a significant source of revenue for many countries trying to raise funds fast.
"Who knows what will happen. We'll just have to wait and see," said Breslau.
U.S. Commerce Department official Joseph Schwan said there would be no guarantees for contractors but Iraqi leaders had said they were committed to foreign investment.
"Iraq is committed to its growth and transformation and one of the most important things is to have an open and transparent system which is open to investment. I think these policies will continue but I cannot guarantee this," he told contractors at the conference.
----
Chalabi Pal Gets Iraq Contract
by Pranjal Tiwari,
June 4, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/tiwari.php?articleid=2741
A U.S.-based company with close links to members of the Iraqi Governing Council has been re-awarded a lucrative supply deal by the U.S. Army.
Virginia-based Nour USA was originally granted a $327 million contract to supply the new Iraqi military and Civil Defense Forces in January, according to New York Newsday.
That decision was soon put on hold, however, after officials in Spain and Poland, as well as a rival company, questioned the U.S.'s motives in giving the contract to an American firm. The Washington Post reported in February that the complainants cited Nour's extraordinarily low bid and lack of experience in the field as cause for suspicion regarding the "credibility" of the deal.
According to Reuters, however, the decision to grant the contract to Nour was upheld last week following a government review. A press release by the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) elaborated that the current contract is now worth $260 million, somewhat less than the original January deal. TACOM says the materials supplied by Nour would be used by Iraqi and "associated" armed forces, "in support of" the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which is scheduled to be dissolved after transferring limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
Court documents show that Nour USA's president, Abdul Huda Farouki, has close ties to Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi. Until recently, when Washington withdrew its backing of him, Chalabi was highly regarded by the White House, and was considered to be the Bush administration's favorite for installment as Iraq's next leader.
Allegations of corruption and favoritism emerged when several business deals made after the invasion were awarded to Chalabi's friends and associates, the Los Angeles Times reported in November 2003.
Nour has been directly involved in some of the most controversial of these deals. Newsday reported in February that Chalabi received a $2 million "fee" for helping to arrange an $80 million contract to provide security for Iraqi oil pipelines, awarded last August to the mercenary firm Erinys International. Chalabi subsequently denied the allegation, but admits he considers Farouki a "friend." The Newsday report says that "within days" of being granted the contract, Erinys became a joint venture operation with Nour.
CorpWatch, a San Francisco-based watchdog group, reports that Nour, which was incorporated just a year ago, is a joint venture between Farouki and Ghiath Sukhtian of the Jordanian Munir-Sukhtian Group. According to a news release from the organizers of the Rebuild Iraq 2005 exhibition, Nour "was set up specifically to bid for business in post-war Iraq." Nour's website says the company's "partners" were looking for ways to invest and operate in Iraq even during the invasion, and its operatives were in Baghdad and Washington setting up investment opportunities shortly after the occupation began.
Nour currently runs an "Iraq Investment Initiative" to encourage foreign firms to enter the country. It also claims to have bought more than 20,000 square feet of commercial and residential properties in Baghdad for its operations in the Iraqi capital, where it says it employs over 100 people.
Though Pentagon officials have denied that Chalabi's links to the Pentagon had anything to do with the deal, Nour is just one recent example of companies with ties to Washington and its allies that has benefited financially from the occupation. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, revealed last month that its quarterly revenue had increased by 80 percent as a result of U.S. government contracts in Iraq.
In March, the Parsons Brinkerhoff company, a subsidiary of which was formerly headed by the current director of the program management office for the Pentagon in Baghdad, was also awarded part of a $43.4 million contract to help manage reconstruction of Iraq's electricity grid, according to the Associated Press. And last month several weapons makers posted massive first-quarter profits partially attributed to the invasion of Iraq and the so-called "War on Terror."
-------- europe
Ahead of D-Day anniversary, France prepares for terror attack risk
CAEN, France (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604175936.jpqdkftl.html
Sixty years after Allied troops landed in Normandy to end the Nazi occupation of Europe, France on Friday was preparing its defences against the major threat stalking the 21st century -- the risk of a biological or nuclear terror attack.
As heads of state and government and thousands of tourists and veterans prepared to gather for the weekend's D-Day commemorations, the local authorities in Normandy vowed they would be able to mobilise 3,000 emergency workers in case of a terrorist attack on the events.
Some 18,000 troops and police will be patrolling the region during the commemorations, which will be witnessed by some 20,000 people over a stretch of territory some 120 kilometres long (70 miles). Twelve jets are ready to take off at any moment and 100 radar systems have been installed.
Reviewing the security arrangements in place for the anniversary, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said there needed to be a "complete deployment in the air, in the sea and on the ground that will allow us to face any situation".
"We are taking all the precautions so that we do not have to intervene," she said, but did not mention any specific threat.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, who accompanied her, added: "Everyone who we have seen is mobilised, vigilant and ready to do everything in the face of whatever could happen ... we know that threats can exist here and elsewhere."
However the French authorities in mysterious circumstances cancelled an anti-terror exercise on the Normandy coast, which had been designed to test emergency readiness to deal with a biological, chemical or nuclear attack.
The exercise, which was to involve some 150 police, army and civil security officers, had been scheduled for late Friday. It was cancelled at the last minute because the top regional government official for the northwestern region was absent.
The official or prefect, Didier Cultiaux, had stressed on Thursday that France was able to respond to such risk levels alone, without US assistance. No official explanation was offered for the cancellation.
"We did not wait for the Americans to respond to this problem. A sovereign state such as ours, manned by professionals, knows perfectly well how to take this type of risk into account," he said.
Government officials have denied that the exercise, only made public on Thursday, was hastily organised at the request of the United States ahead of this weekend's D-Day commemorations in Normandy.
Meanwhile, Gilles Agnes, who is heading a special fire service security unit for the 60th anniversary commemorations, said the emergency services were prepared for any eventuality at the event, given the current security climate.
"What happened in Madrid (on March 11) has become a standard for us, and a figure of 1,200 casualties is now a reality," he said.
Agnes said that 1,600 firemen, divers and members of special disaster teams have converged on Caen in case the worst happens. They are staying in 180 tents at an exhibition park.
Hospitals in the Caen region have also freed up 400 beds in case they are needed by victims of an attack on the event, while the Caen town hall has received a document outlining what to do in case of a catastrophic event.
Some 12,000 litres of water are also available for when the veterans and other onlookers suffer from the hot weather that is expected here at the weekend.
----
France cancels major anti-terror attack exercise
CAEN, France (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604173457.8cbfipam.html
French authorities on Friday cancelled a major anti-terror exercise on the Normandy coast, which had been designed to test emergency readiness to deal with a biological, chemical or nuclear attack.
The exercise, which was to involve some 150 police, army and civil security officers, had been scheduled for late Friday. It was cancelled at the last minute because the top regional government official for the northwestern region was absent.
The official or prefect, Didier Cultiaux, had stressed on Thursday that France was able to respond to such risks levels alone, without US assistance.
"We did not wait for the Americans to respond to this problem. A sovereign state such as ours, manned by professionals, knows perfectly well how to take this type of risk into account," he said.
Government officials have denied that the exercise, only made public on Thursday, was hastily organised at the request of the United States ahead of this weekend's D-Day commemorations in Normandy.
The ceremonies are to include US President George W. Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and the leaders of 15 other countries.
-------- iraq
New Plan Would Let Iraq Order Troops Out
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
Jun 4, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PERU_DRUG_KINGPIN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States and Britain revised their plan Friday for Iraq's interim government that will take power on June 30, giving it authority to order the U.S.-led multinational force to leave the country at any time.
The latest draft resolution - the third in less than two weeks - also spelled out limits on the new government's activities, barring it from taking "any actions affecting Iraq's destiny" beyond the seven months it will be in power.
While the new draft addressed some concerns raised by Iraq and Security Council members, it didn't address the relationship between the new interim government and the multinational force.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had asked the council to detail this relationship. The Iraqis want a partnership with the force and to be consulted on major military operations that have political implications - such as the bloody, three-week Marine siege of Fallujah, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
Zebari also urged the council on Thursday "to endorse and acknowledge" the interim constitution, which is serving as the legal basis for the country until a new charter is completed next year. But the interim constitution, known as the Transitional Administrative Law, is not mentioned in the latest draft.
The previous U.S.-British draft, introduced Tuesday, declared the council's readiness to end the multinational force's mandate by January 2006, or at the request of the government that will be formed after elections, which must be held by Jan. 31, 2005. But it did not give the interim government that will take power later this month any authority over the force.
Zebari told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that the incoming government wants the multinational force to stay to prevent civil war. On Friday, he told The Associated Press that he could not foresee its departure before power is transferred to the transitional government early next year.
The Iraqi minister also stressed that the new government doesn't want "a fixed deadline or timetable" for the departure of the force, but it does want whatever Iraqi government is in power to have the authority to decide when it should leave.
The latest draft, which was circulated to Security Council members, formally states what British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Colin Powell have said publicly - that if asked, their troops would leave.
It declares that the council will terminate the mandate for the multinational force after further elections by Dec. 31, 2005 under a new constitution that will be drafted next year, or earlier "if requested by the sovereign government of Iraq."
The resolution asks the 191 U.N. member states and regional organizations to contribute troops to the multinational force.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Abu Dhabi television Thursday that despite discussions, the United States has not received any new troop commitments.
Once a resolution is approved, he said, he would go to NATO headquarters in Brussels to try to get the alliance to participate, by possibly providing a "headquarters element or something like that." Currently, 16 NATO members contribute troops individually to the multinational force.
Zebari told the Security Council that the interim government wants "a new and unambiguous resolution that will ensure the transfer of full power and sovereignty and put an end to the occupation."
The latest draft states more clearly that the U.S. and British occupation of Iraq will end by June 30, that the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority which has run the country "will cease to exist, and that full sovereignty will have been restored to Iraq."
U.S. and British diplomats said they are waiting for an exchange of letters on the relationship between the interim government and the multinational force. Once the letters have been received, the resolution will be revised again, one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In an apparent response to Russian concerns, the latest draft for the first time addresses the future of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq, which were halted just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein. After the war, the United States barred U.N. inspectors from returning and deployed its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction - so far unsuccessfully.
The new draft states that the Security Council still intends to re-examine the mandates of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is charged with overseeing the elimination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for eliminating any nuclear programs. It did not give a date.
Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Alexander Konuzin, said Thursday the resolution should say who will be responsible for searching for alleged weapons stores and for maintaining any uncovered by U.N. monitors before the war.
----
UN resolution falls short on sovereignty, Iraq declares
By David Usborne in New York
04 June 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=527994
The Foreign Minister of Iraq, Hoshyar Zebari, said last night that a draft resolution before the UN Security Council on the future of his country does not go far enough to guarantee the return of full sovereignty after 30 June. Nor, he said, does it properly clarify the future relationship between the new interim government and foreign troops.
Addressing members of the Security Council in New York, Mr Zebari said that the new government, selected earlier this week, will insist that the UN pass an "unambiguous resolution that underlines the transfer of full sovereignty to the people of Iraq and their representatives".
He made his appeal just hours after Iraq's influential Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, gave his nod to the new government. But the Ayatollah also emphased the need for a clear expression of Iraq's new sovereignty from the Security Council.
Lamenting that the interim government was not elected and lacks "legitimacy", Mr Sistani said, "it is hoped that the government will prove its efficiency and integrity." Referring to Mr Zebari's visit to New York, he urged the government to get "a clear Security Council resolution enabling the Iraqis to restore full sovereignty".
Several key members of the Council have been pushing for rewriting of the latest draft, unveiled by Britain and the United States this week. France, Germany and Russia have all voiced concern that that the text still does not spell out how sovereign Iraq will be.
Debate is starting to focus on the relationship between new government and the US-led force, which would only leave Iraq after direct elections and the completion of a new constitution at the end of next year. London and Washington have, until now, suggested that such issues - for example, when and if Iraq could refuse to participate in a military operation - should be dealt with in separate side letters, outside the resolution.
Mr Zebari told the Council it was important for the troops to remain in Iraq for now to prevent bloodshed and chaos. But he added the Iraqi government "must have a say in the future presence of these forces and we urge that this be reflected in this resolution".
A senior diplomat close to the Council said members are still some way from agreeing on a text. British sources indicated, however, that London was willing to revise the text further to accommodate French and German concerns in the hope of reaching a consensus on the resolution soon.
The wrangling inside the Council was about "how much power the US and the UK are really giving up and how it is distributed," the diplomat said.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, signalled his own reservations about any provision to give a final say over the operations of the multinational force to Iraq. "You can't use the word 'veto'," he insisted in an interview with the Middle East Broadcasting Center. "There could be a situation where we have to act and there may be a disagreement, and we have to act to protect ourselves or to accomplish a mission."
France's President, Jacques Chirac, sent a message that his government needed to "affirm and confirm the full sovereignty of the Iraqi government, particularly in the military domain."
John Negroponte, the next US ambassador to Iraq, acknowledged that the text may need "fine tuning". But he added that the "full exercise of sovereignty will be restored to the people and government of Iraq by June 30. I don't have any doubt about that."
----
Influential Cleric Backs New Iraqi Government
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11774-2004Jun3?language=printer
BAGHDAD, June 3 -- The most influential leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, endorsed the country's new government Thursday and demanded that it swiftly assume "full and unflawed" national sovereignty with power to end the U.S. military occupation.
The endorsement from Sistani, in a statement, was seen as a boost to the legitimacy of the interim government that was sworn in Tuesday behind a U.S. security perimeter and assigned to lead Iraq to its first democratic elections by January. But the demand that it obtain complete sovereignty foreshadowed difficult times ahead for the Bush administration, which has insisted on retaining command over the 138,000 U.S. troops still engaged in fighting a persistent insurgency.
Apparently with that in mind, Sistani declared that one of the interim government's most urgent tasks is trying to obtain "a clear resolution from the Security Council returning to Iraqis sovereignty over their land, full and unflawed in any of its political, economic, military or security aspects, as well as to strive to remove all the consequences of the occupation."
The United States has pledged to hand over formal sovereignty to the interim government on June 30, when the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer will be replaced by a large U.S. embassy under a veteran trouble-spot diplomat, John D. Negroponte. But alongside the transfer of civilian power -- or at least its trappings -- U.S. commanders will continue giving the orders in security matters, even if Iraqi officials have different ideas, the administration has said.
The extent of Iraqi sovereignty over security and military questions has become a subject of debate between the United States and China, Russia and France in preparations for a U.N. Security Council resolution that is to authorize the interim government's June 30 takeover. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zubari, flew to New York immediately after being sworn in to make sure Iraq took part in the discussions about its status.
Sistani said the interim Iraqi government should have been "born out of free, honest elections, in which the people of Iraq would participate." In fact, it was picked in secret negotiations among Bremer, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and returned Iraqi exiles. For that reason, Sistani said, it does not have the required legitimacy and support from all segments of Iraqi society.
The need for speedy and wide-open elections has been a constant refrain from the reclusive cleric, who is in his mid-seventies. Although he rarely ventures from his home in the holy city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, Sistani enjoys wide respect among Iraqis because of his knowledge and his deliberate nature. Therefore, his call for full sovereignty was likely to find a large audience.
Mohammed Jamal, 36, who sells food from a small market in Baghdad's prosperous Mansour neighborhood, was even harsher than Sistani in his judgment of how the interim government and its new president, Ghazi Yawar, were chosen and how much power they will have.
"Frankly speaking, I don't care for this government," he said. "It does not make any difference if Ghazi Yawar is president or not. It is all under the control of the Americans. Let's not deceive ourselves."
Salah Ali, 38, a merchant encountered in a nearby shopping center, echoed Sistani's demand for full sovereignty but expressed doubt that things will work out that way. "How will this government get sovereignty while it is still under the control of the Americans?" he asked. "I doubt it will have full sovereignty."
Ahmed Chalabi, an exile leader who long pushed for U.S. military action against former president Saddam Hussein, also embraced Sistani's insistence on full Iraqi sovereignty. Chalabi, once the Pentagon's pick to run Iraq, has fallen from favor in Washington over suspicion he passed U.S. secrets to Iran. He has spent the last week in Najaf, missing the formation of the new government.
"This fatwa is a road map for Iraqi political action in the coming period," Chalabi, a secular Shiite, said of Sistani's edict.
Sistani's devotion to democratic principles also has a practical side: With Shiites making up about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million inhabitants, democratic voting would likely give them the largest share of power. In that vein, he also demanded that next January's elections choose an assembly "that is not obligated by decisions taken under the occupation" -- in other words, with power to undo some of the decisions by Bremer and the U.S.-appointed Governing Council that was replaced Tuesday.
Despite the criticism, Sistani's statement was decidedly more positive than anything he said about the Governing Council. He expressed wishes for God's help to the new administration even as he warned it "will not win popular support unless it proves, through clear, practical steps, that it is seriously and honestly striving to accomplish the aforementioned tasks."
One of those tasks, he said, was to "provide security in all parts of the country and end all organized crimes and other criminal acts." That was seen as an indirect condemnation of the violent insurgency that has arisen in recent months against U.S. occupation troops, including resistance by another Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, and his militia, known as the Mahdi Army
Sadr's militia clashed with U.S. soldiers for two hours at dawn Thursday near the main mosque in Kufa, which adjoins Najaf and its Shiite shrines. The fighting was more evidence that a week-old truce between Sadr and U.S. forces has collapsed.
The fighting killed five civilians and wounded 15, according to officials at Furat Awsat hospital in Kufa. CNN, which has a reporter with the U.S. troops, said two U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded. There was no word on militiamen killed or wounded.
Sadr's forces, which took over Najaf and Kufa two months ago, were supposed to withdraw from the streets as their part of a cease-fire accord. In exchange, U.S. forces were to limit their presence in sensitive areas surrounding Shiite shrines to joint patrols with Iraqi police. Each side has accused the other of violating the agreement.
It was unclear what effect Sistani's declaration would have on Sadr's ability to maintain support for his stand against U.S. forces. Many Najaf residents have expressed anger at the trouble he has brought their city. But the young cleric, son of a renowned Shiite leader, has his own following among the young and the poor, who may not welcome the establishment views voiced by Sistani.
The insurgency continued elsewhere as well. Several mortar rounds fell near the Italian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and injuring several, police told reporters. The Italian Foreign Ministry said no one inside was hurt.
The U.S. military reported, meanwhile, that a mortar round started a fire Wednesday night at a U.S. base near Kirkuk, in the Kurdish zone of northern Iraq. The blaze spread to an ammunition dump, setting off explosions and forcing evacuation of a nearby detention facility, an announcement said.
Special correspondents Bassam Sabti in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
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Interim Government Seeks 'Full Authority'
By Robin Wright and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14064-2004Jun3.html
Iraq yesterday called on the U.N. Security Council to pass an "unambiguous" resolution that will "invest full authority" in Baghdad's new interim government to run all of Iraq's affairs and have control over all security matters, stipulations that are virtually certain to require further revisions of the current U.S. draft, according to U.N. envoys.
In the new government's first appearance at the United Nations, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zubari said Iraq realistically will need the "assistance and partnership" of a U.S.-led multinational force after the occupation ends on June 30 because its premature departure could produce chaos and "the real possibility of a civil war."
But in a Security Council briefing, he also called for the force's presence to be "regulated" by arrangements that do not compromise Iraq's sovereignty. "The transitional Iraqi government must have a say in the future presence of these forces, and we urge this to be reflected in the new resolution," Zubari said.
The two most contentious issues in the draft, sponsored by the United States and Britain, are the scope of operations foreign troops can carry out once the occupation ends and how much control the interim government will have. John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who will become the new ambassador to Iraq next month, pledged that the multinational force wants a "true partnership, founded on shared goals and tangible cooperation at all levels -- from the soldiers on foot patrols to the highest levels of two sovereign governments."
But France, China and Algeria are calling for Iraq to be able to block major U.S. military missions, an idea rejected by Washington.
In an interview with Middle East Broadcasting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday rejected the idea of Iraq automatically having the final say. "You can't use the word 'veto,' " he said. "There could be a situation where we have to act and there may be a disagreement, and we have to act to protect ourselves or to accomplish a mission," Powell said.
Zubari called for other unspecified amendments that, he says, "correspond more fully to the wishes and aspirations of the Iraqi people."
In opening remarks, Iraq's top diplomat also said the transfer of sovereignty must ensure that Iraqis will "control, administer and manage" all of Iraq's resources and assets, a reference particularly to one of the world's largest oil reserves.
Debate on the resolution, through which all parties are seeking to confer legitimacy on the interim Iraqi government and to spell out the terms of the next phase of the transition, is expected to continue at the experts' level today. All 15 Security Council ambassadors are to hold a retreat with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan this weekend over the talks on Iraq and on West Africa, a meeting that U.N. envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to attend to rally support for the government he helped to select, U.N. envoys said.
A revised draft could be circulated early next week, with the United States and Britain hoping for a vote by week's end, the envoys said.
With the occupation scheduled to end in 26 days, security arrangements are now the most sensitive issue on several fronts, including the question of whether the U.S. allies now in Iraq will remain. President Bush warned yesterday after a meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard that a withdrawal of U.S. allies from Iraq "would be disastrous."
Australia has been a key member of the U.S.-led occupation, and the White House is now trying to rally the allies to extend their mandates beyond June 30, despite domestic opposition. Australia's opposition party has vowed to bring home the country's troops from Iraq by Christmas if it wins the elections later this year.
Bush met with Howard -- his third meeting in a week with the leader of a country that has troops in Iraq -- to urge continued cooperation in Iraq. Australia has only 850 troops there, but its participation is considered an important boost to the mission's credibility.
The Bush administration has been trying to win commitments from allies to remain in Iraq until a constitution has been written and a permanent government elected by the end of 2005. Bush's remarks in a Rose Garden appearance with Howard sought to prevent the further hemorrhaging of support after Spain's withdrawal.
Asked about the possibility of a new, less sympathetic government in Australia, Bush replied: "It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that, we're pulling out. It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq. It would say that the Australian government doesn't see the hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world."
Howard echoed that message. "This is not a time -- it is the worst time imaginable -- for allies to be showing any weakness in relation of the pursuit of our goals in Iraq," he told reporters. "We will keep a presence in Iraq," he said.
--------
Iraq's New Prime Minister Defends Presence of U.S. Troops
June 4, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/middleeast/04CND-FORC.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 4 - In his first address to the Iraqi people, the country's new prime minister today defended the presence of American and British forces on Iraqi soil and warned that their departure would amount to a "major disaster" for the country.
Ayad Alawi, appearing in a televised address three days after being chosen prime minister, said his countrymen could "never accept" foreign occupation, and he vowed to reclaim the country's full sovereignty on June 30. But his speech amounted to a vigorous defense of the continued presence of American troops at a time when public opinion polls have reported that most Iraqis want the foreign troops to leave immediately.
Dr. Alawi's address came on the same day the United Nations officials said they would design an election system of proportional representation to select members to the 275-member national assembly in elections to be held January 2005.
The announcement capped a week of significant steps intended to put this war-ravaged country on the path toward democratic elections, a process that some Iraqis and United Nations officials hope could begin to alleviate some of the anger that is feeding the insurgency.
Dr. Alawi, wearing a Western-style coat and tie, told Iraqis that the democratic elections expected next year were inextricably bound up with the guerrilla insurgency, and that the former could not succeed without the defeat of the latter.
"Your government sees that only the restoration of security and the safeguarding of citizens' dignity, honor and wealth will allow us to successfully proceed on the political track and achieve the transfer of full sovereignty," Mr. Alawi said in a speech that was carried by stations like Al-Arabiya and Al Jazeera, which broadcast across the Arab-speaking world.
"The targeting of the multinational forces under the leadership of the United States to force them to leave Iraq would inflict a major disaster on Iraq, especially before the completion of the building of security and military institutions," Dr. Alawi said.
"And I would like to mention here that the coalition forces, too, have offered the blood of their sons as a result of terror attacks designed to force them to leave Iraq," he said.
Dr. Alwai, a secular Shiite, was chosen earlier this week in a United Nations-sponsored selection process to lead the government that will take over when sovereignty is restored here June 30. His government, which includes 32 other senior leaders, is supposed to guide the country toward democratic elections, which officials say will most likely be held in January of next year.
He is known for his association with the Central Intelligence Agency, which supported the efforts of him and his group, the Iraqi National Accord, to topple Saddam Hussein in the 1990's.
Dr. Alawi's speech followed the announcement earlier in the day of the creation of an Iraqi commission to oversee preparations for the elections, and of the basic framework for the elections themselves.
Carina Perelli, a senior United Nations elections official, said the organization's team had decided to hold elections based on a system of proportional representation, whereby voters across the country would choose a list of candidates, ordinarily supported by political parties. The number of votes tallied by a party nationwide would determine how many of its candidates who appeared on the list would take office.
Under the system, the percentage of votes received by a particular party would roughly equal the percentage of seats they would be awarded in the national assembly.
Based on an estimate of the number of potential Iraqis, Ms. Perelli said a typical candidate would win a seat on the national assembly if he or she captured between 26,000 and 27,000 votes nationwide.
Ms. Perelli said United Nations officials and the Iraqis with whom they consulted favored a proportional system, in part because that system tends to award seats to smaller parties, which a system of district elections would not. Also, Ms. Perelli said the job of setting up districts would be difficult to do quickly.
Ms. Perelli explained the mechanism for meeting the goal of having at least 25 percent of the assembly seats go to women, as called for in the interim constitution: Every third name on each party's list of candidates would be required to be that of a woman. Since United Nations officials anticipate that many parties will qualify for no more than a handful of candidates, the frequency of women's name appearing on the candidate list was increased, she said.
The election commission announced today, and made up of eight Iraqis, is empowered to draw up a list of voters and to set up the vast infrastructure, thought to require at least 20,000 polling places, for the elections. They would also have the power to postpone the elections, across the country or in parts, if they decided that the level of violence would not allow the elections to go forward.
But Ms. Perelli said she was optimistic that elections could go forward here, even amid guerrilla insurgency and terrorist attacks. To illustrate, she listed several war-ravaged countries where the United Nations had either helped set up elections or was currently trying to do so: Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
"We have conducted elections in areas with rampant levels of violence," she said.
Ms. Perelli said she was pleased with the character and competence of the Iraqis who were named to the panel, although those eight Iraqis did not appear publicly today. Ms. Perelli said if the election commission was perceived as being impartial, it could help boost participation in the democratic process.
"Without people, you can't have a credible election," she said. "With the people, even in situations of extreme distress, you can have credible elections."
-------- israel / palestine
Turkish PM: Israel treating Palestinians as they were treated
By Hanoch Marmari,
Haaretz Correspondent
04/06/2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/434975.html
ANKARA - Israel is not contributing to the peace process, is killing women and children indiscriminately and destroying Palestinian houses, in short, treating the Palestinians as they themselves were treated 500 years ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an exclusive interview with Haaretz. In his first interview to a member of the Israeli media following growing tensions in bilateral relations sparked by Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza, Erdogan says there is is no way to describe such actions except as "state terrorism."
The interview in Erdogan's office here comes a week after the Turkish prime minister met with Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky and asked him: What is the difference between terrorists who kill Israeli civilians, and Israel, which also kills civilians?
Turkey and Israel are bound by strong and ongoing relations. In your view, has there been a recent change in attitude on the Turkish side, or by the Turkish government, with regard to Israel?
First of all, regarding our relations with Israel, they must be understood on several different fronts. One is the relationship between the governments, and the other is between the peoples. And another way of looking at our relations would be through our political, economic, trade and social ties.
When we look at relations on the level of the peoples, we cannot even conceive of any problems. As far as the Turkish side is concerned, there are no problems here. It isn't even on our agenda. There might be different evaluations by some individuals or some marginal groups, but as far as the Turkish government is concerned, our view with regard to the people of Israel is very objective.
But at the level of the government, we are in favor of the peace process being regenerated, and the government of Israel has not contributed to our efforts to do so. Why am I saying this? I would have wished that a government, a cabinet, would not decide to carry out an assassination, because governments should never put aside the law.
You have recently defined three kinds of terrorist activities: Personal terrorism, institutional terrorism and state terrorism. Do you think that Israel is practicing a form of 'state terrorism?'
I'll be very sincere and open in sharing my observations with you. When you look at the structure of what has happened, that's how the world has interpreted it.
Do you think that there is a fourth way of looking at terrorism - that there are countries that support institutions or individuals who are terrorists?
Of course I can.
You recently met with quite a few Middle East heads of state, and several Arab leaders have visited Ankara. Maintaining close relations with Israel puts Turkey in a unique position in our region. How do you view the actual Turkish position in the Middle East?
Historically, we have played an important role in the Middle East. There was a period of cold relations for a while, there was a gap in the relations. We have closed that gap.
While doing so, we wanted to act as a mediator for peace in the Middle East, to serve as mediator between Israel and the other countries of the Middle East. We brought this up in every meeting we had. I hope to be able to continue in this.
According to news reports we've heard today, you are going on a first visit to Iran at the end of the month. Are you considering a visit to Israel, as you promised a few months ago, or will you invite Prime Minister Sharon to Ankara?
I had a meeting with your minister of energy [Infrastructure Minister Paritzky] and explained to him what I had in mind in regard to this visit. Regarding my visit to Iran, all the ministers involved have already visited there, and the Iranians have also sent their counterparts here. So it became a process in which I had to find time to visit there myself.
My counterpart, Iran's first vice-president who serves as their prime minister, has visited here and I haven't reciprocated his invitation until now. It is only correct to analyze these relations symmetrically, be it with Iran or Israel.
But I was in the midst of planning to send my foreign minister to Israel and Palestine [sic] when all these incidents occurred. According to the plans, my visit should have taken place after my foreign minister's visit to Israel. We don't have a problem in terms of going [there] or receiving [Israeli] guests.
So are we going to be honored with your visit sometime in the near future?
First we need to rearrange my foreign minister's visit, and then we can plan the next steps. After all, the president of Israel came and was our guest here. As far as Turkey is concerned, we do not have a problem with this issue.
The special relations between Israel and Turkey are unique in another sense - the close relations between the Jewish state and one of the greatest Islamic states are, and should be, a model for the way in which common ground can bridge over differences and diversities. Do you think that these relations will survive the actual crisis?
If the parties are sincere, yes. The relations are strong enough to overcome the difficulties. We should never forget this. Our forefathers, at their strongest time in history, opened up their hearts to the Jews who had been driven out of Spain at the time of the Inquisition and opened up their hearts and homes to the Jews. Jews were the victims at that time.
Today, the Palestinians are the victims, and unfortunately the people of Israel are treating the Palestinians as they were treated 500 years ago. Bombing people - civilians - from helicopters, killing people without any considerations - children, women, the elderly - razing their buildings using bulldozers. When I explained all this to your minister of energy, his response was 'only a friend can be this sincere and talk this openly.'
You see, both history and geography force us to speak out on this matter. When we get to the roots of our mutual history and when we analyze the geography, we have to be honest with each other and talk about our concerns. There was a terrorist attack in Turkey on the 15th of November.
I took all the relevant ministers with me, and we personally visited the chief rabbi of this country, just as I visited all the injured Jewish citizens of my country - one by one - in their hospital beds. Because I could not have discriminated against them. They are all my citizens, the Muslims and the Jews and everyone else. I am the prime minister of all of them, not only of the Muslims. I was the first prime minister who ever visited the chief rabbi in the history of Turkey.
How, in your view, can a country protect itself from terrorism?
It is not the problem of only one country. Terrorism is an international phenomenon. We have to establish a joint plan to fight terrorism. The intelligence agencies of various countries should be in real cooperation with each other. If a mutual platform to fight terrorism can be established, we can achieve some results.
But while doing so we must never forget one thing: We have to take on this challenge, fight this struggle, within the framework of human rights and the supremacy of the law. Saying `I am the strong one, so I can name anyone I want as a terrorist and anyone I want as a criminal and just kill them and go' - that mentality is wrong.
We have to be in solidarity if we want to serve global peace. We have to go hand in hand; humanity does not want to see anymore bloodshed or death. All those responsible [for the bloodshed] are losing their credibility with every passing day. You must have followed at least as much as I did what kind of reactions the pictures of the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison received...
I would like to send 'Shalom' to all the citizens of Israel, especially the ones who have emigrated from Turkey.
-------- mideast
Turkey mum on US plans to station warplanes at Turkish base
ANKARA (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604145845.rhewbdnk.html
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Friday refused to comment on newspaper reports that the United States wants to deploy F-16 warplanes at a base in the south of the country.
"There is no new demand. There is no new situation on this issue," Gul told reporters in Ankara.
He was speaking in reponse to questions raised after The New York Times newspaper reported that Washington wanted to move a wing of F-16 fighter planes from Germany to Turkey's Incirlik base as part of a project to realign its forces in Europe to better counter the threat of global terrorism.
A Turkish diplomatic source said the United States had so far made no demands from Turkey as part of its plans to rearrange its forces.
But, the source added that US military officials recently made a series of proposals to extend aerial training exercises undertaken in Turkey under a 1980 military cooperation accord.
"Turkey decided that there was no need for a new arrangement that would bring exceptions to the existing cooperation accord and conveyed its decision to US officials," the source said on condition of anonymity.
Turkey, the United States and Israel regularly hold air training exercises over the central Annatolia province of Ankara since 2001.
The Incirlik base was used by US and British fighter jets to patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq from the time of the Gulf War in 1991 until the invasion of Iraq last March.
Ankara then limited its use to logistical and humanitarian purposes.
The US has also used the base for refuelling and troop rotation into Iraq and Afghanistan.
----
Istanbul under tight security ahead of NATO summit
ISTANBUL (AFP)
Jun 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040604134005.c49dfg2g.html
Turkey is readying unprecedented security measures with 30,000 troops backed by warships and combat aircraft to protect NATO leaders, including US President George W. Bush, who will gather here late this month.
"All measures have been taken for this summit, there is no reason to worry regarding security," Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told reporters Friday ahead of talks with Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul as well as with army and intelligence officials to discuss security arrangements.
Fears of attacks in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, have grown since four suicide attacks, blamed on local extremists linked to the Al-Qaeda network, claimed some 60 lives and caused massive destruction in the city in November.
Last month, police arrested six people, thought to belong to the northern Iraq-based radical group Ansar al-Islam, an alleged Al-Qaeda ally, on suspicion of plotting to attack the NATO summit.
Air traffic over the venue of the June 28-29 meeting and its vicinity will be banned and maritime traffic restricted on the Bosphorus Strait, which bisects Istanbul, as part of measures to ensure the safety of an estimated 7,000 guests.
Steel and concrete barriers will be erected around an area with a diameter of 10 kilometers (six miles) to seal off the congress hall where the meetings will take place, the press center and the hotels where the guests will stay.
All traffic into the so-called "NATO valley" will be banned and only those producing specially issued badges will be allowed access.
Besides Bush, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice are expected to attend the summit.
Organizers also expect some 3,000 delegates from 26 NATO member nations and 20 partner countries as well as about 3,500 journalists to attend the Istanbul summit.
-------- space
Cassini nears Saturn rendezvous
NASA expects stunning images around gas giant
By MARK CARREAU
Houston Chronicle
June 4, 2004,
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2610373
Saturn represents a milestone for solar system exploration:
• Named for the Roman god of agriculture.
• The solar system's second largest planet.
• Like its bigger neighbor Jupiter, Saturn is considered a "gas planet" because its small rocky core is enveloped in hydrogen and helium clouds.
• Has the solar system's most spectacular ring system and 31 moons.
• One moon, Titan, could be a destination for future explorers because scientists believe it may hold a frozen record of pre-biotic conditions like those of the ancient Earth. After nearly seven years on the cosmic highway, NASA's camera-toting Cassini spacecraft is just weeks from reaching one of the solar system's most intriguing destinations. But Saturn is as much a tempest as a temptress.
Powerful hurricanelike storms lasting weeks, even months, swirl across the giant planet's cloud tops. Wide bands of ice and rock encircle it like a gaudy jeweled necklace. And its diverse collection of 31 moons includes a mysterious Earth-like beauty called Titan.
"When I think about Saturn, plus its rings and moons, I almost see a solar system in miniature," said NASA's Linda Spilker, an expert on the multi-hued bands that may be the fragments of a shattered moon or asteroid.
Cassini and its companion probe Huygens represent the centerpiece of a $3.4 billion, U.S.-led mission that counts participants from 17 countries.
Circling the sun well beyond even larger Jupiter, Saturn's ringed realm represents the boldest attempt yet to establish a robotic foothold around another planet.
"A detailed knowledge of that environment, and the dynamic interactions between Saturn, the rings and the numerous moons will provide valuable data for understanding how the solar system and its planets formed," said Orlando Figueroa, NASA's director of solar system exploration.
Three early NASA deep space missions, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 and 2, cruised quickly past Saturn in 1979, 1980 and 1981, measuring the rings and discovering new moons and a substantial magnetic field.
This time, scientists envision at least four years of continuous scrutiny of Saturn if the plutonium-powered Cassini maneuvers successfully into orbit late on June 30. Plans call for the camera-equipped Huygens to separate from the larger spacecraft on Christmas Eve to begin a treacherous descent through the thick cloud veil of Titan on Jan. 14.
Titan appears to be one of the few places in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. In addition to a rocky terrain, it features fluids -- likely petroleum substances that hint of a chemistry on Titan close to what is needed for biological activity.
"The kinds of chemistry at work on Titan today resembles the ones at work on the Earth 4 billion years ago, before there was life," said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, who manages the European Space Agency's Huygens project. "Exploring Titan is like exploring the Earth's pre-biotic past."
Earlier this year, NASA's twin robotic rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, thrilled the public and scientists with remarkable pictures of the rugged Martian terrain.
The imagery from Saturn's ringed realm promises to be equally spectacular.
"I think we have the potential to match or even exceed what we saw with the Mars rovers, in part because we will get very detailed, close-up views of a totally new world," said Spilker, who serves as Cassini's deputy project scientist.
The suspense builds on Friday, when Cassini swoops within 1,300 miles of the Saturn moon Phoebe with cameras rolling. By June 30, Cassini should float into orbit if it responds to the pre-programmed commands. But first, the fast-moving spacecraft must thread through a narrow gap in Saturn's vast ring network, a bump-and-grind collection of ice and rock particles -- some as small as sand grains, others as massive as a motor coach.
"The potential hazard is there is dust, there are fine particles that are out there," said NASA's Robert Mitchell, the Cassini program manager. "The only question is, is there anything that can hit us on the way through?"
The 30-minute sprint through a 625-mile-wide gap in a pair of the planet's outer rings will kick off the more than 90-minute maneuver that steers Cassini into the desired orbit.
Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 managed nearly identical passages without peril.
Saturn's most powerful calling card is Titan, and Huygens offers the best prospect for unraveling its mysteries.
As Huygens descends by parachute into the dense nitrogen atmosphere, where temperatures are nearly 300 degrees below zero, the probe will flip on a flood light and relay imagery and readings back to Earth through Cassini.
The probe should land softly, striking either crater-ravaged terrain or an ice sheet or splashing into a pool of methane or ethane.
"I would visualize this not as continents and oceans in the way we visualize the Earth but more like a cratered surface where the bigger craters are filled with liquid," said University of Arizona planetary physicist Jonathan Lunine, a member of the Huygens science team. "That makes it really alien terrain."
-------- spies
Chief wants FBI to have a domestic spy division
06.04.2004
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Arizona Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/printDS/24786.php
WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller, fighting calls for an independent domestic intelligence agency, proposed Thursday that the bureau create its own service to gather information to combat terrorism.
The division would be largely independent from the rest of the FBI and have its own budget. It would include all the bureau's intelligence-gathering resources. The chief would report directly to Mueller.
Mueller told a House Appropriations subcommittee that an independent domestic spy agency would have to duplicate much of the expertise already in the FBI and harm what's become the bureau's top priority: fighting terrorism.
"Any reform proposal must recognize that intelligence is fundamental to successful FBI operations," he said. "Intelligence functions are woven throughout the fabric of the bureau, and any changes to this integrated approach would be counterproductive."
Mueller did not provide estimates of how many new people would be hired or any additional costs for the initiative.
Congressional reaction has been mixed on the need for a domestic spy agency.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., asked Mueller in February to consider creation of the separate entity within the FBI. Wolf disagreed with those who want a separate agency similar to the British intelligence service.
Britain's Security Service, known as MI-5, collects and analyzes intelligence to disrupt terrorism, espionage and sabotage but has no law enforcement powers.
----
Tenet leaves CIA's reputation in tatters, Under his leadership the agency peddled misinformation that created false rationales for bad decisions
Scott Ritter, a former UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, is author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America."
June 4, 2004
Newsday
by SCOTT RITTER
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vprit043832438jun04,0,4160926.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
George Tenet's resignation as director of Central Intelligence has taken the political world of Washington by storm. And yet, it was an act that had been foreseen for some time.
Consider what made Tenet's tenure at the CIA untenable: the combined weight of the 9/11 intelligence failures, the absence of Iraqi WMD and the post-occupation fiasco, as well as the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, whether it be the leaking of the identity and the affiliation of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife (a CIA covert operative) to the press, of Ahmed Chalabi's allegedly informing the Iranians (courtesy of a leak from the Pentagon) that the United States had broken Iran's diplomatic code.
But, in reflecting on his passing, one should never forget that his troubles were, for the most part, of his own making.
I was an intelligence officer for many years, and I had always been instructed to abide by the adage that "an intelligence officer tells his boss not what they want to hear, but rather what the facts are." George Tenet repeatedly violated that principle during his time as director - most egregiously on Iraq.
In Tenet's haste to please his bosses in both the Clinton and Bush White House (he served both presidents as the CIA director), he oversaw the politicization of the intelligence process to the extent that today the CIA lacks credibility as an institution not only in the United States, but around the world as well.
Perhaps the most glaring example of this can be found in Tenet's February 2004 speech at his alma matter, Georgetown University. In a rambling defense of the CIA's pre-war estimate on Iraqi WMD capabilities, Tenet hedged on his agencies' earlier assertions. For the most part, he provided little or no substance to back up his remarks. But midway through his presentation, Tenet mentioned the 1995 defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had controlled Iraq's biological weapons program.
"Only then was the world able to confirm that Iraq indeed had an active and dangerous biological weapons program," Tenet said. "Indeed, history matters in dealing with these complicated problems."
The irony of this statement by Tenet is that he, of all people, should have known it to be false. During the course of Hussein Kamel's debriefings with the CIA, British MI-6 and with UNSCOM, he repeatedly talked about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, and his role not only in their manufacture, but also in their destruction following the onset of UN weapons inspections in Iraq in the summer of 1991.
"Nothing remained," Kamel told UN inspectors. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed."
Tenet knew this was the case. As deputy director of the CIA in August 1995, he was directly involved with the CIA's debriefing of Hussein Kamel.
As director of the CIA in February 2004, he had total access to the debriefing documents in order to refresh his memory. That he chose to misrepresent the defection of Hussein Kamel during his presentation at Georgetown University only underscores the personal culpability that Tenet bears when it comes to deceiving the president, Congress and the people of the United States about the threat posed by Iraq's WMD.
Tenet's visually defining moment as director of the CIA came on Feb. 5, 2003, when he was prominently seated behind Secretary of State Colin Powell during Powell's now discredited presentation to the UN Security Council on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Tenet's positioning was deliberate, designed to reinforce the credibility of Secretary Powell's assertions by reminding those viewing the proceedings that the weight of the CIA backed the secretary of state's words. At the time, Powell's presentation was considered a tour de force. Today, sobered by the harsh reality that not only was almost every assertion made by Powell that day wrong, but for the most part drawn from data that many in the U.S. intelligence community at that time knew to be suspect.
Today Colin Powell has tried to disassociate himself from the intelligence provided by George Tenet for that fateful briefing. Powell may want to distance himself from his words and deeds of that day, but Tenet will never be able to erase the public vision of him seated behind Powell, on the world stage, an empty suit peddling false information in support of a war that has so far proved to be a lost cause.
----
Tenet Resigns as C.I.A. Director; 3 Harsh Reports on Agency Due
June 4, 2004
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04TENE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 3 - George J. Tenet, the besieged director of central intelligence who presided over a major expansion of American spy agencies but also critical intelligence failures, abruptly resigned Thursday.
Both Mr. Tenet and President Bush said the resignation was for personal reasons. But current and former intelligence officials noted that Mr. Tenet was anticipating heavy criticism from three reports expected to assail the agency either over its failure to detect the Sept. 11, 2001, terror plot or the assessments that Iraq possessed unconventional weapons before the American invasion last year.
Most damaging among them is a Senate Intelligence Committee report, due this month, which is expected to single out errors made by the agency in its prewar judgments.
Some Republican senators, including Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, signaled to the administration in the past two weeks that the report's conclusions would be so critical that it would raise questions about who should be held accountable, an official said. Another official said the highly critical nature of the report was widely known at the White House.
Mr. Tenet is to be replaced by his deputy, John McLaughlin, who will serve as acting director. Mr. Bush is unlikely to nominate a permanent successor before the November election, Republicans said, because a confirmation battle this summer would attract more attention to the agency's assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons.
In another resignation at the C.I.A., a senior intelligence official said Thursday evening that James Pavitt, the head of the agency's clandestine service, is to announce Friday that he is retiring. The retirement of Mr. Pavitt, a C.I.A. veteran whose current title is deputy director of operations, had been planned for some time and had nothing to do with Mr. Tenet's resignation, the agency official said.
Mr. Bush, who had kept up a close bond with his C.I.A. chief through two wars, unrelenting intelligence crises and internecine feuding, announced Mr. Tenet's resignation in a two-minute statement late Thursday morning on the South Lawn of the White House. Moments later, the president departed for a trip to Europe.
"I met with George last night in the White House," Mr. Bush said. "I had a good visit with him. He told me he was resigning for personal reasons. I told him I'm sorry he's leaving. He's done a superb job on behalf of the American people."
Mr. Tenet, in teary remarks to C.I.A. employees at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., later in the morning, called his resignation "the most difficult decision I have ever had to make" and added that it was for "the well-being of my wonderful family."
Richard Kerr, a friend of Mr. Tenet's and a former deputy director of central intelligence, said: "He may have believed that he was hurting the president. He's an honorable person, and he may have had that as a consideration." The two other reports expected soon are from an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, due in late July, and from Mr. Tenet's own weapons hunter in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, who is expected to issue a progress report sometime this summer.
Mr. Tenet said he would step down on July 11, the seventh anniversary of his taking charge, making him the second-longest serving director of central intelligence, behind only Allen W. Dulles, who served eight years and nine months in the 1950's and 60's. Mr. Tenet, a wily, highly political Washington survivor and one of the few holdovers from the Clinton era to serve in a senior position in the Bush administration, had made clear for several years that he was eager to move on.
A number of Mr. Tenet's friends said that despite the looming critical reports, the intelligence director was stepping down for the family reasons he cited and because he was worn out from the relentless pressures of his job since the attacks of Sept. 11. Under Mr. Tenet, the C.I.A. has been the subject of blistering critiques for what its detractors have called the two worst intelligence failures of the last 50 years: not anticipating Sept. 11 and exaggerating the threat of Iraq's unconventional weapons.
"If criticism either actual or anticipated was a factor, he would have left a long time ago," said David Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and a mentor to Mr. Tenet who talked to the director on Thursday afternoon. "It's been months of his desiring to leave."
Mr. Tenet had talked so often of leaving, friends said, that last December Mr. Bush personally asked him to stay. Mr. Bush even appealed to Mr. Tenet's wife, Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, telling her that her husband's service was important to the country.
But last weekend, a person familiar with Mr. Tenet's thinking said, the intelligence chief decided during discussions with his wife and high-school-age son that he really was stepping down.
He informed the president in the family quarters of the White House on Wednesday night, when the two men met alone for an hour. Mr. Bush asked Mr. Tenet to stay through the end of the year, the person said, but Mr. Tenet responded that summer was a natural break point and a good time to depart.
The person familiar with Mr. Tenet's thinking insisted that his leaving was not prompted by the coming reports, and that he waited until all the recent hearings on Iraq and Sept. 11 were completed before reopening the question of when he should exit. Mr. Tenet does not deny, the person said, that his relationships with some senior White House advisers have soured, but he likes to say that "there's only one relationship that matters" - the one with the president.
Mr. McLaughlin, a 32-year veteran of the C.I.A., is unlikely to have as chummy a rapport with the president as did Mr. Tenet, who started most mornings in the Oval Office in Mr. Bush's intelligence briefings. Off duty, Mr. Bush and Mr. Tenet had a boisterous relationship, marked by a fondness for sports and what Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida and the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, referred to as "male talk."
But Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill said that as the criticism over the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq mounted, Mr. Tenet was increasingly seen as a political liability for the president, who is facing a tough re-election campaign.
For all of Mr. Bush's closeness to Mr. Tenet, Republicans noted that the president spent only a few minutes praising the man who had been at his side throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vice President Dick Cheney issued a statement saying that he believed Mr. Tenet had done "a superb job," but it was only three sentences long.
"I don't think there are any tears over there," said Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, a frequent critic of Mr. Tenet.
Mr. Graham, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he doubted that Mr. Tenet had departed as willingly as his friends said. "I suspect there was some push out of the office," he said. "This president has been enamored of George Tenet, and has been reluctant to hold him or anyone else accountable, and that failure was becoming a bigger and bigger liability."
In the end, Mr. Graham said, Mr. Bush announced Mr. Tenet's resignation for his own political well-being "under circumstances where he is at the crime scene as short as possible."
The timing of the announcement appeared to take even senior White House officials by surprise. As one recounted the events, Mr. Bush had just walked back into the Oval Office after finishing a morning news conference in the Rose Garden with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. At that point, Mr. Bush informed a small group in the Oval Office that Mr. Tenet had resigned. The group included Mr. Cheney; Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; and Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.
Minutes later, Mr. Bush reappeared on the White House lawn to make the short walk to Marine One, the presidential helicopter. En route, he stopped to make the statement about Mr. Tenet's resignation to a group of reporters.
Mr. Tenet called at least two members of Congress on Thursday morning to inform them of his decision. One was Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and the other was Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Both praised Mr. Tenet's performance, and Mr. Warner said that Mr. Tenet put his wife on the phone and that she told him the decision was "predicated on carefully thought-through family considerations." Mr. Warner said that the remark convinced him that Mr. Tenet was leaving of his own volition.
Sheryl Stolberg contributed reporting for this article.
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Tenet Resigns as CIA Director
Intelligence Chief Praised by Bush, But Critics Cite Lapses on Iraq War
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14025-2004Jun3?language=printer
Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, who presided over intelligence failures and successes of historic proportions, said yesterday that he will leave the job, telling CIA employees in a tearful speech that his decision had "only one basis in fact," a desire to spend time with his wife and teenage son.
President Bush named deputy director John E. McLaughlin, a mild-mannered, professorial analyst, as acting director and is not expected to name a successor before the election. James L. Pavitt, the CIA's deputy director of operations, told associates recently that he will leave his position in midsummer, leaving the agency with new leaders at a time of a heightened threat of terrorist attacks during political conventions and the Summer Olympics in Greece.
Current and former intelligence officials described Tenet, a gregarious schmoozer who has held the job for seven years, as being psychologically worn down by the pace of clandestine counterterrorism operations and by the barrage of public criticism over the CIA's inability to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and accurately characterize the threat from Iraq's prewar weapons programs.
Tenet told CIA employees yesterday that he will step down on July 11; he wanted to leave the job more than a year ago, but Bush asked him to stay. Bush has maintained a close, almost chummy working relationship with the director. Yesterday, the president said that Tenet had "done a superb job on behalf of the American people."
"He's been a strong leader in the war on terror, and I will miss him," Bush said.
A senior administration official with firsthand knowledge, however, said that although no one at the White House asked Tenet to leave, nobody asked him to stay, either.
"Relations haven't been good for some time," one former White House official said. "But the friction had achieved an equilibrium where it was a sustainable working relationship, even though it was tense."
White House officials have sought to blame Tenet for leading the president into war based on bad intelligence. But even before the intelligence community had produced its definitive reports on Iraq, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials were describing the threat from Saddam Hussein in more dramatic and unequivocal terms than the intelligence ever supported.
Tenet's relationship with White House staff members grew tense when he refused to take sole blame for an inaccurate statement about Iraq in the president's State of the Union address in 2003. It worsened after a speech by Tenet at Georgetown University in February, in which he pointed out that the agency had never used the word "imminent" to characterize the threat from Hussein's weapons.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that Bush met with Tenet in the White House residence for about 45 minutes on Wednesday evening and that Bush had received no notice of Tenet's decision.
Asked if Bush tried to talk Tenet out of his decision, McClellan said, "I think the president understood his reasons for leaving." McClellan replied with a firm "no" when asked if Bush had at any time sent a signal to Tenet that he should spend more time with his family.
The Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), said Tenet had worked "extremely hard on behalf of our nation." Kerry added: "There is no question, however, that there have been significant intelligence failures, and the administration has to accept responsibility for those failures."
Some critics said they believe Tenet was being made the scapegoat for Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq and for the Defense Department's mishandling of the war's aftermath.
"There were clearly errors in our country's intelligence gathering and handling," said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). "I hope that he's not taking the fall as a sacrificial lamb."
The criticism of Tenet is only expected to get worse when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases its report in mid-June on prewar intelligence on Iraq, said officials who have seen the report.
The report accuses Tenet of failing the president by providing poor analysis and relying on outdated and thinly sourced information to prepare its National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found in Iraq.
The Sept. 11 commission's report is due in mid-July and is expected to be equally harsh on the CIA director.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said yesterday morning that he is disappointed that "almost three years after 9/11, no one has been fired or disciplined." Likewise, "nearly two years after the NIE on Iraq" was written, "no one in intelligence has been fired or disciplined."
Tenet read the Senate report last week, telling an acquaintance, "I'm not going to be chased out by a piece of paper."
But neither did he want to become a focus of the presidential campaign -- either as a target of Democrats' attacks or as a defender of the Bush White House.
Former senator David Boren (D-Okla.), a longtime friend, said Democrats in the campaign will surely bring up a passage in Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," in which Tenet is quoted as telling Bush that the evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction amounted to a "slam-dunk case."
Tenet "was not going to talk about conversations with the president, and he did not want to see the agency as a political football," said Boren, who was chairman of the Senate intelligence panel when Tenet was a Senate staff member.
Boren said Tenet had been looking for a time when he could step down. "Each time he started to resign, they would be in the middle of something and the president wanted him to stay on," Boren said. More than avoiding the coming criticism, Boren said, Tenet "wanted to get on with the rest of his life."
The recent crush of criticism of the CIA has virtually drowned out public talk of the agency's successes. They include the assassination or capture of two-thirds of al Qaeda's leadership, the dismantling of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's black-market nuclear supply network, and pushing Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to end his nuclear weapons programs. There have also been no terrorist attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
Tenet signaled his intention to leave last week, in a meeting with the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Questioned on how he would handle criticism from the Senate inquiry and the Sept. 11 commission, he said: "It's just not going to happen. I'm not worried about it."
Pressed about whether he was about to resign, he quipped, "You must be talking to my wife."
Tenet told associates he had made his decision after vacationing in New Jersey recently with his family. He said he wanted to take his son, John Michael, on college visits, and he choked up in front of CIA employees yesterday when talking about his son, who was in the audience.
His son was in second grade when Tenet was sworn in as deputy director, he told employees, "and he's grown up to be" -- but Tenet got too emotional to finish the sentence. Then he added:
"Anyway, the point is, John Michael is going to be a senior next year. I'm going to be a senior with him in high school. We're going to class together. We're going to party together. I'm going to learn how to instant-message his friends."
On a more serious note, Tenet only briefly acknowledged the agency's troubles.
"Our record is not without flaws," he said. "The world of intelligence is a uniquely human endeavor . . . and we all understand the need to always do better. We are not perfect, but one of our best-kept secrets is that we are very, very, very good."
Pavitt, who directs the agency's clandestine operations, has said he will leave his job in the summer as well. He is to be replaced by Stephen Kappes, who spent his career in covert operations before becoming Pavitt's deputy two years ago.
Several Florida lawmakers suggested Bush replace Tenet with Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer, who would have a good chance confirmation. Goss, 65, is retiring after 16 years in the House and said he had not ruled out such an appointment.
Bush kept the secret overnight even from some of his closest aides. No word of the news leaked out until moments before the president made his comments on the South Lawn at 10:26 a.m. as he headed toward his chopper, Marine One.
Bush had conducted a 17-minute media appearance in the Rose Garden with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and no rumor about Tenet's decision got around the White House until the networks were told to set up microphones because Bush was going to talk on his way to the helicopter.
Tenet has said he would like to go into business, as well as write, lecture and teach at a university after he leaves the CIA job.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
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Analysis For Personal Reasons, Or Is He the Fall Guy?
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13986-2004Jun3.html
When three hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands, no one took the fall in the Bush administration.
When the nation went to war in Iraq on the basis of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be wildly wrong, no one took the fall, either.
So when George J. Tenet resigned as CIA director yesterday, it was no surprise that his departure was choreographed to demonstrate he was not being blamed for any of the intelligence failures that occurred on his watch. The administration line was that he was leaving on his own accord to spend time with his family.
But in official Washington, where every departure of any senior official is searched for hidden meaning and ulterior motives, the question lingered yesterday in the corridors of power and over expense-account meals: Was Tenet finally being served up as a sacrificial lamb by an administration that loathes to admit a mistake?
As with much news that has had Tenet at the center, there was no shortage of spin -- and many competing answers. While defenders accepted the official explanation, those eager to tarnish the administration saw the departure as proof that somebody was finally paying the price for the assorted intelligence failures. Republicans who sensed tension between Tenet and the White House believed his resignation was not unwanted.
Fueling much of the speculation was the fact that Tenet had sought to leave at several points last year, but President Bush had persuaded him to stay, as administration officials told it. Now, when the White House is under severe political pressure and Bush's reelection may be imperiled, the president finally accepted Tenet's resignation.
"To some degree, the White House may be making a craven calculation," said Flynt Leverett, a former CIA and Bush White House official who is now at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "You have calls for accountability, that someone has to lose a job. In a sense, you have an easy way to have someone lose his job -- he wants to quit."
Others noted that Tenet is leaving before reports are issued on intelligence failures that led to the Sept. 11 attacks and the gathering of intelligence about weapons in Iraq. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that it was "no secret" that Tenet was tired and wanted to leave but that Tenet was also well aware that the reports would soon be issued. But, he added, "I don't think George Tenet should be held responsible or blamed for the intelligence failures of the past two years."
Former CIA director Stansfield Turner told CNN that he was very surprised by the resignation because he thought "the president was not going to acknowledge that there were problems in his own inner circle. I certainly thought that Tenet, being a very loyal type of civil servant, would not walk out on the president in the middle of an election campaign."
Those closest to Tenet tended to discount the more conspiratorial explanations.
"I'm probably the only person in Washington who takes George at face value," said former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who said he had many phone conversations yesterday speculating on the motives and political impact of Tenet's departure. Berger, who worked closely with Tenet in the Clinton White House, noted that Tenet has been at the center of intelligence decision making for nearly 12 years, either at the CIA or Clinton's National Security Council.
Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said the critical reports -- by the Senate intelligence panel and by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks -- had nothing to do with his departure. "It was a personal decision, nothing more, nothing less," he said.
To be sure, many of the CIA's successes are hidden from view, while its failures generate big headlines. Tenet earlier this year offered a firm defense of the agency making exactly that point, focusing in particular on its role in cracking a nuclear smuggling ring operating out of Pakistan.
Tenet's resignation came, moreover, just as the CIA's critical assessment of Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi seemed to be borne out with allegations that Chalabi told Iran that the United States had broken its code for secret communication.
Tenet by all accounts had also forged an unusually close relationship with the president. He was a holdover from the previous administration, but -- unusual in an administration stocked with officials deeply suspicious of anything associated with former president Bill Clinton -- he won Bush's trust and appreciation.
"It's quite extraordinary that George was able to serve two presidents of two parties with such distinct personalities and earn the trust of both of them," said Berger, Clinton's second-term security adviser.
In terms of policy, a new CIA director is not likely to make much difference, since the director's role is to provide information and analysis for policymakers, not to try to influence policy. The interim replacement, Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin, is almost a Tenet clone, a self-effacing career civil servant.
Still, Tenet's resignation signals the beginning of the breakup of a foreign policy team that has taken the country through the Sept. 11 crisis and two wars over the past 3 1/2 years. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice have made it clear they will depart at the end of the current term, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appears unlikely to remain in the wake of the prison scandal in Iraq and the many calls for his resignation.
Thus, even if Bush wins reelection, the foreign policy slate largely could be wiped clean in six months.
Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.
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Second top official to quit CIA
Pavitt has been in charge of the CIA's spies for the past five years
June 4, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3775423.stm
A second top CIA official is to retire from his post, less than a day after the surprise resignation of the agency's director George Tenet.
James Pavitt, deputy director for operations, is said to have made the decision some weeks ago.
The departures come as the agency is braced for reports expected to criticise its conduct in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq.
The CIA says Mr Pavitt's decision was unconnected with Mr Tenet's departure.
But analysts say the move will mean more upheaval at a critical time for the agency.
On Thursday Mr Tenet cited "personal reasons" for his decision to go, but he has faced months of criticism for not preventing the 11 September 2001 attacks, and over the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says the official 9/11 inquiry is due to report soon and is likely to savage the CIA for failing to stop Osama Bin Laden.
At the same time, another inquiry is investigating what the agency told President George W Bush about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr Bush accepted the CIA director's resignation and said he would miss the "strong and able" Mr Tenet as head of the US intelligence agency.
Mr Tenet, 51, will leave the CIA on 11 July when Deputy Director John McLaughlin will take over temporarily.
Department under fire
James Pavitt has worked for the agency for 31 years, five as the deputy director of operations, in charge of the agency's spies.
The CIA has been under pressure for not preventing 11 September
His identity had been unknown until last April when, in an unprecedented move, he appeared publicly before the 11 September commission.
At the time he said the failures that occurred before the attacks were due to woefully inadequate resources, not a lack of caring.
The BBC's Ian Pannell, in Washington, says it is his department's record in gathering intelligence in Iraq that has come in for the strongest criticism.
In particular they are criticised for not having enough good human intelligence on the ground, that they placed too much credence on badly sourced material.
A spokesman for the CIA told the BBC that Mr Pavitt's decision to leave was a retirement not a resignation and that it was emphatically not related to the director's decision to retire.
Still, the timing at the very least appears poor and many of the agency's critics will no doubt interpret this as a sign of crisis at the CIA, our correspondent says.
Surprise announcement
In a farewell speech to CIA employees, Mr Tenet said his resignation had "only one basis in fact: the well-being of my beautiful family".
Choking back tears, he told his son Michael, a teenager who was sitting in the audience: "You've been a great son - and now I'm going to be a great dad."
Correspondents say Mr Tenet, who has been in the post for seven years, had been widely expected to step down after the November presidential election.
Unusually, Mr Tenet has served under two presidents from different parties, having been appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Following Thursday's surprise announcement, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, said he wished Mr Tenet "the very best", but he said the Bush administration had to take responsibility for "significant intelligence failures".
Mr Kerry, who has previously called for Mr Tenet to step down, said this was an opportunity to reform the US intelligence services.
After the 11 September attacks, many commentators thought Mr Tenet's position was at risk - but President Bush stuck by his intelligence chief.
Last July Mr Tenet accepted full responsibility for unsubstantiated allegations about Iraq's weapons programme being included in Mr Bush's State of the Union address.
GEORGE TENET Born 5 January 1953 in New York to Greek immigrants Studied at Georgetown and Columbia universities Served on Clinton's National Security Council 1992-95 Deputy CIA director 1995-96 Acting CIA director 1996-97 Confirmed as CIA director 1997
JAMES PAVITT Joined the CIA in 1973 Posts in Europe, Asia and Washington Deputy director for operations since 1999 Identity secret since April Appeared before 9/11 commission
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Coded Cable In 1995 Used Chalabi's Name
Intercepted Iranian Message Involved Plot to Kill Hussein
By Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14020-2004Jun3?language=printer
Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician suspected by U.S. authorities of having told Iran this spring that its secret communications code had been broken, was involved in an intercept episode nine years ago, according to senior administration officials.
Officials yesterday recounted an incident in early 1995 when Chalabi's name turned up in an encrypted Iranian cable reporting a purported CIA-backed plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein, then Iraq's president. The message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence and caused a major political stir in Washington.
Similarly, it was an intercept several weeks ago of another Iranian message -- this one from an agent in Baghdad to his superiors in Tehran saying Chalabi had told him that U.S. intelligence was able to read Iran's secret cables -- that has triggered a major counterintelligence probe and concern about Washington's future ability to monitor Iranian developments.
A U.S. law enforcement source said yesterday that FBI investigators, trying to determine the source of the leak, had interviewed at least one Defense Department employee in Baghdad and had administered a polygraph test. More tests were planned, some involving officials at the Pentagon, said the source who demanded anonymity because the investigation is secret. But several senior defense officials said yesterday that they knew of no one at the Pentagon who had yet been approached by investigators.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said the investigation is still at its early stage. Noting that Chalabi is a British citizen, she said law enforcement officials are trying to determine "to what extent he is covered by U.S. law barring disclosure of U.S. classified information."
Chalabi, whose exile group -- the Iraqi National Congress -- has received more than $40 million in U.S. payments over the years, has denied that he disclosed secrets to Iran and demanded that the Bush administration investigate the source of the leak about the investigation of him.
The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.
Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.
Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.
To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.
In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.
What happened next has not been previously reported.
The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.
The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.
The concern of investigators, as Baer recounted in his book, was that he was in violation of presidential orders and U.S. law that prohibited assassinations. Baer passed a polygraph test, but it would be almost a year before he and his team were cleared. Nevertheless, Baer's career was damaged and never recovered.
Shortly after the intercept, Chalabi's militia forces and Kurdish fighters went ahead with an attempted coup, launching a three-city strike against Hussein's troops. But the offensive quickly foundered.
The White House, having warned Chalabi not to proceed because Iraqi intelligence had learned of the operation, declined to provide air power to help him. Hussein's troops crushed the attackers, leaving the CIA angry that it had funded such a fiasco and infuriating top officials in the Clinton administration.
Taken together, the intercept and the foiled revolt marked a turning point in the CIA's relationship with Chalabi, an official said. The events explain to a large extent why the CIA later cut Chalabi off from funding and refused to administer money appropriated for his organization in the late 1990s that was aimed at bringing about Hussein's fall. CIA authorities knew the funds were headed for Chalabi, and they would not work with him any further, the official said.
For many years, Chalabi has made no secret of his contacts with leaders in Iran. He has described his ties as purely expedient, reflecting Iran's strategic significance in the region.
One of Chalabi's top lieutenants, Aras Karim Habib, who served as the Iraqi National Congress's intelligence chief, has long been considered by the CIA as a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, according to senior intelligence officials. He has denied that allegation.
Chalabi's attorney, John J.E. Markham II, said yesterday that his client has denied passing sensitive or classified information to the Iranians and is more than willing to tell that to anyone in the U.S. government. "We have not been contacted by anyone from the Department of Justice, the FBI or the CIA," he said.
Staff writers Steve Coll, Allan Lengel and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
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U.N. Troops, Protesters Clash in Congo
From News Services
Washington Post
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11772-2004Jun3.html
KINSHASA, Congo, June 3 -- U.N. troops fired on rampaging protesters in Congo's capital Thursday, killing at least two people, as the capture of an eastern city by renegade commanders sparked the most violent protests here since the outbreak of the country's 1998-2003 war.
Crowds turned on the government of President Joseph Kabila and the 10,800-member U.N. force in Congo for failing to stop the fall of Bukavu, surging into the streets by the tens of thousands and attacking U.N. installations.
"The state is dead!" protesters cried at demonstrations that broke out at daybreak, filling the city center with thunderous chants. Many toted wooden clubs as they converged on U.N. posts.
U.N. officials said demonstrators also attacked missions in the eastern town of Kindu, the northeastern city of Kisangani and the southern mining center of Lubumbashi, where staff members sought refuge with the army, the Reuters news agency reported.
Despite the bloodshed, hope rose of defusing the unprecedented crisis for Congo's fragile postwar government when renegade commanders in the east agreed to end their takeover of Bukavu by Friday.
"We shall withdraw . . . to assure the transitional government that we are not opposed to it," Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda, one of two commanders who broke from ranks of the government's forces and seized Bukavu on Wednesday, told the Associated Press.
Kabila blamed Rwanda, Congo's primary foreign adversary in the war, for the fall of Bukavu, a strategic trading center on the Rwandan border. Rwandan officials denied the charge.
In New York, the U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, blamed the violence on unreasonable expectations among Congolese about the U.N. peacekeepers' ability to control the situation.
"There's an expectation that MONUC with its limited resources could do everything," Guehenno said, according to the AP, in reference to the U.N. mission in Congo. "I think it's likely we will need more troops."
At a U.N. logistics base in Kinshasa, crowds broke down the main door and began looting, said Hamadoun Toure, a U.N. spokesman. U.N. troops inside opened fire, killing two protesters and wounding one, he said.
"They entered, and there were very many of them," Toure told the AP. He said U.N. forces fired in self-defense, adding: "We regret this deeply because our mission was to establish peace in the country, but we were left with no choice."
State radio said that five people were killed at the U.N. base.
In a separate incident, Congolese security forces fired, apparently into the air, to hold back thousands of protesters besieging U.N. mission headquarters in the heart of Kinshasa. Shattered glass, rocks and chunks of wood surrounded the cordons of Congolese troops.
Protesters also burned the offices of former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, one of four vice presidents in the power-sharing government, officials said.
The city calmed down by early afternoon, and the demonstrators picked their way home through burned vehicles, tires and barricades.
The protests were the largest in the capital since at least 1997, when longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko fell, launching Congo into the five-year war.
The war drew in the armies of six nations, including Rwanda, and split the country. The fighting, and the famine and disease it created, killed an estimated 3.5 million people.
Nkunda and Col. Jules Mutebutsi, the renegade commanders who seized Bukavu, were members of a rebel group allied with Rwanda during the war.
Talks with U.N. officials yielded Nkunda's promise to pull out of Bukavu by Friday, allowing U.N. forces to take control.
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Inside the Ring
June 04, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Pacific buildup
Days after the Pentagon released its annual report highlighting China's steady military buildup, defense officials have disclosed new details of plans to beef up U.S. military forces in the Pacific.
Officials say several more attack submarines will be deployed at the U.S. base at Guam. In the past, the base has been used mostly as a major supply depot and bomber airfield.
Under a force-restructuring plan being worked out by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Pacific Command, Guam is slated to become a major strategic operational hub for naval forces keeping an eye on China.
"We need to be able to get to the Taiwan Strait faster than we can right now," one official said.
Guam has three attack submarines that were recently moved to the island. As many as three more submarines could be deployed there by 2006, officials said.
The other major power projection effort in the Pacific will be the deployment of another aircraft carrier closer to Asia. Officials tell us Guam does not have the infrastructure to support a carrier battle group.
Plans call for deploying a group from the West Coast to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, we are told. The carrier battle group would be able to augment the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier group based in Japan.
Who's lying?
The breathless headline in a major daily newspaper read yesterday, "Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi Inquiry."
Trouble is, no one at the Pentagon with whom we checked knows of anyone in the building being polygraphed by the FBI. Nor has the Pentagon been notified by the FBI that it is investigating the supposed leak of classified information to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress.
"No official has been polygraphed or told to expect to be polygraphed," a Pentagon official said. The official and others said there has been no notification from the FBI that anyone is under investigation and needs to be questioned, in the Chalabi matter. The case broke open when the United States intercepted a cable from an Iranian spy in Baghdad to Tehran saying that Iran's code had been broken by the Americans and that Mr. Chalabi was the source for this information.
An FBI spokesman said he did not know whether anyone at the Pentagon had been questioned. He said the bureau is investigating whether any government official leaked classified information to Mr. Chalabi or his group that found its way to Iran.
Why, ask Pentagon officials, would the Iranians disclose such a development in a cable they know will be read by the United States? Some suspect the whole episode is a plot by Tehran to discredit Mr. Chalabi, a Shi'ite who opposes Tehran's hard-line, Shi'ite theocracy.
Brooks moving
The public probably remembers Army Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks as the face and voice of the war to topple Saddam Hussein. From a media center in Qatar, Gen. Brooks delivered a spare, just-the-facts war briefing to an international press corps.
After the war, the general moved from U.S. Central Command back to the Pentagon's Joint Staff. Now, we hear he is returning to the profession of public affairs. Next month, he becomes deputy chief of Army public affairs.
Fay report
Maj. Gen. George Fay, the Army's top intelligence officer, has returned to the United States to write his report on how his soldiers interrogated enemy detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and at other detention facilities.
The report is much anticipated by the press and the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will likely call Gen. Fay as a witness before the ink is dry.
His investigation is called a "Procedure 15" - the Army regulation for investigating how intelligence is collected.
Gen. Fay, relying on a staff of more than two dozen investigators who have interviewed soldiers in Iraq and Germany, will hopefully be able to outline the full scope of the scandal. He might be able to say whether the abuse of prisoners during interrogations was limited to a relatively few soldiers at Abu Ghraib, and to some sporadic cases at other facilities.
One Pentagon official said he thinks most of the misconduct at Abu Ghraib occurred on two nights and involved about a dozen soldiers.
Gitmo
Pentagon officials say they anguished over the rules for interrogating terror suspects at the war's first central holding center - the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
President Bush decided that as terrorists the detainees from the Afghanistan battlefield were not specifically covered by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. But they decided to abide by the guarantees. Still, officials decided they could allow techniques that put stress on al Qaeda members, such as sleep deprivation, management of light and darkness to disorient them, and temperature fluctuations.
In the end, intelligence collectors, who included personnel from foreign governments, learned volumes about the identify of al Qaeda members and how the organization operates. Most of the information on planned attacks was garnered at coalition headquarters at Baghram, north of Kabul, before the detainees were flown to Guantanamo.
Personnel shift
Pentagon speechwriter Mark Theissen, who has spent the past three years crafting speeches for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, has moved on to the White House. Mr. Theissen, a former aide to retired Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, is now helping President Bush shape his election-year messages.
Also, Mark Esper, a deputy assistant defense secretary for negotiations policy, has moved on to Capitol Hill, where he once worked as a national security specialist for both the Senate and House. Mr. Esper has been hired by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to be director for national security affairs in that office.
Security breach
The Pentagon is one of the most secure buildings in the world. At least one intruder has been fatally shot in the hallway after attempting to reach the military command center several years ago. Security forces also constantly conduct electronic sweeps to make sure no electronic bugs are planted in the building.
But security police were unable to keep out one intruder who nearly reached Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's third-floor office. We spotted a 2-inch-long cicada at the foot of the escalator some 20 feet from the door to Mr. Rumsfeld's office. The red-eyed winged insect was spinning helplessly.
• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@WashingtonTimes.com. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarborough@WashingtonTimes.com.
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Kerry Says He Would Add 40,000 to Army
Missile Defense Cut Could Defray Cost
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11971-2004Jun3.html
INDEPENDENCE, Mo., June 3 -- In his most extensive remarks on the future of the American military, Sen. John F. Kerry said here Thursday that he would expand the active-duty Army by 40,000 soldiers, including a doubling of U.S. Special Forces; speed development of new technologies and equipment to meet threats posed by terrorist networks; and better integrate the National Guard into the nation's homeland security strategy.
The Democratic presidential candidate said that, to cover part of the cost of his proposals, he would cut back current funding for a national missile defense system, which he characterized as "the wrong priority" at a time when the nature of the threats has changed.
Kerry repeated his charge that the Bush administration has instituted a "backdoor draft" to deal with a military stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pledged as president to expand and transform the armed services to handle more effectively the unconventional threats of the 21st century.
Kerry seized on Wednesday's Pentagon announcement that it will extend tours of duty for thousands of troops whose units may be heading to Iraq and Afghanistan, part of the administration's effort to deal with a much higher level of violence than it had anticipated.
"From Day One, this administration has been obsessed with threats from other states, instead of opening their eyes to the perils of the new century: terrorist organizations with or without ties to rogue nations and failed states, entities that can become their sanctuaries," Kerry said in a speech at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library. "These are the enemies our military is facing, and this is where we must train, arm and equip our military to win."
It was the Massachusetts senator's third major address on foreign policy in a week. He combined strong rhetoric designed to reassure voters that he would be a capable commander in chief with criticism of President Bush's policies aimed at casting himself as a more forward-looking military leader.
As part of Thursday's program, Kerry advisers announced a military advisory panel for the campaign that includes two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili and retired Navy Adm. William J. Crowe Jr.; a former director of central intelligence, retired Navy Adm. Stansfield Turner; and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who challenged Kerry in the primaries.
Bush campaign spokesmen challenged Kerry's diagnosis and his commitment to a strong military, with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) describing Kerry's reference to a "backdoor draft" as "absurd." The Bush officials pointed to Kerry's past positions in opposition to some major weapons programs and upbraided him for campaigning in Florida on Wednesday rather than returning to the Senate to vote for a $25 billion appropriation for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, which passed 95 to 0.
Asserting that U.S. forces "are stretched too thin," Kerry said in his speech that the administration has mismanaged the war in Iraq and that those U.S. forces and their families are paying the price.
"The administration's answer has been to put a Band-Aid on the problem," he said. "They have effectively used a 'stop-loss' policy as a backdoor draft. They have extended tours of duty, delayed retirements and prevented enlisted personnel from leaving the service."
Kerry said the Pentagon announcement marks just one more mistake by an administration that he said has failed to adapt to new threats posed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"We went into Iraq with too few troops to prevent looting and crime, to maintain security, fundamental order, to secure nearly a million tons of conventional weapons now being used against our troops," he said. "We failed to build alliances and squandered the opportunity to generate wider support inside Iraq, in the Arab world and among major powers so critical to every effort we have made through the last century. These mistakes have complicated our mission: a stable Iraq with a representative government secure in its borders."
Kerry likened the challenges facing the next president to those that confronted Truman at the end of World War II when the world was challenged by a nuclear threat from the Soviet Union and the task of rebuilding a shattered Europe. "Today, in the post-9/11 world, we stand at another historic crossroad," he said. "We must change if we are to meet and defeat the danger." He added that the threats of the 21st century cannot be defeated "with a military from the last one."
Kerry earlier had proposed expanding the active-duty Army by 40,000 troops, but went further Thursday in detailing that and other recommendations. He said the 40,000 additional troops eventually could help relieve the burden on current active-duty, reserve and National Guard forces.
Kerry also said he would reshape U.S. forces by expanding the kinds of units required in post-conflict environments such as that in Iraq, saying he would add civil affairs, military police, combat support and psychological operations units.
Kerry said current forces -- and their families -- are so exhausted and burdened that "we are in danger of creating another hollow Army," a reference to the reduction in capability and morale that followed the Vietnam War.
He criticized the administration for not providing the forces in Iraq with all the equipment they need. "As president, I will see to it that we don't have to have bake sales and bargain-basement sell-offs, yard sales by parents and buy on the Internet to supply the troops of the United States of America."
The Democratic candidate offered few details to explain how he intends to speed the development and use of advanced technology, from communications gear to precision weapons.
A Kerry adviser estimated that the expanded force levels would cost $5 billion to $8 billion a year, but said Kerry intends to make his transformation budget neutral. The candidate singled out missile defense, a priority of the Bush administration, as a major target for cuts. "We must build missile defense," he said, "but not at the cost of other pressing priorities."
Focusing on the National Guard, Kerry said Bush's decision to send Guard forces to Iraq has undermined homeland security. "Sending thousands of National Guard members to Iraq has actually weakened our ability to defend our own country," he said.
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DynCorp Took Part In Chalabi Raid
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13904-2004Jun3.html
Four civilian contractors from Reston-based DynCorp International were present during the Iraqi police raid on the home and offices of former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad , the U.S. occupation authority has confirmed.
Officials of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress have said that Americans in civilian clothes, holding rifles and wearing body armor, directed the Iraqi police on what rooms to go into and what items to take. The Americans did not enter Chalabi's home but did enter the Iraqi National Congress offices that also were raided May 20, Chalabi's associates said.
The presence of DynCorp employees at the raid was first reported by the Baltimore Sun. DynCorp declined to comment.
A spokesman for the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority said the DynCorp employees were "international police advisers." DynCorp, a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp. of San Diego, has a $50 million State Department contract to provide 1,000 advisers to help organize Iraqi law enforcement and criminal justice systems.
At a May 21 briefing in Baghdad, Dan Senor, a spokesman for the provisional authority, said that civilian contractors whom he would not identify were at the raid "to observe and advise the Iraqi police during this operation, as they do on numerous operations."
Military officials have said that the raid was an Iraqi police action with backup from U.S. soldiers, and that no one from U.S. intelligence agencies was present.
The role of contractors in sensitive operations has raised concerns among some in Congress as the military increasingly depends on civilians for work once done by soldiers.
Chalabi was once considered the Pentagon's pick to run postwar Iraq but has fallen out of favor. U.S., INC and Iraqi police officials have said the raid was part of investigations into corruption, kidnapping and robbery. Chalabi has not been charged, and calls to his Boston attorney were not returned. Chalabi has called the raid retaliation for his criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq.
Staff writer Scott Wilson in Baghdad and researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
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MILITARY
Soldiers and Their Families Have Mixed Feelings on Policy That Extends Active Duty
June 4, 2004
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04EXTE.html
Ron Mysliwiec thought his son would be home for good next year, but now, after the announcement of a new Army policy extending the active duty of some soldiers in units destined for Iraq or Afghanistan, he is not so sure.
"My expectation was that my son would be out of the Army when his obligation ended," said Mr. Mysliwiec, a New York lawyer. He declined to give his son's name or unit for fear it would jeopardize his standing in the military, but he said his son was a platoon leader who fought in Iraq last year, was training for redeployment and was due to leave the military next year.
"He was going to apply to law school, and now that might be on hold," Mr. Mysliwiec said. "We don't know what will happen."
Soldiers and their families have many questions about the policy, which was announced Wednesday, including how many troops may be affected.
Active-duty soldiers who had planned to leave the military when their enlistments expired - or to move to other military jobs - could be required to stay for the length of their unit's deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan. The extensions could range from a few weeks to more than a year, though commanders could make exceptions.
The so-called stop-loss policy will affect soldiers in units that are within three months of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and will last up to 90 days after the units return home.
The new policy standardizes what had been an ad hoc practice affecting soldiers in selected Army units. Now soldiers in all units called to Iraq or Afghanistan would fall under the policy, which has been in effect for the National Guard and Reserves since 2002.
Only one unit has been identified as within the three-month window, the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., but an Army spokesman said other units are likely to be called up for the combat zones within that period.
Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a spokesman for the Third Infantry Division, said Army personnel officers were trying to figure out which soldiers would be affected.
"We anticipated it would be coming; it was just a surprise when it would come," Colonel Kent said.
Critics of the policy, including the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, likened the policy to a "backdoor draft," out of sync with the nation's volunteer military. They complained it was an end run around expanding the size of a military they consider woefully thin and depleted.
Some soldiers support the policy and agree that it would bring more cohesion and stability to units in which soldiers are frequently cycled in and out.
"I don't think it affects morale of soldiers because you are going to be there for a definitive amount of time anyway," said Mark Folkerts, 27, a first lieutenant with the Third Infantry Divison at Fort Benning, Ga. "I don't see it as a major concern. If it does happen, it happens. There is going to be a reason for it and it's for the mission."
Staff Sgt. Maurice Ray, 40, also with the Third Infantry Division, said he was set to retire in 15 days. But he said that the order was always a possibility and that every soldier knew it.
"Would I like it?" he said. "No. But would I do it? Yes. I am a soldier, and I already gave my life to the military."
Sergeant Ray said the Army had already tried to keep him on by offering him a promotion, which he declined, saying he had two young sons and a business that offered a better source of income. But he said he served in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and would be willing to serve in a war zone again.
"Nobody in my generation came into the military expecting to go to war," he said. "Now that we are going all kinds of places, people are looking to get out."
But others and their families were more conflicted. Mr. Mysliwiec said he understood the rationale, but as a father he worried that his son would have to serve dangerous duty longer than expected.
"Whether it is news to him or not, it is news to me, and it is not entirely happy news," Mr. Mysliwiec said, adding that he has been unable to reach his son, but knows he is training for a return to combat.
At Fort Drum, officials declined to allow reporters on the base to interview members of the Second Brigade, the unit headed for Iraq.
But among other soldiers at the base the policy has caused a range of reactions, including speculation that it was intended to combat the problem of people refusing to re-enlist when their time is up.
"My personal opinion is that it is necessary, but it's no longer a volunteer Army," said Sgt. John Fiery, 29, of Hagerstown, Md., who just returned from Afghanistan. "If it's people who have served their commitment, they should be allowed to leave.
"I think it's not good long term for the health of the Army," Sergeant Fiery said. "All the guys I know are not going to re-enlist. They're getting out as fast as they can. The people who are going to re-enlist anyway won't care."
Pvt. Timothy Chambless, 21, of Pascagoula, Miss., has been in the Army 11 months and is expected to be deployed in 2005.
"I don't agree with it," he said of the new order. "After you have served your time, you should be allowed to come home. It's a heartbreaker leaving your family. I feel if someone has put in their time, they should be allowed to come home. If you are deployed over there, and you have to stay longer, your morale is shot."
Others said soldiers should be prepared for the unexpected in the military. Sgt. Glenda Johnson, who has been in the Army since 1989, said, "I don't think anyone who came into the Army wants to see our country faced with war, but this is part of our service."
Shaila Dewan contributed reporting from Fort Benning, Ga., for this article, and Michelle York from Fort Drum, N.Y.
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A Pentagon Plan Would Cut Back G.I.'s in Germany
June 4, 2004
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04MILI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 3 - The Pentagon has proposed a plan to withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany and undertake an array of other changes in its European-based forces, in the most significant rearrangement of the American military around the world since the beginning of the cold war, according to American and allied officials.
Pentagon policy makers said the aim is to afford maximum flexibility in sending forces to the Middle East, Central Asia and other potential battlegrounds. But some experts and allied officials are concerned that the shift will reduce Washington's influence in NATO and weaken its diplomatic links with its allies, all at a time of rising anti-American sentiment around the world.
The proposal to withdraw the divisions comes at a time when the Army is stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Pentagon officials said the move, which has been under consideration for some time and involves forces in Asia as well as in Europe, is unrelated to the current fighting.
Under the Pentagon plan, the Germany-based First Armored Division and First Infantry Division would be returned to the United States. A brigade equipped with Stryker light armored vehicles would be deployed in Germany. A typical division consists of three brigades and can number 20,000 troops if logistical units are included, though these two divisions have only two brigades each in Germany, with the other brigade in the United States.
In addition, a wing of F-16 fighters may be shifted from their base in Spangdahlem, Germany, to the Incirlik base in Turkey, which would move the aircraft closer to the volatile Middle East; a wing generally consists of 72 aircraft. Under the Pentagon plan, the shift would be carried out only if the Turks gave the United States broad latitude for using them, something that some officials see as unlikely.
The Navy's headquarters in Europe would be transferred from Britain to Italy. Administration officials are also discussing plans to remove some F-15 fighters from Britain and to withdraw the handful of F-15 fighters that are normally deployed in Iceland, though final decisions have not been made.
Administration officials said Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, recently briefed German officials on the plan. The Germans were told that the withdrawal plan had yet to be formally approved by President Bush and that the United States would listen to their concerns, an American official said.
Officials said they expected the major decisions on the rearrangement to be made in a month or two. But the main direction of the Pentagon plan appears to be set.
"Everything is going to move everywhere," Mr. Feith said a year ago, as the Bush administration was beginning to develop the details of its plan. "There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be."
For Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the reasons for the reshuffling seem clear and compelling: that the purpose of military units is to fight and win the nation's wars, and they should be stationed in locations that enable the United States to use them most efficiently and with minimal political restrictions.
"It's time to adjust those locations from static defense to a more agile and a more capable and a more 21st-century posture," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on Thursday on a flight to Singapore.
Proponents of Mr. Rumsfeld's plan see little merit in keeping a large number of forces in Germany now that the cold war is over. They argue that the United States would be better off withdrawing most of them and establishing new bases in Southeastern Europe, from which forces could be rushed if there was a crisis in the Caucasus or the Middle East.
"From a strategic point of view, there is more sense in moving things out of Germany and having something in Bulgaria and Romania," said Joseph Ralston, a retired general and a former NATO commander.
But some experts and allied officials are concerned that a substantial reduction in the United States military presence in Europe would reduce American influence there, reinforce the notion that the Bush administration prefers to act unilaterally and inadvertently lend support to the French contention that Europe must rely on itself for its security.
Montgomery Meigs, a retired general and the former head of Army forces in Europe, said substantial reductions in American troops in Europe could limit the opportunities to train with NATO's new East European members and other allies. While American forces can still be sent for exercises from the United States, he said, it will be more difficult and costly to do so.
"You will never sustain the level of engagement from the United States that you can from Europe," he said. "We will not go to as many NATO exercises or have as many training events."
Other specialists have warned that the greatest risk is the possible damage to allied relations.
"The most serious potential consequences of the contemplated shifts would not be military but political and diplomatic," Kurt Campbell and Celeste Johnson Ward of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in an article published last year in the journal Foreign Affairs, well before the extent of the changes now planned became known."Unless the changes are paired with a sustained and effective diplomatic campaign, therefore, they could well increase foreign anxiety about and distrust of the United States."
Gen. James Jones, the American commander of NATO, has supported the withdrawal of the two divisions from Europe on the understanding that American ground units would rotate regularly through Europe, allied officials say. But some allied officials believe it is less clear that the Pentagon will finance and organize the regular rotation of forces that are central to General Jones's vision, especially since so much of the United States' energy and effort is focused on Iraq.
Already, administration officials have said a brigade of troops is to be shifted from Korea to Iraq. That reflects both the demand for additional forces in Iraq and the new thinking about positioning forces in Asia.
Pentagon officials insist they are effectively managing relations with key allies. "What we have been hearing from the allies privately and publicly is that they understand the U.S. is changing and want to stay connected," said Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. "The real message is that we have been consulting with the allies and the result has been pretty positive."
The Pentagon plan was discussed at a May 20 meeting of top United States officials. Administration officials declined to comment on the record about the session. A State Department official said that the meeting was a "snapshot at a given time," and that some ideas have continued to be refined since then. In the meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was once the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he thought it was unlikely that the Turks would agree to allow the United States to operate freely from Turkish bases. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said securing Turkey's agreement was a long shot and indicated that he favored keeping the F-16's in Germany, according to an account of the session that was provided.
No United States forces are to be removed from Italy. The Navy's European headquarters, however, is scheduled to move from London to Naples.
Earlier plans to move that headquarters to Spain have been dropped. While skeptics have wondered if the switch from Spain to Italy is related to the decision by Spain's new Socialist government to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Defense Department officials insist that it is being made on cost grounds.
Regarding Britain, administration officials are discussing a plan to remove some F-15 fighters. Some Defense Department officials have suggested moving an air command center to Britain from Germany as compensation if F-15's are removed. But General Myers indicated that he thought the F-15's should remain in Britain, according to an account of the meeting.
Iceland has long been a sensitive matter, with civilian officials at the Pentagon pushing to remove the small number of F-15's that are regularly rotated through Iceland under a bilateral agreement reached during the cold war. That could upset a government that has been generally supportive of American policy and which relies on the F-15's for its air defense.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said at the May 20 meeting that Mr. Bush would not support the withdrawal of the aircraft until a way was found to mollify the Icelanders. One possibility is to make Iceland a "cooperative security location," Defense Department jargon for a base to which forces could rapidly deploy in a crisis.
The Caucasus has also figured into the Pentagon's calculations. Here the issue is not about moving out, but whether to move in. At the May 20 meeting, senior officials agreed that stationing troops in Georgia could be destabilizing, especially since Russia still has not withdrawn all its forces from that country, a former republic of the Soviet Union. The idea was dropped.
Civilian officials at the Defense Department have pressed for a presidential speech or announcement in mid-June about the new military posture. But State Department officials have argued that this would not leave sufficient time for consultations with the allies and would make the new policy appear to be a fait accompli.
Some officials have noted that the stationing of forces in past decades has entailed more flexibility on all sides than many people realize.
During the May 20 meeting, Mr. Powell is reported to have observed that Army troops like being stationed in Europe and noted that the Germans had never stood in the way when the United States wanted to send its German-based forces on other missions. The United States sent Army units in Germany to fight in the Persian Gulf conflict in 1991 and in the Iraq war in 2003.
-------- war crimes
U.N. Says Abu Ghraib Abuse Could Constitute War Crime
June 4, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/middleeast/04CND-NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 4 - The United Nations' top human rights official said today that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international figure to oversee the situation.
Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting high commissioner for human rights, acknowledged that the removal of Saddam Hussein represented "a major contribution to human rights in Iraq" and that the United States had condemned the conduct and pledged to bring violators to justice.
"Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition governments as regards the behavior of their forces in Iraq," he said in a 45-page report issued at the agency's headquarters in Geneva.
But, Mr. Ramcharan declared, after the occupation of Iraq, "there have sadly been some violations of human rights committed by some coalition soldiers."
In an apparent reference to the incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and to cases where Iraqi prisoners have died in detention, Mr. Ramcharan said that "willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment" represented a grave breach of international law and "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal."
He said it was a "stark reality" that there was no international oversight or accountability for the thousands of detainees, the conditions in which they were held and the manner in which they were treated.
To correct this situation, he said, the coalition authorities should immediately appoint "an international ombudsman or commissioner." That person would be charged with monitoring human rights in Iraq and producing periodic reports on "compliance by coalition forces with international norms of human rights and humanitarian law."
In its passages about the fall of Saddam Hussein, the report said that the invasion of Iraq "removed a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights." It also noted approvingly that Iraqis had gained a freedom of expression never enjoyed during the years of Hussein rule.
Mr. Ramcharan, a British-educated trial lawyer from Guyana and an adjunct professor of international human rights law at Columbia University, has been a United Nations official for 30 years. He has been the acting commissioner since Sergio Vieira de Mello, the high commissioner, went to Baghdad as chief of the United Nations mission there last May on what was supposed to be a four-month assignment.
Mr. Vieira de Mello was killed in the bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters last August, and Secretary General Kofi Annan subsequently removed all international staff members from Iraq.
The human rights experts had hoped to go to Baghdad in compiling their report, but instead ended up interviewing people outside Iraq in regional capitals.
There was no immediate reaction from the United States to the report, but the White House's top lawyer warned two years ago that American officials could face prosecution for war crimes because of the unorthodox tactics of detaining Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan.
The confidential Jan. 25, 2002, memo, first reported last month by Newsweek magazine, was written by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and urged Bush administration officials to declare captives in the war on terror exempt from the Geneva Convention. It said that otherwise, Americans might be subject to "unwarranted charges" of committing or fostering war crimes.
Critics have argued that the Bush administration's decision not to grant suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention created the climate under which the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib prison occurred.
The report also comes at a moment when the United States has been hoping to obtain a Security Council resolution shielding American troops serving in United Nations-approved operations from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. The multinational force remaining in Iraq after the transfer of power to Iraq at the end of this month will be such a United Nations-sanctioned force.
Earlier this month, the United States withdrew its bid for the resolution exempting its soldiers when China indicated that it might veto the motion. In announcing the diplomatic move, China's United Nations ambassador, Wang Guangya, said he did not want to support a resolution that might grant immunity to people committing abuses like those uncovered at Abu Ghraib.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Court throws out $959 million Iraq award
June 4, 2004
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040604-114226-1044r.htm
Washington, DC -- A federal appeals court in Washington Friday threw out a $959 million judgment against Iraq in a suit brought by former U.S. prisoners of war.
The 17 former POWs served in the first Gulf War and brought the suit under a terrorism exemption to a law giving foreign governments immunity from suit in U.S. courts.
The judgment was opposed by the Bush administration, which said Iraq was no longer a terrorist state since the fall of Saddam Hussein last year.
The former POWs, current and former U.S. service members, said they were severely tortured while in Iraqi hands in 1991.
When Iraq failed to appear at trial, a federal judge ruled for the former POWs. However, the judge later refused to seize the award from U.S. Treasury funds headed for Iraq.
Friday, the appeals court said there was no right to sue a foreign state under either the terrorism exemption or a separate amendment of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The appeals court threw out the award and dismissed the lawsuit.
-------- homeland security
Agency faulted for visa overstays
June 04, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040603-112812-1736r.htm
The Department of Homeland Security can't properly track when foreign visitors leave the United States, according to the General Accounting Office, which said a "substantial" amount of illegal immigration is attributable to overstays.
The GAO, Congress' investigative division, released a report yesterday saying those who overstayed their visits to the country accounted for 27 percent of illegal aliens, according to one survey.
"Overstays who settle here in large numbers can affect domestic security because they (like other illegal immigrants) are able to obtain jobs and security badges with fraudulent identity documents, thus gaining access to critical infrastructure locations, such as airports, or special events, like the Super Bowl," the GAO said. "For example, overstays with fraudulently obtained badges were found at 25 of 26 airports examined."
Homeland Security officials estimated there were 2.3 million visa overstays in January 2000, but the GAO said that number is low and that the department lacks the ability to track the others.
One particular problem is that Canadian citizens staying less than six months and Mexican citizens with border-crossing cards staying near the border for less than 72 hours can enter the country without filing a form I-94, which could be used to track overstayers.
During fiscal 1999 to 2003, the State Department issued 6.4 million Mexican border-crossing cards, the report said.
"Although most long-term overstays appear to be motivated by economic opportunities, a few overstays have been identified as terrorists or involved in terrorist-related activities. Notably, some of the September 11 hijackers had overstayed," the GAO said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who requested the study, said he was "deeply frustrated" that so many illegal aliens from countries that sponsor terrorism remain in the United States even after having been identified as overstayers.
"Despite the fact Congress takes this security issue very seriously and has authorized hiring thousands more immigration enforcement personnel since 9/11, little progress has been made by [the Department of Homeland Security] on this security threat," he said.
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller did not return a phone call, and neither Justice or Homeland Security (DHS) submitted comments to the GAO.
But DHS spokesman Bill Strassberger said yesterday many of the investigation's conclusions about visa overstays are based on numbers and reports from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, an agency that no longer exists.
"A lot of the numbers it looks at are pre-Department of Homeland Security information," he said. "We would not disagree with those conclusions because, pre-DHS, we were working with some really obsolete systems."
By the end of next year, the department will have the US-VISIT system fully up and running. It will require foreign visitors to be fingerprinted upon entry and give authorities a centralized system to track their arrivals and departures.
"The problems they identified are really historical and, if anything, I see it validating the efforts DHS is making," he said.
He also said in the case of the Mexicans with border-crossing cards, in order to obtain the cards they have been checked to make sure they aren't security or overstay risks.
"They're, in essence, pre-screened before they even get a chance to enter the United States," he said.
-------- police
Intelligence Unit for FBI Is Proposed
Service Would Be Entity In Agency, Mueller Says
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13853-2004Jun3.html
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday proposed the creation of an intelligence service within the FBI that would have its own director and budget and would operate separately from other parts of the law enforcement agency.
Such a move would mark a substantial shift in the operations of the tradition-bound FBI. It is aimed in large part at heading off proposals that would strip the bureau of its responsibilities for intelligence and espionage investigations in the United States and turn them over to a new agency akin to Britain's domestic intelligence service.
The plan comes as the Bush administration is considering a broad reorganization of the CIA and the rest of the nation's sprawling intelligence bureaucracy. FBI officials said yesterday it was a coincidence that the plan, which has been in the works for months, was unveiled on the same day that the resignation of CIA Director George J. Tenet was announced.
Under the proposal, outlined by Mueller during a hearing of a House subcommittee, the FBI would create a "directorate of intelligence" with clear authority over all FBI intelligence activities, including language translators and analysts. The restructuring "will help us forecast future threats and drive the allocation of resources and the development of investigative and intelligence strategies to support the FBI's mission," Mueller said in a statement.
"A strong intelligence service within the FBI . . . leverages our formidable collection capabilities" and will improve the sharing of information with police departments and other intelligence agencies, Mueller said.
Mueller did not provide lawmakers with cost estimates or many details, and FBI officials said it is too early to predict what the price of the restructuring might be. Many of the steps involved in creating such a service would require congressional approval and are likely to be included in House appropriations legislation later this year, officials said.
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, State, justice and the judiciary, first proposed the "service-within-a-service" several months ago and had strongly encouraged the FBI to endorse the idea. Wolf said in an interview yesterday that a restructuring would "keep the country from facing another 9/11" by improving the FBI's ability to collect, analyze and share counterterrorism intelligence.
"I'm very hopeful that this kind of organization will help us prevent another terrorist attack," Wolf said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration has overseen the creation of the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, which has its own intelligence unit, as well as an alphabet soup of other intelligence entities. They include the FBI-run Terrorist Screening Center and the CIA-led Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Mueller said in his statement yesterday that the FBI counterterrorism functions that are based at the TTIC would be part of the proposed new intelligence service.
Mueller's plan does not go as far as proposals by Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and others to create an entirely separate domestic spying agency, akin to Britain's MI5. The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has also debated whether to endorse the creation of an MI5-style agency in its final report, but members have indicated recently that most of them have soured on the idea.
Earlier this year, a half-dozen current and former senior officials, including Mueller, Tenet and former attorney general Janet Reno, condemned proposals for an MI5-style intelligence agency.
Mueller said yesterday that wresting domestic intelligence responsibilities from the FBI would lead to more roadblocks in the sharing of vital national security information within the government and could invite abuses of civil liberties. "Gathering intelligence has to be done within the Constitution," Mueller said. "Our agents understand that. In the past, we've gotten into trouble when collecting intelligence for the sake of collecting intelligence."
James B. Steinberg, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and a former deputy national security adviser, said the Mueller proposal is "clearly second best" to an MI5-style intelligence agency, which he favors. Steinberg said he remains concerned that intelligence functions are not valued highly enough within the FBI.
"What you can't have is a situation where they are second-class citizens within the bureau, where the 'real' agents are the ones out chasing criminals," Steinberg said. "That's the real challenge."
I. Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said the idea appears to be "the flavor of the month" for reforming the U.S. intelligence community.
"Everyone is agreed that there needs to be a uniform direction and focus for intelligence, but it seems like every month a new agency is created to address the problem," Greenberger said. "There needs to be one person in charge of coordinating intelligence within the government, but instead the president has let a thousand flowers bloom."
Staff writer Stephen Barr contributed to this report.
--------
F.B.I. Wants New Division on Terrorism
June 4, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04buro.html
WASHINGTON, June 3 - The F.B.I. on Thursday proposed the creation of a separate intelligence division in the bureau, an announcement that administration officials acknowledged was an effort to head off critics' proposals to form a new stand-alone domestic intelligence agency to deal with terrorist threats.
The proposal for a Directorate of Intelligence was announced in Congressional testimony by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, who has railed against proposals on Capitol Hill and elsewhere to strip the bureau of its responsibility for domestic intelligence in response to its often-documented intelligence failures in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Appearing before a House appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Mueller proposed a "service within a service" in which the bureau would centralize its intelligence duties. The directorate, he said, would have "broad and clear authority over intelligence-related functions" and would be led by an executive assistant director of the F.B.I. who had direct budget authority.
Aides to Mr. Mueller said the proposal, if approved by Congress, would probably result in the hiring of 100 additional intelligence specialists at the bureau.
Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, which is in the final weeks of its inquiry, have criticized the bureau for its failures before Sept. 11. Members have said they may recommend creating an American version of MI-5, Britain's domestic counterterrorism agency, to take over many intelligence functions.
Told of Mr. Mueller's announcement, a Democratic member of the panel, Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana, said he wanted to review the proposal.
"The F.B.I. is badly broken and needs both systemic and personnel reform," Mr. Roemer said. "This is another option, and it might be one that we'd consider."
The announcement was also cautiously welcomed by the leading critics of the bureau on Capitol Hill, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who said the idea was ''good in theory, and I hope it works in reality."
He said that the bureau needed "to make sure that tendencies to react to the crime of the day don't get in the way of its focus on fighting terrorism at every level."
Mr. Mueller, a former federal prosecutor who was sworn in as director days before Sept. 11, has promised to overhaul the bureau, turning it from its traditional emphasis on basic crime-fighting to focus on preventing terrorist attacks on American soil.
Aides to Mr. Mueller said the intelligence directorate was intended to streamline decision making and add far greater authority to the executive assistant director for intelligence, the agency's chief intelligence officer. The post is held by Maureen A. Baginski, a former official of the National Security Agency who was an architect of the new proposal.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Methods Used on 2 at Guantanamo
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14131-2004Jun3.html
Intensive interrogation techniques approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were used to elicit information from two prisoners at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Army general said yesterday.
Pentagon officials previously said Rumsfeld helped approve a list of intense interrogation techniques for Guantanamo, but Army Gen. James T. Hill said for the first time yesterday that Rumsfeld had granted permission to use those techniques in two cases. Hill, who is in charge of the U.S. Southern Command based in Miami, told reporters at the Pentagon that both prisoners were considered "high-value" detainees who have since provided important intelligence information about al Qaeda.
Yesterday's briefing was one of a series of sessions designed to reconstruct the foundations of U.S. policy on the interrogation of detainees in the war on terrorism after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. The documented abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred shortly after officials from Guantanamo Bay visited the prison outside of Baghdad, and several investigations are underway to determine the extent and origin of U.S. interrogation policies used there and their possible connection to abuses.
Hill said yesterday that the policies at Guantanamo arose out of discussions with the Pentagon, and four intensive interrogation techniques were vetted by a group of lawyers and could be used only with Rumsfeld's approval on a case-by-case basis.
Hill declined to discuss details about the four interrogation techniques -- which remain classified -- but he said the use of military working dogs is not on the list and is not used for interrogations at Guantanamo. Sources familiar with the list have said that it includes such techniques as disrupting detainees' sleep patterns and exposing them to heat, cold, loud music, bright lights and other "sensory assault." Hill said the procedures met Geneva Convention rules requiring humane treatment.
"Guantanamo is a professional, humane, detention and interrogation operation," Hill said. "It is bounded by law and guided by the American spirit. It has contributed and continues to contribute to winning the war on terror."
In one of the cases in which intense techniques were used, interrogators believed they were questioning someone who had direct knowledge and links to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They said they had gotten nowhere with standard interrogation tactics because the detainee had been trained to resist. Another detainee -- who Hill would only say was an al Qaeda operative with "high intel value" -- was also approved for intense questioning.
Hill said some of the enhanced techniques that interrogators at Guantanamo had used on the first detainee, over four to six weeks in late 2002 and early 2003, were later barred by Rumsfeld and discontinued. Hill would not describe what those techniques were.
"Before then and during then, there is discussion . . . of, were, in fact, we doing the right thing," Hill said. "And the secretary called me, and we talked. And he directed me to stop using those techniques, and I agreed."
According to Hill, Rumsfeld has a seven-day window in which he can veto the use of the classified techniques. Hill would not say whether Rumsfeld has done so in any case.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
White House Initiatives Are Rejected
House Appropriators Cut Bush Projects for Congressional Priorities
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13887-2004Jun3.html
A House panel voted unanimously yesterday to slash a number of signature Bush administration domestic initiatives by $750 million, sending a signal that Congress intends to make the White House share the pain of belt tightening.
Among the spending rejected by a Republican-led House Appropriations subcommittee was $18 million for the "American Masterpieces" program, which has been championed by Laura Bush; $23 million for the "We the People" civics and history program, which was announced by President Bush at a White House ceremony, and $219 million for "FutureGen," a special initiative of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to develop a nonpolluting coal-fired power plant.
The action marked the beginning of what is expected to be months of contention over the 13 annual bills that allocate funds for government departments and agencies starting Oct. 1. Overall, the panel reduced funding for the natural resources bill from $20 billion this year to $19.7 billion in 2005. The elimination of the Bush initiatives, Republicans said, was necessary to accommodate a long list of congressional priorities, including more money for maintaining national parks, fighting disease in forests, improving Indian health services and providing more funds to fight forest fires in the West.
In a blistering speech, the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), said the panel's denial of a lengthy list of pet administration projects was a lesson in "reality." He suggested that the administration knew when it announced the initiatives that funding would not be available.
The writing of the spending bills this year has been complicated by the inability of the Republican-controlled House and Senate to reach final agreement on a budget. The House set an $821 billion limit on the 13 appropriations bills, $1.6 billion less than requested by the White House.
Final action on the allotment for the spending bills has been thwarted in the Senate by delays in final action on the 2005 budget.
After years of increases for education, basic scientific research, health research, land conservation and other priorities, domestic spending is now being squeezed by the explosive growth of spending on defense and homeland security.
The House Appropriations Committee agreed this week to a $25 billion increase for the Defense Department in the new budget, not including another $25 billion that the administration is seeking to fight the war in Iraq. The Pentagon alone will claim nearly half of all the funds available for the 13 bills.
Increases are also slated for homeland security, foreign aid and military construction, but most domestic programs would be held close to or below their current levels.
"The austere funding levels will make it challenging to move bills through the legislative process this year," House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) said.
The natural resources, Interior Department and arts bill voted on yesterday reflects those spending pressures. Land conservation programs would be cut from $1.2 billion to $900 million, but there would be a small increase for operating national parks. Funds for fighting wildfires -- a top priority of both parties -- is increased by nearly 10 percent, to $2.6 billion, and $1 billion is set aside in 2004 and 2005 in an emergency fund for firefighting.
Faced with the need to fund such priorities, Republicans decided to reject virtually all major Bush administration initiatives, including several programs for the arts that received wide coverage when they were announced earlier this year.
The $18 million request for the "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius" program had been announced by Laura Bush. Funds would be used by the National Endowment for the Arts to send top American orchestras, musical ensembles, theater groups and collections of paintings to communities and military bases around the country.
An NEA spokeswoman, Felicia Knight, said that despite "disappointment" over the results of the markup yesterday, the administration hoped the funding could yet be obtained by amending the natural resources bill as it moves through Congress.
-------- investigations
Bush 'Willing to Cooperate' With Leak Probe
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12499-2004Jun3.html
President Bush said yesterday that he plans to personally cooperate with the investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name, and said he consulted an outside lawyer because he realizes the case is a serious criminal matter.
The White House announced Wednesday night that Bush had recent discussions with Jim Sharp, a white-collar defense attorney in Washington, in case FBI agents or a grand jury want to question Bush about the blown cover of the officer, Valerie Plame.
White House reporters were given the chance to ask Bush two questions during a Rose Garden appearance yesterday. The first was whether he had any indication prosecutors plan to call him, and what he would tell them.
"I've told our administration that we'll fully cooperate with their investigation. I want to know the truth, and I'm willing to cooperate myself," he said.
Bush said questions about the case should go to the prosecutors, who have refused to discuss the matter.
"In terms of whether or not I need advice from my counsel, this is a criminal matter, it's a serious matter, I have met with an attorney to determine whether or not I need his advice," Bush said. "And if I deem I need his advice, I'll probably hire him."
A federal grand jury meeting in Washington is investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed Plame's identity to Robert D. Novak, who named her in a newspaper column published July 14. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was one of the most prominent critics of the White House case for war in Iraq, and he has accused Bush's aides of abetting the disclosure.
White House officials involved in the case maintain they are not concerned about the outcome. They said they do not believe Bush was in any jeopardy, but said they had been forbidden to discuss the case for quotation.
Vice President Cheney's office would not say whether he has consulted a lawyer about the Plame case. A statement said Terrence O'Donnell, a partner at Williams & Connolly, has been Cheney's attorney for several years.
"He has consulted Mr. O'Donnell on many matters since coming to the White House," the statement said. "Were the Vice President to seek legal counsel on any issue, Mr. O'Donnell is the man he would go to." The statement said Cheney's office could not comment further because of the probe.
Sharp, a low-profile lawyer, was a member of the firm that represented Richard V. Secord in the Iran-contra affair, in which Reagan administration officials were accused of arranging secret arms shipments to Nicaraguan rebels and to Iran.
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
--------
INVESTIGATION
Report Blames Agencies Over Prewar Intelligence
June 4, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04REPO.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 3 - George J. Tenet's resignation may have been hastened by a critical, 400-page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that was presented to the Central Intelligence Agency for comment last month.
Government officials and people close to Mr. Tenet said the classified report was a detailed account of mistakes and miscalculations by American intelligence agencies on whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons before the United States invaded last year. An unclassified version of the report is to be made public this month. Some close to Mr. Tenet said the report was among the factors that led him to resign from a post he had considered leaving for several years.
A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had neither read nor been briefed on the Senate report. The official described as "bunk" the idea that his departure had been related to the Senate findings.
Officials who have read the report described it as presenting a broad indictment of the C.I.A.'s performance on Iraq. They said its criticisms ranged from inadequate prewar collection of intelligence by spies and satellites to a sloppy analysis, often based on uncorroborated sources, that produced the conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.
"There are some things that are indefensible," said a recently retired intelligence official who had seen the report. "There are some real errors, of omission and commission, and it's not going to be a pretty picture."
A Congressional official declined to comment on the tone of the report or its specific content, but said, "Our intention has been to be as detailed and as thorough as possible, and we've been very specific."
The version of the report that was shown to the C.I.A. included only factual findings. Separate conclusions are still being drafted by Democrats and Republicans on the Republican-controlled panel, government officials said. But the findings alone were portrayed by three officials as likely to be particularly embarrassing to the C.I.A., whose analysts were the main proponents among those from various intelligence agencies of the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.
Mr. Tenet and his agency have insisted that it is too soon to say whether the C.I.A. made mistakes in its prewar assessment. But even before Mr. Tenet announced his resignation, the committee chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said at a meeting on Thursday that he believed intelligence agencies were still "in denial."
Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence who has been leading the C.I.A.'s internal review of its performance, said in an interview on Thursday that he had not read the Senate report. But he said he believed that it had been a factor in Mr. Tenet's decision to resign.
"This has been a very rough go," he said, citing the criticism during Mr. Tenet's tenure of the agency's performance on other issues, including the Sept. 11 attacks, the subject of another report, by an independent presidential commission, which is to be released next month.
The reports by the Senate panel and the Sept. 11 commission will be "very critical" of Mr. Tenet and his agency, Mr. Kerr said. "I think he was at a point where he thought maybe it was better that he was no longer the person up front on this."
Until early this week, Congressional officials said, Mr. Tenet had been tentatively scheduled to appear before the Senate committee on Thursday in a closed session, in what would have amounted to a final rebuttal before the report was released. The officials said Mr. Tenet had canceled that appearance, citing other commitments but giving no hint that he was preparing to resign.
A senior intelligence official said the C.I.A., which has the power to decide how much of the classified report will be released in unclassified form, was expected to complete its review soon.
One senior government official outside the C.I.A. who has seen the report described it as prosecutorial. "This is not what you'd call a balanced, analytical document," said the official, who is not normally a Tenet ally. "It's very, very harsh."
Mr. Tenet and President Bush said Thursday that Mr. Tenet's reasons for leaving were personal, and others close to Mr. Tenet endorsed that account. Some, including David L. Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma who hired Mr. Tenet as a staff director on Capitol Hill, emphatically denied that the forthcoming Senate report or the one by the Sept. 11 commission had anything to do with the resignation.
But in anticipation of the report, Senator Roberts, the intelligence committee chairman, had by Thursday morning adopted a newly critical tone toward the intelligence agencies that Mr. Tenet oversees.
"Simply put, I think the community is somewhat in denial," Senator Roberts said at a breakfast meeting, at which he also called for "fresh thinking" among the intelligence agencies. A statement issued later by Senator Roberts and his Democratic counterpart, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, praised Mr. Tenet for his contributions but called attention to to the stormy environment.
"While he steps down during a period of controversy over events leading up to the attacks of 9/11 and the quality of intelligence prior to the Iraq war, we should not lose sight of a simple truth: George Tenet has served his country with distinction and honor during difficult and demanding times," the two senators said in the statement.
Among the particular criticisms that government officials said were made in the classified version of the Senate report were the failure of the C.I.A. to develop human sources of intelligence in Saddam Hussein's government before the war. As late as 2002, intelligence officials have acknowledged, American intelligence agencies could count on no more than four informants in the Iraqi government.
The report also criticizes what is called the C.I.A.'s heavy reliance on foreign governments for intelligence about Iraq, including sources who were never interviewed by American intelligence and whose veracity is in doubt. Among those sources were one known as "Curveball," who was introduced to German intelligence by the Iraqi National Congress, a group led by Ahmad Chalabi, and who was cited in American intelligence reports as the primary basis for what now appears to be the mistaken assertion that Iraq had mobile laboratories for the manufacture of biological weapons.
The report also calls attention to what one official called "slipshod work" and "factual errors" by C.I.A. analysts and operations officials, including cases in which single sources of intelligence were identified as multiple sources, and in which at least one warning that identified a source of intelligence as a fabricator was ignored. The information provided by the fabricator - that Iraq possessed mobile biological laboratories - found its way into Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation in February 2003 to the United Nations Security Council making the administration's case for war.
In a speech in February, Mr. Tenet acknowledged generally the mishandling of the notification about the fabricator, who was also linked to the Iraqi National Congress. Other intelligence officials, also in general terms, have acknowledged one source being listed by various names, so the accounts were presented as corroborating one another.
But government officials who have read the Senate report said it described many more mistakes and did so in abundant detail.
American intelligence agencies have been sharply criticized before during Mr. Tenet's tenure, most notably in reports by the House-Senate inquiry on the Sept. 11 attacks and in the staff reports released this year by the independent 9/11 commission. Those reports prompted some in Congress to call for his resignation.
--------
MISTREATMENT
Abu Ghraib Inquiry Is Said to Focus on Head of Its Interrogation Center
June 4, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and ANDREA ELLIOTT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 3 - The Army general investigating the role of military intelligence specialists in the abuse of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison is focusing on the former head of the site's interrogation center, a senior Army official and soldiers interviewed by investigators said Thursday.
The investigating officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, has a broad mandate to examine intelligence gathering in Iraq and has interviewed dozens of soldiers and officers in Iraq, Europe and the United States.
But General Fay is asking several specific questions about Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the former head of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, the statements he made to interrogators and his instructions about treating Iraqi prisoners, said one military intelligence soldier who has been interviewed and who would only speak if promised anonymity. "Fay showed a real interest in Jordan," the soldier said.
General Fay is also believed to be examining an incident at Abu Ghraib last October in which several Iraqi prisoners may have been hidden from representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross during a visit they made to the site.
A military interrogator stationed at Abu Ghraib said that, over a six-hour period during the inspectors' visit, five or six prisoners were put into cells, where they were forced to sit in uncomfortable positions. "They had hoods on them and they had their arms bound," said the interrogator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing inquiry. "They put them over there to hide them from a Red Cross inspection."
The interrogator said he overheard Colonel Jordan and other officers say that the Red Cross inspectors did not need to know about those Iraqi prisoners.
The role of Colonel Jordan and the activities of the interrogation center that he directed from late September to late December are among the least understood elements of the widening scandal, and lie at the heart of General Fay's inquiry, a senior Army officer said. "Fay's focus is on questionable intelligence gathering," the official said. "The interrogation center is ground zero for where intelligence would be garnered from detainees."
In a sign of the investigation's complexity and political sensitivity, General Fay has asked Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq who ordered the inquiry, for a 30-day extension, pushing his deadline for completion into early July. Army officials said that General Fay was striving to be thorough, but the extra time would also delay the inquiry's findings until after the American-led occupation transfers sovereignty to a caretaker Iraqi government on June 30.
General Fay's report will be the second major chapter in the Army's examination of the prisoner abuses in Iraq. Military officials said he would determine whether tactics used by military interrogators at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan were wrongly applied in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib. An earlier report focused on military police there.
Soldiers who had returned from Iraq and who were deemed to have information useful to General Fay's investigation were flown to Washington to meet personally with the general earlier this month, soldiers who were interviewed said. Soldiers who were still in Iraq had already been questioned in the inquiry.
Colonel Jordan has declined all requests for interviews. He is still in Iraq, working as an intelligence staff officer for Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top American intelligence officer in Iraq, a senior military officer in Iraq said.
To date, seven enlisted personnel from a military police company have been charged with crimes in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, all in a single cellblock, known as Tier 1. But most of those soldiers have said that they were acting with the knowledge or encouragement of military intelligence officers, including Colonel Jordan and his immediate superior, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who first investigated the prison abuses, said in his classified report that he suspected Colonel Jordan and Colonel Pappas were either "directly or indirectly responsible" for the misconduct.
From sworn testimony and interviews, Colonel Jordan emerges as a hands-on commander from the moment he arrived last September to oversee the newly created interrogation center's activities.
"Wing One was supervised mostly by LTC Steve Jordan," Capt. Donald J. Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company, said in a sworn statement to investigators. "LTC Jordan was very involved with the interrogation process and the day-to-day activity that occurred."
Sgt. Samuel J. Provance III, of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, now in Germany, spoke of Colonel Jordan with respect.
"He was the one who was always giving the briefings, he was the top guy," Sergeant Provance said in an interview. "He stuck up for the soldiers. Any time people would complain about the place, he would blow 'em off, you know, `I got you guys' back, don't worry.' He was very involved, he was the soldier's officer."
Other soldiers praised his dedication. "He was a very outgoing, larger-than-life individual," Specialist David Monath, an analyst with the 323rd Military Intelligence Battalion at the prison, said in an interview. "He had an extremely strong work ethic."
In November, Specialist Monath said, military police officers failed to properly screen Iraqi police officers coming into the prison, and one was found to have smuggled in a handgun to give to a detainee.
"These were serving Iraqi police officers who were attempting to smuggle in arms for the prisoners," he said. "Colonel Jordan went to the front gate and personally patted down every Iraqi police officer who came in." Two Iraqis were arrested in the next two days for smuggling weapons into the prison, he said.
But some lawyers for the military police who have been charged say that Colonel Jordan shielded his military intelligence troops from the kind of stern disciplinary measures facing the military police.
Last November, Colonel Jordan investigated an incident involving Specialist Armin J. Cruz and Specialist Luciana Spencer, both of the 66th Military Intelligence Group. During an interrogation of a male prisoner, they stripped him and Specialist Spencer ordered the prisoner marched back to his cell through the cold, past other detainees.
A civilian interpreter reported the incident, fearing that the humiliation could incite other prisoners to riot. The matter was brought to Colonel Jordan's attention. Both soldiers were transferred to other duties, but were not otherwise punished.
Other soldiers questioned if Colonel Jordan's temperament was appropriate for the job. One military interrogator recalled a briefing of several dozen interrogators and interpreters in which Colonel Jordan made a derogatory remark about Arabs. The remark did not go over well and Colonel Jordan had to apologize because the remark offended some Arabic interpreters in the room, the interrogator said.
"When it came to protecting detainees' rights, it wasn't a big issue," said another military intelligence soldier. "The detainees never really got up to the top of his priority list."
Brian Wingfield and Kate Zernike contributed reporting for this article.
-------- us politics
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004,
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_4636.shtml
President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be "God's will" and then tells aides to "fuck over" anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
"We're at war, there's no doubt about it. What I don't know anymore is just who the enemy might be," says one troubled White House aide. "We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing."
Aides say the President gets "hung up on minor details," micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
"This is what is killing us on Iraq," one aide says. "We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items."
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush's inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration's war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration's lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft "the Blues Brothers" because "they're on a mission from God."
"The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion," says one aide. "They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God."
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them "fucking assholes" in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him "unpatriotic" or "anti-American."
"The mood here is that we're under siege, there's no doubt about it," says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. "In this administration, you don't have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President."
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
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Soros likens Iraqi prisoner abuse to 9/11
June 04, 2004
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040603-112820-6106r.htm
The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was "a moment of truth" for the United States as severe as the September 11 terrorist attacks, billionaire financier George Soros told a gathering of liberal activists yesterday.
"The picture of torture in Saddam's prison was a moment of truth for us," Mr. Soros said. "I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself. Not quite with the same force, because in the terrorist attack, we were the victims. In the pictures, we were the perpetrators and others were the victims."
He said there was a "connection between the two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators."
"The war on terror has claimed more victims than the original attack," Mr. Soros said, describing "neoconservatives" as "American supremacists."
Mr. Soros delivered his speech to hundreds of activists at Washington's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, where they gathered for the three-day "Take Back America" conference.
The conference concludes today with closing speeches from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.
Mr. Soros, 73 and a native of Hungary, said "The coming elections are, in effect, a referendum on the Bush Doctrine, and if we endorse that doctrine, then we have to take the consequences of the mistrust and the rage that is directed against the United States."
Mr. Soros' comments drew a swift rebuke from Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.
"Abu Ghraib was bad and the soldiers involved are rightly being punished, but for Democrats to say that the abuse of Iraqi fighters is the moral equivalent of the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans is outrageous," Mr. Gillespie said. "Their hatred of the president is fueling a blame-America-first mentality that is troubling."
Yesterday's comments were part of a continuing verbal assault and financial crusade against the Bush administration by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Soros told the British Broadcasting Corp. last year that he was "very hopeful that people will wake up and realize they have been led down the garden path, that actually September 11 has been hijacked by a bunch of extremists to put into effect policies they were advocating before, such as the invasion of Iraq."
He has proclaimed the United States under Mr. Bush "a danger to the world. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
Which he has. Mr. Soros has pledged $15.5 million to various Democratic interests to help defeat Mr. Bush in November so that, as he has said, "we can write off the Bush Doctrine as a temporary aberration."
He has also been a large contributor to groups seeking to ease laws regarding medicinal marijuana, heavily bankrolling successful efforts in Arizona and California in 1996.
Forbes magazine last year estimated Mr. Soros' net worth at about $7 billion.
His tax-exempt Open Society Institute reported more than $362 million in contributions in 2002. The group reportedly gave about $18 million in the past seven years to promote new campaign-finance laws.
In his book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy," published last year, Mr. Soros wrote: "I have made it my primary objective to persuade the American public to reject President Bush in the upcoming elections."
Mr. Soros was introduced yesterday with effusive praise from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat.
"George Soros is using his considerable success in our democracy to make sure that his opinions are heard in the marketplace of ideas," Mrs. Clinton said.
The former first lady warned that another four years of the Bush presidency "would leave this country unrecognizable."
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Nader condemns major parties
June 04, 2004
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040603-112819-5361r.htm
Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader lashed out at Democrats and Republicans yesterday for denying the rights of third-party candidates and either ignoring or purposely suppressing their issues in favor of corporate interests.
"The two-party trajectory has begun to dial for the same dollars from the same special interest and are reducing the two-party system to one," Mr. Nader said.
He said the indications are clear in the current status of federal, state and local elective seats. The two parties are vastly more similar than they are different, he said, especially in their efforts to have absolute control over the nation's political landscape.
Mr. Nader added that 95 percent of U.S. House seats are deemed noncompetitive, and 40 percent of state and local elections this year have incumbents facing no opposition.
"This reflects a long buildup of rigging the system against third-party candidates," he said.
Mr. Nader also pointed to a recent meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to talk about their respective platforms.
Mr. Kerry told Mr. Nader that he would be strong on energy efficiency and renewable-energy technology if elected, and complained that the oil-industry lobby was the biggest obstacle in that regard.
"So I asked him, 'What will you do to overcome the [oil lobby],' and he said, 'Just wait until I'm president,' " Mr. Nader said, chuckling at Mr. Kerry's answer.
The speech before the National Press Club was not short on condemnation for both parties. He said they are conspirators in taking issues important to Americans off the table and moving the country toward a corporate state.
"When government is controlled by private economic power, that is fascism," Mr. Nader said, quoting President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Who was saying "no" to health care for all Americans, a national living-wage standard, equal distribution of taxation, campaign-finance and election reforms, and environmental protection and energy advances, Mr. Nader asked rhetorically.
"The corporations, that's who," he answered.
Talking about the Iraq war, Mr. Nader reiterated that an impeachment process should begin against President Bush for "faulty" intelligence, "misleading" Congress and taking the country to war under pretenses.
Mr. Nader also accused Democrats of being soft in their criticism of defense spending, which he said encompasses 50 percent of the nation's budget and has the most corrupt spending mechanism for contracts of any agency.
Quoting another former president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mr. Nader said the continual costs of new fighter planes, tactical weapons and bombs could be invested into advancements for schools and hospitals.
"Because [Mr. Bush] knew the cost of war, sometimes it's more important to have a president who knows what war is, instead of a clutch of chicken hawks who think they know," he said.
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The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation
By JOHN W. DEAN
FindLaw
Friday, Jun. 04, 2004
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040604.html
Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative.
(Plame is the wife of Bush critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson; I discussed the leak itself in a prior column, and then discussed further developments in the investigation in a follow-up column.)
This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush explained his action by saying, "This is a criminal matter. It's a serious matter," but he gave no further specifics. White House officials, too, would not say exactly what prompted Bush to seek the outside advice, or whether he had been asked to appear before the grand jury.
Nonetheless, Bush's action, in itself, says a great deal. In this column, I will analyze what its implications may be.
The Valerie Plame Grand Jury Investigation
The Plame investigation took a quantum leap in December 2003, when Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. Ashcroft's deputy appointed a special counsel, who has powers and authority tantamount to those of the attorney general himself. That means, in practice, that Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney from Chicago, does not report to the Justice Department regarding his investigation. (In this sense, Fitzgerald's position is similar to that of an Independent Counsel under the now-defunct independent counsel statute.)
Those familiar with Fitzgerald's inquiry tell me that the investigative team of attorneys is principally from his office in Chicago, and that they do not really know their way around the workings of Washington. This has resulted in an investigation that is being handled Chicago-style - not D.C.-style. That's significant because in Washington, there is more of a courtesy and protocol toward power than exists in the Windy City.
The Fitzgerald investigation has not made friends with the Washington press corps, many of whom are being subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Those journalists with whom I have spoken say they are not willing appeared before any grand jury to reveal their sources. So this issue is headed toward a showdown. And under existing law, a journalist cannot refuse to provide information to a grand jury.
Nor, based on the few existing precedents, can a sitting president refuse to give testimony to a grand jury. And that appears to be the broad, underlying reason Bush is talking with Washington attorney James Sharp.
Reasons the Plame Grand Jury May Want Bush's Testimony
Why might the grand jury wish to hear Bush's testimony? Most of the possible answers are not favorable for Bush.
There is, of course, one totally benign way to view the situation. "It is hard for me to imagine that Pat Fitzgerald is going to be going aggressively after the president," one Washington lawyer told the Los Angeles Times. "My guess is that he feels a need to conduct an interview because he needs to be in a position to say, 'I have done everything that could be done.'" The lawyer added, "If [Fitzgerald] closes the case without an indictment and has not interviewed the president, he is going to be criticized."
But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many.
Instead, it seems the investigators are seeking to connect up with, and then speak with, persons who have links to and from the leaked information - and those persons, it seems, probably include the President. (I should stress, however, that I do not have access to grand jury testimony, and that grand jury proceedings are secret. But the facts that are properly public do allow some inference and commentary about what likely is occurring in the grand jury.)
Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so. .
If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. -- then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about this leak.
If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly.
Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it was referred by the CIA last summer.
It seems very possible the leaker - or leakers, for two government sources were initially cited by columnist Robert Novak -- may have panicked, covered up his (or their) illegality, and in doing so, committed further crimes. If so, did the President hear of it? Was he willfully blind? Was he himself the victim of a cover-up by underlings? The grand jury may be interested in any or all of these possibilities.
Bush Needs An Outside Attorney To Maintain Attorney-Client Privilege
Readers may wonder, why is Bush going to an outside counsel, when numerous government attorneys are available to him - for instance, in the White House Counsel's Office?
The answer is that the President has likely been told it would be risky to talk to his White House lawyers, particularly if he knows more than he claims publicly.
Ironically, it was the fair-haired Republican stalwart Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who decimated the attorney-client privilege for government lawyers and their clients - which, to paraphrase the authority Wigmore, applies when legal advice of any kind is sought by a client from a professional legal adviser, where the advice is sought in confidence.
The reason the privilege was created was to insure open and candid discussion between a lawyer and his or her client. It traditionally applied in both civil and criminal situations for government lawyers, just as it did for non-government lawyers. It applied to written records of communications, such as attorney's notes, as well as to the communications themselves.
But Starr tried to thwart that tradition in two different cases, before two federal appeals courts. There, he contended that there should be no such privilege in criminal cases involving government lawyers.
In the first case, In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Duces Tecum, former First Lady Hillary Clinton had spoken with her private counsel in the presence of White House counsel (who had made notes of the conversation). Starr wanted the notes. Hillary Clinton claimed the privilege.
A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with Starr. The court held that a grand jury was entitled to the information. It also held that government officials -- even when serving as attorneys -- had a special obligation to provide incriminating information in their possession.
In the second case, In re Lindsey, Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey refused to testify about his knowledge of President Clinton's relationship to Monica Lewinsky, based on attorney-client privilege. Starr sought to compel Lindsey's testimony, and he won again.
This time, Starr persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to follow the Eighth Circuit. The court ruled that exposure of wrongdoing by government lawyers fostered democracy, as "openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government."
Based on these precedents, President Bush has almost certainly been told that the only way he can discuss his potential testimony with a lawyer is by hiring one outside the government.
What Might a Private Attorney Advise Bush to Do?
It is possible that Bush is consulting Sharp only out of an excess of caution - despite the fact that he knows nothing of the leak, or of any possible coverup of the leak. But that's not likely.
On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.
What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and does not plan to disclose it, the only good legaladvice would be to take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate issue."
I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I consulted - who is well versed in this area of law -- opined that "Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware of."
That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege, however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As I have discussed in one of my prior columns, Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued.
Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself, suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it should be interesting.
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More Changes Are Needed, Democrats Say
Critics Insist Tenet's Departure Is Not Enough to Account for Intelligence Failures
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13941-2004Jun3.html
Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and other congressional Democrats said yesterday the resignation of CIA Director George J. Tenet was overdue, but argued that additional changes in U.S. intelligence gathering -- and White House personnel -- are needed to account for past failures and guard against future ones.
Although Tenet said he stepped down to spend more time with his family, several Democrats characterized the CIA director as a scapegoat and his resignation as a well-timed distraction from controversies, ranging from the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to an alleged Pentagon leak of highly classified information regarding U.S. access to a secret Iranian communications code. Democrats were virtually unanimous in calling on President Bush and other officials to accept greater responsibility for intelligence lapses.
"I think there are many more people who are responsible for the mess," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters. "The responsibility goes far beyond George Tenet."
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), former chairman of the intelligence committee, said that Tenet's resignation "is long overdue" and that the CIA director lacked "critical leadership necessary for our intelligence community to effectively operate."
Kerry, campaigning in Missouri, said in a statement: "There is no question . . . there have been significant intelligence failures, and the administration has to accept responsibility for those failures. Sometimes with change comes opportunity."
On the latter point, Republicans agree. With Bush's popularity waning and GOP anxiety rising, several Republicans said Tenet's resignation, coupled with recent progress creating an interim Iraqi government, presents Bush with an opportunity to put some of the recent crises and scandals behind him while implementing changes at the CIA.
"I do think this is a positive move, for him [Tenet] personally and for the agency," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said. "His resignation also will give the president the opportunity to implement other needed reforms in the intelligence community to improve its operation."
Republicans said Bush's recent decisions to internationalize the effort in Iraq and to offer to relinquish some U.S. authority over it are also helping position the president for a political surge. Some Republicans said Tenet's resignation shows that administration officials recognize they made mistakes, even if they are not publicly admitting them. Tenet did not cite mistakes under his watch as a reason for quitting.
"Some people believe [Bush] is turning the corner," said a House GOP leader, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly about the president. But, the leader warned, "Others are sitting here with a deer-in-the headlights stare wondering" if he can.
A Democratic strategist predicted Bush would get a short-term boost from recent events.
However, some Kerry advisers said the resignation might portend even larger problems for the president, with a federal grand jury investigating a possible White House leak of a CIA operative's name and the Sept. 11 commission set to release its report on intelligence failures leading up to the deadliest terrorist strikes on U.S. soil.
"I don't see how losing a top person in the administration so suddenly becomes an asset," a top adviser to Kerry said.
A few Republicans had called for Tenet's resignation, and they welcomed yesterday's news.
"It was a surprise, but I think that it is fine that he has finally decided to step down," said Rep. Mac Collins (R-Ga.), who is running for the Senate. He said Tenet had improved intelligence gathering in recent months, but "we had some shortfalls at times, and Tenet didn't address them like he should have."
Democrats were often more critical of Bush than Tenet, and openly questioned whether the president was sacrificing his director. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said: "Although George Tenet is a good man who served two administrations honorably, there clearly were errors in our country's intelligence gathering and handling. I hope he's not taking the fall as a sacrificial lamb."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the intelligence committee, said he has disagreed with Tenet, "but I can tell you that George Tenet is not the problem."
"The problem is those in the Bush administration who are misinterpreting or ignoring intelligence, who are misusing intelligence and who are setting up their own intelligence-gathering agencies that actually compete with the CIA," Durbin said. "The problems we are seeing today rest farther up the chain of command."
Durbin particularly criticized the Pentagon's undersecretary for intelligence gathering, telling reporters the administration immediately should "close down the intelligence operation of Mr. Doug Feith in the Department of Defense."
Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist, said: "It's just too early to know if this one body will be enough to feed the jackals, or it just might whet their appetites."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
The Age of Renewables Has Arrived
June 4, 2004
BONN, Germany, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-04-01.asp
Pledges of increased funding for renewable sources of energy have brightened the four day International Conference for Renewable Energy which concludes here today. The nearly 2,000 participants - government ministers and business people, trade unionists, women, nongovernmental organizations, consumers, scientists, farmers, actors in development and poverty alleviation, and renewable energy manufacturers - heard investment promises of hundreds of millions of new dollars a year for renewables.
Renewable energy includes such sources as water, wind, geothermal and solar thermal power, solar photovoltaics and bioenergy.
"Renewables 2004 is something new," German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin told the conference on Tuesday in the building that housed the German Parliament before it moved to Berlin five years ago. "Here in Bonn, we want to combine voluntary initiatives for increasing the use of renewable energies with the United Nations sustainable development structures. This is the inner link between the Declaration, the Policy Recommendations and the International Action Programme," he said.
Presenting the case for more investment in renewables, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated a market potential of nearly $2 trillion in the next 15 years.
"It's time to get down to business," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, a former German environment minister, stating the theme of the conference. "Sustainable development needs sustainable energy, but sustainable energy needs investment," he told delegates, urging them to develop new products for the rapidly evolving renewable energy sector.
A report by the Climate Change Working Group of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative says this potential can be realized only if "real concerns" by the financial sector are addressed. The report details case studies illustrating the opportunities and challenges in renewable energy finance and represents the work of key financial institutions - ANZ, Aviva, Citigroup, Dresdner Bank, Garant, HypoVereinsbank, and the Munich Reinsurance Company.
"The world needs more energy, but conventional sources are unsustainable and finite," said Thomas Loster, the chairman of the UNEP Finance Climate Change Working Group, who heads the Weather-Climate Risks Research department at Munich Re.
The most important step for policymakers is to create confidence in the long term future of the renewable energy market by policies that make "the deal on the table" financially attractive, said Loster.
The World Bank responded by announcing it will increase lending by about 20 percent a year for renewable energies. Peter Woicke, managing director of the World Bank Group and executive vice president of the bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corp, told conference participants Thursday that will amount to about $400 million a year by 2010.
"Our strategy through program and policies will aim to ensure that renewable energy and energy efficiency are seen as economically viable and essential ingredients in the energy choices of our member nations, not marginal considerations," Woicke said.
The bank has been the largest lender for renewable energy projects in the developing world since 1990, with investments totaling about $6 billion.
Woicke said that rich nations could not prescribe sweeping changes for poor nations while doing little to improve their own energy efficiency. But poor nations should not expect power investments without improving governance, investment climates and commitments to sustainable energy pricing, he said.
"We believe it will require a market place of partnerships, public and private, national and local, corporations and civil society, that is organized around a few key principles," Woicke said. The Bank is "convinced more than ever that the transition to a cleaner energy future will be won project by project, village by village and nation by nation."
Sustainable bioenergy systems have a place in the pantheon of renewables. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's Gustavo Best told delegates, "The production and use of bioenergy also contributes to poverty alleviation and food security. It can reduce land degradation and helps to mitigate climate change."
The agency is currently working with the Shenyang Agricultural University in China in developing new sweet sorghum varieties and technologies to produce ethanol to substitute for petroleum. The agency also has energy projects in Nepal and Brazil.
On Wednesday, UNEP presented the "Day of Geothermal Power" at a nearby hotel exploring all aspects of geothermal energy production: resource assessment, technology, project development and financing of geothermal projects.
As part of its growing climate change portfolio in the Global Environment Facility, UNEP has launched three UNEP/GEF geothermal energy project proposals:
- In Africa' Rift Valley, the Argeo project is a program of financial, policy and technical instruments for the promotion of geothermal energy development. Several countries of the Rift Valley are being considered for geothermal investments.
- A Joint Geophysical Imaging project will assess geothermal reservoirs in Kenya with potential impacts for the African Rift Valley. The resulting higher resolution and more accurate assessments will increase the probability of finding large, productive steam reservoirs. Testing is planned for this year.
- The aim of the Eastern Caribbean Geothermal Development project is to overcome the barriers to the development of geothermal power and establish one or more commercially viable geothermal power plants in the region.
As the financial mechanism for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Global Environment Facility has provided about $900 million for more than 110 projects in 50 countries. This support has leveraged almost $6 billion in additional cofinancing.
In Mexico, for instance, the GEF is supporting the commercial development of a solar thermal power plant. The project aims to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of the solar trough technology as a major source of power. The GEF is engaging the relevant companies in a dialogue about risk sharing and the next steps toward achieving fully commercial development. The GEF is supporting similar plants in Morocco, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and India.
Tritten, a Green Party member, opened the conference on Tuesday by presenting the challenge the world must address. "Together we face the task of ensuring that the number of people living in absolute poverty is halved in the next 10 years, and of preventing global temperature from rising more than 2 ° Celsius compared to pre-industrial times up to the end of this century."
"Renewable energies hold a vital key to this," Trittin said. "We must satisfy the growing need for energy - without imposing too heavy a burden on our atmosphere."
Trittin has been the architect of the German phaseout of nuclear power, which is now mandated by law to take place over the next 20 years. "It is now less expensive to build a wind park on the northern German coast than a new nuclear power plant," Trittin told the conference.
And Trittin is a firm supporter of renewables, which, he told delegates, provide 120,000 jobs in Germany today and save Germany 53 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide every year.
In Bonn, all activities will be brought together in a concrete Action Programme, Trittin explained. The implementation of this Action Programme will be reviewed in the framework of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in 2006 and 2007.
The International Action Programme now contains 132 projects. The Action Programme contains significant new financial commitments - from individual countries and from the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder committed Germany to a large new investment. "In cooperation with the Kreditanstalt," he told the conference delegates, "the Federal Government will set up a special facility for renewable energies and energy efficiency with a volume of up to 500 million euros. Starting in 2005, over a period of five years the facility will be used to offer low-interest loans for investments in developing countries to public and parastatal institutions, banks and also private sector organizations."
In the Action Programme countries have set themselves new targets for increasing the use of renewables with specific timeframes.
Germany has doubled the share of renewable energies in electricity generation within five years, Trittin told delegates. "Now we want to cover 20 percent of our current energy demand with renewables by 2020. This 20 percent target is part of the Renewable Energy Sources Act. We have thus made it legally binding."
Costs for renewable technologies are going down, while demand is increasing. "Nowadays wind power installations cost 30 percent less than 10 years ago," said Trittin. "Photovoltaic systems have even become more than 50 percent cheaper."
At the conference, Germany signed a 2.6 million euro strategic partnership agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank to promote renewable energies and increase energy efficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean. The German Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, and President of the Inter-American Development Bank Enrique Iglesias, signed the agreement Thursday.
But the fact that the "Political Declaration of the International Conference on Renewable Energies" did not exclude large hydropower from its definition of renewable energy, has frustrated some conservation groups. On opening day, 260 citizens' groups from 61 countries called for large hydro to be excluded from renewables initiatives and targets.
Patrick McCully, campaigns director of International Rivers Network says that lobbying pressure from energy ministers, in particular from Brazil and Uganda, succeeded in ensuring that the Political Declaration, approved by 154 countries, did not set explicit limits on the inclusion of hydropower within renewables programs.
Brazil and Uganda plan to build large hydro projects that are opposed by civil society groups within their countries due to their social and environmental impacts, high economic costs, and inability to provide affordable energy to the poor.
"The big hydro lobby is hijacking concern over poverty and climate change to promote their destructive technology," said McCully. "If big hydro projects are included in renewables programs this will crowd out funds for new renewables, increase vulnerability to climate change, further degrade rivers, and lead to more forced evictions of riverine people."
Creating more large reservoirs in the tropics would also increase emissions of greenhouse gases, McCully contends. "Critics of large dams will continue to push the adoption of new renewables and strive to ensure that the big hydro lobby does not hinder their implementation," he said.
Participants flying to Bonn for the Renewables 2004 conference enjoyed a carbon neutral flight, as the greenhouse gases generated by their air travel has been calculated nad will be offset by a solar energy project being developed in India. Trittin says the German government decided to make this meeting one of the first climate neutral conferences of its scale by purchasing Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) through the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and will retire them afterwards.
To generate the CERs, one of the first bundled small-scale Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects under the Kyoto Protocol has been selected. Ten to 12 solar community kitchens will be installed in institutions such as hospitals, schools and religious ashrams in several Indian states.
The technology uses concentrated sunlight to generate steam for cooking, and will replace kerosene, diesel or unsustainably harvested firewood. The project will provide daily carbon neutral meals for around 30,000 people. The project will meet the strict criteria of the Gold Standard, a quality label for CDM projects promoted by environmental NGOs.
The project is under development by the Swiss company Factor Consulting + Management AG in cooperation with Gadhia Solar Energy Systems based in India.
"The age of renewables," Trittin said, "has begun."
Visit the conference online at: http://www.renewables2004.de/
----
Car owners are turning to vegetable oil as cleaner, cheaper fuel alternative
Friday, June 04, 2004
By Laura Walsh,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-04/s_24528.asp
WESTON, Connecticut - As car owners across the country grapple with pumped-up gas prices, some are turning to their favorite restaurants for a solution: recycled vegetable oil.
Environmentalists with diesel cars have used vegetable oil for years as an alternative fuel to cut back on sooty emissions, but as gas prices soar above $2 a gallon, they say their "veggie cars" are a great way to save cash.
Every two weeks, Etta Kantor drives to a local Chinese restaurant to fuel her blue Volkswagen Jetta. She calls ahead and the owner puts aside a few buckets of used oil for her. At home, Kantor uses a colander and a bag filter to remove water and any food particles.
The vegetable oil is then poured into a 15-gallon tank in the back of her Jetta, where a spare tire would usually be kept. With a touch of a button located above the radio, Kantor can switch from diesel fuel to vegetable oil in seconds.
"Oh, I zip around town, go fast on highways. It's not any different," said Kantor, 58, of Weston.
Restaurants that would have to pay to get rid of their old vegetable oil are happy to give it away for free.
"It saves us a couple of dollars and it helps to save the environment a bit so I thought, 'Why not?'" said Shawn Reilly, a co-owner of Eli's On Whitney, a restaurant in Hamden. Reilly estimates it costs as much as $60 a month to have the oil removed otherwise.
Bridgeport resident Aaron Schlechter says he picks up about 30 or 40 gallons twice a month from Eli's. He uses it to fuel his car for his 170-mile commute every day to his job as an environmental consultant in Staten Island, New York.
"The only way that I can assuage my guilt by driving this awful distance is by driving something that isn't consuming fossil fuels and has much more environmentally friendly emissions," Schlechter said.
Vegetable oil is becoming so popular that a Massachusetts company called Greasecar is buying it in bulk from a distributor and selling it to local customers. It's priced at 90 cents a gallon, said company founder Justin Carven.
Since 2001, Greasecar has also been selling conversion kits, like the one in Kantor's car, that allow diesel cars to run on the recycled oil. About 200 kits were sold in the past year, Carven said. A standard conversion kit sells for $800 at Greasecar.
"Once you install it, though, you are saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars," Carven said. "The product usually pays for itself within the first year."
Cars that have a conversion kit have two fuel systems, one that operates on diesel and the other on the recycled oil. The car is stopped and started with diesel; once it's running, the vegetable oil is heated to make it thinner. The driver can then switch fuel systems and the recycled oil is sprayed into the engine in the same way diesel fuel is.
The kit only works on diesel engines because vegetable oil is not flammable enough to work in gasoline engines that are spark-ignited.
Liquid Solar in Ithaca, New York, has contracts with a few local restaurants to collect their used vegetable oil. And in Santa Rosa, California, a group of 50 people have formed a co-op to buy oil in bulk from a local manufacturer and then filter it for their own use.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency has approved vegetable-based biodiesel, which is also gaining in popularity, it hasn't OKed any recycled oil for sale, said Christine Sansevero, an environmental engineer for EPA.
"You just don't know what's in that oil," she said. "There could be metals, other chemicals that, when burned, could create something you didn't intend to burn. It could also be fine, but it's an unknown."
Biodiesel is a fuel derived from plant oil or animal fat, Sansevero said. It can be used in pure form but it is often blended with regular diesel. The most common form is B20, a blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petroleum diesel.
Veggie car owners agree that biodiesel is another renewable fuel source but say it isn't as cost effective or eco-friendly. Pure biodiesel costs about $1 more per gallon than diesel, Sansevero said. B20 costs about 20 cents more per gallon than diesel, she said.
The trend is catching on, especially for those who have a distance to drive.
The Healing Waters Band had a Greasecar conversion kit installed in its bus for a recent seven-week tour across the country. The band used a blended biodiesel mix to start and stop the engine and vegetable oil for the rest.
The band left its hometown of San Diego on a full tank of vegetable oil and then filled up again at a Chinese restaurant in Missouri before buying 500 gallons during a stop at Greasecar in Massachusetts.
"We only spent $200 that would have normally cost us about $1,200, and we probably could have done it all for free if we kept stopping (at restaurants)," said Tony Thorpe, a bassist and vocalist for the band.
----
A pledge to promote renewable energy
Interest in renewables, like solar energy, has surged recently
Friday 04 June 2004,
AFP
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/64C87D5A-D9E0-41A6-B626-028319EA29E3.htm
Senior officials gathering at the world's biggest meeting on renewable energy have pledged to boost the share of solar, wind and other clean sources.
Senior officials from 154 countries vowed in Bonn on Friday to "substantially increase with a sense of urgency" the share of renewables in meeting world energy needs.
"Renewable energies, combined with increased energy efficiency, will become a most important and widely available source of energy and will offer new opportunities for cooperation among all countries," they said.
The communique, described as a political declaration, did not provide a timetable or set any other specific targets.
Delegates said this was a concession to the US, which faces the biggest bill of all for weaning its economy off oil and is an opponent to government intervention in the market place.
Tiny share
The meeting also issued a document of policy guidelines and an "action plan" - a draft of 165 detailed promises by governments and corporations for promoting renewable sources.
"The sun has just cracked the horizon on the dawn of the renewable energy revolution"
Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace International's political director
Renewable energies comprise solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave and hydro power.
Today, they have just a tiny share of the world's energy mix. Much of the infant technology is still outgunned by fossil fuels, whose long reign has given them a huge cost edge in infrastructure, efficiency and lobbying power.
Interest in renewables has surged in light of this year's dramatic rise in oil prices, driven in part by fears over supplies from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
'Big success'
German Cooperation and Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said developing countries faced an estimated $60 billion increase in their oil bill, and this helped explain their support in Bonn.
"This conference was a success," she said. "There are sometimes in politics, big successes."
The four-day meeting, hosted by Germany, gathered around 3000 ministers or senior officials, corporate executives, energy users and green activists.
The declaration said countries were "committed to achieving tangible progress as well as substantive follow-up" and planned to "continue the high-level political dialogue begun in Bonn".
Green power
Green activists, relentless foes of fossil fuels whose pollution is blamed for global warming, were ecstatic at the outcome.
They were delighted there would be monitoring of the action plan, thus setting a benchmark to which pledgers would be held accountable.
And, they believed, further meetings would guarantee that the cause of renewables would not wither away, as happened in the 1980s when oil prices tumbled and undercut green power.
"One of the main breakthroughs is that renewable energy, instead of being an odd technology in the corner, is now recognised as playing a major part of the world's energy future," said Jennifer Morgan, director of WWF's climate-change programme.
"The sun has just cracked the horizon on the dawn of the renewable energy revolution," said Greenpeace International's political director, Steve Sawyer.
But he stressed governments urgently had to give renewables help through tax breaks, regulatory support and political backing.
Huge task ahead
Renewables contributed just 5% of world energy supplies in 2000, but accounted for 19% of electricity production, mainly through hydro plants, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).
"We need a transformation of unprecedented scale and urgency"
Margaret Beckett, Britain's secretary of state for Environment By comparison, oil accounted for 38% of energy supplies, coal and gas 50%, and nuclear 7%.
Margaret Beckett, Britain's secretary of state for the environment, said the task ahead was huge.
Quoting IEA estimates that the world needed to invest 16 trillion dollars to meet its energy needs by 2030, she warned "we need a transformation of unprecedented scale and urgency" to give renewables a central role.
-------- OTHER
-------- health
Health Council's Chief Criticizes Administration
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13851-2004Jun3.html
The president of the Global Health Council castigated federal health officials this week for abruptly ending 30 years of support for the private agency's work, saying the Bush administration caved in to election-year pressure from a "small clique of right-wing extremists."
In an unusually harsh speech Tuesday, Nils Daulaire accused the administration of choosing the political wedge issue of abortion over the free exchange of ideas when it rescinded $365,000 in grants and discouraged participation in the council's international conference, "Youth and Health: Generation on the Edge."
"It is the politics of health -- more correctly, the exploitation of sensitive global health issues for domestic political purposes -- that has kept them away," he said.
House Republican staffers and groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition lobbied the State and Health and Human Services departments to sever ties with the council because some participants hold views in conflict with administration policies on abortion and sex education.
Judie Brown, president of the antiabortion American Life League, said the council is mistaking "reproductive rights" for a medical issue.
"Pregnancy is a very normal and healthy state for a woman to experience; abortion is totally abnormal," she said. "He's railing at us, the pro-lifers, because he wants abortion to be protected and funded by the government."
Daulaire said he was not surprised by the work of the antiabortion leaders but "what was surprising -- and deeply disappointing -- was that our government's health policy leaders did not respond with the truth."
The flash point between the two sides is a policy known as the Mexico City Policy, initiated by President Ronald Reagan and revived by President George W. Bush, that prohibits any clinic abroad that receives U.S. aid to discuss abortion with clients.
For decades -- including the first three years of the current administration -- the U.S. government has not only subsidized the annual conference but also sent high-ranking health officials to speak at the gathering. Three years ago HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson discussed women's health, and last year Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke about severe acute respiratory syndrome.
By withdrawing funding and by discouraging federal employees from attending the Washington conference, officials "sacrificed the principles of participation and respectful dialogue to spurious allegations," Daulaire said.
HHS spokesman Bill Pierce rejected charges that the decision was politically motivated, saying the stumbling block was a law prohibiting federal dollars to be spent on lobbying. He said the group's plans to hold an "advocacy day" on Capitol Hill violated that rule.
"We don't lobby," Daulaire replied. He said organizations as diverse as Boeing Co. and the National Association of Evangelicals have held advocacy days and received federal money.
When the controversy arose in late April, conference organizers were reluctant to criticize the administration, saying they hoped to reach a compromise. But when that did not happen, Daulaire said, he decided to devote his entire keynote address to the dispute because "we have a responsibility to stand up and challenge those who hold positions of public trust when they are wrong -- and on this, they are wrong."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Cheney speech to draw protesters
June 04, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040604-015252-5489r.htm
Chicago, IL, Jun. 4 -- Security is tight for a political speech in Chicago by Vice President Dick Cheney at a fundraiser for Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan.
Pickets from several labor unions and activist groups planned to demonstrate outside the Chicago Hilton and Towers Hotel to protest contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq. Cheney is former chief executive officer of the Houston-based oil and construction firm.
Cheney arrived at Midway Airport Friday afternoon.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is urging Cheney to use his remarks at the $1,000-a-plate fundraiser to correct statements he made this week in Kansas City about the administration's use of the USA Patriot Act and the impact of the law on average Americans.
Cheney told an audience in Kansas City that no abuses of the Patriot Act had been reported or confirmed. The ACLU says at least two lawsuits have been filed, including one by an Internet service provider that can't be identified under a "gag order."
----
Police Make 16 Tiananmen Square Arrests
By JOE McDONALD
Associated Press Writer
Jun 4, 2004,
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_TIANANMEN_ANNIVERSARY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese police kept Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators Friday, detaining at least 16 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the deadly military attack on pro-democracy protesters and pressed their demands for political change.
Since the June 4, 1989, military assault that killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of demonstrators, communist leaders have made many changes demanded by the dissidents, including scrapping rules dictating where Chinese could work and whom they could marry. A decade of stunning economic growth has given millions of people new choices in life.
But the closed, secretive ruling party that crushed the protests still permits no independent political activity and has jailed or driven into exile most of China's active dissidents.
Reporters saw 16 middle-aged men and women picked up Friday on the square in small groups and dragged to waiting police vans. It was not clear whether the detentions were related to the anniversary, but security forces had been trying to block public commemorations for people killed in the military crackdown.
The square was open to the public and hundreds of tourists with their children strolled under a light sprinkling of rain.
Though extra guards were on duty, security was relatively light compared with other politically sensitive dates. Troops from the paramilitary People's Armed Police dozed aboard two parked buses. Security agents in civilian clothes moved among the crowds.
An Associated Press photographer was briefly detained after photographing detentions on the square, and Chinese tourists who snapped pictures were forced by police to delete them from digital cameras.
In advance of the anniversary, Chinese authorities detained activists and relatives of people killed in 1989 or ordered them out of Beijing.
On Friday, broadcasts of CNN to hotels and apartment compounds for foreigners in the Chinese capital were blacked out repeatedly when the network showed reports on the crackdown.
In contrast to the quiet in Beijing, veterans of the protests and other activists commemorated the deaths with vigils, marches and hunger strikes in Hong Kong, Washington and Taipei, Taiwan.
In Hong Kong, police said at least 48,000 people waved candles, sang and chanted Friday night to commemorate the anniversary and to protest China's hard line against democracy in the former British territory.
"Hong Kong should be democratic," university student Rocker Tsui said at an annual vigil that was highly charged by the recent bitter dispute over the territory's political future.
The crowd - which organizers estimated numbered around 82,000 - bowed three times in a traditional Chinese funeral gesture, then chanted slogans including "demand accountability for the massacre."
Hong Kong school officials said last month that students in the territory will be taught about the 1989 bloodshed for the first time in new history textbooks due to be released in September. Discussion of the topic is still forbidden on the mainland.
In Washington, a veteran of the demonstrations was in the midst of a fast outside the Chinese Embassy that began Tuesday.
"We should not just sit and wait for change. We've been waiting for 15 years and it hasn't happened," Liu Junguo said.
The 1989 protests drew tens of thousands of people to the heart of Beijing to demand a more open political system and an end to official corruption.
The violent government response plunged Beijing into international isolation and set off an upheaval in Chinese politics.
Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party general secretary, was dismissed after losing a power struggle and still lives under house arrest 15 years later. Jiang Zemin, a former Shanghai party leader, was plucked from obscurity by then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping to succeed Zhao and went on to lead China through a prosperous decade before retiring as president last year.
"Fifteen years has marked tremendous progress economically, but still the biggest obstacle is political," Wu'er Kaixi, a protest leader who survived the 1989 assault, said by telephone from the United States.
On Friday, the New York-based group Human Rights in China released a list of 25 people it said are still imprisoned in Beijing for participating in the protests.
Beijing is still trying to repair remaining damage abroad from the bloodshed, lobbying the European Union to lift a ban on weapons sales to China imposed after the crackdown.
Communist leaders are experimenting with what they call "village democracy." Nonpartisan local elections let tens of millions of Chinese pick officials for low-level posts, though winners are required to carry out policies made by unelected figures higher up.
President Hu Jintao, who took power last year, has called for more "socialist democracy." But that means making the party more attentive to public needs, not allowing real opposition politics.
China's leaders defend the crackdown and one-party rule as a key to China's economic success. They reject pleas to reverse the verdict that the protests were a counterrevolutionary riot.
The crackdown "enabled China to develop its economy and make contributions to the peace and development of the world," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said this week.
On Thursday, Liu refused to say whether student exiles could come home without being arrested. He said they would be dealt with "in accordance with relevant laws."
----
Remembering Tiananmen
June 04, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040603-093604-7995r.htm
It was 15 years ago today that the Communist leadership of the People's Republic of China sent tanks into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to subdue peaceful demonstrations. Thousands were killed and disappeared into the nation's gulags. In the years since, China has been welcomed into the community of nations with open arms, winning the 2008 Summer Olympics and being admitted into the World Trade Organization. The hope was that engagement and exposure to civilized governments would encourage Beijing's thugs to appreciate the rule of law. So far, the strategy has not worked. China's Communist rulers are as tyrannical as ever.
The regime's posture toward Hong Kong and Taiwan exposes how far its leaders are from accepting political reforms. In Hong Kong, reporters have been harassed, radio personalities forced off the airwaves, and the legislature prohibited from even debating the topic of direct elections to choose the region's representatives. A month ago, Beijing ordered a naval battle group into Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor in a chilling show of force to discourage the democratic movement there. In recent weeks, mainland officials have reiterated that a declaration of Taiwanese independence would trigger an attack, and the People's Liberation Army continues its military buildup across the Taiwan Strait to show that the threat is serious.
Appeasement-oriented Sinophiles have an original way of looking at today's anniversary. They argue that the 1989 crackdown actually aided the cause of democracy because Beijing is afraid of the international backlash similar repression would cause today. If anything, the opposite is true. Increased business and diplomatic relationships after Tiananmen and during Hong Kong and Taiwan hostilities signal that the world isn't interested in interfering in Chinese affairs.
Beijing's reaction to democratic movements is always the same, whether they be in Hong Kong, Taiwan or in the Communist capital of Beijing itself. The instinct is to use force to suppress. What strikes fear into the Communists is the idea that any Chinese can live in free systems based on popular sovereignty and political rights for the people. It is a precedent they desperately want to squelch before the ideas take root in the imagination of the more than 1 billion mainlanders who still live under authoritarian rule.
As a prerequisite for negotiation with mainland officials, Hong Kong democrats are demanding that Beijing admit that the violent crackdown at Tiananmen 15 years ago was a mistake and announce that the Communist Party intends to take a more progressive approach to freedom of speech and assembly in greater China. So far the Communists have refused and have begun to apply more strongarm tactics in Hong Kong. Until there is a change in this belligerent attitude, the dream of freedom and democracy for the Chinese people is unrealistic.
----
Tiananmen Memory Haunts Demonstrators
Still in China On 15th Anniversary, Crackdown Is Ever-Present
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13913-2004Jun3?language=printer
BEIJING, June 3 -- There are quiet moments with his 4-year-old son at his apartment in the suburbs when Zheng Xuguang manages to forget the event that changed his life 15 years ago: the violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
He was a leader of the student protests, No. 9 on the government's "most-wanted" list, but he withdrew from dissident politics soon after leaving prison. He lost a series of jobs because police harassed his employers. He then decided to stay home and earn a living by playing the stock market.
Yet Zheng can't escape the memories: the exhilaration of marching through the city with a crowd of hundreds of thousands; the horror of a tank crushing a friend's legs; the pallor of a student's body carried out of a hospital on a wooden board; the voice of the doctor who told him 45 other bodies had already been taken away. Fifteen years ago Friday, the ruling Communist Party sent troops to end weeks of peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in an act of violence that China has yet to fully recover from.
At the time, the government issued a list of 21 most-wanted student leaders. Today, most of them have fled or been sent into exile in the United States or Europe. But Zheng is one of seven still living in China under the same authoritarian government that they protested against and that ordered its soldiers to fire on them. Their stories offer a lesson in how China has learned to live with what happened in Tiananmen Square, but without forgetting or forgiving.
The government has labored to put the June 4, 1989, massacre behind it, suppressing public discussion of the event while highlighting the rapid economic growth China has achieved in the years since. But the memory of Tiananmen continues to mar China's reputation abroad, and at home it remains a powerful symbol -- and potential rallying point -- for those dissatisfied with the Communist Party's monopoly on power.
The party defends the Tiananmen crackdown as necessary to maintain stability, and it has resisted calls to reassess its decision to send in troops. It has formally acknowledged errors before, including Mao Zedong's destructive 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, but Tiananmen is particularly sensitive because a reversal could prompt fresh demands for democratic reform. Earlier this year, the party began requiring officials to watch a four-hour documentary defending the crackdown, the Reuters news agency reported Thursday. And the Chinese leader ousted in 1989 for opposing the crackdown, Zhao Ziyang, remains under house arrest at age 84.
In recent weeks, the government has detained or placed under surveillance dozens of dissidents and relatives of those killed in 1989, as it does every year to prevent any commemoration of the June 4 anniversary. Among those who appear to have been detained is Jiang Yanyong, 72, a military surgeon who became a national hero after helping to expose the government's coverup of the SARS outbreak and who wrote a letter this year calling on the government to admit its error in ordering the Tiananmen crackdown.
In addition, human rights groups have identified about 125 people still in prison on charges related to their participation in the protests, mostly workers who rallied behind the students. The total number behind bars is estimated to exceed 500.
One of the seven student leaders still in China, Yang Tao, 34, was arrested again in May 1999 on subversion charges for attempting to mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre. He was released last year after completing a four-year sentence, but declined an interview request. A friend said that police had ordered him not to speak to reporters and that he was worried about how he would support his elderly father if he were arrested again.
Another of the student leaders, Wang Zhixin, 36, also said it was inconvenient for him to be interviewed. But four others agreed to discuss their lives since the crackdown, including two who asked to be interviewed by telephone because they were under police surveillance.
All of them said they had been barred from returning to college after being released from prison in the early 1990s and have had difficulty finding steady work because many people are afraid to hire or do business with them. They said police have also harassed their employers and warned not to give them promotions.
"I have a lot of spare time, so I often think about what happened," Zheng said recently, sitting in an armchair at home with his son in his lap. "Since 1995, I stopped participating in political activities. You might say I've been acting against my conscience. . . . I've been making some money, but my heart still feels the pressure from 1989."
Zheng, 36, a soft-spoken man with a long face, spent two years in prison for "assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic" in Tiananmen. He said he was consumed with anger when he was released. "I felt that if this murderous government wasn't overthrown and killed, I would never be mentally at peace," he recalled.
But then he made contact with old friends and found comfort in dissident politics, signing petitions, organizing a campaign on behalf of residents whose houses were being demolished and attending discussion forums on democratic reform.
Police detained him twice, holding him for several weeks each time and beating him once, he said. The authorities also ruined his wedding, warning all his friends not to attend. Then in 1995, after police pressured a trusted colleague into denouncing him in public, Zheng decided to abandon politics. "I didn't have a source of income," he said, "and I needed to make money."
Zheng said he is in debt now but no longer as worried about his finances because his stocks have done well. The volumes on political philosophy on his bookshelves were replaced by the translated works of Warren Buffett. But he wrestles with his conscience about whether he should be doing more on behalf of those who died at Tiananmen. His wife said he still has nightmares.
"I do feel guilty," he said. "If a student doesn't appeal on behalf of the students who died, how can you not feel guilty?"
Ma Shaofang, who was No. 10 on the most-wanted list, said he also struggles with pangs of guilt, about what happened 15 years ago and about not doing enough since. Reached by telephone in the southern city of Shenzhen, he said the government bore ultimate responsibility for the bloodshed in 1989, but he and the other students might have saved lives had they been more willing to compromise with the authorities.
Ma, 39, said he was haunted by the memory of a small child he saw who had been shot several times. "I feel responsible for that child's death," he said. "I could have done better in 1989, and I could have done more afterward."
After he was released from prison, Ma said he refrained from politics, only occasionally signing a petition or writing an essay. But the police have made it difficult for him to make a living. He said he started his own brand marketing firm in 2001, but the authorities frightened off all his customers last month.
"I used to think I should stay out of politics, because if I couldn't solve my own problems, how could I solve society's problems?" he said. "Now I realize I can't solve my own problems because the police are always harassing me. I realize that I just want to be an ordinary citizen, and to be a citizen, I have to assert my rights and speak out."
Wang Zhengyun, No. 8 on the most-wanted list, said he also has struggled to make a living. A member of China's ethnic Lahu minority, he grew up in an impoverished mountain village in Yunnan province and was among the first from his village to go to college. But after Tiananmen and a prison term, the authorities forced him to go back to the village.
A year later, Wang returned to Beijing. He said he lived in basement apartments and survived by selling stones for use in construction. Then he saved enough to open a store to sell home audio equipment. Eventually, he opened a chain of stores and last year started a firm that wires buildings with audio, video and computer cables. But Wang, 35, said he still feels "a dull pain, spiritually."
"I wish I was able to do something for China's democratization," Wang, a wiry man with a buzz cut and an angular face, said over lunch this week. "Who wants to accept a government that gives you no hope and no freedom? . . . But what can we do? What's the next step? I don't know."
Until recently, the most successful of the student leaders who stayed in China was Zhang Ming, No. 19 on the list. After his release, Zhang avoided his fellow students and stayed away from politics. He even changed his name.
"He had already suffered tremendously, and he wanted to concentrate on economic development," said John Zhang, his younger brother, a software engineer. "He decided that would be how he would contribute to the country."
John Zhang said his brother found a partner, and over the past decade they built a huge real estate conglomerate in Shanghai with subsidiaries in the software, mobile telephone and auto industries and nearly $250 million in assets. But in late 2002, state security agents arrested him and accused him of planning to blow up a building. The charge was later changed to embezzlement, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Zhang said a business rival used his brother's Tiananmen background to persuade local party authorities in Shanghai to crush him. Zhang Ming, 39, is now on a hunger strike in prison.
Zhai Weimin, No. 6 on the list, also complained of official harassment and said he would leave China if he could. "I feel like I'm living in a big net. It's very stifling," said Zhai, 36, by telephone from his home in Henan province, where his small publishing business is struggling.
But Zhai said he never feels lonely. Local residents remember what he did 15 years ago, he said, and they often seek him out for help in addressing grievances with the government and local businesses. "People haven't forgotten June 4," he said. "Their feelings may be less intense and they may be scared, but they haven't forgotten."
----
500,000 protest Bush's visit to Rome
Jun. 4, 2004
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040604-040853-5056r.htm
Rome, Italy -- Thousands filled Rome's streets Friday to protest President Bush's visit and their own country's involvement in the Iraq war, CNN reported.
Police deployed some 10,000 officers around Rome as an estimated 500,000 protested Bush's arrival and Italy's active support of the U.S. war in Iraq.
Protests, which were largely peaceful, reached a peak shortly after Bush had an audience with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City. During that meeting Bush gave the pontiff the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor given to civilians.
On the first stop of his 36-hour European tour, Bush also met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the Iraq war.
The prime minister has committed troops to the conflict despite the opposition of a majority of Italians. Twenty Italian soldiers and four civilians have been killed in the war.
On Saturday, Bush travels to Paris to meet French President Jacques Chirac, another war opponent, before heading to Normandy on Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
----
Thousands Protest in Rome Against Bush Visit and Iraq War
June 4, 2004
New York Times
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/europe/04CND-ROME.html
ROME, June 4 - Confronting their prime minister's staunch support of the American-led invasion of Iraq, throngs of Italian antiwar demonstrators converged in Italy's capital today in a show of protests against the governments of President Bush and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Mr. Bush arrived in Rome just after midnight and spent the 60th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Rome in talks with Mr. Berlusconi, one of his most outspoken backers, Pope John Paul II and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Italian president.
But rather than rally support, Mr. Bush, who is facing vast unpopularity in Europe, met expressions of dissent as thousands of demonstrators in the streets sounded the hymns of a broad antiwar sentiment.
Many protesters demanded the immediate withdrawal of the roughly 3,000 Italian soldiers, police officers and civilians now serving in Iraq in a military effort the demonstrators said had compromised global peace and security.
Playing on the weekend's theme of D-Day commemorations, one protester, Gaetano Cordova, help up a copy of a major newspaper for communists, Il Manifesto, with photographs depicting Mr. Bush and Mr. Berlusconi as grim-faced bullies.
"They are two bandits, because they are warmongers," said Mr. Cordova, 73, of Naples. He said the Iraqi war, "is increasing the threat of terrorism we face every day."
The Rome protests, coming on a humid day that threatened rain, are likely to be the largest bloc of opposition Mr. Bush confronts in a European trip that will continue to Paris and Normandy, on Sunday, the D-Day anniversary. While similar antiwar opinion is pervasive in France, the opportunity for protests may not be as prevalent.
Here, Italians took freely to the streets.
They clapped, chanted sharply worded slogans, poked the sky with Iraqi and Palestinian flags and sounded beats on drums in a march that began this afternoon at the Piazza della Repubblica and snaked through the Piazza Venezia, all before a watchful arc of armed soldiers and police officers.
"We don't want Bush to come to Rome," said Francesco Raparelli, a leader of Disobbedienti, the Disobedients, a radical-left group, which had tried, unsuccessfully, with others to block the streets to impede Mr. Bush's entourage.
"He is a war criminal, a torturer of innocent people and Berlusconi is in this unjust war with him," Mr. Raparelli said.
Despite much ballyhooed fears of widespread violence - like that at the G-8 summit meeting in Genoa on July 20, 2001, when a 23-year-old Italian protester was shot and killed by a police officer during a riot - restraint seemed to reign over today's planned protests.
Indeed, backers of Italy's more moderate center-left parties did not demonstrate at all, alienating the protesters politically.
Rather, at the suggestion of center-left party leaders, many Romans flew rainbow-colored peace flags from the windows of homes, stores and cars in acts that seemed to define the overall mood. Marchers displayed those flags more than any others.
Days ago, Francesco Rutelli, an opposition party leader in Parliament, said any violence would only show that the left could not control its radical fringe.
"We disagree with the policy of the current administration, what we believe are mistakes," Mr. Rutelli said in a recent interview. "At the same time we know and we support people who put peace flags in their windows."
By evening, local authorities had reported only small scuffles, no arrests and no injuries. There was one report that some masked protesters hurled bottles at the police, who stood stoically without responding. At another point, some protesters struggled against one another.
Fears that some might break windows, fling paint or hurt people did not immediately materialize. Instead, the crowds, made up mostly of young people, drank beer, listened to pop music blaring from a van and kept in general order.
Crowd estimates are often little more than politically tinged guesses, but the authorities late today put the number of protesters at 6,000 to 7,000.
Rafeala Bolini, a representative of Stop the War, an Italian coalition of antiwar groups that helped organize today's events, said she expected 100,000 people in Rome. All through the morning, thousands of protesters arrived by bus and train from Naples, Trieste, and points outside Rome.
But on the streets, the numbers appeared far less than 100,000.
Planning for the events, the police buildup seemed to turn Rome into a fortress before the start of President's Bush's 36-hour whirlwind visit.
At least 10,000 officers were deployed to guard against disruptions and protect the dignitaries. Phalanxes of helmeted armed officers patrolled the streets - many carrying riot shields - protected transportation hubs and closed off certain neighborhoods to traffic. High fences and concrete blockades were set up in certain neighborhoods, particularly around one of Mr. Berlusconi's residences in Rome, and helicopters buzzed overhead throughout the day.
In an act seen as an olive branch, officials who first insisted the Piazza Venezia would be walled off to protesters gave in and allowed it to remain open.
Mr. Berlusconi has in recent days said that he was, "worried about the possible violence," at the demonstrations. The United States Embassy warned Americans to avoid the crowds, saying, "not all demonstrations are expected to be peaceful," and many Italian storekeepers closed shop for the day in the center of Rome.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Bush appeared on Italian television, giving the perception that he was open to protests.
"I have no problem with someone who says, `I don't agree,' " Mr. Bush said in an interview when asked if he knew about antiwar protests planned for Rome. "In fact, I think it's healthy."
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Thousands March Against Bush's Rome Visit
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO
Associated Press Writer
June 4, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ITALY_BUSH_PROTESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ROME (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Italian anti-war demonstrators marched through central Rome amid tight security to protest President Bush's visit, many waving peace banners and calling for the pullout of Italian troops in Iraq.
A small group of hooded protesters clashed with police, but the scuffles appeared to break up after a few minutes. It was unclear if anyone was injured.
Italy deployed about 10,000 police officers to protect Bush and his entourage. Premier Silvio Berlusconi has said he is worried about the possibility of violence, and the U.S. Embassy warned Americans to avoid the crowds.
Most Italians opposed the Iraq war. Berlusconi, however, insisted that the cause was just, and his government sent 3,000 troops to help rebuild Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster.
"The war in Iraq was launched on the basis of mistaken assumptions and it's useless that Italy, with its little contingent, be there at America's side," said Luca Galassi, a 33-year-old student with a rainbow-colored peace flag around his waist.
The main protest drew 150,000 people, according to organizers. Police put the crowd at around 25,000.
Smaller demonstrations took place elsewhere in the capital. Some protesters shot fireworks at an Italian air force building and blocked roads around the city, but police did not intervene.
Bush arrived Friday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Rome and to meet with Italian leaders and Pope John Paul II. He was to leave Saturday for Paris.
Critics questioned whether Americans should still be called "liberators" decades after World War II.
"Their credit as liberators was lost in Vietnam," 40-year-old Mario Bucci said.
Many leaders of the center-left opposition, who strongly opposed the Iraq war have urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully, stressed their gratitude for the U.S. role in liberating Italy.
"It's difficult to forget that the world would be different if 60 years ago, this great international alliance of forces hadn't formed against Nazism," said Romano Prodi, the European Commission president and a top opposition Italian leader, who visited an Allied cemetery outside Bologna.
The area around Villa Taverna, the U.S. ambassador's residence in a posh neighborhood where Bush is staying, was cordoned off to traffic Friday morning. Hundreds of police were on alert near the Vatican, where the president met John Paul, and anyone entering St. Peter's Square had to pass through metal detectors.
Manholes were sealed and trash bins and cars removed along the routes the president would travel. Helicopters hovered overhead, and the airspace over Rome was closed to private aircraft. Some bus routes were suspended, selected roads were closed to traffic and the city center was largely quiet, with many staying home, while some schools and a few shops were closed.
In the past, some large demonstrations in Italy have turned violent, notably the 2001 Group of Eight summit attended by Bush in Genoa during which a 23-year-old protester was killed.
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After 75 Years, Barnard Makes Activist an Alumna
Honorary Status Is Given Woman Who Was Turned Away
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14401-2004Jun3.html
NEW YORK, June 3 -- Seventy-five years after she passed an entrance exam to Barnard College, Dorothy I. Height Thursday became an alumna.
That status, bestowed at an Alumnae of Color dinner, was honorary. Height, now 92, never attended Barnard. In 1929, she rushed to the prestigious Seven Sisters college clutching an acceptance letter but was denied entrance because of her color. The school's quota for black students -- two -- was full.
"I came all the way from Rankin, Pa.," said Height, who had attended integrated schools all her life. "I could barely eat or sleep" after school officials rejected her. "It was such a shock to me. I never thought there would be a racial quota." Height instead attended New York University, where she received bachelor's and master's degrees in four years -- and went on to a lifetime of leadership in the civil rights movement.
Barnard College President Judith Shapiro read a citation praising Height and bestowing alumna status on her to mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling against de jure segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. "We were enthusiastic to do this," Shapiro said in an interview, "and we are grateful that she is willing to see that times have changed and to forgive her alma mater."
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the Alumnae of Color member who suggested the award, said, "It's an important statement for all the women of color who have come through Barnard. . . . This college has taken on the responsibility of acknowledging the horrible deed that happened to Dr. Height."
Barnard's honors add to the many already in Height's trophy case. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, and earlier this year President Bush presented her with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award from the federal government. Bush praised Height as a citizen who helped extend the promise of freedom to millions, and said, "We recognize a hero."
Two years ago, African Americans granted her one of the warmest tributes the community gives. Television talk show host Oprah Winfrey, actor Bill Cosby, activist Coretta Scott King, comedian Dick Gregory and boxing promoter Don King were among hundreds who donated $5 million to pay off the mortgage on the Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women, which Height directed for decades.
"Ms. Height is the epitome of what we are," civil rights activist and recent presidential candidate Al Sharpton said that March night. "In many ways, her life celebrates our development as a people and as a community."
Rosa Parks is the mother of the civil rights movement, Pennsylvania activist C. Delores Tucker once told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but "Dorothy Height is the queen."
Height was born in Richmond and moved at age 4 to Rankin, Pa., a mostly European immigrant town outside Pittsburgh, with her father, James Height, and her mother, Fannie. Her activism started at age 11, when she volunteered to read to white preschoolers at the Rankin Christian Center, where social programs were segregated.
A year later, she became a poster child for the YWCA Girls Reserve Club, yet the Pittsburgh YWCA barred her from swimming lessons at a whites-only pool. Working for the organization as an adult in 1946, Height led every YWCA in the nation to adopt an interracial charter for full integration.
Height was a civil rights activist long before then. In November 1937, a few weeks after she started working at the Harlem YWCA, she met Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt, two women whose activism would direct the course of her life.
Bethune had just founded the National Council of Negro Women, and Roosevelt was speaking on behalf of Bethune, her friend. Height was assigned to escort Roosevelt to a meeting. The young worker was so mannerly that Bethune asked her name, appointed her to a committee in her organization and "drew me into her dazzling orbit of people," Height wrote in her memoir, "Open Wide the Freedom Gates."
She joined Bethune's crusade to end poll taxes, lynching and unfair employment practices. That work pushed her into the modern civil rights movement, and Height found herself sitting an arm's length from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington in 1963.
But even on that stage, in one of the movement's most triumphant moments, Height saw discrimination within her own group, the United Civil Rights Leadership. On the morning of the march, Height and others appealed to organizer Bayard Rustin to allow at least one woman to speak.
Rustin refused. Women were represented in the church and other organizations, he said. Mahalia Jackson, the gospel vocalist, sang the national anthem as Height and others sat, seen but not heard.
"That moment was vital to awakening the women's movement," she said. "Mr. Rustin's stance showed us that men honestly didn't see their position as . . . patronizing."
Last night, she said her commitment to the movement resulted partly from her initial rejection from Barnard. "It certainly quickened my interest," she said. "Having this firsthand experience as a young adult helped me realize the work that lay ahead."
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'Take Back America' Aims at Left
Ex-Candidate Addresses 'Progressive Activists'
By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13886-2004Jun3.html
Howard Dean was not angry.
As the star attraction of the Campaign for America's Future three-day "Take Back America" conference in Washington, he was, however, pretty fired up. And so yesterday afternoon was his audience of, as he called them, "2,000 of the most committed progressive activists" in the country.
When Dean applauded the resignation of CIA Director George J. Tenet hours earlier, saying "it's about time someone in the administration resigned," the audience cheered. When he talked about the need for active citizenship ("Democracy is not a spectator sport"), the audience cheered louder. And when he promised that liberal activists would not only win the White House but also the culture wars ("Never again are we going to permit the extreme right wing of the Republican Party to dictate what we do"), the audience jumped to its feet and roared, drowning out the last rousing moments of Dean's speech.
Dean was the main event, and honoree of the Tom Paine Common Sense Award for leadership, at a conference full of political stars of the left -- from philanthropist George Soros, who was introduced by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), to civil rights leader Julian Bond to former labor secretary Robert B. Reich -- and attended by the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" -- people who would have probably chosen the former Vermont governor as the Democratic presidential nominee had his campaign not crashed and burned in Iowa.
Dean's speech, with the exception of a few references to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), for whom he pledged to fight, was an updated version of his stump speech. But the crowd was not wistful. Rather, it seemed grateful that the end of Dean's campaign had not silenced him.
The conference, with workshops on everything from delivering winning messages in campaigns to the role of social issues in the election, was designed to energize its participants to return to their home bases and fight the good liberal fight.
Even Clinton was brazenly partisan: "Do you remember I once mentioned the vast right-wing conspiracy?" she said. "Some doubted me."
Soros, who is spending millions of his dollars to fund various anti-Bush groups, compared Bush's foreign policy to George Orwell's political satire "Animal Farm."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," Soros said.
Still, for returning a backbone to the Democratic Party and leading a fight that has created dozens of new or newly energized liberal groups, many credited Dean, the earliest, most outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, as well as Bush's policies on the environment, education, the economy and on the judiciary.
As Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.), "who called himself a proud progressive and proud liberal," said in introducing Dean, "We could not be more proud of this individual."
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Hong Kong Vigil Remembers Tiananmen Square Killings
June 4, 2004
New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/international/asia/04CND-HONG.html?hp
HONG KONG, June 4 - Holding white candles and singing songs, an unexpectedly large crowd numbering in the tens of thousands gathered here under clear skies tonight to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings.
By contrast, the square itself in Beijing was largely quiet on the anniversary. Despite light rain, foreign tourists and some school groups roamed the vast space under the watchful gaze of a noticeably strengthened but not overwhelming police presence.
No organized protest was apparent in China's capital, although at least 16 people were arrested in twos and threes in the square through the day, apparently for making small acts of remembrance.
The crowd in Hong Kong, however, clearly included some mainland Chinese, who dress a little differently from local residents and often speak a different dialect. Seeking to revive Hong Kong's economy as a way to tamp down democratic sentiment here, the Chinese government recently began allowing residents of neighboring Guangdong Province, Beijing and Shanghai to visit here on individual visas, instead of with supervised tour groups.
The result has been a flood of tourists crowding streets, shops and hotels. In an action certain to anger Beijing further, activists here have distributed flyers to mainland tourists this year for the first time, urging them to attend the candlelight vigil.
A neatly dressed mainland man standing at the edge of the vigil said that while he was not expecting quick political change on the mainland, he was nonetheless impressed by the commemoration here of the military crackdown on pro-democracy students in 1989.
"Hong Kong should become the foundation for Chinese people to pursue democracy," said the man, who insisted on anonymity.
He added that while he might tell his family about the event upon his return to the mainland, he had not decided whether it would be safe to mention it to his neighbors.
The annual candlelight vigil here has become the main event by which the military crackdown is remembered. Tonight, a blanket of people covered six soccer fields at the skyscraper-fringed Victoria Park and spilled into surrounding areas, compared with a crowd last year that covered four soccer fields.
Organizers estimated the crowd at 82,000 people, up from their estimate of 50,000 in last year's crowd. A police spokeswoman said the crowd peaked at 48,000 an hour and a half into the vigil, although more people may have left earlier or arrived later; the police did not issue an official estimate last year.
Tonight's vigil coincided with a deepening split in Hong Kong society, especially over whether freedom of speech is being limited here. Beijing has issued increasingly tough warnings and legal decisions this spring to limit efforts by local residents to achieve greater say in selecting their leaders.
Hong Kong, a territory with almost the same population as Switzerland packed into a peninsula and archipelago of small islands with half the land area of Luxembourg, became a special administrative region of China when Britain handed it over in 1997.
Three popular radio talk show hosts have quit in the last five weeks, complaining of pressure to limit their pro-democracy views. In the last week, a succession of mainland officials have stepped forward to insist that the hosts had not been intimidated and to suggest that one of the commentators, Allen Lee, had misunderstood a late-night phone call from a former mainland official.
Anti-Tung Solidarity, an activist group here that is critical of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, said today that a Hong Kong businessman had been detained for a week in Shenzhen, across the border in mainland China. The businessman had been producing blue umbrellas at his factory in Shenzhen with the Chinese characters for "general elections" on them.
After 3,000 umbrellas had been produced and shipped to Hong Kong for use in a pro-democracy demonstration planned here for July 1, the businessman was detained on May 27 and further umbrella production halted, said Stephen Shiu, the convener of the activist group. Mr. Shiu said that the man, whom he declined to name, had been released from police detention on Thursday but told that he could not leave Shenzhen pending an investigation into his "political affairs."
Shenzhen Public Security Bureau officials could not be reached for comment this evening.
Defenders of Beijing's policies are becoming increasingly organized here as well. Daniel Fung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority, the regulatory agency for radio and television stations, said that he and a few other prominent lawyers were forming a new group to pursue what he described as China's modernization and better relations between Hong Kong and the mainland.
"We need to keep a perspective here - China today is more than Tiananmen Square," he said, adding that many of the lawyers in the new group were members of the China People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.
He compared the Tiananmen Square incident 15 years ago, in which possibly hundreds of students were shot to death by soldiers or crushed by tanks, to the fatal shooting of four Vietnam War protesters by edgy national guardsmen in 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio.
"Kent State was a major tragedy, but America today is not about Kent State," Mr. Fung said.
Tonight's vigil seemed to feature a generational split, with older participants focusing mostly on what happened at Tiananmen while younger people tended to give equal weight to events in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and to current democracy struggles here.
Ma Hong-kit, a chain-smoking, 73-year-old retired garment factory worker, said that he came because "the Chinese government should come clean about June 4."
But Yung Sau-mui, a 37-year-old teacher, said that the turnout increased this year "because of the issues in the last month."
Mr. Lee, the vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, which organized the vigil, said that Beijing risked radicalizing the youth of Hong Kong by taking such a hard line against democracy here.
Young people here increasingly see themselves as citizens of Hong Kong first and China second, he said, adding, "There will be more defiance in the next generation than in our generation, and we don't want to see that."
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Cheney speech to draw protesters
Jun. 4, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040604-015252-5489r.htm
Chicago, IL -- Security is tight for a political speech in Chicago by Vice President Dick Cheney at a fundraiser for Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan.
Pickets from several labor unions and activist groups planned to demonstrate outside the Chicago Hilton and Towers Hotel to protest contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq. Cheney is former chief executive officer of the Houston-based oil and construction firm.
Cheney arrived at Midway Airport Friday afternoon.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is urging Cheney to use his remarks at the $1,000-a-plate fundraiser to correct statements he made this week in Kansas City about the administration's use of the USA Patriot Act and the impact of the law on average Americans.
Cheney told an audience in Kansas City that no abuses of the Patriot Act had been reported or confirmed. The ACLU says at least two lawsuits have been filed, including one by an Internet service provider that can't be identified under a "gag order."
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Protest song is back - with a vengeance
And this time the lyrics are not just antiwar. From hip-hop to punk to rock, artists are wailing against President Bush
By Christopher Blagg
The Christian Science Monitor
June 04, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0604/p11s01-almp.html
The term protest music often conjures up images of unkempt folkies strumming guitars and warbling their dissent in Greenwich Village coffeehouses.
All that has changed.
Folk music no longer dominates the genre. Today, rebellious political rhetoric can be found in hip-hop, punk, country, metal, alt-rock, and everything in between. Not only has protest music diversified, it seems to be rapidly on the rise.
Some of the new songs, unsurprisingly, address the war on Iraq. But whereas protest songs during the Vietnam era were broadly antiwar in their message, the new batch of political tunes aren't narrowly focused on the recent war. It's more personal than that. Most of the music is targeted at the actions and policies of one man: George W. Bush.
And it's often incendiary stuff.
"For better or worse, Bush has stirred up a lot of vitriol in the music community," says David Browne, head music critic for Entertainment Weekly. "There's always been protest songs against presidents, but they have never been near to the level of venom you're seeing now."
That isn't to say no songs are championing the administration's foreign policy - country music has produced hits such as Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (The Angry American)." But they're being drowned out by the sheer volume of musicians working to oust the Oval Office's current occupant.
The musicians range from punk rockers to pop acts to older artists like Patti Smith and Rickie Lee Jones. In all, Mr. Browne reckons protest songs seem to have been more numerous in the past year and a half than in the late '60s. "There just wasn't that concentration of songs during the Vietnam War," he says.
Leading the charge in the current round of Bush-whacking is Fat Mike, frontman for the veteran punk rock group NOFX. Mike created the current Billboard-charting compilation entitled "Rock Against Bush," a collection of sneeringly rebellious punk rock songs including ones from mainstream acts like Sum 41, OffSpring, and the Ataris. Twenty-six bands offered songs for the compilation, and many more joined the tour that followed.
The idea for the album emerged from the controversy over the Florida vote count in the previous presidential election. The outcome still rankles Fat Mike, who believes the result was unjust.
"After the 2000 election I was pretty upset," says Mike. "I needed to come up with a way I could use my celebrity to expose the fraud of the election."
Mike also soon founded the provocative website punkvoter.com, which aimed to harness the youth vote.
"Punk rockers have been against government policy from the start, but it's never been specific," asserts Mike. "This is the first time we've been focused on one thing - getting Bush out of office."
Toby Veg, organizer and cofounder of punkvoter.com is amazed at the genre's outpouring of bile aimed at the president. "In one sense, the Bush administration has been great for punk music. I mean, how do you reconcile a genre based on anarchy? It really speaks to exactly how much punk musicians dislike Bush," says Veg.
It's not just the punk rockers who are turning to the microphone to assail the president. The Beastie Boys, legends of hip-hop, are releasing their long-awaited new recording, "To the 5 Boroughs," on June 15, and its lyrics are loaded with jabs at Bush. The personal nature of the current protest music is something of a modern phenomenon.
Alternative-rock heartthrobs and MTV darlings Incubus have offered up perhaps the most strident attack on the president with their latest single "Megalomaniac." The controversial video, which has now been relegated to the marginal hours by MTV, depicts a "Leave It To Beaver" family drinking crude oil instead of milk, and a smarmy, baby-kissing Bush look-alike, all shown in a graphic style eerily reminiscent of Nazi war propaganda.
You'd think that the hip-hop, punk, and hard rock bands would hand out the most spirited shots at the embattled president, but that has been left to the smooth, jazz-tinged tunes of singer Rickie Lee Jones. The songwriter felt that the music community was initially too quiet after the Patriot Act was passed.
"Everybody was afraid to speak out against him [Bush]," says Jones in a recent telephone call. "It was a very dangerous time. The atmosphere was very reminiscent of fascist Germany.... I've never been an activist, but I wanted to start doing something."
Jones makes no bones about her views about the president on her new compact disc "Evening of My Best Day." Despite its soft atmospherics, the opening tune off the track, "Ugly Man," may be the sharpest attack on a president to date, while the up-tempo bounce of "Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act Now)" is similarly self-explanatory in its rebellious intentions. Jones wants to be clear that what she is protesting is not the Iraq war, but the actions of George W. Bush. Asserts Jones, "Call it what it is! It's not a war, it's George Bush - the man wielding the weapon is the problem."
The goal for all these musicians is to create change, but how effective can a song actually be? The audience is primarily young, disillusioned non- voters. Fat Mike says the Rock Against Bush concerts are a far more effective tool. Audiences are greeted with a barrage of public speakers in between sets, and those who buy the compilation also receive a free DVD that offers more detailed information and advocacy tips.
Volume II of the Rock Against Bush compilation will come out Aug. 10 and includes such mainstream pop acts as No Doubt, The Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Yellowcard.
Whether this new burst of protest activity from the music community will have an effect on the coming election remains to be seen, but Fat Mike seems confident nonetheless.
He says punkvoter.com is getting 14 million hits per month and 500,000 unique users a month. Asserts Mike, "On Nov. 4 there will be between 200,000 to 500,000 kids showing up to vote for the first time because of Rock Against Bush and punkvoter.com."
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Families to press Pentagon on MP unit's deployment
Associated Press
June 04, 2004
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-213101-2979743.php
PORTLAND, Maine - Two dozen relatives of members of the 94th Military Police Company will meet with top Pentagon officials and New England senators Monday to complain about the length of deployments.
The unit, which has been serving in Iraq since April 2003, was supposed to return home last October, but the unit's tour was extended another six months. Then last month, as reservists prepared to board a homeward-bound plane, their stay was extended by another 120 days.
Family members of soldiers in the unit, based in Londonderry, N.H., are expected to meet with Maj. Gen. James Helmly, head of the Army reserve, along with an official from Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq.
Afterward, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a member of the Armed Services Committee, will host a meeting of the relatives with lawmakers from the three states where they live: Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The unit, which has escorted supply convoys, was in Kuwait, expecting to be home for Easter Sunday, when the latest extension orders came. Relatives have since noticed that other military-police companies have rotated home sooner than the 94th, so they plan to ask about the criteria for when units are moved.
"These soldiers have more than served their country," said Nancy Durst of Saco, whose husband, Scott, a Portland police officer, serves in the 94th. "We're not asking for any special privileges. This is now a question of fairness."
The relatives submitted 10 questions in advance to the Pentagon that they hope to have answered at the meeting. Most important is the timetable for getting the 94th home and the Pentagon's criteria for rotating units in and out of Iraq.
Uncertainty about the scheduled shift in power June 30 from U.S. military to an interim Iraqi government has stoked concerns.
The problem stems from a 1970 policy that coordinated skills among the active military, reserves and National Guard units. The mix has left military police, transportation and engineering units in high demand.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has argued that the country doesn't need a bigger Army, even though the Pentagon is seeking a temporary increase of 30,000 troops, to get the right mix of skills among full-time soldiers.
Collins said she is hosting the meeting with lawmakers to assure the relatives that they have a voice in the capital.
"It is important that they have the opportunity to meet in person with the military officials who have direct command over the units in which their loved ones are serving," Collins said. "These soldiers have gone above and beyond in serving the country and helping to create a better life for the Iraqi people."
Collins has pressed Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Armed Services Committee hearings for answers about the lengthy deployments.
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Israel attacks BBC's Vanunu interview
Claire Cozens
Friday June 4, 2004
UK Guardian
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1231533,00.html
Vanunu: Israel says BBC broke terms of his release
The Israeli government has accused the BBC of breaking the strict rules governing the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu by paying him for an interview.
Israel's foreign ministry has written to the BBC Jerusalem bureau chief Andrew Steele claiming the interview, which was broadcast on BBC2 on Sunday night, "was planned and conducted in a clandestine manner, with the express intent of bypassing the law as well as the security restrictions imposed on Mr Vanunu by the Israeli authorities".
Mr Vanunu, who was released from jail last month after serving 18 years for leaking secrets about Israel's nuclear programme to the Sunday Times, is barred from speaking to foreign journalists under the terms of his release.
Although the BBC's interview was conducted by an Israeli journalist, Yael Lotan, the letter appears to suggest this was simply a way of circumventing the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities.
Foreign ministry spokesman Gideon Meir claimed in the letter that "the BBC bureau in Jerusalem was involved in logistical and technical support for the interview as well as in the duplication of the tapes", and also accused the BBC of paying for a flat for Mr Vanunu.
"To add insult to injury," Mr Meir's letter continued, "the BBC refused to respond to the legitimate queries of the Israeli authorities on the latter".
However the BBC today denied the claims, insisting its Jerusalem bureau was not involved in the interview, and that Mr Vanunu had not received any payment.
"Mordechai Vanunu was not paid by the BBC for the interview. Neither did the BBC offer to rent or pay for an apartment for Mr Vanunu on his release. Magnetic North, the independent production company, leased an apartment in a complex in Jaffa for a short time for its producer. That had nothing to do with any other apartments in that complex that may or may not have been secured on Mr Vanunu's behalf by other parties," the BBC said in a statement.
"The interview was secured by the independent production company, Magnetic North. It was conducted by an Israeli journalist and crew and therefore no restriction placed on Mr Vanunu was broken.
"The BBC's Jerusalem bureau was not involved in the organisation or conduct of the interview, nor was it involved in its editing. In broadcasting this interview, the BBC was fulfilling its duty to report world events fairly and impartially. Mr Vanunu's story is of legitimate world interest and it would have been remiss of the BBC not to cover it."
Huge security has surrounded Mr Vanunu since his release and last week Peter Hounam, the Sunday Times journalist who conducted the original interview with the former nuclear technician, was himself arrested by the Israeli security agents hunting for tapes of the BBC interview.
Hounam was held and questioned about the interview, but was eventually freed after the intervention of Mr Vanunu's lawyers and the British ambassador.
In an account of his experiences published by the Sunday Times at the weekend, Hounam revealed what had happened following Mr Vanunu's release.
"My aim in the weeks after [Vanunu's] release was to get an exclusive interview with him for this newspaper and film it for the BBC," he said. "Restrictions imposed by the ever-obsessive security authorities banned him from speaking to foreigners but permitted him to be interviewed by any Israeli.
"I was of the firm belief, as was Vanunu, that an interview would help to highlight the ridiculousness of the restrictions, and show those in the Israeli government who had displayed a degree of common sense about the issue - notably the attorney general, Menahem Mazuz - that they were pointless and repressive."
Hounam also revealed how the programme's producer, Chris Mitchell, had later been stopped at Tel Aviv airport and ordered to hand over the tapes of the interview.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857
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